If You Can't Beat Them . . .

The Open Society and a New Enemy

In a recent article on the Energy Bulletin website (June 29, 2008), Kurt Cobb, who is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, argues for restrictions upon free speech with respect to climate change.

This is not new. It has been part of the sinister underbelly of the movement for some time. Every so often the covering is removed for all to see.

Towards the end of World War Two, Karl Popper wrote the now famous The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper argued very successfully, against the backdrop of the closed societies of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, that a pre-requisite for progress was maintaining an open society where there was a tolerance of the free exchange of ideas scholarship and research. Cobb and his ilk are calling for the Open Society to be closed to climate change skeptics. The rights of free speech should be removed from anti global warming advocates.

What exigency would require such a lurch into a closed, controlled, totalitarian society?


Let us consider carefully Cobb's two reasons for this extreme suggestion.

1. The dire magnitude of the threat requires that basic freedoms be relinquished. This argument is familiar to us all. In a time of war, when our very existence is threatened, it is common for a nation to move to a “war footing” which usually results in greatly expanded state powers, on the one hand, and greatly diminished personal freedoms, on the other. We all understand this, and most find the argument compelling.

However, as we look around we don't see a state of war. It does not appear as though we are living under dire threats. Cobb and his ilk argue in return that this is the very point. The threat exists, it is real—but it won't show up for another fifty years or so. There is so much carbon in the atmosphere right now that these consequences are inevitable; so we must take urgent action now. It is comparable to a situation where we know that a submarine has launched a polaris nuclear missile, but it is just going to take several decades to arrive. So we ought to go to a war footing now—with its attendant restrictions on personal freedoms. All criticism of global warming must be silenced because it is equivalent to traitorous talk in a time of war. Just as we jailed conscientious objectors during the world wars, we should silence global warming critics now.

The problem with this argument is its question begging. It is a fallacy. It assumes what has to be proven. It is precisely the existence of the danger, the proximity of the peril, and the reality of the threat that is at issue. Critics don't believe, or are not convinced, the polaris missile is airborne, or even that there are hostile submarines out there. Until global warming acolytes can engage rationally with the objections and the criticisms, and prove them wrong, suppressing the critics amounts to no more than substituting force for reason. Might is attempting to make right.

Now, we don't question the depth or fervency of Cobb's belief in anthropogenic global warming. We just believe him to be in error. He and his colleagues have far more work to do.

A variant of the “dire threat” argument is the pragamatic overlay: it is better to be safe than sorry. The argument runs that even if global warming is not correct, it will do no harm to combat carbon emissions in the meantime. We will not have lost anything.

Really? Try telling that to the starving millions who cannot afford to buy food any more, courtesy of the bio-fuel mania—explicitly whipped up to combat global warming. Sure the UN has now declared bio-fuels have turned out to be a crime against humanity, but it is a little too late.

It turns out that working to prevent “so called” presumed damage in the future brings terrible hardships, deprivations, and suffering now. It does a great deal of harm. Wisdom says we had better be sure we are right, before we inflict that price upon ourselves—particularly because the price will be disproportionately born by the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable in the world—the people that Franz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth.

2. Public debate is being muddied because oil companies have huge financial resources with which to promote their case in the media and to the public. By implication environmentalists don't have has much money so in this issue the state of free speech is an uneven, unfair playing ground. He who talks the most wins the debate.

Again, there is a certain force to this argument. We have all observed arguments where one protagonist has shouted the other down, has not let him get a word in edgewise, and effectively has won by silencing his opponent.

But is this really the case? When we observe such a situation, do we not resent the shouter and disrespect his arguments? Do we not have sympathy for the person whose views are silenced? Does it not make people more determined than ever to hear the other side? Often that is precisely the effect.

Secondly, oil companies can have no apparent vested interest in fossil fuels per se over the longer term. They are essentially energy “manufacturing” and distribution companies. One would have thought it was deeply within the vested interests of oil companies to promote all sorts of fears about global warming. Who stands to benefit from the bio-fuel mania? Oil companies. As soon as it becomes industrialised and in the supply chain, the oil companies will take a position and make money from it.

It is likely that oil companies will morph into energy conglomerates and will make lots of profit from global warming fears. After all, the major oil companies have been researching alternatives to fossil fuels for decades. So it is not immediately evident why all their vast resources will be put to silencing the siren calls, or to queering the debate. In fact, if anything the widespread phobia over global warming could well be due in part to oil companies stirring the pot along.

We would humbly suggest that every major oil conglomerate in the world right now is carefully positioning itself to maximise its profit from energy measures and policies arising out of efforts to oppose global warming. They will make heaps off the government subsidies, the rules and regulations—because in the end the world needs energy, and it needs capital to develop tools to harness it—and the major oil companies will be right up there.

Finally, is Cobb's capitalist conspiracy theory credible when you consider that all the mainstream media appear to froth at the mouth to publish stories about global warming? Every significant climate event is causally connected with global warming. Once again, like the oil companies, it helps them make profits. Sensational dangers grab attention and increase news consumers—leading to higher advertising revenues. The content of the mainstream media has favoured the cause of global warmingism many many time over.

In 2007, news clippings services recorded that James Hansen, Al Gore's resident global warming expert, was quoted over nine thousand times. No sceptic even came close.

What we desperately need is more, not less debate. The dangers of trying to shut your opponent up by force are just too great. You usually try and do that when you sense your argument is weak and deeply flawed. Or you are frustrated. Or both.

The Loser Letters #8

The Editor of National Review Online introduces the next in the series of the Loser Letters: "Following a hot hot July 4 holiday wherever she is, numero uno atheist convert A.F. Christian returns with number eight of THE LOSER LETTERS, a Screwtape for our screwed-up time.

In the latest round over God, Mary Eberstadt takes on a gynophobe craptocracy, Steven Pinker, flocks of nervous chickens, Peter Singer and more as A. F. begins the real story behind her conversion to atheism." Read the Eighth Letter.

The S-Files

Corrosive and Cancerous

Contra Celsum feels compelled to nominate Winston Peters for a second S-Award

Winston Peters is leader of the political party, New Zealand First and currently serves as New Zealand's Foreign Minister.

Citation:

During the last general election (2004) Prime Minister, Helen Clark character assassinated the person of her opponent, Dr Don Brash by accusing him of having a corrosive and cancerous effect on the body politic.

We believe this indictment reflected a punchy line supplied to her from her PR political minders and push pollsters. However, it begs the question as to what behaviour or actions or policies would actually make such an extreme allegation fair and reasonable. What would one have to do to corrode the body politic or to become its carcinogen?

Contra Celsum believes that the actions and career of Winston Peters are so offensive and amoral that “corrosive and cancerous” has now come close to being a reasonable indictment. Surely, this is what Dr Michael Cullen, Finance Minister was alluding to, when he characterised Mr Peters as the “blowfly of New Zealand politics”.

For most of his populist political career, Mr Peters has attacked and slandered “big business” under the cloak of parliamentary privilege. In earlier years his target was Sir Ron Brierley and his colleagues. In later years, it was Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite. Mr Peters painted a dark and foreboding vista where monied forces conspired to line their own pockets at the expense of the little guy, the ordinary Kiwi battler.

When it was deemed appropriate, Mr Peters went on to the issues of race and immigration. He played on the fears of the xenophobic, telling them that our way of life was being threatened by the Asian hordes. Such outbursts generally occurred every three years, co-inciding with the electoral cycle.

His worst venom has been reserved for political opponents—usually the National and Act parties—whom he regularly lambastes as venal creatures who are little more than willing tools of “big business”.

Now some e-mails have come to light (ironic that emails would the the medium of exposure, given his claim that he was in possession of confidential emails stolen from Don Brash, which he used to taunt his opponents) which appear to substantiate that Mr Peters was the recipient of what amounts to a political bribe.

This bribe was no ordinary bribe such as “vote for me and I will ensure that you get an upgraded hospital”, but a bribe from an offshore plutocrat, someone who has all the hallmarks of a latter day robber baron, the very kind of person Peters has spent his whole career vilifying. It appears as though, despite Peters's energetic and emphatic denials, one Owen Glenn has confirmed that he donated a large sum of money to Mr Peters, at the very time he was lobbying Mr Peters to appoint him as an honorary consul to Monaco.

Mr Glenn appears to be an honest broker. There is no subterfuge in his actions. He is an archetypical robber baron capitalist who openly and overtly seeks to use money to buy his preferred outcome. He has been the Labour Party's largest donor. That corrupt Party deliberately created a loophole in the current Electoral Finance Act which would have allowed it to continue to receive undeclared donations from Mr Glenn, while forcing everyone else to disclose and declare. (Oh, yes, the same Labour Party that accused its opponents of having wealthy American bagmen funding the Party from offshore—yet, when challenged, could not deliver a scintilla of confirmation. Yes, the same Party which admitted Mr Glenn to the New Zealand Order of Merit for his donation to Auckland University.)

We are sure that Mr Glenn would not care two hoots whether the thing was disclosed or not. It appears he also tried to bribe the Maori Party with a large sum of money if they would join Labour in coalition after the 2004 election. To their credit, the Maori Party showed great integrity, and declined. Consequently, the donation never materialised.

