Letter From the UK

O Canada our only hope

By James Delingpole
The Telegraph

I love Canada. I love Canadians. I like very much what their government is doing. I have great faith in their future. And if it weren't for their winters, I'd go and live there like a shot. Weird, huh?

Well it's certainly weird enough for those of us old enough to remember Canada in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties when it was little more than an embarrassing liberal-lefty joke. Sure we still remembered the suffering and courage of those plucky Canucks from Vimy Ridge to Dieppe to the Low Countries, but that spirit appeared long since to have vanished under the noisome regime of Pierre Trudeau and his grisly communitarian successors. Canada was like a pale imitation of the US with all the worst aspects of European Socialism and political correctness tacked on to it.

But suddenly – sorry South Park – but Canada-is-crap jokes just aren't funny any more because they lack the key ingredient of truth.

UK Labour Critiques Welfare

Intriguing Developments

When conservative political parties turn mushy and move to the centre to make themselves more electable, left wing parties sometimes force themselves to face up to reality.  Ironically this can mean they adopt traditionally right wing ideas.

Something like this may be happening in the UK right now.  Labour, out-mushed by the Conservative-Liberal coalition, is starting to rethink social welfare.  The idea that the state should fund life-style benefit dependency in perpetuity is coming under Labour critique.  Leading the charge is the shadow work and pensions secretary, Liam Byrne.  The Guardian reckons that Byrne is leading a significant redrawing of Labour's position on welfare.

Three things are in Byrne's sights:

Letter from the UK

Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton - review

A banal and impudent argument for the uses of religion

Terry Eagleton
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 12 January 2012 10.00 GMT

The novels of Graham Greene are full of reluctant Christians, men and women who would like to be rid of God but find themselves stuck with him like some lethal addiction. There are, however, reluctant atheists as well, people who long to dunk themselves in the baptismal font but can't quite bring themselves to believe. . . .


Such reluctant non-belief goes back a long way. Machiavelli thought religious ideas, however vacuous, were a useful way of terrorising the mob. Voltaire rejected the God of Christianity, but was anxious not to infect his servants with his own scepticism. Atheism was fine for the elite, but might breed dissent among the masses. . . .  There was one God for the rich and another for the poor. Edward Gibbon, one of the most notorious sceptics of all time, held that the religious doctrines he despised could still be socially useful. So does the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas today.

Diderot, a doyen of the French Enlightenment, wrote that the Christian gospel might have been a less gloomy affair if Jesus had fondled the breasts of the bridesmaids at Cana and caressed the buttocks of St John.

Not so Fast . . .

Knowing Where the Butteries Are

The Scottish Nationalist movement is skirting a dangerous precipice.  How times have changed.

For years the SNP ("Scottish National Party") has pushed for a referendum where the people of Scotland get to decide whether they withdraw from the United Kingdom and establish themselves as in independent, sovereign nation.  Scotland is a net fiscal drain to the UK.  It could not easily survive if it depended upon its own taxation basis to support welfare payments and central government lolly scrambles. 

That has never been an impediment in the past because the plan always was to enter the European Union as a sovereign nation.

Serious Deficit Measures

When All Else Fails . . .


A thoughtful proposal to cut national deficits, from The Onion. In the end we all have to contribute and do our part to cut the national debt.

More Lanchashire Cotton Wool

Troglodyte Reactionary Syndrome, Part II

Economic ignorance amongst the left never ceases to surprise it seems.  Hidebound in ideology, leftists would appear unable to see what is right before their face.  

The latest example: the self-styled humble blogger, Danyl at Dim Post.

Cocooned in Lancashire Cotton Wool

Troglodyte Reactionary Reflex Syndrome

Mike Lee--Auckland Councillor, former Chair of the now defunct Regional Council, and left-wing true believer--has weighed in on the Ports of Auckland stoush.  His argument draws upon a spurious ideology and is parlous economic on fact. 

Mike complains that competition between the Ports of Auckland and the Port of Tauranga is doing no-one any good.  It is driving down prices and operating margins so that big business (Maersk and Fonterra) can make a killing.  The people who suffer include every Aucklander (an argument likely to be less appealing to Bay of Plenty folk than a fetid, mildewed jaffa) and, of course, the unionised work force at Ports of Auckland.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Laughter is the Best Medicine

 Stupid Is as Stupid Does

When a society or culture looks to government as its god, this is the sort of thing that happens.

