Way to Go!

Get Rid of Democracy: More Authoritarian Governments Needed

The Copenhagen UN Climate Summit was a failure--acknowledged to be such by everyone but the most extreme spinmeisters. This has resulted in a lot of wound-licking, rethinking, recalibrating, and re-conspiring. What to do next? Where do our erstwhile planet saviours go from here?

One interesting discussion thread has been a critical condemnation of democracy which is being blamed for an intrinsic inability to deal with the threats facing mankind. This is an development--ironic to the Christian--but almost inevitable in the West. Post-Enlightenment Unbelief has sought to ground everything upon the ultimacy of human reason, and in particular reason as grounded in the scientific method and informed by the certain and infallible knowledge which rationalistic science is believed to produce.

Western democratic political ideology has itself been grounded in this world-view. The reasoning individual is the ultimate individual. Rationalistic science is so powerful, so transcendently truth-giving that a reasoning individual can discover truth just as effectively, if not more effectively, than governments. The ideological foundations for modern Western democracies rest upon millions of supposedly rational, scientifically informed, and therefore enlightened individuals.

But, and here is the paradox, in every truth system or philosophical system some truths are necessarily more fundamental than others. Some principles are axiomatic; some knowledge is so basic that it relegates other principles and knowledge down a pecking order (subjugated to a realm of opinion, beliefs, desires, wishes). It is inevitable that societies grounded upon rationalistic science will end up making some beliefs more fundamental than others. When that happens, the holders or discoverers or protectors of this more fundamental knowledge will assert themselves as the true philosopher kings who alone are wise enough to rule society.

When that point is reached, democracy as a political ideology will be passed its use-by-date. It is no accident that those who espouse democratic ideals most fervently also tend to see themselves as elites, as superior, as natural leaders. The input of the people is welcomed, as long as the people agree with us. If not, we--the enlightened ones--will tell the masses what they really ought to be doing and thinking. Being part of an elite means that one really does know what is best for ordinary men and women.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that global warming "scientists" and their political advocates have begun concluding, in the light of the failure of Copenhagen, that democracy is now part of the problem. Nico Stehr (Karl Mannheim Professor of Cultural Studies, Zeppelin University, Germany )and Hans von Storch (Professor of Meteorology, University of Hamburg, Germany) recently wrote an article in Der Spiegel tracing this latest development in the saga. The argument, as they describe it, runs like this:

Democracy, an emerging argument holds, is an inappropriate and ineffective political system to meet the challenges of the consequences of climate change in politics and society, particularly in the area of necessary emission reductions. Democratically organized societies are too cumbersome to avoid climate change; they act neither timely nor are they responsive in the necessary comprehensive manner. The "big decisions" to be taken need a strong state. The endless debate should end. We have to act -- that is the most important message. And that is why democracy in the eyes of these observers becomes an inconvenient democracy.

In another historical context, decades ago, Friedrich Hayek pointed to the paradoxical development that follows scientific advances; it tends to strengthen that view that we should “aim at more deliberate and comprehensive control of all human activities”. Hayek pessimistically adds “It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom”.

Copenhagen shows not the failure of climate "science" but the inability of democracies to cope with the apocalyptic end of the planet. Since climate science provides ostensibly infallible and certain knowledge, the lesser views, opinions, beliefs, and knowledge of millions of subjects and citizens must be discarded; democracy itself has become part of the problem. Saving the planet is more important than human freedom.

Note well: you can only get to this point if your starting assumption is that scientific rationality is infallible and absolute. But, since Western democracies are built upon that assumption, they will find it rather hard to demur when "science" concludes that democracies are problematic and have to done away with.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Constitution As Frankenidol

Douglas Wilson January 16, 2010

The other day I was listening to one of those military commentators that Fox News brings on from time to time, and he was talking about the Ft. Hood massacre. Now, before going any further, I need to say that of course that shooting was terrorism, of course the military dropped the ball on preventing it because of all this crazy political correctness, and of course the media has been complicit in covering for crazed Muslims, the kind that should give everyone the creeps and willies. I don't believe you need full body scanners in every airport to find out that somebody's name is Abdul Muhammad, and that he is flying without a passport.