Now Mr Peters appears to have accepted a bribe, even while strenuously denying that it was proffered or accepted. Mr Glenn appears to have been the leaker of the emails which confirm his involvement. Presumably, he has grown tired of having paid over “good money” only to have Peters fail to deliver the sought after honorary consulship to Monaco. Mr Peters has so far declined to deliver the sought-after bauble to Mr Glenn, but the public outcry at the time would have made such an appointment odious indeed.

Mr Peters continues his strenuous denials of receiving money from Mr Glenn, but his list of allies is now growing short. Plausible deniability is what is required now; it appears to be in short supply.

Such actions and behaviour would indeed be corrosive and cancerous upon the body politic. Receiving secret donations which intend to manipulate the decisions and actions of politicians (that is, bribery) is a manifestation of terrible corruption. Mr Peters would have been right to spend a good deal of his career attacking such behaviour, assuming he could back it up with verification. Unfortunately, this was rarely the case. So, it was largely hollow and false.

False accusations made for pure political advantage have a corroding influence on the body politic. But accepting bribes for favours in kind would be truly cancerous. Mr Peters has now been exposed prima facie to have lied over the receiving of money from a foreign plutocrat, even while that same plutocrat was lobbying Mr Peters for a favour. As long as Peters continues to deny, without offering sufficient proof and evidence that his denials are plausible, the damage he is doing to the body politic is considerable.

Winston Peters, NZ Foreign Minister: S-Award, Class II, for actions that are Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied

The S-Files

S-Award given to Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)

Contra Celsum is pleased to nominate Mark Twain for a posthumous S-Award for some wry observations on the wonders of scientific extrapolation

Citation:

1. In 1882 Mark Twain was taking a nostalgic trip on a steamboat down the Mississippi River—nostalgic because he was revisiting his old haunts from his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi in the antebellum years. (His observations and reflections are recorded in his wonderful Life on the Mississippi [New York: Bantam Classic Edition, 1981])

2. He records that in his years as a pilot, and subsequently, the river had shortened itself considerably. Floods had led to huge bends being “cut off” as suddenly the river ran straighter. Towns, such as Vicksburg, once at the river bank, ended up “landlocked”, which was tiresome if your whole reason for existence as a town was river commerce. In the course of 150 years, the river had shortened itself by around two hundred odd miles.

Twain then seeks to bring some scientific reasoning to these observations:

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor 'development of the species' either! . . . .

In the space of one hundred and seventy six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of alderman.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact! (p.93)

Mmmm One imagines that Mark Twain, were he alive today, would have been having enormous fun at the expense of global warming ideologues.

In passing, readers may be interested to know that even as the Mississippi has once again been bursting banks and in flood in recent days—and we have been told that this is yet again an “evidence” of global warming—Twain records that in 1882, an unusually large flood occurred, such that at some points the lower river broke its banks and became seventy miles wide! Clearly carbon dioxide and methane must have been working their deadly humours back then as well.

Science has clearly not lost its fascination. Thanks to computer “models” it now gets even more wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. As Georges Santayana put it, he who does not learn from history is condemned to repeat it.

Mark Twain, author: S-Award, Class I for lampooning the conjectures of pseudo-science in a manner that unfortunately is still relevant to our day, and so acting in the course of duty in a way that was, and remains, Smart, Sound, and Salutary.

"It's Justice, But Not as We Know It, Jim"

When Public Justice is Pathetic

Over recent days a very interesting case has hit the headlines. A high profile sports broadcaster several years ago was ending a relationship with a woman who was the marketing manager for a large corporate. In the midst of a stormy argument, the broadcaster assaulted her physically in some way (details have not been disclosed). The former couple resolved the dispute. The resolution included the payment of $170,000 to the assaulted female. Nothing was disclosed in public. Both parties went their separate ways.

Recently, several years later, the incident and the payment of money has come to light. The sports broadcaster has been roundly and soundly condemned by everyone who has spoken up on the matter. Apart from the wrong of physically assaulting another person, and in particular, a man assaulting a woman who is the weaker vessel, criticism has focused upon other “transgressions”.

Most have expressed moral distaste and repugnance that the woman was “bought off”, that her silence was “purchased.” This we will call the pathetically puerile condemnation.

Others have condemned the failure to have the assault brought before the courts, and the offending broadcaster jailed. This we will call the arrogantly unjust argument.

First, the pathetically puerile argument that the woman was “bought off.” It's instructive how emotive and irrational public media has become. Let's just change the language and see what happens. Let's use the words “compensation” and “restitution” and “victims' rights.” Here is a wonderful case of justice being done in the private sphere—in a manner and result far superior to the kind of pseudo-justice that obtains in the public sphere.

From what we know, both parties chose to resolve the situation privately. The broadcaster admitted his sinful actions. The two therefore worked out a way of compensating the victim in a way that was acceptable to her. She was reportedly restituted for hurt and humiliation, pain, and forgone earnings while recouperating. Was justice done? Absolutely. Was it constructive, helpful justice? Apparently, for both parties have moved on and are living productive lives. Was the victim left angry, hurt, bitter, non-restored, depressed, on medication? Apparently not. She continues in a successful career. Did it restore the offender? Clearly, yes. Did the victim receive far more compensation and restitution than she would ever have been granted in the public justice system? Without question.

One would have thought that this was the kind of outcome the justice system and Athenian society craves, but seldom gets. But now we find out that when Athens does get a wonderful example of the kind of justice it says it wants, it reviles and vilifies the parties. We believe this is childish petulance of the worst kind. It calls for a thorough smack on the collective rear end.

Finally, before we turn to the “arrogantly unjust” argument, we cannot pass on without noting the supreme arrogant condescension displayed in this puerile criticism towards the victim. A criticism which we believe to be implicitly sexist. She is implicitly portrayed as venal, carnal, weak, easily manipulated, cheap, easily bought off—one could go on—but nowhere is she respected as a human being making responsible choices that truly reflected her own preferences. “Oh no—we, the great public chattering classes of Athens' narrow fetid streets, we know better. We know her true interests better than she does. We know what's best for her, and we are going to make sure that she humbles herself and submits herself before us, so that she can receive from our superior hand.”

The “arrogantly unjust” argument is slightly different. It approaches the whole event not from the concern for justice, but for the driving needs of propaganda. There are those who have opined that violence is a huge problem in our society and zero tolerance must be shown. Showing zero tolerance requires that all cases must be duly prosecuted and the the guilty punished in the public square.

In this argument justice is reduced to being a mere function of perceived public behavioural impact. Therefore the private agreement has to be rejected as inherently unjust—for justice is all about public impact and propaganda. The “arrogantly unjust” argument makes justice irrelevant and unimportant. Thus it is unjust because, at least in cases of violence, justice is of little concern. It is arrogant because it believes that society can be molded and shaped by such stratagems.

What will be the outcome of this latest paroxysm of indignant outrage, of Athenian foam dribbling down the collective chin? It is hard to predict—but high on the cards must be the two individuals concerned leaving New Zealand for countries less banal, less benighted, less arrogant, and less unjust.

Gushing Hypocrisy

When Greenism Meets Realpolitik

Further to the previous post on the unsustainability of greenism as a political movement, we refer to an interesting essay by Robert J Samuelson in Newsweek. It is a frank assessment of the realpolitik concerning greenism and global warming, entitled "Don't Hold Your Breath: Global Warming Promises to Become a Large and Gushing Source of National Hypocrisy".

Samuelson, having talked with both with believers and sceptics, notes the things no-one knows for sure with respect to global warming:

1.We don't know by home much or if temperatures are going to rise in the next one hundred years.
2.We don't know what the effects of warming might be.
3.We don't know how to prevent warming.
4.We don't know if global warming will be a calamity.

But, he argues, politicians can be expected to adopt two “faces” towards global warming. Firstly, they will fulminate against it, warn of its dangers, hector everyone who will listen. They will want to be seen to be engaging with the people and the issue. Secondly, they will do precisely nothing. Politicians know that there are all sorts of unintended outcomes waiting in the wings if action is taken to combat global warming. It would be political suicide to do anything about it.

This analysis highlights the political madness of New Zealand's Prime Minister. She actually does want to do something about it. Worse, she wants New Zealand to lead the world in doing something. She wants New Zealand to set a moral example to humanity. No wonder the Wall Street Journal opined that quixotically New Zealand would be likely to set an example to the world—but a negative one, demonstrating to the world the true price of such madcap policies. Trying to steer the economy to produce less carbon involves one thing and one thing only: more tax. Plenty more. Which means poorer people.

According to Samuelson smart politicians the world over have worked out that the “do nothing” option is the most prudent course. We note that Australia appears to be taking a much, much more cautious approach, highlighting the enormity of the changes required and the extent of the effects and costs. If Samuelson is right, Australia will talk up a big game, but will end up doing nothing. Thus far, the portents suggest Samuelson to be right on the money. Clark has yet to realise this. Prudence appears to be no longer her long suite. The caution for which the media have long lauded her has departed. Why the madness?

No doubt the causes are complex. It is of little relevance to spend time analyzing them because all the indications are she will soon be gone.

