It's Worth Serious Consideration

‘It's miraculous’

Owners say cultural burning saved their property

By Ella Archibald-Binge and Rhett Wyman
Sydney Morning Herald


Phil Sheppard watched with trepidation as a giant blaze approached his beloved Hunter Valley property outside Laguna, near Cessnock.  The 66-year-old had poured his heart and soul into Ngurrumpaa - an isolated 160-acre bushland property with a main house and several huts, offering cultural camps for tourists and Indigenous youth.

The fire came within metres of the main house on Leanne King and Phil Sheppard's property in the Hunter Valley.   Three weeks ago, he and other owners were forced to evacuate, helplessly watching online as the Gospers Mountain fire converged with the Little L Complex fire and appeared to engulf the property.  To his amazement, when he returned two days later, traversing the long gravel driveway on foot after fallen trees blocked vehicle access, most structures remained perfectly intact.

“I came around the bend and could see my hut still standing, I just couldn't believe it,” he said.  “It burnt right around the house ... it was as if somebody had been here watching it and putting it out, but there wasn't, there was nobody here at all.”  Another hut, outside the cultural burn area, was completely destroyed.

Owners say the property was saved by the traditional Indigenous technique of cultural burning conducted on their land three years ago.

David French's Letter From America

Iraq: The More You Know, the Worse You Feel.

The French Press

I’m not going to rehash all the events of the last few days in Iraq. The short version is relatively simple—after an escalating series of attacks on American bases (including an attack that killed an American contractor), the United States responded with a series of air strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria that killed more than two dozen militants. Earlier this week, these militias responded by besieging the American Embassy in Baghdad, the U.S. reinforced its defenses, and the militias have withdrawn. For the moment, the immediate crisis seems to have passed. So, what should we make of the week’s events?

First, don’t tell Twitter, but this was no Benghazi. In Libya, an outmanned, outgunned detachment of American diplomats and intelligence officers faced a sustained, organized assault from jihadist militias without meaningful assistance. The diplomatic outpost was overrun, a CIA facility was abandoned, and we lost four American lives, including the life of the American ambassador. It was a terrible defeat, and only extraordinary American heroism kept it from becoming a massacre.

By contrast, the American Embassy in Baghdad did not fall, and an American show of force (including Apache helicopters over the embassy and rapid Marine reinforcements) demonstrated to the Iraqi militants that the U.S. would defend its diplomats. There was no American defeat. The embassy still stands.

Second, the protests were no “grassroots uprising.”

Daily Meditation

Linking Faith and Loyalty

Ligonier Ministries

Loyalty is a virtue that is linked to the biblical concept of faith. We tend to restrict or limit our understanding of faith to an act of believing, a kind of intellectual assent to the truth of a proposition. We know, however, that saving faith includes more than assent; it includes personal trust.

When we probe the depths of this trust, we discover that it is multifaceted. It is within the nature of trust that we see the link between faith and loyalty. Together, faith and loyalty yield fidelity. In our language, loyalty and fidelity serve as virtual synonyms.

Once, on an airplane, I sat beside Edward DeBartolo, the entrepreneur and owner of the San Francisco 49ers. I asked him what he valued the most in his employees and players. He answered without hesitation: “Loyalty!” On the surface, this may have been interpreted as the desire of a leader to be surrounded by “yes men” or a band of sycophants. But “yes men” are not really loyal. They are driven more by self-preservation than fidelity.

A faithful friend does not exhibit a blind loyalty that refuses to recognize the errors or faults in his or her friends or bosses. Rather, he or she exhibits the biblical love that covers a multitude of sins, remaining faithful in the midst of failure and shortcomings.

Coram Deo

Are you a faithful friend to others, despite their failures and shortcomings?

Passages for Further Study

Proverbs 27:6
Proverbs 17:17
Proverbs 18:24

UK Police Live Out A Monty-Python Skit

Make-Work Police Stupidity in the UK

There is something terribly wrong with the Police force in the United Kingdom.  One hopes that the Orwellian overreach gets exposed and then uprooted from the Force.  