So, are my bona fides in order? Can I say something cautionary to those Christians who are going to be helping a whole lot with the right wing blowback that appears to be already under way?

The military commentator was talking about the warning signs that were actionable before the shooting, and the way he put it was pretty chilling. He said that Hasan could have been brought up on charges early on because he had said (out loud) that the Koran outranked the Constitution. To say that anything outranked the Constitution was, to this gentlemen, clear and obvious treason.

Now of course, Hasan was mistaken, but this was a question of fact, not of principle. The Word of God outranks Madison, et al. and if the Koran were the Word of God, then the Constitution should just sit down and listen for a minute. The reason it doesn't have to is not because the Constitution is the Last Word. It isn't. It doesn't have to listen because the Constitution was the work of wise men and the Koran was the work of an unwise one. They are in the same league, both being from man, but if there is a Word from God, the Constitution and that Word are not in the same league.

So according to the principle laid down by this commentator, I am guilty of treason because I believe (and will say) there is a law above the law, completely out of Congress's reach. I believe that Jesus is Lord, and not just in some invisible spiritual sense. Jesus is Lord, and the Constitution may be followed just so long, and only so long, as it does not require disobedience to Him. Treason? If it is treason, then the Constitution is now a Frankenidol, trying to destroy the men who wrote it. They all believed that there was a law above the law.

The problem is that this commentator guy was lambasting the leftists, who have become a parody of themselves, and are soon to go poof. After they do, Christians should not then discover that they have helped give this pernicious doctrine of arrogant secularism a second lease on life.

The Scriptures and the Constitution sometimes speak to the same issues. When the Constitution doesn't contradict Scripture, then we can go right on ahead. It is perfectly okay to have two senators from every state. More than four congressmen might be pushing it, but in the main, all such procedural questions are fine. But when the Constitution is being wielded by men who demand for it an ultimate loyalty, and they will brook no other gods before it, then Christians should laugh contentedly, and turn away. That doctrine, and all the books it is printed in, need to be pitched into Hell, where they should all burn quite nicely.

So That's It, Then

Parents are the Problem

The appearance of Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) is one of those mad ideas that inevitably arise in a culture controlled by a systematic and programmatic rejection of original sin. Children are at worst regarded as pure, blank slates upon which good things can be written. More often they are thought of as angelic beings, at least until reality intrudes. Even more common is the notion that they are "just like adults", only smaller.

It is not surprising, then, that when children begin to show signs of acute self-absorption and self-will, coupled with a strong resistance to anyone telling them what to do or how to do it, the Unbeliever naturally concludes that the child must have a (physical or psychological) malady of some kind. Such behaviour cannot be the fault of the child. To make it official the "experts" rush to give this phenomenon a name, so that it can be written about in the academic journals and text books. It can also be formally diagnosed, since symptoms can be codified. Moreover, thankfully, as we have been reminded in a recent article in the Daily Mail, it can be treated with "powerful amphetamine-like stimulant drugs, which work by affecting levels of brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters, aiding concentration and reducing hyperactivity," otherwise known as Ritalin.

And so a couple of generations of kids (most of them boys) have been fed a steady diet of drugs to quell their intrinsic and natural rebelliousness. Now, however, recent British research has concluded that "children suffering from the behavioural disorder can control their symptoms - simply by learning self-discipline."

Well, actually, that is a bit of an oversimplification. Researchers have had very positive results from a computer game which requires concentrated thought in order to win. After playing the game, the researchers at University of Hertfordshire's School of Psychology in Hatfield reckoned that their subjects had reduced their self-absorbed impulsive behaviour by twenty-five percent. Wow. ADHD can now be treated by the child learning self-control.

Ah, but here's the rub. The child must be willing to be taught self-control, right? If not, no treatment can occur. They have to be willing to play the game in the first place. Actually, come to think of it, a lot of money, effort, and psycho-babble could have been saved by having the ADHD child directed to a chess board. No doubt the outcome would have been the same.