Samuelson's account of greenist realpolitik, however, is a salutary example of the unsustainability of greenism. It is a great relief to know that such realpolitik is equally at work in New Zealand, albeit in our case amongst the voters, who increasingly appear to believe that the Prime Minister is from another planet.

Biting the Hand that Feeds

Greenism is Unsustainable

It has been a long time since the developed world had a really, really good recession. Possibly the oil shocks of the seventies and their aftermath was the last really good one. Since then the world has had mere speed bumps along the way.

New Zealand's history is slightly different. In the late eighties and early nineties we had a deflationary recession, deliberately caused by the Reserve Bank, to drive inflation and its attendant expectations out of the economy. It was the recession we had to have. It was an attempt to deal with the dead weight of double digit inflation under which the country laboured at the time. It worked. But it was the last decent recession.

It looks now as if we maybe about to have a genuine recession again. We are now all aware of the litany.
Our economy has shrunk. Unemployment is on the rise. Manufacturing businesses are migrating offshore. The speculative residential housing market is reversing; house prices and volumes are falling markedly. The share market (always a leading indicator of future economic activity) has fallen to three and a half year lows, and there appears more falls to come. Consumer confidence has plummeted. Interest rates and our currency remain stubbornly high. Inflation is rising. The price of energy and food staples is rocketing upwards. Most people have less disposable cash as a result of rising food and petrol prices. Taxes have risen. People realise they are worse off than they were several years ago, unless they have been fortunate enough to achieve wage rises, or they are dairy farmers.

In the past twenty-five years we have become used to short, sharp downturns—then everything picks up and goes on again. There are indications, however, that this latest recession, while certainly sharp, might also be far from short. Neither food nor fuel prices are going to come down: contrary to the superficial popular wisdom, the changes in food and energy markets are secular, not cyclical—which is economist jargon referring to long term changes in either supply or demand of a good or service. Essentially, a tide of rising global demand for food and energy is pushing up prices. The tide is now surging due essentially to the rapid economic growth occurring in China and India, leading to rising living standards and consequent increasing demand for food and energy. The scale of increase is prodigious.

Once the New Zealand dollar falls—as it inevitably must—the exporting sector will boom. But the consumer consumption economy—which for the past thirty years has been fueled by government welfare handouts and rising household debt—will be hit by a second shock, and will likely collapse. The price of all imported consumption goods will ratchet up again, leading to dark and difficult days for free wheeling, big spending, debt laden New Zealanders, who have lived beyond their means for far too long.

The end result is likely to be a sharp and continuing drop in living standards. At such a time, greenism will become hugely unpopular. Greenism always was a world view that belonged to those who had the luxury of being well enough off to be bothered about it. When you are shivering and cannot heat your house, or you cannot afford groceries, saving the planet is the last thing on the mind. In this sense, greenism as a political movement or as a philosophy is unsustainable. It requires conditions of prosperity and wealth to gain public traction. There is no greenism amongst the poor. It was only ever trendy amongst the upper middle classes od developed economies. Greenism gets no time of day in China, Africa, and India—the race to survive is too all-consuming.

There is an irony here: greenism wants everyone to become poorer—to consume less, to emit less carbon, to waste less—and the only way this can be done is by a voluntary or involuntary lowering of living standards. Some economists have calculated that in order to reduce carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to the levels greenists say are required for a stable world climate, living standards would have to fall back to what they were in the mid-nineteenth century. But this goes against human nature. As soon as people are faced with the stark choices of greenist prescriptions versus maintaining living standards, support for the greens disappears. In other words, the more influential greenism becomes, the less attractive it turns out to be. It succeeds to failure. It is unsustainable.

The present government and its chattering classes have forgotten this. The current crop of government politicians is unlikely to recall it, either. They are now securely locked in the “beltway”, with all system feedback coming from likeminded supporters and thinkers. Recently, our greenist Prime Minister said she looked forward to fighting the election over climate change as “the defining issue”, were the Emissions Trading Scheme to falter. This confirms just how far out of touch with reality she is. Does she really believe that her former voters in South Auckland, West Auckland, and Tawa are going to be so committed to saving the planet they will be enthralled by policies that will increase their living costs? Apparently.

With recession upon us, support for greenism is withering by the day. Greenism has always been a western, upper middle class luxury. If that luxury has been engendered by consumption and increasing debt, greenism, like the wealth which gives it traction, will inevitably fade away.

Educational Standards Rising

Young Children Show Acute Discernment

Our self esteemed PM Helen Clark was visiting a primary school and asked to look in on one of the classes.

They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.
The teacher asked Mrs Clark if she would like to lead the discussion on the word 'tragedy'.

So our illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a 'tragedy' to show the difference between that and an 'accident' or a 'great loss'. One little boy stood up and offered: 'If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field & a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a 'tragedy.'

No,' said our Helen 'that would be an accident.'

A little girl raised her hand: 'If a school bus carrying fifty children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.' 'I'm afraid not,' explained Helen 'that's what we would call great loss.'

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Helen searched the room. 'Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?' Finally, at the back of the room, a small boy raised his hand... In a quiet voice he said: 'If A plane carrying you and Mr Clark was struck by a 'friendly fire' missile & blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy.'

'Fantastic!' exclaimed Helen. 'That's right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?'

'Well,' says the boy 'it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be an accident either!'

ChnMind 2.4 The King of the Kingdom

King of all Kings; Lord of all Lords

Post Enlightenment Athenian political practice and theory has demonstrated a recurring tendency to swing between two extremes. For Athens, either ultimate power resides in individual human beings (classic liberalism, libertarianism, Lockian Social Contract) or it resides in the collective (fascism, communism, absolute monarchism, Rousseau's republic).

Either ultimate power resides in the Many or the One. Either ultimate power resides in individuals, and the powers of the State derive from the people, or the ultimate power resides in the State, and the individual (his property, his family, his life) derive from the collective. But both extremes alike agree on this one fundamental principle: ultimate power and authority derives from, and belongs to, Man. Man is the only king of Athens.

(There is a further strand of Post Enlightenment Athenian political theory which we may characterise as Burkean or classic conservatism, which has argued that ultimate power resides in the conventions and rules which have been transmitted to us historically, and which represent the collective cumulated practical wisdom of our forbears. However, it is fair to say that classic conservatism has never enjoyed widespread appeal or traction. It has been “swamped” in Athens by the yawing either towards the One or the Many.)

Most political systems represent a ceaseless warring between the One and the Many; however, it has to be acknowledged that over the last one hundred and fifty years the “balance of power” within Athens has moved markedly towards the One, the Government, or the State. Governments have become more powerful, larger, more intrusive—which is to say they have arrogated more and more power to themselves, which has entailed less and less individual liberty and responsibility. In Athens, in recent centuries, the One has been getting the nod. But all in that city are relatively content, for this is not a blasphemy.

The constitution of the Kingdom of God is entirely different. It considers all Athenian political theories and arrangements as idolatries, which end up absolutising and semi-divinising one or more parts of the creation. All debates between competing political philosophies in Athens are intra-mural in nature: they are arguments over my god versus your god, my idol versus your idol. But, as we have consistently pointed out, all Athenians idols really represent the worship of man. Athenian political philosophies demonstrate this most clearly: man is ultimate authority whether as an atomised individual, or as a collective, or as an historical tradition, or as abstracted and absolutised human reason. All Athenian political philosophies are really one: the disputes are merely over which representation of man is to be worshipped and served.

As we have argued previously, in sharp antithesis to all that Athens represents, the Kingdom of God is an absolutist, totalitarian Kingdom. It is ruled over by a totalitarian Sovereign, an all governing Governor, an all conditioning Conditioner, an all dictating Dictator—the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, absolute authority does not reside anywhere in the creation. It resides in Him alone. All authority in heaven and upon earth has been ceded to Him; every knee is to bow, and every tongue is to confess Him. It either bows willingly or unwillingly—but bow it most certainly does.

The constitutional documents of the Kingdom, or of the City of Jerusalem, leave us in no doubt about this. We are told that all men have their being, they live, they think, they act only in Him—by His will and power and command (Act 17:28); from Him and to Him and through Him are all things that exist (Romans 11: 33-36).

Athens itself, in all its wretchedness and idolatry exists only by the will and command of the King. He permits it to continue in its unbelief for the ultimate manifestation of His glory. Usually, unbelieving Athenians rapidly conclude that because they and their ilk continue in the earth for a time (that is, the destruction of their city is not immediate), their power and authority is genuine and original. However, it is derived. It is granted. It is permitted for a time. It is temporary. And it will be taken away.

Once again the Scriptures make this very clear:

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
Romans 9: 22-24

Athens continues to exist for the sake of those who are being called. History must continue until the full number of the called are gathered into Jerusalem, resulting in the full manifestation of His glory, of His mercy. The full number are to be from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. The continued existence of Athens is not an evidence that the King is not absolute: quite the reverse. The particular command of the King which ensures the continued existence of Athens for a time is for the greater manifestation of His glory and power.

The Lord has made this quite clear in the following parable of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprang up and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.