Here is the problem: 

Police officers in the United Kingdom are spending time and resources on logging tens of thousands of “hate incidents” every year, even though the offences are not crimes.

Over the past five years, police in England and Wales have recorded over 87,000 ‘non-crime hate incidents’, using the same system that logs real crimes, the result of which can lead to the offences appearing on an individual’s background check despite not committing a crime.  [Kurt Zindulka, Breitbart London] 

At the same time as this piece of "make work" is consuming more and more police time, the police hierarchy is complaining that they are overworked.

David French's Letter From America

The Sad, Necessary Division of the United Methodist Church

It’s about much more than gay marriage.

David French


Last week, believe it or not, there was a news development of generational importance that had absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump. The two different factions of the United Methodist Church agreed to divorce. Here’s the New York Times with the basic facts: 

A group of leaders of the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced on Friday a plan that would formally split the church, citing “fundamental differences” over same-sex marriage after years of division.

The plan would sunder a denomination with 13 million members globally — roughly half of them in the United States — and create at least one new “traditionalist Methodist” denomination that would continue to ban same-sex marriage as well as the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy.

The church announced the plan to divide less than a year after a close denominational vote (led by the denomination’s African and other overseas churches) to reject a plan that would have allowed “local congregations, conferences, and clergy to make their own choices about conducting same-sex marriages and ordaining LGBT pastors.”  Instead, it adopted a “Traditional Plan,” which “affirmed the denomination’s teachings against homosexuality.” But the vote hardly ended the internal debate. Delegates from America were largely opposed to the Traditional Plan.

The agreement to divide still has to be approved at its global conference in Minneapolis this May, but approval is likely. And if the agreement is approved, it will represent—in essence—the final fracturing of the traditional American church from two primary streams of Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) to three—Catholic, Mainline, and Evangelical.

The secular media will cast the divide primarily in the terms it understands—as focused on “LGBT issues”—but that’s incomplete. The true fracturing point between Mainline and Evangelical churches is over the authority and interpretation of scripture. The debate over LGBT issues is a consequence of the underlying dispute, not its primary cause. As I explained in my first Sunday newsletter, there is a strain of Protestant Christianity that views the Bible as valuable but not infallible or inerrant. Evangelical Christians, by contrast, strongly dissent from that view.

Daily Meditation

Embracing Our Mission

Ligonier Ministries

A church that cares not for truth is a community that rejects its very mission. The person who says, “I’m not interested in doctrine or theology,” is not “of the truth.” He or she has missed the voice of Jesus.

For the church to be the church, she must bow before her King and embrace the mission He has given to her. Yes, we desire a cultural reformation and a restoration of public morality. But that is secondary to and dependent on our mission to bear witness to the truth. Doctrine is important because its central concern is for an understanding of truth, without which there can be no godliness. It is the truth that sets us free, reforms our behavior, and defines us as disciples of Christ.

The world does not see or understand the city of God. It is a hidden city, a concealed kingdom. It is veiled by falsehood, by he who seeks to obscure the truth. The truth is that at this moment Jesus is the King of kings. This world is under His dominion. We are citizens in His realm. We must not negotiate or retreat from that affirmation. The kingdom of God comprises those people who believe what God says and obey when God commands.

Coram Deo

Are you part of God’s kingdom? Do you believe what God says and obey when He commands?

Passages for Further Study

Matthew 28:18–20
Luke 9:60

David French's Letter From America

Trump’s Bold, Justified Gamble In Killing Soleimani Just Might Pay Off

David French

Under this scenario, Iran doesn’t end its enmity and opposition to the U.S., but it does at least temporarily de-escalate. There is some historical precedent for this hope. After the Reagan administration’s sank several ships in the Iranian navy in Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, Iran reduced attacks on neutral shipping in the gulf, providing the United States with a temporary victory. If Iran does stand down its escalations, even if only for a time, Trump’s gamble will have paid off. The strike on Suleimani will have deterred Iran more than it provoked Iran.