Let's be very clear. ADHD is a condition in children caused by parental neglect and abuse. Neglect, because Unbelieving parents have wilfully ignored the intrinsic selfishness and lust for personal autonomy that has been in every human heart since the Fall, Messiah excepted. This is as stupid and short-sighted as the parent who thought he was successfully feeding and clothing his child by ensuring there was food in the cupboards and clothes in the closet. Abuse, because modern parents have failed in their duty to correct, train, and discipline their children out of their selfishness and natural rebellion, and so left them imprisoned and racked by their impulses, lusts, and self-absorption.

We did not need some very expensive research scientists to tell us this. Well, actually, Unbelievers do--because in large measure Science has become their holy writ. Will it change anything? Of course not. At least not until our culture faces the uncomfortable truth of intrinsic human depravity--and traces its implications appropriately through to child-rearing practice. But that will not happen because it would cut far too close to the bone. Some much-loved idolatries would come under threat.

So here is what will happen. The valiant researchers, clutching their fresh research grants, waving scientific papers, and presenting myriads of variants of new computer games to teach self-discipline will eventually discover that virtually the whole bunch of children diagnosed with ADHD resist playing such games. Consternation will generate need for a new disorder to be discovered which will eventually be named "Game Phobia Syndrome" or "GPS". Drug companies will work feverishly to discover a chemical treatment for this disorder. And so it will go.

But this fact remains. One of the great tragedies in the West is the systematic abuse and neglect by parents of generations of children in the name of an "enlightened" denial of the true moral guilt and sin before a Holy God, with which they and their children were born.

Himalayan Glaciers Safe

Chicken Little's Credibility Melting

Good news! We are now being told that the Himalayan Glaciers are not about to disappear. Just as well. We have been inundated (if you would pardon the expression) with docuphobias about the terrible floods that are going to afflict India as a result of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Apparently it was just a "Memphis meltdown" all along. (A "Memphis meltdown", for those of you unlucky enough not to know, is mere figment of a creative advertiser's febrile imagination.)

The reputation of global warmist climate "science" is in tatters. The tears and rips get bigger every day. Now we hear that the BBC is thinking of dumping the UK Met Office as its forecaster, since it has failed so abysmally over the past few years. It has routinely predicted warmer summers and warmer winters, when the actual temperatures have gone in the other direction. Their "barbecue summers" prediction went up in smoke (well, actually were doused with rain) and their most recent "mild winter" forecast has just shattered in ice shards. A BBC weatherman has accused the Met Office of having a computer with a warm-bias. Hmmmm.

But back to the Himalayas. The Times Online reports that when questions were raised recently about the scientific credibility of the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were melting, Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as "voodoo science". I suppose this kind of reactionary ideological burp is to be expected, since it was the IPCC which published the claim the claim in the first place, and as we know, the IPCC deals only in credible scientific stuff--which has been peer reviewed, and which is the acme of scientific knowledge on climate change, yada, yada, yada.

Here is what has now come to light:

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Two years ago, full of alarmist enviro-indignation, the IPCC solemnly intoned:

The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

But glaciologists know that the Himalayan glaciers are so thick and vast that this claim had to be nonsense--even if they were melting at the rate the IPCC claimed. But, as we would expect, that actual shrinkage is far, far less than what the IPCC asserted it to be. As always, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, especially one that promises a big pot of money at the end of the tale.

Don't expect any headlines or even minor corrections in the the organs of our MSM. After all, everybody now knows that the IPCC has got stuff wrong all over the show--so it's hardly news any more, right?

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Why We Are Upon the Earth

God be gracious to us and bless us
And cause His face to shine upon us--
That Thy way may be known on the earth,
Thy salvation among all nations.
Psalm 67: 1-2

The sixty-seventh Psalm is a remarkable revelation. The first verse, “God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us,” could be seen as a typical Jewish prayer, at least of the Third Age. One of the characteristics of that Age was an abiding hatred of the Gentiles (non-Israelites) on the part of the many Rabbis and ordinary Jewish folk.

By the time of the Third Age, the notion that the Lord might show favour and mercy to Gentiles had become blasphemous. It was for this reason, after all, that the Jewish crowd in the temple precinct (ironically in the very Court of the Gentiles) went ballistic and tried to kill the Apostle Paul.