And the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, “Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?” And He said to them, “An enemy has done this!” And the slaves said to him, “Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?” But he said, “No; lest while you are gathering up the tares, you may root up the wheat with them. Allow them both to grow until harvest; and in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, 'First gather up the tares; and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.'” . . . .

The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the Kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are the angels. Therefore, just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.

Matthew 13:31—40

The tares (Athenian Unbelievers) are allowed to continue for a time for the sake of the sons of the Kingdom.

But the all conditioning Conditioner, the omnipotent King of the Kingdom is also subduing all enemies under His feet. Gradually, throughout history, the Kingdom of Heaven grows larger, stronger, more powerful. More wheat seed is planted and flourishes. Meanwhile, the city of Athens gradually withers, weakens and attenuates into the shadows. The two kingdoms occupy the same space and time. Only the citizens of Jerusalem are aware of the existence of both cities. Athenians see only their own City of Unbelief; they can only see all of life, all existence in terms of their own unbelieving frame.

When the citizen of Athens meets a Believer, the servant of the King, the Unbeliever cannot comprehend or acknowledge the King whom the Believer serves. Consequently, he cannot understand the Believer. He sees him only as one like him, but as one who serves a different idol. He has no conception that the Kingdom of God manifested before him in the person of the Believer is so totalitarian in its nature that all that the Believer has and is, has been submitted to a willing obedience of the King—even to the point of death itself. Every thought, every motive, every action; every penny, every relationship, every deed; every goal, every motive, every standard. All dedicated to the service, obedience, and disposition of the King.

The Unbeliever consequently cannot “see” the Believer in truth. The Believer is beyond his knowledge or comprehension. He is blinded, and can only see in terms of his own unbelieving frame. He sees the Believer through his Unbelieving glasses. He sees the Believer as a particularly stupid and especially mistaken or ignorant idolater—but an idolater just like him, nonetheless. To the blind Athenian, the “King” of the Believer is simply one more abstraction conjured up out of the heart of man.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem is unlike any found in the realms and satellite cities of Athens. Its Sovereign Lord is acknowledged as such by all in Jerusalem. Its citizens know and profess that the very hairs on the head are numbered and known by their King; that not only sparrow can fall apart from His command; that even things regarded by man as utterly random (such as the casting of a lot) are totally commanded by the King.

The Kingdom of God is not an ideal. It is not a formal or fictional warranting concept. It is real. It is here. It is now. It is historical. The heartbeat of the City of Jerusalem is to live for, and to serve, the King—with great joy and gladness. The highest dignity of its citizens is that they have been made, and therefore found, worthy to be His servants.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Time and Tide are Not Waiting

Thus says the LORD,
For three transgressions of Judah and for four
I will not revoke its punishment,
Because they have rejected the law of the LORD
And have not kept His statutes;
Their false gods also have led them astray,
Those after which their fathers walked.
So I will send fire upon Judah,
And it will consume the citadels of Jerusalem
Amos 2: 4,5

The kingdom of Judah was a mere remnant of the much larger Kingdom of Israel. After the nation split in around 970BC, Judah flirted constantly with idolatry and the worship of false gods. It was a covenant breaking nation. Amos, the prophet of the Lord, pronounced judgment upon Judah over two hundred years later—around 750BC.

The judgment of fire of which he warned fell finally in 586BC, as Nebuchadnezzar put Jerusalem to the torch—that is, a further two hundred years after the proclamation of Amos. The prophet Jeremiah was an eyewitness to the horror. The time frame is very important.

Our modern Athenian culture, in its prosperity and hubris, mocks the very idea of judgment.

It does not see itself as the city of sin facing an angry God. Such ideas are quaint at best, primitive at worst. They are decidedly not modern. They are clearly not consistent with the latest and brightest thinking of those considered to be the wise and clever of the day.

The strongest encouragement to the deafness of Athens lies in the failure of judgment to fall. Things continue on as they were: therefore, warnings of judgment must be spurious. Athens mocks the very idea, saying, “Where is its coming? It is a myth.”

Once again, note the time frames above. Holy Scripture cautions us that our time frames are not the Lord's. A thousand years to Him are as one day; and one day as a thousand years. The Lord does not measure truth or reality by time. Time, rather, is measured and known by His Truth. What He declares will most certainly and implacably come to pass, in His time, when the cup of iniquity is full.

Judah had toyed with idolatry and apostasy for two hundred years. But the Lord was and is longsuffering and unbelievably patient. He gives peoples many opportunities to come to their senses and repent. Amos is part of a long line of prophets warning Jerusalem of judgment to come. All the Lord's prophets were opposed, persecuted—many were martyred. Two hundred years later judgment finally falls. It was exceedingly severe.

There are two kinds of judgments. The first is what we might call “intrinsic judgment” where a society experiences the fruits of its unbelief. The second is “extrinsic” where destruction falls upon a people or nation from the outside. It may be a tsunami or a volcano; it might be pestilence or experiencing the ravages of war. It is always devastating.

Intrinsic judgment serves to chasten and to warn. It declares to us in sermons without words, that if we turn away from the Lord, the consequences of disobedience will follow, as we experience the fruit of our disobedience. If a society turns away from God's commands for marriage and divorce, for example, marriages break up; sexual immorality becomes institutionalised (even protected and encouraged by the law); disease spreads; children are spiritually and mentally (and even physically) torn apart; lawlessness, violence and crime spreads; and so forth. These intrinsic judgments should serve to chasten people and cause them to seek the Lord. The evidence of the evil fruits of sin are all around them warning them, calling them away from the causes of Unbelief.

But the Scripture says that whereas a mere word of warning to the wise is sufficient, for the fool, one hundred heavy blows on his back makes no impression whatsoever. When a culture stiffens its neck and closes its heart to the warnings of intrinsic judgment, finally extrinsic judgment falls. The Son of Man will come riding upon the clouds of heaven, with His holy angels—and for that people or culture it has become too late. Most often they never recover; they pass out of the pages of human history never to return. Like Ozymandius, only the crumbling, overgrown, empty monuments remain, serving as a fearful warning to others.

In our day, the call of the Lord is going forth, “Turn to Me, turn to Me; for why would you, and your children, and your children's children die, O house of Israel?” Why, indeed? And if the Lord did not spare His own beloved covenant people when they arrogantly rebelled, what do you think He will do to our apostate culture?

“Those who hate Me, love death,” is surely one of the truest words ever spoken of Athens.

The Loser Letters #7

Let's Get Some High Moral Ground for a Change

In this seventh Loser Letter, A F Christian gives more tactical advice to her atheist friends. She is concerned that the Brights have completely lost touch with the moral traction that so many Christian positions have with lots of people, whether they are Dulls or not. If Atheism is to make serious progress, it has to capture some of that high moral ground for itself. Read more.

The S-Files

The Corrosion of Envy

Contra Celsum feels compelled to nominate Helen Elizabeth Clark for an S-Award

Helen Clark is the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Citation:


Helen Clark and her political allies have long professed an aversion to the wealthy. It was natural that when John Key, who has a personal net worth of around $50m, became leader of the opposition Clark did not have to screw herself up to dislike and hate. To chardonnay socialist Clark, Key represents something she detests: privileged, monied classes, who corruptly use the levers of power to line their own pockets at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.

The fact that Key was a poor boy made rich is a slight impediment, but quickly laid aside.

This is why she has persisted in making a huge noise over privatising state assets. In the (first and) last great round of privatisation some notorious Kiwi “rich pricks” made an awful lot of money shopping the state owned businesses to the private sector. This was not unusual: merchant bankers usually make a lot of money advising or, and underwriting, mergers and acquisitions, as do the legal and accounting advisers contracted to assist. But such things to the parsimonious Clark are evil.

That fact that it was her own political colleagues that led the privatisation charge, and that she was an increasingly trusted member of the government at the time is a slight embarrassment, but quickly brushed over. We are not talking about the facts here. We are talking about righteous indignation.

She believes instinctively—that is, she intuitively knows and is utterly certain—that Key is set to sell off a whole lot more assets to “make his mates rich”. Just as she knows that leopards cannot change their spots, she is certain and sure that underneath the mild demeanour and nice-boy image of John Key is the rapacious fangs of a bloated rich bastard. Fighting this evil which she sees more clearly that ordinary human beings has become something of a holy crusade.

The fact that just this week she has made a few “rich pricks” much, much wealthier by paying an exorbitant price to Toll Holdings for a run down train business—the reverse of privatisation, but equally rewarding to the hated monied exploiters—and has made the tax payers correspondingly poorer at the same time, is a bit ironic, but let's not get persnickety.

She followed up this prodigious folly by seeking to deliver one of her infamous coup d'graces. She accused Key of profiting from the original sale of New Zealand Rail in 1991, then of trying to talk up Tranz Rail's share price in Parliament, while he was a shareholder in the company, in June 2003.

The fact that Key was no longer a shareholder of Tranz Rail at the time was a bit of a bummer, but when you intuitively know you are right, let's not worry about the facts getting in the way of a story.

Ah, but hold on. Mr Key asked a parliamentary question about the Government's intentions with respect to Tranz Rail prior to selling his shares. That clearly indicates his corrupt venality, his conflicts of interest, his “slippery-rich-prickiness”.