But don’t think a pause – or even a de-escalation – means peace. After Praying Mantis, Iran continued to aid anti-American terrorists, and in 1996 it struck America again, bombing the Khobar Towers military complex in Saudi Arabia and killing 19 American service members.

A pause is possible, but it’s optimistic to call it likely. Iran could well respond to Trump’s gamble with a gamble of its own – hitting back, hard, at America or its allies to take advantage of relative American military weakness and profound American division in the hopes of consolidating support at home and pushing the American people past the point of tolerating yet another Middle East conflict.

Cynical Realpolitik

Don’t Repeat The Last Two Decades Of Foreign Policy Idiocies With Iran

The best way to neutralize Iran is to have them overstretch. An older, forgotten grand strategy where adversaries bleed each other is in the Western interest.

Sumantra Maitra
The Federalist

. . . .

Iranian influence will never be completely eradicated from its neighboring country with an overwhelming Shia majority. But Iran is also an adversary, albeit with a very limited area of influence. However, one way to stop Iran, which has not been tried, is a very old, forgotten art of bloodletting. It’s a grand strategy that was once taught to every rookie foreign policy wonk, when schools still focused on teaching amoral history instead of an ideological supposed end of history.

Let Iran bleed. Let Iran overstretch, from Tehran to Tartous. Let them spend their own blood and treasure and impoverish their wealth maintaining security trying to dominate the massive Sunni population of Western Iraq and Northern Syria. Persians and Ottomans were the natural balancers of the Middle East up until 1919. Why not have that back 100 years later?

We can already see the Turks are busy securing Libya and Northern Syria. Why not let Iran do that on their Western front? With the Iranian Quds force leader dead, Iran would look to escalate in asymmetric ways, like it did during President Reagan’s time, by bombing Americans in Lebanon.

President Donald Trump was not elected to civilize the Middle East. He was elected to secure his own borders, and focus on China. As Defense Priorities research shows, this new problem in Iraq is not a cause of concern but an opportunity to disconnect from a cancerous region for good. To rephrase Napoleon, never interrupt your adversary when he is bleeding himself dry.

Amoral, dry, cynical realpolitik was once in Western sinews. The 1920s saw the rise of Wilsonian internationalism. One can only hope this coming decade, a hundred years since, proves to be its final death knell and sees a return of a much older, and far more intelligent form of conducting foreign policy. Let’s finally stop going abroad to search for monsters to destroy. And let’s avoid permanent alliances and entanglements everywhere.

Sumantra Maitra is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a senior contributor to The Federalist. His research is in great power-politics and neorealism. You can find him on Twitter @MrMaitra.

Daily Meditation

Understanding Our Pilgrimage

Ligonier Ministries

Resting within the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the small piece of real estate known as Ellis Island has become a symbol of American history. There, immigrants assembled on arrival to this nation. They came from many places for many different reasons. They all looked to Lady Liberty for hope—this despite her somewhat hypocritical smile, inasmuch as she was erected two years after Congress passed a law limiting immigration.

Two of my ancestors arrived at Ellis Island. One came from Ireland to escape the potato famine. He left a thatched-roof home with a mud floor. The other one came from Yugoslavia, where he was a member of the aristocracy of Croatia.

The two shared a common goal. They both left their homelands seeking a better country. They were pilgrims, sojourners in a foreign land. Like Abraham, they went out seeking a city. Yet unlike Abraham, my ancestors sought the city of man.

Every Christian is called to be a pilgrim. We are pilgrims and sojourners on the earth. Our home is in the city of God. Our community is the church, the visible testimony to the invisible kingdom of God. It is our community—a community of faith.

Coram Deo

Are you living like a pilgrim in this world or have you settled in as a permanent resident?