When Paul recounted to the crowd how the God of their fathers had appeared to him and commanded him to go to the Gentiles, Luke records “And they listened to him up to this statement and then they raised their voices and said, 'Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live.'” (Acts 20: 21-22)

The prayer, then, that God would be gracious to us (that is, Israelites) implies naturally enough that His grace would be withheld from non-Jews. Well, actually, no. The rest of Psalm 67 explodes that notion forever. The psalmist prays for God's favour and blessing upon Israel so that the ways of the Lord would be made known to all the earth, and that all the nations would come to bless and praise God.

It has always and ever been so. The redemption of God is global—covering the entire creation and all the nations of the earth. The covenant with Israel was not a denial of this, but a means to that end. Faithful Israelites, Third-Age rabbis notwithstanding, always understood this. They were a kingdom of priests, that they might represent and mediate for all the nations of the earth before the face of the Lord.

It continues to be so today. We, believing Gentiles, have been grafted into the vine of Israel's election not for our own sake, but for the sake of the entire world, that “all the ends of the earth may fear Him”. (Psalm 67:7)

It is entirely legitimate—indeed absolutely necessary—that we pray God for His blessing to dwell upon us in indescribable fullness. Like our father, Jacob we would wrestle with the Lord and not let Him go until He blesses us (Genesis 32: 26). But the reason and purpose and end does not rest upon us. Rather, we seek the blessing of God so that all the peoples of the earth would be likewise blessed.

This is the essence and heart of our calling upon the earth.

Letter From America

Does God Hate Haiti?

Al Mohler

Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 5:19 pm ET


The images streaming in from Haiti look like scenes from Dante's Inferno. The scale of the calamity is unprecedented. In many ways, Haiti has almost ceased to exist.

The earthquake that will forever change that nation came as subterranean plates shifted about six miles under the surface of the earth, along a fault line that had threatened trouble for centuries. But no one saw a quake of this magnitude coming. The 7.0 quake came like a nightmare, with the city of Port-au-Prince crumbling, entire villages collapsing, bodies flying in the air and crushed under mountains of debris. Orphanages, churches, markets, homes, and government buildings all collapsed. Civil government has virtually ceased to function. Without power, communication has been cut off and rescue efforts are seriously hampered. Bodies are piling up, hope is running out, and help, though on the way, will not arrive in time for many victims.

Even as boots are finally hitting the ground and relief efforts are reaching the island, estimates of the death toll range as high as 500,000. Given the mountainous terrain and densely populated villages that had been hanging along the fault line, entire villages may have disappeared. The Western Hemisphere's most impoverished nation has experienced a catastrophe that appears almost apocalyptic.

In truth, it is hard not to describe the earthquake as a disaster of biblical proportions. It certainly looks as if the wrath of God has fallen upon the Caribbean nation. Add to this the fact that Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism -- mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult.

Haiti's history is a catalog of political disasters, one after the other. In one account of the nation's fight for independence from the French in the late 18th century, representatives of the nation are said to have made a pact with the Devil to throw off the French. According to this account, the Haitians considered the French as Catholics and wanted to side with whomever would oppose the French. Thus, some would use that tradition to explain all that has marked the tragedy of Haitian history -- including now the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Does God hate Haiti? That is the conclusion reached by many, who point to the earthquake as a sign of God's direct and observable judgment.

God does judge the nations -- all of them -- and God will judge the nations. His judgment is perfect and his justice is sure. He rules over all the nations and his sovereign will is demonstrated in the rising and falling of nations and empires and peoples. Every molecule of matter obeys his command, and the earthquakes reveal his reign -- as do the tides of relief and assistance flowing into Haiti right now.

A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening.

God's rule over creation involves both direct and indirect acts, but his rule is constant. The universe, even after the consequences of the Fall, still demonstrates the character of God in all its dimensions, objects, and occurrences. And yet, we have no right to claim that we know why a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti happened at just that place and at just that moment.