The fact that Key was asking a question, was in no way in a position to influence government policy, and was eliciting information, which immediately became public, with the result that the market was potentially better informed, is a bit of nuisance—but when you are playing a losing hand, bet more, as they say.

Shortly after the infamous question (which Key was required to ask if he was doing his job properly) he sold his shares in Tranz Rail—realizing a loss of $49,000. Yup. He clearly ripped off the public. He obviously had a huge conflict of interest: his public duties led him to suffer financially. Now that's a conflict of interest.

But envy is a corrosive emotion. It eats away. It blinds the mind. It is that terrible canker on the human soul that says, “Rather everyone was in abject poverty than you had your money. If I can't have it, nobody can.”

Clark used to be feted and celebrated by the media for her intelligence. She was supposed to be the most educated, clever, intelligent person ever to hold the office of Prime Minister in New Zealand. She is rapidly turning out to be one of its biggest fools. Envy does that. It corrupts the eye; it blinds the mind; it clouds the judgment.

But it's not all bad. Key has sold up almost all his family wealth and put it into cash and fixed interest. He says he has come to recognise when you own assets and you are in politics, potential conflicts of interest abound. He is paying the price, and putting his money where his mouth is.

However, we expect that this will be lost on Clark. Rather, she will pervert it into a new crusade. We expect that whenever Key comments on the Reserve Bank Act, on the need to fight inflation, on interest rates—or any number of economic issues—she will be accusing him of a conflict of interest. Now Key, you see, has so arranged his corrupt assets that he will benefit from high interest rates. Clearly he will want to keep them high to his own advantage, lining his own pockets, to the harm and hurt of ordinary Kiwi “battlers.”

The government this week announced that it was intending to change the Reserve Bank Act so that fighting inflation was not its prime objective and responsibility. The Opposition opposes the move. “Of course they would. Key stands to benefit.” One can imagine Clark practising her lines now, trying to get the right notes of triumph, venom, and righteous indignation in her delivery.

The fact that Helen Clark herself is a millionaire, that she owns several houses, that she is a member of that hated-by-socialists landlord class is an irrelevance. It will have been entirely overlooked. Envy blinds the mind. It is always someone else's fault.

The fact that Helen Clark runs government ministries affecting the housing market, both from the perspective of homeowners and landlords, and that she stands to benefit significantly if certain policies are followed, will never have occurred to her. The fact that she benefits personally if rents in Auckland and elsewhere are rising is no conflict of interest. The fact that a loose monetary policy will result in a re-ignited speculative residential property market, which in turn will line her own pockets to the damage of thousands of people aspiring to own homes, is utterly beside the point.

Helen Elizabeth Clark, riven by envy, utterly self-righteous, regarding herself as pure as the driven snow. She alone understands the truth about John Key, about the demon that lies beneath the smooth, oily, slippery exterior. And she is apparently prepared to lie, obfuscate, falsely accuse, slander under the cloak of parliamentary privilege—to do whatever it takes—to strip off the mask and expose the evil within.

Helen Clark: S-Award, Class II, for actions that are Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied

ChnMind 1.29 Foundations in Genesis

Old Abe--Jerusalem's Most Venerable Founding Father

The Covenant with Abraham

Any and every world-view inevitably has a philosophy of both the past and the future. In fact, ask a person their view of the past, their philosophy of history―whether formal or informal―and one can pretty much discern immediately whether he or she is a citizen of Jerusalem or of Athens, and if of Athens, the particular idolatry to which he is wedded.

With respect to the mind of a Christian, our view of the past and our philosophy of history is not latent; it is explicit. While Christians are profoundly future orientated, their beliefs, hopes and aspirations for the future are grounded upon certainties imbedded in the past. In particular, they are grounded upon the great redemptive, saving acts of God in His Incarnate Son, Jesus our Lord, Who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, Who descended into hell, but Who rose again from the dead on the third day and ascended into heaven, where He sat (and sits to this day) at the right hand of God, whence all enemies in the immaterial realms and upon the earth are being progressively placed under His feet.

But the history of Jerusalem goes back farther than the fullness of time when Jesus Christ came forth, born of a woman. His coming forth did not occur in a conceptual or historical vacuum. The framework of His advent into the human race was given two millennia previously, when God made a covenant with a wandering Aramaean, named Abram, later called Abraham.

Not only did Jesus come forth in the terms of that covenant, He came to keep and fulfil the obligations of God's oath to Abraham and his descendants. Eventually, when Christ arose, entered the heavens and poured forth the Spirit of God upon His people, so that His salvation began to reach to the ends of the earth, including the Gentiles, He declared that those who had formerly been strangers and exiles, outside and afar off from God, were grafted into the covenant made with Abraham. Thus, Gentiles were called sons of Abraham, heirs according to promise (Galatians 3: 28,29).

Therefore, from the time of Abraham onwards, God's dealings with man, which are both the crucible and the flame of all human history, have been according to the terms of His covenant with Abraham.

What, then, is a covenant? It is a formal structured bond, whereby God promises to act a in a certain way toward Abraham and his descendants, and swears by Himself (since there was nothing higher that possibly could be invoked) that He would perform what He had promised. Abraham for his part was commanded to live and act in a certain way towards God. Above all else, it was expected that Abraham and his descendants would trust God and believe in Him. This believing in God and His promises covenanted to Abraham resulted in Abraham and his descendants being justified or reckoned as righteous (sinless) before God, and therefore recipients of eternal life.

Thus, we are told in Genesis 15:6, as the Lord and Abraham entered into a formal covenant making ceremony, that Abraham believed in the Lord, and consequently He reckoned it to him as righteousness. And Paul the apostle of the Lord confirms that to this day both Jews and Gentiles who believe truthfully in the Lord are likewise reckoned as righteous before the Lord. (Romans, chapters 4 & 5) Being reckoned as righteous, they inherit the Kingdom of God, the recreated heavens and earth, and eternal life.

The covenant with Abraham, then, sets out the terms and conditions of all human history, the entirety of our course and our existence. This includes not only those who dwell in Jerusalem, but also all who dwell in Athens, the City of Unbelief, insofar as they are being conditioned, shaped, and dealt with in terms of God's oaths and promises to Abraham, whether they recognize it or not. This is made evident in Genesis 12: 3 where the Lord says to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse.”

The key covenant documents with respect to Abraham in Genesis are Genesis 12:1―3; Genesis 15; and Genesis 17: 1―14. As redemptive history unfolds, these texts are augmented, enlarged, expanded, and developed. They reached their final development and augmentation in the Person and work of Christ Jesus, the Lord incarnate, Who declared that all along Abraham had looked forward and rejoiced to see Jesus day―and that he did see it (in faith) and was glad. (John 8:56)

The key elements of the covenant with Abraham include:

1. The requirement to leave his father's house, which was a house of idol worshippers.
2. The promise that Abraham would become a great nation
3. That God would bless him and would make his name great, so that he in turn would be a blessing to others to the extent that all the families of the earth would eventually be thus blessed by the Lord.
4. Abraham's descendants would be more numerous than the stars of the heavens.
5. The covenant would be entered into by the Lord not only with Abraham, but his descendants after him, as an everlasting covenant.

The universal reach of the covenant promise is breathtaking. In fact, Paul's commentary upon it was that Abraham would possess and inherit not just the land of Canaan, but the whole world (Romans 4: 13) which corresponds with the risen Christ's command to go forth and disciple all the nations of the earth.

Since the covenant with Abraham is so foundational, such that even the entrance of our Lord incarnate into human history, is according to its structures, terms, promises, and goals, it is helpful to keep in mind some key characteristics of the covenants God makes with His people.

1. God's covenant defines His relationship to us, and our relationship to Him.
2. God's covenant always runs in the lines of generations (which is why the families and households of Jerusalem are so important).
3. God's covenant has always been built around the blood He provides.
4. God's covenant has a legal aspect, but it is also a relationship far deeper and closer than anything which law could circumscribe.
5. God's covenant is always given with conditions.
6. The Newer Covenant is the Older Covenant all grown up.
(Our thanks to Pastor Steve Schlissel of Messiah's Covenant Community Church, Brooklyn, New York for this helpful summary.)

There are two cities in the world: the Jerusalem, the City of Belief, and Athens, the City of Unbelief. The constitutional documents of Jerusalem are the Scriptures of the Older and Newer Testaments, and in particular, her charter or founding documents are the great covenant texts which were issued first in the days of Abraham, and which were completed and culminated in the history, deeds, and revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of all kings, and Lord of all lords.

These documents confirm that Jerusalem will expand and grow and fill the whole earth, as the faith of Abraham and his descendants spreads from heart to heart, parent to child, nation to nation through the agency of the life giving Spirit of the Lord. This is the essence of Jerusalem's philosophy of history. It is the only true Universal History.

To Athens is left the detritus of a fractured world, chaotic, tumultuous, a ceaseless sea of doubt, fear, uncertainty and death. To Athenians we say, " Come out, leave that city, for why would you prefer to die, son or daughter of Adam? The gates of Jerusalem are still wide open, though they will not always be. You would be welcomed with great joy and much celebration, for there is not one citizen of Jerusalem who has not likewise departed Athens and its living death, and walked before you through those ancient gates wherein the Lord Himself dwells."