Grand Pooh-bahs and High Priests

Religious Libertarians

We had to hoot with laughter over this one: Peter Cresswell, high-priest of libertarianism, has deigned to declaim libertarian Ron Paul.  The Grand Pooh-bah of the Orthodox Libertarian Church has pronounced that Paul is not an orthodox libertarian.  He is a sectarian libertarian, holding views and opinions that no true believer would dare hold.

Now, to be a true member of the true church of libertarianism you have to bow five times a day towards the last known resting place of Ayn Rand.  [For our readers not familiar with the wonderful attributes of the Goddess, we have posted a couple of times on her holy attributes, here and here.]  Paul does not bow and worship.  Therefore, he is not even an apostate--one who once genuinely believed, but then departed from the true faith.  He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. 

Paul's heretical belief?

Running on Fumes

It's All Going to End--Not

Part of the catechism of Green Catastrophism is describing the forthcoming horrors of Peak Oil.  You know, the world is running out of oil and the dislocation and suffering that will bring to humanity is unthinkable--so, the governments of the world (through the UN) had better come up with a government led solution to save us all, yah de yah de yah. 

But, we recall the sage words of Sheik Yamani.  He opined that the Coal Age ended not for lack or shortage of coal, and the Oil Age will also eventually end, but not for lack of oil.  The Sheik knew a thing or two about economic development, it would appear.

"Peak Oil" looks a more and more distant risk.  Take this as an example (it's not uncommon):

Harmful Utopian Dreams

Standing Up for Workers

At ContraCelsum we love to see employees win.  We get great satisfaction and much pleasure in seeing "workers" (to use the socialist, class-warfare term) get significant rises in income, working conditions, work satisfaction, enjoyment, and so forth.  Yet many--far too many--would accuse us of being "anti-worker".  Why would that be?

It's because we have a radically different perspective on how workers' pay and conditions should be improved.

Letter From America

The Left’s So-Called Empathy

 

By Mark Steyn

Reprinted from National Review Online

January 7, 2012 6:00 A.M.

Lest you doubt that we’re headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within ten minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the “crazy things” he’s said and done.

Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America’s political class, but the “crazy thing” Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum’s “taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home,” whereupon he “played with it.”

The Myth of Social Equality

Cruel Envy

It's an old saw, but with all the nonsense swirling about calling for equality and the terrible evils of inequality, it's worth repeating.  What would happen if we introduced egalitarianism into sport?

The analogy is re-presented by Martin Robinson in the NZ Herald.  Yes, it has been said before, but worth repeating, especially because the champions of egalitarianism are lifting their lusty voice everywhere.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Some Preliminary Thoughts On "Real Marriage"

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, January 07, 2012

[Editor's Note: Mark and Grace Driscoll have written a book on sex and marriage which is stirring up controversy.  A summary of the controversy can be found here.  Douglas Wilson intends to interact with the Driscoll's book.  Here is his first piece.]

Lord willing, as time goes by, I will be interacting more with Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll. But here are some of my basic assumptions going into the discussion.

1. Words written are easier to interact with (and be concerned about) than words unwritten. Pastors like Driscoll frequently get in trouble for things they write and say. This book has been called "dangerous." In the meantime, other pastors rarely get in trouble for things they didn't write and didn't say. But -- and here I am convinced that the Driscolls are exactly right -- a lot of damage has been caused by the church's unwillingness to address certain topics, an unwillingness to bring the whole counsel of God to bear on this subject. Silence is also dangerous.

Sultans of Snide

 Bottom Feeders

Storm clouds are gathering around Rick Santorum--running to win the Republican nominee for this year's presidential elections.  Santorum is a Christian who takes the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ seriously.  Consequently to the Commentariat and the media, by definition he is stupid, dumb, and dangerous.  The spittle is in full spray.

We blogged recently about the mockery Santorum is starting to face because one of his children was still born and the parents took the deceased child home so that the rest of the family could grieve and make their farewells.  This is being pilloried as a sign of someone of unsound mind.  Weird.  Kooky.

Blogger Patterico opens up with both barrels at the Sultans of Snide.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Dog With Two Tails

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, January 05, 2012

Rick Santorum has said that those who are critical of his so-called "big government conservatism" are wrong, and they are libertarians to boot. Since he is not a libertarian, he rejects the label -- he reasons that if you are a virtual anarchist, then everything is going to look like big government to you. That's true enough, but there is more to it.