The arrogance of human presumption is a real and present danger. We can trace the effects of a drunk driver to a car accident, but we cannot trace the effects of voodoo to an earthquake -- at least not so directly. Will God judge Haiti for its spiritual darkness? Of course. Is the judgment of God something we can claim to understand in this sense -- in the present? No, we are not given that knowledge. Jesus himself warned his disciples against this kind of presumption.

Why did no earthquake shake Nazi Germany? Why did no tsunami swallow up the killing fields of Cambodia? Why did Hurricane Katrina destroy far more evangelical churches than casinos? Why do so many murderous dictators live to old age while many missionaries die young?

Does God hate Haiti? God hates sin, and will punish both individual sinners and nations. But that means that every individual and every nation will be found guilty when measured by the standard of God's perfect righteousness. God does hate sin, but if God merely hated Haiti, there would be no missionaries there; there would be no aid streaming to the nation; there would be no rescue efforts -- there would be no hope.

The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe. The entire cosmos awaits the revelation of the glory of the coming Lord. Creation cries out for the hope of the New Creation.

In other words, the earthquake reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real message of hope. The cross of Christ declares that Jesus loves Haiti -- and the Haitian people are the objects of his love. Christ would have us show the Haitian nation his love, and share his Gospel. In the midst of this unspeakable tragedy, Christ would have us rush to aid the suffering people of Haiti, and rush to tell the Haitian people of his love, his cross, and salvation in his name alone.

Everything about the tragedy in Haiti points to our need for redemption. This tragedy may lead to a new openness to the Gospel among the Haitian people. That will be to the glory of God. In the meantime, Christ's people must do everything we can to alleviate the suffering, bind up the wounded, and comfort the grieving. If Christ's people are called to do this, how can we say that God hates Haiti?

If you have any doubts about this, take your Bible and turn to John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. That is God's message to Haiti.

Sidelining of Europe

Copenhagen and the Demise of Green Utopia . . .
. . . With sad lessons for little ol' NZ

Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the editor of the climate policy network CCNet. has written a piece arguing that Copenhagen's failure represents the beginning of the end of climate hysteria. It also marks the end of Western dominance in geo-politics.

He makes the following points:

1. Copenhagen was never going to succeed. The hope was hype; it was credible only to the credulous.

The failure of the climate summit was not only predictable – it was inevitable. There was no way out from the cul-de-sac into which the international community has manoeuvred itself. The global deadlock simply reflects the contrasting, and in the final analysis irreconcilable interests of the West and the rest of the world. The result is likely to be an indefinite moratorium on international climate legislation. After Copenhagen, the chances for a binding successor of the Kyoto Protocol are as good as zero.

2. Europe has been sidelined in a global sense.

The extent of the debacle and the shift in the balance of geopolitical power was demonstrated by the fact that the final accord was made without the participation of the European Union. The exclusion of Europe is a remarkable symbol of the EU’s growing loss of influence, a green bureaucracy that was not even asked whether they agreed with the non-binding declaration of China, India and the USA. Although the Copenhagen conference was held in a European capital, the negotiations and the final result of the conference were totally outside European involvement.

The failed climate summit caused a tectonic shift in international relations and left behind a new political landscape. After Copenhagen, green Europe looks rather antiquated and the rest of the world looks totally different. The principles on which Europe’s climate policies were founded and which formed the basis of the Kyoto Protocol have lost their power while the EU itself lost authority and influence.

3. India and China's persistent "no" was powerful. We might also add that the West had no bargaining chips. Once China could have been levered by the promise of entry into the WTO; India by promises of military support in the face of a Pakistani threat. But the West, severely indebted to the East, held no bargaining chips.

. . . there is little doubt that China and India are the big winners of the Copenhagen climate poker. The two emerging superpowers managed to win new strategic allies, even among Western nations. China’s and India’s strategy to align themselves with other developing countries in opposition to protectionist threats by the U.S. and the EU proved itself as very successful. In the end, their persistent No even forced the Obama administration to join the anti-green alliance.

The Asian-American Accord connotes a categorical No to legally binding emission targets. This means that a concrete timescale for the curtailing of global CO2 emissions, not to mention the reduction of the CO2 emissions, has been kicked into the long grass. The green dream of industrial de-carbonisation has been postponed indefinitely.