Stop Taking the Mickey

Cullen, Greenism and Waste

So, the Government has bought a train set. What we see on display here is the wont of all socialists to plan, arrange and control. Out of it come a cluster of useful and instructive lessons.

Firstly, we see how modern greenism and a planned economy fit together like hand and glove. The former requires the latter. To “save the planet” environmentally, the economy needs to be steered in a certain direction—which inevitably requires centralised planning, state planning—which, in order to execute the plan, requires state ownership and increasing state control over the means of production (capital and labour). It is the only way to “make” the economy move in a certain direction.

This is not just hinted at in the re-nationalisation of rail in New Zealand—it has been overt. It has been trumpeted as one of the justifications for buying the trains. The Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen, has made reference to “strategic” reasons when justifying the purchase. Whenever governments start using the “s” word, state planning of the economy is moving up rapidly from the rear. We need to have the government owning rail to make New Zealand more “environmentally sustainable”, to reduce the “carbon footprint” of our transport system, and to extract greater fuel efficiency, we have been told.

Moreover, the political ideologues want to create an integrated transport system (road, rail, air, and sea). What they mean by this is a centrally planned transport system. Once again, Cullen has been explicit about this. He wants to “orchestrate a major strategic (there's that word again) shift in the country's transport architecture.” (NZ Herald, 2 July 2008)

Centrally (bureaucratically and politically) planned transport systems fail abysmally—they always have, and this will be no exception. Why do it then? Why is the government being so stubbornly foolish? Why did Cullen deliberately sideline his own Treasury department in buying the train set? Because greenism provides a moral imperative that overrides all previous failures, wastage, suffering and ruination of lives. Greenism requires an increasingly planned economy. It's provides the excuse that Cullen and his colleagues have always wanted. Again, to his credit, Cullen has been quite overt about this. He has candidly stated on more than one occasion that he and his colleagues are socialists and that we should expect them to act accordingly.

Marxism, as a socialist variant, did not explicitly call for central economic planning. It's just that it could not achieve its aims without it. So Marxist socialism, Fabian socialism, communist socialism, democratic socialism—they all ended up engaging in central economic planning. Now greenism is the new socialism. As night follows day, suddenly the government moves back to the future: central economic planning is not only back on the menu, it is being served up at the tables.

To the extent greenism inevitably requires a planned economy it represents “new age” socialism. Now, most people are vaguely aware that socialism as an economic ideology lost its gloss in the previous century. Actually, it proved to be a dismal failure. Those economies which applied its theories ended up impoverishing its people. But socialists, like old soldiers, do not die. Unfortunately, neither do they fade away. Rather, they put on new clothes and come bursting forth again.

Marxist socialism proved an abject failure, resulting in the deaths and suffering of millions. Greenist socialism will generate results that are exactly the same.

Secondly, Cullen has already fallen into the inevitable trap awaiting all central economic planners. They are unable to measure the true cost or price of capital. For socialists and central planners, capital has no economic cost. It comes out of the pockets of taxpayers. To be sure, this has (in the end) a political cost, but when government (immorally expropriated) money is applied to businesses, as is inevitably the case in a planned economy, it has no economic price. Money is free for the central planner. Need more money?—well, just up the taxes or print more.

In a sane economy, the price of capital is the return which needs to be generated on every invested dollar, in order to persuade people with savings to invest. Otherwise, they will keep their capital to themselves, thank you very much. Central planners don't have to face this economic hurdle. So they end up wasting large quantities of other people's money. Your money. They steal and squander. Once again, this shameful, wasteful reality is already evident in the act of purchasing and re-nationalising the rail system. (By the way, it is more than a little ironic that greenist socialism, which purports to oppose waste and needless consumption, is perfectly relaxed consuming, wasting and squandering millions of dollars of other people's money.)

The final price of the rail business is literally incalculable. But that has not deterred the central planners. Why? Because for them capital has no cost. It is simply not a factor worthy of consideration by central planners. For them, there are bigger fish to fry. Your fish.

The former owner, Toll Holdings was not investing substantially in the rail business. It was busy extracting profits. Effectively, Toll was running the business into the ground. Anyone beyond primary school age knows that if a business is to continue as a going concern it has to invest capital continually to maintain its current operations. Plant, equipment, buildings, trains wear out. They have to be maintained, then eventually replaced with new plant. Toll was not investing even to maintain the business. Why? Because Toll worked out that given the real cost of capital it simply could not generate an adequate return out of the business going forward.

But the central planning socialists had other ideas. So they paid a premium price for a run down business. Then on top of this purchase price ($690m, plus $120m of debt) they will have to invest fresh capital to ensure that the train set becomes an “ongoing concern”. How much? Firstly, let's get the actual purchase cost right. In addition to the purchase price above, by buying Toll's business, the government will lose $340m of payments over ten years which Toll had to pay in order to “rent” the rail track system. The government will have to find that money from somewhere else. As Fran O'Sullivan has pointed out in the NZ Herald, the actual cost before any new investment to get the business back to a minimum operational level, is actually well over $1bn. Wait, no problem. We are central planning socialists, and capital is no object.

Now, KiwiRail's hand is already going out to the central planners for more money. And Cullen has promised to provide it. So, chalk up another odd billion. What's money amongst friends? But the economic reality remains: if Toll could not get an economic return out of necessary on-going capital investment, will the central planners be able to? No. Not a chance.

Rail is a bad business. Its economics are parlous at best—anywhere in the world. It tends to work better in vast countries that require massive volumes of long haul, raw material-type freight between huge population centres or export/import ports. Even then, the amount of investment required in rail tracks and rolling stock, makes the business highly risky. But nature in New Zealand stacks everything against rail. It is a long narrow country, with very few larger population centres, which on world scales are very very small. It is divided by the Cook Strait, complicating surface transport. Its terrain is both mountainous and extremely varied.

One cannot imagine our economy producing huge volumes of raw materials (timber, milk powder, caseine, frozen meat) that need to be transported from Auckland to Wellington. Rather, the materials we produce in huge volumes need to move to ports. For most large volume, raw material export producers, the nearest port is no more than a hundred kilometers away. Rail just does not cut it. It cannot cut it.

Meanwhile, the business is hugely capital intensive. Worse, the competitive pressures it faces are enormous and unrelenting. Trucks, courier companies, and aircraft are fast, efficient, and can operate in a co-ordinated fashion that brings door to door service to every hamlet in the country. The breadth of freight types they handle is prodigious. And, apart from airlines, they are not nearly as capital intensive as rail.

The upshot? Rail in New Zealand is an elitist, central planner's dream.

Here is the final kicker. Businesses and managements, like individuals, are adaptive. If capital in KiwiRail is cheap and there is no requirement to generate a commercial rate of return on that capital, the business will act rationally and will treat it as if it were cheap (which for them it is). It will adjust and adapt to produce a business operation and culture that is both inefficient and wasteful. To keep it afloat will require ever more injections of fresh funds and capital. Your funds. Your capital.

What should the incoming government do? Simple really.

1. Reject the ideology of greenist socialist central economic planning.

2. Write the investment down to the current market price if it were put up for sale in the open market today.

3. Ensure that the tax payer gets a return on the amount of capital that remains invested after the inevitable write-down—which would effectively quantify the waste and squandering of capital to date.

4. Refuse investment of any further public capital unless that investment is strictly on arms-length commercial terms.

5. Require the business to make a profit that represents the current market return on invested capital, adjusted for risk.

6. Refuse any cross subsidy from competitor transport and freight businesses. (That is don't use road-user charges to subsidise rail.) Robbing Peter to pay Paul disguises inefficiency and waste.

7. Hold the Board to account for the achievement of these commercial objectives.

8. Let the Board make the commercial decision as to whether they can justify additional investment capital, or whether the prudent thing to do is to run the business into the ground.

We suspect they will end up choosing the latter.

And, oh, one last piece of advice. Fire the new chairman. Mr Bolger, whatever his accomplishments, has never been responsible for operating a private business in a competitive environment. He farmed during the days of huge public subsidies to that sector. He has never had to operate a business under the discipline facing the true cost of capital. His political experience is a huge impediment: he cut his teeth under Muldoon's Think Big lunacy—the ultimate central planning exercise that, as is always the case, resulted in massive losses and waste. He would simply not have the requisite qualifications or experience for the job if KiwiRail were to be run as set out above.

On the other hand, he has precisely the experience that will make him a compliant Chairman if KiwiRail is left as a greenist central planning socialist dream.

At least we can credit Cullen with seeing a reflection of himself when he cast his rheumy eye upon one James Bolger.

The S-Files

Socialism's Fetish with "Deep Pockets"

Contra Celsum feels compelled to nominates Laila Harre for an S-Award

Laila Harre is a union senior manager and a long time militant for left-wing Fabian socialist causes.