Passages for Further Study

Hebrews 11:13
1 Peter 2:11
Psalm 119:54

Trump Doctrine Becomes a More Clear

Iranian Analytics

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

)

For all the current furor over the death of Qasem Soleimani, it is Iran, not the U.S. and the Trump administration, that is in a dilemma. Given the death and destruction wrought by Soleimani, and his agendas to come, he will not be missed.

Tehran has misjudged the U.S. administration’s doctrine of strategic realism rather than vice versa. The theocracy apparently calculated that prior U.S. patience and restraint in the face of its aggression was proof of an unwillingness or inability to respond. More likely, the administration was earlier prepping for a possible more dramatic, deadly, and politically justifiable response when and if Iran soon overreached.

To retain domestic and foreign credibility, Iran would now like to escalate in hopes of creating some sort of U.S. quagmire comparable to Afghanistan, or, more germanely, to a long Serbian-like bombing campaign mess, or the ennui that eventually overtook the endless no-fly zones over Iraq, or the creepy misadventure in Libya, or even something like an enervating 1979-80 hostage situation. The history of the strategies of our Middle East opponents has always been to lure us into situations that have no strategic endgame, do not play to U.S. strengths in firepower, are costly without a time limit, and create Vietnam War–like tensions at home.

But those wished-for landscapes are not what Iran has got itself into. Trump, after showing patience and restraint to prior Iranian escalations, can respond to Iranian tit-for-tat without getting near Iran, without commitments to any formal campaign, and without seeming to be a provocateur itching for war, but in theory doing a lot more damage to an already damaged Iranian economy either through drones, missiles, and bombing, or even more sanctions and boycotts to come. If Iran turns to terrorism and cyber-attacks, it would likely only lose more political support and risk airborne responses to its infrastructure at home.

Iran deeply erred in thinking that Trump’s restraint was permanent, that his impeachment meant he had lost political viability, that he would go dormant in an election year, that the stature of his left-wing opponents would surge in such tensions, and that his base would abandon him if he dared to use military force.

Condemned to Repeat Evil

Greenist Folly

Those Who Will Not Learn From Mistakes Are Condemned to Repeat Them

The following article appeared back in early 2009.  Columnist Miranda Devine argued that the terrible bush fires of the 2008/9 season were exacerbated significantly by nay-saying Greenists.  It is as relevant today in Australia, as it was ten years ago. 

But, such is the stranglehold of greenists and greenism in Australia nothing has been done.  The result?  More innocent people have died in the recent Australian firestorm catastrophes than need or ought to be the case.  Greenism is a most deadly religion.

Green ideas must take blame for deaths

By Miranda Devine
Sydney Morning Herald


It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.

So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.

Daily Meditation

Awaiting the City of God

Ligonier Ministries

Evangelical Christians love America. Some see in her the last hope of creating a Christian nation. But it is not a Christian nation. It is pagan to the core. It is in danger of becoming, if it is not already, the new “Evil Empire.” The Mayflower Compact is a museum piece, a relic of a forgotten era. “In God We Trust” is now a lie.

Yes, we must always work for social reform. Yes, we must be “profane” in Martin Luther’s sense of going out of the temple and into the world. We do not despise the country of our birth. But in what do we invest our hope? The state is not God. The nation is not the Promised Land. The president is not our King. The Congress is not our Savior. Our welfare can never be found in the city of man. The federal government is not sovereign. We live—in every age and in every generation—by the rivers of Babylon. We need to understand that clearly. We must learn how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange and foreign land.

America will fall. The United States will inevitably disintegrate. The Stars and Stripes will bleed. The White House will turn to rubble. That is certain. We stand like Augustine before the sea. We pray that God will spare our nation. If He chooses not to, we ask for the grace to accept its demise. In either case, we look to Him who is our King and to heaven, which is our home. We await the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, whose builder and maker is God.

Coram Deo

Are you looking to your King and to your eternal destiny, despite the circumstances around you? Keep your focus on the heavenly Jerusalem, whose builder and maker is God.