4. Europe has not yet realised the extent of its diminution. It continues to speak as if Mexico in 2010 will reach a binding agreement. (One could add our own Prime Minister's voice to this Greek chorus.)

Despite the manifest fiasco, considerable resistance to admit defeat and to accept the new reality still exists in many European capitals. Thus, we hear the usual post-conference mantra: but at the next climate conference we will be successful. The decisions which were postponed in Copenhagen will be agreed to at the next summit Mexico later this year.

This green rhetoric has no basis in reality. It’s a green fata morgana. After all, the rejection by the developing world to commit to legally binding emission targets is not a tactical negotiation ploy. The categorical NO is absolute and non-negotiable. Due to the evident lack of realistic energy substitutes, developing countries have no choice but to continue to rely on the cheapest form of energy, i.e. fossil fuels - for the foreseeable future.

5. Eventually, European countries will back away from climate politics and policies.

The Copenhagen fiasco will undoubtedly trigger a rethinking of the European climate policy. Especially East European member states – but probably also the Italian and German governments – will be demanding a drastic reassessment of unilateral climate targets which are turning into an economic liability and a political risk. They are already putting a heavy burden on European economies as well as driving ever higher the costs for energy, industrial output and the general public. . . .

Even in the Western world, the general climate hysteria shows a marked cooling. If recent opinion polls are to be believed, the obsession with climate change, which was a common feature during much of the 1980s and 90s no longer exists. In its place, climate fatigue is spreading. The novelty of climate change and the habitual alarms have lost their original shock value. Instead, the public seems to be warming to the idea of gradual and inevitable climate change.

5. Unilateral Green policies are now becoming a political liability.

International climate politics face a profound crisis. Green taxes and climate levies in whatever form and shape have become political liabilities. Revolts among eastern European countries, in Australia and even among Obama's Blue Dog Democrats are forcing law-makers to renounce support for unilateral climate policies. In the UK, the party-political consensus on climate change is unlikely to survive the general elections as both Labour and the Tories are confronted by a growing public backlash against green taxes and rising fuel bills.

On the assumption that Australia shows a marked swing towards Tony Abbott in the next election--and Abbott has already made rejection of "cap and trade" the signature issue of this year's election--New Zealand will be left in a pickle. We have unilaterally committed to stabbing ourselves in the back with our reckless "cap and trade" legislation. When will the government repeal the legislation?

We are not holding our breath. Our Prime Minister shows signs of substituting the stubbornness of ideology with the stubbornness of, well, stubbornness. "Because I said so," is becoming the signature and hallmark of John Key as Prime Minister. Beneath the cheery demeanour may well lurk a growing cancer of arrogance. Power doth corrupt so quickly.

It is interesting that John Key's Prime Ministership has become marked so far not by what he has done, but by what he has refused to do--to the point of recklessness. His refusals have been damaging to all.

His stubborn refusal to amend the anti-smacking legislation has left him in the ridiculous and dangerous position of endorsing "modest" lawbreaking for every household in the country.

His stubborn refusal to scrap or at least suspend the Emissions Trading Scheme has substantially weakened the country economically--when we are already in hock up to our eyeballs. And let us never forget that insisting on an ETS being in place was to give New Zealand street cred in Copenhagen. Now there is an oxymoron of gargantuan proportions.

John Key will take years to wipe the thick layers of egg now plastered all over the face of his "because I said so--I know best" government.

The Problems of Haiti

What a "Failed State" Looks Like

We may well ask, Can anything good come out of Haiti? That is not to say that we ought to do all we can to help the emergency aid efforts on the ground, now--as soon as possible. But Haiti was in a terrible situation before the earthquake--which will have only made things so much worse.

The terrible earthquake--as is true of all natural disasters--was amplified many times over in terms of its devastation because of the abject poverty and degradation of the inhabitants of that island. The bald reality is that applied civil engineering protects people when natural disasters strike. Haiti has virtually none. The magnitude of the social and human problems existing before the earthquake struck was such that no government, top down, imposed solution is ever going to make things better. Consider the following litany:

First, Haiti has been virtually ungovernable.There was no functioning Parliament or judiciary system, no political compromise or consensus, and extreme violence perpetrated by paramilitaries, gangs, and criminal organizations. Corruption and drug trafficking ran rampant. No government enjoyed much legitimacy.