Citation:

In a recent radio interview, Laila Harre acknowledged that she had underestimated the nation-wide opposition to Susan Bradford's, and now the Parliament's, “Ban-the-Smack” Act. Like all genuine religious acolytes, she feels the need in this instance to confess her sins. She contritely acknowledged in the radio broadcast, in the face of persistent and widespread public aversion to the Act, that, “we didn't know the smacking lobby had such deep pockets.” [Hat Tip: Half Done] And the rest of the world is left scratching its head, politely asking, “Pardon? Which planet did you say you were from?”

In that flash of religious fervour, Mz Harre purified her soul with a standard liturgical confession reflecting socialism's catechism that the whole world turns around money. Here is the materialistic myopia of the Left on grand display. Here is the Iscariotist ethic of socialism in bright lights. Like Judas of old, the socialist ethic is to profess concern for the poor, while the real motive is a perpetual lust and desire for (other peoples') money.

Socialists have a fetish about money. Money and conspiracy theories. It runs something like this. People who have money are evil. They use their money as a tool of power to exploit and oppress the disadvantaged. Socialists stand up for the disadvantaged. Therefore people with money are more than our opponents; because they are evil, they are to be regarded as enemies.

But, socialist realism demands that we acknowledge that money represents power. Therefore, if we, the defenders of the poor and oppressed are to capture and maintain power, we have to get money. Once we have money we will be able to fight fire with fire. Our cannons will be as big as theirs. However, money in our hands is not evil, for we are good, and we know how to use money properly—for the good of the weak and poor and anyone else who will support us politically.

Part two of the socialist catechism runs like this: our opponents are funded by and represent the interests of evil money, otherwise they would support us. The catechism goes on to expound as follows: since money is evil and those who possess it have dark souls and use their money to conspire against us and our supporters, it follows that if any issue which we socialists oppose gains traction in the hearts and minds of our former supporters (in spite of our opposition) then it must only be due to wealthy evil conspirators using their money against us by bribing and seducing the hearts of the poor and weak to oppose our views.

Thus Harre, naturally, automatically, mindlessly, without thinking, believes that 80% of the population only stubbornly continue to oppose the anti-smacking Act because they have been bought off by the dark interests of money. The effect of widespread public opposition to the benighted Act has been caused by conspiratorial, dark, monied, deep pockets who have seduced the simple dears over to the dark side.

Thus, the world view of socialism. Behind every expression of opposition to their views they see the dark conspiracy of the monied class. Helen Clark saw evil money at work in the Exclusive Brethren campaign conspiring to undermine her saintliness. Socialist Labour saw (and still see) evil American money behind (semi-socialist) National's rising electoral support.

Historians will adjudge Clark as the fool who feared shadows, leading her to push through the uber-superstitious Electoral Finance Act in the vain attempt to cut off her opponents from the feared largesse of monied conspirators, all the while attempting to reserve the money of the taxpayers for herself. But in the course of her crusade she cut off her own financial nose to spite her political face—thus contributing to the ignominy of her forthcoming electoral oblivion, all the more bitter because it was largely self-inflicted. But socialists like Harre and Clark are hopelessly imprisoned in their religous world view. They cannot help themselves.

Their fear, their ignorance, their simplistic antiquarian view of the world leads them to trip over themselves. Clark, Bradford, Harre, Cullen all share the same world-view, the same myopic, ignorant, ante-diluvian view of the world. The most monstrous insult they can think to utter is to declare an opponent a “person of deep pockets” or a “rich prick”. Then, watch them perform the augury of socialism swirling mists of conspiracies before an audience captivated only in their own antiquarian imagination. Meanwhile, they writhe, legislate, fulminate, and conspire in such a way that in the eyes of the populace their odium grows by the day.

The ultimate insult to the weak, the disadvantaged, the poor, and the masses represented by Harre and her ilk is their belief that ordinary people cannot think for themselves. They cannot have opinions of their own—unless, of course, they are the opinions they want them to have, the opinions of which they approve. So, those who oppose the “ban-the-smack Act” in Harre's strange and exotic world view are mere simpletons, whose views and opinions have been manipulated and bought by “deep pocket” money.

Socialists have always been paternalistic overlords who presume to know what is in the best interests of others. The people they claim to represent are not able, nor allowed, to think for themselves. Socialists represent the epitome of vain hubris and arrogance. That is why doctrinaire socialists inevitably integrate into the void, consumed by their lust for money and power.

For socialists, materialists all, money represents the ultimate power. They lust after it , all their attention is fixated on it: in their warped view, coin and command are one and the same. Benighted fools.

Laila Harre: S-Award, Class II, for actions that are Stupid, Short Sighted and Stupefied

Meditation on the Text of the Week

He Who Knows the Future Controls the Present

For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God and there is no-one like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning
And from ancient times things which have not yet taken place
Saying, 'My purpose shall stand,
And I will do all that pleases Me.'
Isaiah 46:9,10

Every culture, every religion, every belief system seeks to foretell the future, to predict, and to prophesy. There is something intrinsic to the nature of mankind that he needs to know the future so that he can adjust and guide his actions in the present. It is only as we know what is going to happen that we are able to make decisions in the present.

There are whole philosophical systems built upon future expectations. Utilitarianism is the most widespread and influential today. In it, one's actions and decisions are to be judged and guided by the effect or outcome that will be produced. Our understanding of the future must shape our present actions, according to utilitarians.

The Scripture, in our Text of the Week declares two things about this apparently inevitable preoccupation with the future. Firstly, that prediction of the future is an essential attribute of deity. In fact, so essential and so intrinsic, that when the Living God compares Himself to the fake idols of Isaiah's day, He declares His power to declare the future accurately and truthfully makes Him uniquely God; it marks Him alone as being God.

Secondly, the Scriptures declare that God alone can declare the future, because His purposes totally determine the future. He neither answers to, nor respects, nor is conditioned by anyone or anything. He does entirely what pleases Him. In this sense, a further essential attribute of God is that He is absolutely free to do whatever pleases Him. If His purposes did not totally and universally determine the future, the future could not be declared with any certainty. He, then, would not be God, but a mere idol.

In our temporarily post Christian world, Athens has declared the God of the Scriptures to be dead and non-existent. It has declared it loudly and for a long time. Since volume and repetition are often confused with truth, this Athenian declaration is now widely believed. But, Athens cannot escape being human. It is still required by its citizens to foretell the future, to predict, and to prophesy. Man cannot function without have a belief about what is going to happen.

So, the Delphic Oracles of ancient Greece have been revivified in our day. Everywhere men and institutions are busy predicting the future and they are idolized and lionized for attempting to do so. Futurology has become an academic discipline. Other ages would have called it augury. This is understandable: since foretelling is an attribute of deity, the predictors and the prophets are regarded in popular Athenian culture as being gurus and semi-divine, commanding fear and reverence.

But let's get this right. The logic of the Scripture is unassailable: he would would predict the future must also command the future—and command it comprehensively and totally—otherwise the prophesy is no more than a pathetic joke. Since no-one in Athens—yes no-one—claims to command the future comprehensively and totally, nor to represent anyone who does, their predictions are vanities. There predictions of the future are mere guesses, more or less wild.

Astute Athenians, such as Warren Buffett, have understood this, and have profited immensely from laughing at the seers and gurus who attempt to predict what is going to happen in financial markets or economies in the next week, month, or year. As Buffett himself says, Why bother reading or watching comedies when one can read the forecasts from the Wall Street investment banks?

Since Unbelieving Athens has no religious or philosophical basis for predicting the future, those from within its halls who attempt do so inevitably turn out to be charlatans. Nonetheless, or possibly precisely because Athens has no ground upon which one can stand and prophesy, its pseudo-prophets are prized all the more.

This is why increasingly Athens is becoming both credulous and superstitious. The more loud, insistent, and persistent any particular prediction about the future, the more believable it becomes. For mankind cannot exist or function without a belief about the future. The sheer need to believe in something tends to make false prophets credible and believable.

Athens ultimately and “officially” believes in nothing. Therefore, it will fall for anything. It has and does.

Those in Jerusalem are neither credulous nor superstitious. They are confident in the future because they know Who commands the future. They know He alone commands the future, because He does and will do whatever pleases Him.

The Loser Letters #6

We Must Not Overlook the Children

In this sixth Loser Letter, a former Christian (A F Christian) offers some timely counsel from rebab to her new found athiest heroes. Apparently, they have entirely overlooked, or chosen not to look, at the effect children have on the Dulls--the believers. Apparently, families and children are a means by which Dulls come to faith and are strengthened in their belief. Fellow atheists are hard put to deal with this, since by-and-large the Brights are predominantly anti-family and anti-children-- sentiments which A F Christian strongly endorses. Read this sixth Loser Letter here.

Sabbath Meditation

Seeing Not as the World Sees

Only Jerusalem can Replicate the Balance and Harmony of God

Ever since the Enlightenment, there has been a constant emphasis upon the individual. This arose from the Enlightenment's elevation of human reason to a position of the semi-divine. The rationalist mind, the thinking man, became the highest locus of authority and truth. Descartes', “I think, therefore I am” is an apt encapsulation of this individualising of meaning, truth, and being.