Passages for Further Study

1 Corinthians 15:50
John 3:5
2 Peter 1:11

The Ardern Doctrine: Flim Flam and Fluffery

New Zealand's Year of Style Over Substance

In 2019, politics was dominated by spin doctors PR professionals and talented communicators while a ‘Year of Delivery’ failed to do just that

Bryce Edwards
The Guardian

[Editor's Note: there is an old cliche that runs something like this.  "If you want to influence people for the long run, you should under-promise and over-deliver."  If a political leader is successful in living up to that standard, over time integrity becomes a hall mark of an administration or a regime.  If, however, a leader fails, but instead over-promises and fails to deliver, the game is all over, Rover.  That is precisely the situation faced by our present government.  It now represents a deadly combination of fluff and dross.  Columnist Bryce Edwards sees the problem.  However, he believes our PM, Jacinda Ardern can redeem herself and turn the ship around.  We, to the contrary, suspect it is, indeed, "all over, Rover."  She risks being type-cast as a slightly older version of Greta Thunberg.]

Style isn’t always a bad thing in politics. There is a lot to be said for a politician who can channel emotions and values in a way that salves the soul or mobilises the masses. That’s the type of powerful leadership that makes history. Jacinda Ardern has been an exceptional world leader in this way. In 2019 the New Zealand PM responded to the 15 March terrorist attacks with an emotional and thoughtful response that was a lesson in leadership.

Understandably Ardern’s strong and appropriate statements made her the “politician of the year” in nearly every political pundit’s end-of-year summary. Similarly her pronouncement about the Muslim victims that “They are us” was clearly the quote of the year.

For all that, there are an enormous number of New Zealanders who need more than hugs from their prime minister. They voted for the parties of government because they wanted to see a promised “transformation” rather than business as usual.

It was supposed to be the government’s “Year of Delivery” – or so Ardern declared to the press at the beginning of 2019. It was a neat line, because 2018 had been the “year of the working group” in which little reform was carried out, on the promise that the experts would hand the government some major new policies to implement.

However as 2019 rolled on and key promises such as KiwiBuild’s 100,000 affordable houses, a capital gains tax and alleviating child poverty failed to eventuate, the “Year of Delivery” line became a stick with which to beat the government at every turn.

We have now learned that Ardern’s “Year of Delivery” promise was only ever a slick catchphrase dreamed up by a speechwriter, not Ardern herself.

Last week Beehive insiders told leading political journalists that the “Year of Delivery” promise was actually a spin-line produced on the fly by the PM’s top spin doctor to get his boss out of a tight situation when she needed something memorable to say at the start of 2019. The explanation from the Beehive was to convey that it’s not actually fair to hold the PM to account for a catchphrase that was never intended to be taken so seriously.

It is extraordinary that something presented as a solemn promise to the electorate is now being explained away as nothing more than a manufactured PR soundbite. But, in fact, this episode perfectly epitomises the year in politics – showing how PR has come to dominate.

Greenists Propagating a Grand Deceit

Enivoronmentalists Have Exacerbated Australian Fires

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

Australia is on fire, at least 17 people have been killed, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and an estimated half-billion animals — both livestock and wildlife — have been burned alive. The area burned in the bush fires so far is considerably bigger than the area burned either in last year’s Amazon rainforest fires or the fires in California.  But let us not allow the heartbreak and the emotion to distract us from the truth about this natural disaster: it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘climate change’.

First, let’s look at rainfall. All the data and graphs that follows are from the Australian BOM:


As we can see, rainfall in NSW over the last three months is well below average, but no worse than several previous years on record.

The same applies to temperature.

Daily Meditation

Rejecting Kingdoms of This World

Ligonier Ministries

Augustine stood by the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. He had heard of the hordes of barbarians that were moving as a juggernaut against Rome and the empire. The reports were ominous and foreboding, lending little reason for hope of the survival of the Roman culture.

Augustine said a prayer in three parts. In the first part, he implored God to save the empire. In the second part, he asked for grace to accept the destruction of civilization as he knew it, if that should be the will of Providence. In the third part, he asked that in either case he might be permitted soon to die and enter his eternal rest.