As Republicans have done their go-along-get-along thing for the last several decades, an awful lot of territory has opened up between the mainstream Republican right and the libertarian right. This is not the result of the libertarians moving. As the spending has grown, so the distance between the two has grown. There is a lot more distance than there used to be. If you were to show the editorial board of National Review (from 1965, say) what kind of budgets the 2012 conservatives were going to be urging, their temptation would be to sell their magazine and spend all the money at the dog races.

But Santorum's comments to the contrary, there are still conservatives around, not libertarians, who see him as too easy with the checkbook.

Stupid, Crazy, Ignorant and Dangerous

No Surprises

Secularism represents the most intolerant bigotry in the West.  Its megaphone is the media.  It consistently casts its opponents--religious believers, usually Christians--as ignorant and dangerous.  But that is its only consistency.  In all other ways it is hypocritical. 

Rodney Stark describes the syndrome:

The Journey of the Magi

Nobody Reads Eliot Like Eliot

In September 2009, Bob Toomey uploaded the vid below on You Tube. He commented:

A rare recording taken from a live interview T. S. Eliot did for the BBC, broadcast during World War II. The original audio was pretty bad, but I cleaned it up as best I could. The thing that comes through most clearly is that nobody reads Eliot like Eliot.



Hat Tip: Justin Taylor.

Bleeding Out

 Fonterra's Off

We have blogged several times on the crisis confronting the Ports of Auckland.  As its unionised labour force hold the company to ransom via the strike weapon, shipping clients are moving their business elsewhere.  The Port is in a vicious circle. 

Normally when the returns to shareholders are under threat the owners of the business either capitulate to the strike threat (and so kick the can down the road until another day of reckoning) or they get tough and break the union.  In this case, however, the owner is the Auckland City Council which is replete with left-wing old-style luddite socialists.  Better to have a Port that fails commercially than allow anti-union actions to be taken.

The Iron Lady

Wonderfully, Conservatively Subversive

Rebecca Cusey

Conservatives have nothing to fear from the controversial and wonderfully subversive Margaret Thatcher biopic, “The Iron Lady.” Because the creators, whatever their personal political beliefs, had the artistic integrity to let Thatcher be Thatcher, the film becomes a rousing call to those who believe that “those who can do, must get up and DO.”

The film opens today in New York and Los Angeles, a common practice to make end of year films eligible for the Oscar race, and expands nationwide on January 13. Meryl Streep plays Thatcher, the powerful former leader of Britain who rose from humble roots to lead her country through economic turmoil, Irish Republican Army terrorism, military engagements, and the end of the Cold War.

The controversy stems from the framework of the film,

Remembering the Dead

Perspective

Rick Santorum, contender for becoming the Republican Presidential candidate, was smeared last week as being weird, if not a little unhinged.  The proof: in the nineties, the Santorum's suffered under the tragedy of a still-born child.  Santorum took the dead child home for a couple of hours so that the other children could grieve appropriately and say farewell.  Weird, apparently. 

Here is an excellent post from Patterico, putting things in perspective.  Framing the narrative is everything.

Shaking Baradur

But As For Me and My House . . .

The human race is troubled, deeply so.  Existence is not what it should be.  Things are not right.  They must be put to right.  Who or what will do it?  Whilst there may be the occasional Pollyanna who believes in relentless universal goodness, the overwhelming majority of human beings think that things could (and should) be better. Since this is true of most nations and human cultures, we are faced with a dilemma: either we descend into bitterness, or we find a saviour in which we can place our faith and hope that things will improve and eventually be put to rights. 

The quest for, and hope in, a saviour of some kind is pretty much universal. Our age is no exception.

Doug Wilson's Letter From America

An Iowa Caucus Nano-Margin

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Here are a few observations that conservatives can pack into their suitcases as they leave Iowa. Romney edged out Santorum by eight votes -- a victory so razor-thin close as to make no difference. Eight votes! And the way the expectations world is structured, Romney cannot really claim a triumph here and Santorum can.
In the meantime, Ron Paul came in a strong third -- not as well as I thought he was going to do, but still doing very well. After those "three tickets out," Iowa did what Iowa does well, which was to winnow the field.

Here are some thoughts:

Chutzpah Indeed

 Very Smelly

The poor old NZ Herald.  It claims to be New Zealand's Fishwrap of Record, but these days it is smelling decidedly stinky.  When anyone attempts to cloak naked self-interest by conjuring high moral principle the stench of decay usually becomes overwhelming.  And so it is in this case.  