Out of this came various political theories emphasizing individual human rights. Thus, classic Western liberalism was born. Also, and ironically, the same idolatry produced opposite political theories: Rousseau and others trumpeted the collective expression of individual autonomous reason. The collective Will of the People, as determined and mediated through the citizen deputies of the Assembly, came to be the justification for extreme tyranny and bloodshed.

The Church of the Lord has been infected by this relentless torrent of individualising mankind. Personal salvation, personal conversion, personal devotional life, personal divine guidance, and personal “revelations” have increasingly dominated western Christendom. Sadly, as is often the case, these emphases arise more out of the prevailing paganism of Athens than the Scriptures.

If you were to toss the influence of the “Enlightenment” into the garbage heap and cease looking at the Scripture through Enlightenment glasses, one of the things that would be immediately obvious is that in the biblical world-view, the individual is neither higher nor lower than the corporate, and the corporate is neither higher nor lower than the individual. Each has its place, authority, sphere, responsibilities and function. Each needs the other to be truly authentic. As God's people, both individually and collectively, obey His commands and instructions, a wonderful harmony between the One and the Many emerges.

The pattern for this is the Triune nature of God Himself. In the Godhead, we have three Persons in One God. The Oneness of God is not more important or fundamental than His Many-ness. In God, the One and the Many (which just happens to be a fundamental philosophical problem) are equally ultimate.

Likewise, in the creation, the Lord has called into being corporate entities and individual entities: both alike are equally ultimate.

A clear example is the institution of marriage. For the cause of marriage, we are told, a man (individual) shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his (individual) wife, and they shall be one. In the marriage, which is more important: the individuals entering the marriage, or the marriage itself? Neither. Both alike are equally important. Marriage has an aspect of diversity and an aspect of unity. In a wonderful divine scheme, it turns out that those marriages which work best and have the highest manifestations of unity, harmony, and oneness are precisely those which reflect enhanced individuality of the spouses. The popular adage “opposites attract” provides an albeit superficial hint of this reality.

The equal ultimacy of the one and the many within Jerusalem can also be seen under the terms of the Older Covenant. Israel was bound together as the one covenant people of God. Over and over the Lord indicated to Israel that He had set His love upon one people, one collective, one nation, one family and its descendants. He had not set His love upon all peoples, all nations (that would come later).

Nevertheless this emphasis upon the corporate entities of faith did not overshadow individual faith or the personal believing heart. In fact it enhanced it. For example, the Psalms represent the deepest trials, struggles, doubts, joys, and faith of the individual heart found anywhere, in any time, in any literature, throughout in all human history.

But a brief skimming of the Psalms also tells us that the longing of the individual believer was for corporate Israel, God's people, and public worship. The individual longing of the soul was also a longing to be one with the Lord and His people. It was a longing for the Lord of hosts.

O Lord of hosts, how lovely, Thy tabernacles are,
For them my heart is yearning in banishment afar.
My soul is longing, fainting Thy sacred courts to see;
My heart and flesh are crying, O living God for thee.
Psalm 84.

It is Greek and pagan rationalism which has distorted the understanding of the Newer Covenant into one which emphasizes the individual at the expense of the corporate, the many at the expense of the one. It is the animus of Unbelief which wants to pull apart what God has put together. If you read the Newer Covenant documents without Enlightenment glasses you will see immediately the continuation of the one and the many, the equal importance and weight of the individual and the corporate from the Older Covenant to the New Covenant. The weight and emphasis upon Kingdom and Church in the New Covenant is equal with that of the emphasis upon the need for personal repentance and faith and sanctification.

In the Middle Ages, again under the influence of Greek rationalism, the One became to be regarded as far more important than the Many; the corporate was more fundamental than the individual. Thus, the church (or the state) was more fundamental and important than the individual believer. It was the church which set itself up between (and above) man and God. The Reformation attacked this falsity at its root, with its stress upon individual repentance, faith and sanctification. But the Reformation also stressed the importance of the corporate, the church, the community, and the state as equally legitimate and divinely appointed institutions within the Kingdom of God.

But if paganism could not make the one ultimate, it would swing to the other extreme and make the many ultimate. So, the Enlightenment was born as a reaction of the many against the one, and the pendulum swung to the other extreme.

Jerusalem takes its mark and cue from the Lord, not from Athens. As part of sweeping its streets and carrying out its garbage, it needs to rid itself of the Enlightenment. Jerusalem knows that eventually the Enlightenment, which last century produced the bloodiest one hundred years in all human history, will eventually come to be seen as the beginning of a terrible Dark Age. Jerusalem needs to recover that wonderful harmony and balance between the one and the many, the individual and the corporate, that is so beautifully “archetyped” in God Himself. This is part of what it means to be the City set upon a great hill, the wonder of the whole earth.

As Athens progressively whipsaws itself into pieces, racked first with making the Many absolute, then flicking back to the extreme of making the One ultimate, the City of God will, by contrast, be seen as a bright and beautiful light in an otherwise benighted world.

The Mythology of Evolution

We Don't Believe in It Anymore
It's an Illusion, It's an Illusion . . .

No-one really believes the theory of evolution. Well, maybe a few isolated extreme sociopaths do. But for the rest of mankind, evolution is profoundly disbelieved.

Yet, it has a very useful function, nonetheless. Its utility is akin to Locke's concept of the Social Contract. Locke was trying to justify the existence of limited and proscribed civil government. The original state of mankind—the state of nature—he argued, was one of no laws, no governments, no restrictions upon anyone's rights. However, this proved to be unworkable, so mankind entered a Social Contract, whereby man voluntarily surrendered some rights in order to establish protections of property and life.

The Social Contract was a formal warranting concept—a philosophical notion—that gave legitimacy to civil government and its laws. No-one really believed, including Locke, that there was an actual time in the history of mankind where a universal human convocation was held and men decided to cede some of their rights to a civil government.

Evolutionism functions in our society in exactly the same way. No-one really believes it, but it is a useful fiction, because it places man at the top of the tree of being (which is rather nice) and it removes the idea of sin and judgment in the hands of an angry God (which is even nicer). It also justifies just about every libertinistic moral impulse or action imaginable (which is nicer still).

But no-one really believes it. Even the academic and scientific propagators and defenders of evolutionism are just going through the motions. They don't really believe it either—except as a formal warranting philosophical concept.

We know that no-one really believes the theory, because no-one is prepared to stand up and advocate, much less live out, evolutionism as an ethic. No-one is prepared to be evolutionistic. At first glance this may seem rather strange. If someone were to say that they believed in Islam, one would expect that they would endeavour to live out their lives as an Islamic—in a manner consistent with the teachings of Islam. If they failed to do so, or disregarded the teachings of the Koran and Islamic traditions, we would quickly conclude that they were hypocritical, or they were really infidels (to use an Islamic category).

But for some reason, similar assessments are not made over evolutionism, its belief, and its practice. All of which leads to the conclusion that evolutionism is a myth of convenience.

How should an evolutionist be expected to live? We would expect him to hold up and seek to live out the ethic that lies at the heart of evolutionism—that the survival of the fittest is not only the greatest engine of progress, but that only by the outworking of this ethic, will life and existence be maintained. This would be a consistent and entirely reasonable position for an evolutionist. Now, of course, evolutionism is meaningless because the “survival of the fittest” is a tautology—something that is true by definition. But let's not get side tracked on technicalities.

Evolutionists at the very least should be expected to ensure the survival of the species by destroying all threats, including threats from other creatures. Evolutionists should also, not only advocate, but be actively involved in the killing off of the weak to ensure that the strong are made stronger. If food is short, solve the problem by exterminating the overly-numerous mouths—that is what evolutionists should be advocating. The elderly should be terminated, or exposed so that they die off. This very act makes the living stronger. They are no longer distracted and dissipated by worthless concerns. For the true evolutionist, these things would be amoral—except that the process of terminating the weak both ensures the survival of the species, and ensures the progress of being from lower to higher life forms.

We are aware, of course, that some fundamentalist evolutionists have danced a merry jig trying to avoid these implications, which for some reason they find unpalatable. They have suggested that the evolution of mankind has reached such an advanced stage and man is such a higher life form that he has been able to turn away from the raw brute fight to survive by killing and destroying others. Man is so advanced on the chain of being that he has evolved into co-operative activity. Yes, the jig for these die-hard fundamentalist evolutionists is very lively and frenetically danced. Mankind is so advanced that he has been able to banish evolution. The doctrine that the survival of the fittest is necessary to enable a species, well, to survive has been retired.

But these fundamentalists surely could not object in principle if other human beings disagreed and were successful in terminating them. Such road kill would help ensure the survival of the species.

No-one really thinks and acts like this—which is to say that no-one really believes in the theory of evolutionism. The most die-hard fundamentalist evolutionists spend most of their time arguing that the process has actually stopped now—which is deeply and richly ironic. They can be dismissed as fatuous idiots. But what of the rest of the population?

Just as Locke and all the Contract theorists did not actually believe in the historicity of the Social Contract, so the vast majority of people today could not care at all whether evolutionism is actually literally true or not, or whether it actually occurred. Its value lies in what the theory justifies or warrants.

That makes evolutionism a pearl of great price for the Unbeliever. He will sell all that he owns to possess it, even, especially, and literally, his own soul.