Permanence and security cannot be found in the structures of man. Concrete crumbles. Glass shatters. Steel melts. When God says “No!” the cities and kingdoms of men come to ruin. God simply will not tolerate man’s quest for autonomy—his lust for idols of his own making. No city, no nation, no culture can survive the judgment of God.

Coram Deo

Spend some time in prayer today for your city, state, and nation.

Passages for Further Study

Revelation 11:15
Psalm 145:11
Psalm 145:13

Trump's Doctrines of War

Interesting Times

The powers that be within Iran are right now between a rock and a hard place.  On the one hand the clerics and Islamists in that country are losing support from ordinary Iranian citizens by the day.  The only way they can control the restless population is by murder on a grand scale.  Secondly, the United States has demonstrated that it will protect the interests of the US whenever and wherever Iran attempts to do damage to the US. 

We find ourselves intrigued by Trump's doctrines of war.  For a long time he has declared that he wants US military personnel and weaponry brought home.  He wants to turn away from the US being the military policeman of the globe and replace it with a military that is far more narrowly focused upon defending essential US interests.  To this end he has declared he wants to see much of the US military repatriated back to the US.  Secondly, he has made himself obnoxious to some by demanding that allies of the US begin to contribute to their national and international obligations, instead of expecting the US to stump up and pay their defense and western military alliance costs. 

But Trump has also demonstrated that he is not a pacifist--not by a long shot.

An Evil Doppelganger

The Economist Has Given Up On Liberalism

Even as The Economist drifts further and further into progressivism and away from the liberalism of its founding, it still claims to be liberalism’s true, authentic voice.

Jeremy Lott
The Federalist


The Economist fashions itself a liberal magazine, in the original sense of the word. The weekly was founded in 1843 to argue against the corn laws, which discouraged food imports with tariffs and other restrictions and kept domestic food prices high. It chalked up the repeal of those laws only three years later to “a fearless reliance upon the truth and justice of a great principle”: liberalism.

Today we usually call the intellectual descendants of liberals “classical liberals” for clarity. Liberals like those who founded and supported The Economist in its earlier years believed in property rights, free trade, freedom of speech, religious toleration, and the emancipation of slaves. The original liberals’ idea of government was limited, usually sharply.

Conservatives are broadly in agreement with classical liberal ideas, and so are libertarians. The reason we don’t call ourselves liberals, without the qualifier, is what happened to the term in the intervening years. As we’ll see, it was an unfortunate intellectual trend that The Economist was susceptible to.

Progressives Versus Liberals

Progressivism is a movement that came after liberalism, and had very different ideas about government. Progressives wanted a lot more government with few restrictions of its aims or its size.

To progressives, the growth of the state, and its demands on our purses and our persons, was a good thing. Big business was the enemy of the people.

Daily Meditation

Making History Count

Ligonier Ministries

For a little fun, as well as an important look into the pages of your history, take a few minutes for a simple exercise. Take a pencil and paper and jot down the five most meaningful compliments you’ve ever received. They may have been verbal or nonverbal, direct or indirect. On your paper note:

1. The nature of the compliment.

2. When it was given.

3. Who gave you the compliment and what role that person represented to you.

After completing this exercise, try another: Write down the five most important events in your life. Then write briefly why these “historic” moments are so important to you.

These two exercises represent a simple means by which you can come to grips with who you are. To finish the exercise, ask yourself this question: If Rembrandt could paint only one portrait of you, what would he have you doing in the portrait? What is your fruitful moment? Maybe tomorrow will bring a moment that will redirect your personal history.

Our history is not the result of blind fate or the impersonal forces of chance. My personal history and yours are bound up with the Author and Lord of history, who makes my personal history count forever.

 Coram Deo

Do the two exercises suggested in today’s reading, then answer the question: “If Rembrandt could paint only one portrait of you, what would he have you doing in the portrait?”

Passages for Further Study

Psalm 89:1
Psalm 77:11
Psalm 143:5