Our Fishwrap of Record is continuing to beat up on the Crown seeking to recover costs from one over litigious journalist.  The "story" has been framed not just as a David versus Goliath struggle (although there has been plenty of that) but more importantly a struggle between individual freedom versus overreaching government power.  Now it is democracy itself which is at stake.  Wow.

Letter From America

Completely and Unreservedly

Posted by Derek Thomas

(Derek Thomas was a colleague of ours many years ago.)

It was forty years ago today (December 28, 1971) that I became a Christian. My conversion was Saul-like: sudden, unexpected, and decisive. I was eighteen, a freshman at university studying physics and math at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

I was not raised in a religious home. My memory holds only fleeting acquaintance with the church - a "Christening" in my early teens with just my mother, an Anglican vicar and myself present; the ritual of "confirmation classes" and the visit of the bishop followed by rebellion and atheism. By eighteen, I was, like most of my peers, a firm believer in science. The universe was the product of a Big-Bang and everything that exists - Mozart, The Beatles, Rembrandt, Salvador Dali, you name them - came from this primal event. Everything comes from nothing.

            Enter John Stott.

The World of Marxist Academia

Unmaking Decent Society

It's a terrible world--at least according to Tim Hazledine, Professor of Economics at Auckland University.  Tim has provided us with his peculiar version of festive cheer, declaiming systemic injustice in New Zealand society.  And what is this gross injustice?  It is deeply imbedded income inequality.  You know--same old, same old.  The rich are getting richer and the poorer are not keeping up. 

This egregious situation is a threat to what Hazledine nominates as the Decent Society (upper caps are his).  According to Hazledine the Decent Society appears to be one where there are no great disparities between the unseemly wealthy and the grinding poor.  It is a society where incomes cluster around the median.  "Unrestrained, short-sighted greed" is unmaking us all. 

Hazledine goes on to give an example of the very thing he is decrying.

Letter From America

Why and How to Read Calvin’s Institutes

Justin Taylor

If you haven’t yet read C. S. Lewis’s introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, I’d highly recommend it.

He wants to refute the “strange idea” “that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books.”

Lewis finds the impulse humble and understandable: the layman looks at the class author and “feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him.”

“But,” Lewis explains, “if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator.” Lewis therefore made it a goal to convince students that “firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”

I suspect this holds true with respect to evangelical Calvinists and Calvin’s Institutes. Are we in danger of being a generation of secondhanders?

Let me forestall the “I don’t have time” objection. If you have 15 minutes a day and a bit of self-discipline, you can get through the whole of the Institutes faster than you think. Listen to John Piper:

The Most Real of All Histories

Beloved for the Sake of the Fathers

In Romans 11, Paul gives the divine plan for human history.  It turns around redemption and deliverance of the human race.  A key dynamic driving the progress of redemption is the Jewish-Gentile relationship.  We learn that a hardness came over the heart of Israel, so that the Gospel could legitimately come to the Gentiles.  The latter, coming to reverence the God of Israel and worship His Messiah, make the Jewish people jealous, causing them, in their turn, to desire to return to the God of their fathers.  Then, in its turn,  return of Jewish people to the Messiah becomes the apex stone of blessedness for the entire world.

In certain periods of history, it has pleased the Lord to return to His ancient people, making the call of the Gospel life from the dead for them.  In such times, the veil appears removed.  It would seem that one such period of blessedness is occurring in the United States now.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

And Then, Wham

Money, Love, Desire - Wealth and the Christian
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, December 26, 2011

As news comes in that China is starting to teeter, allow me to take a moment to remind everybody that there are two kinds of money. Given that miscreants are often put in charge of economies, the boundary between the two kinds of money is frequently murky, but it is important to note the two kinds of money anyhow.

Wealth is made up of goods and services. One kind of money, the real kind, is a measuring stick for those goods and services. When men are being comparatively honest, paper money can work for a time,

It's an Accident

A Mere Drop in an Ocean of Chance

Harper's Magazine, in the December 2011 edition, carried an "emperor has no clothes" piece by Alan P Lightman entitled The Accidental Universe: Science's Crisis of Faith. 

The crisis of faith is occurring amongst the high priests of scientism--that religion-cum-philosophy which asserts that only matter exists and the study of matter alone reveals truth and knowledge.  And it is the high-priests of scientism who are in crisis.  The high-priests, of course, are the theoretical physicists. And the crisis is one of existence being so random that ultimately nothing has meaning.