Second, U.S. administrations suspended, reduced, or delayed foreign aid to pressure Aristide and the opposition [in the nineties] to stop the conflict, contributing to extreme poverty and economic and political stability.

Third, the 1991-1993 international economic blockade further impoverished Haiti’s people and economy.

Fourth, Haiti remains the object of an ever changing U.S. foreign policy, that on occasion has made problems there worse, making Haiti a U.S. responsibility.

Since 2001, the US has poured over $1billion into Haiti in the form of various aid projects. The rest of the international community has contributed roughly the same. And the result has been nada. If ever there was an example to prove that showering money and aid from the top down upon a society does not work, it is Haiti. The problems in Haiti are nursed within the national soul, and until that is changed, very little can be achieved. Here is a brief profile of Haiti's troubles:

The facts of Haitian poverty are startling. The UN Human Development Index (HDI) ranks Haiti as 153rd least developed among the world’s 177 countries. About three-fourths of the population is impoverished—living on less than $2/day. Half of the population has no access to potable water. One-third have no sanitary facilities. Only 10% have electrical service.

Ninety-five percent of employment in Haiti is in the underground economy; while 80% of businesses in urban areas are “off the books.” Official unemployment rates range from 50% to 70%, but no one really knows. Haiti’s private sector is comprised mostly of subsistence farmers and micro-businesses.

A small elite organized in family groupings controls all exports and imports, tourism, construction and manufacturing.About 4% of the population owns 66% of the country’s wealth. Some 10% own nothing. About 5% to 8% of the population has HIV/AIDS, and that percentage is rising. Haiti is the most severely affected by HIV/AIDS outside Sub-Saharan Africa. Only an estimated 5% to 10% of those with HIV/AIDS receive treatment. HIV/AIDS is reducing life expectancy in Haiti by
10 years. In addition, tuberculosis, and recently polio, have emerged as epidemics.

Non- governmental organizations (NGOs) deliver four-fifths of public services.
As many as 250,000 children work as unpaid servants in homes placed there by their
biological parents.Around 2,000 children annually are victims of human trafficking primarily to the Dominican Republic. Two-thirds of women have been violently abused.

Haiti ranks among the worse countries environmentally: 141st out of 155 on Yale University’s Environmental Sustainability Index. Because Haitians are forced to use wood for fuel—70% of energy use is from this source—and because of excessive wood harvesting by private companies, Haiti is now 97% deforested, an irony for a tropical island. Deforestation causes chronic, catastrophic flooding with extensive loss of life. In 2004, tropical storm Jeanne caused property damages at 3.5% GDP.

According to a recent poll, 67% of Haitians would emigrate if they could. Many already have: 2 million Haitians live in the United States, of whom 60% are now American-born. Four-fifths of Haiti’s college-educated citizens live outside of the country.

One well-meaning, but failed, initiative by the West was to get Haiti to adopt a Western style constitution. The 1987 constitution is based upon an amalgam of the French and US constitutions. But such edifices have no foundation upon which they can be supported when law and law keeping is not part of the cultural fabric. There are so many checks and balances in the constitution that the only way any decisions can be made is by the application of graft and bribery. Consequently, Haiti is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

The Canadian International Development Agency has been very active in Haiti. Its summary of the situation is bleak:

• A society profoundly divided between a traditional culture and an elite, ex-military and petit bourgeois class, each seeking or clinging to power;

• An unstable government and a weak public institutional capacity;

• Seriously deteriorated economic and social infrastructures;

• An absence of capacity for law and order, allowing continued violent insurgencies
and rioting, perpetrated by paramilitaries and gangs;

• An uncontrollable flux of migrants from rural areas into slums of Port-au-Prince;

• Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few traditional families and new mafia-
like groups; and

• An inadequate and constantly deteriorating environment

We believe there is no one "key" to solving Haiti's problems. No external aid programmes, trying to apply external solutions will bear any good fruit. The unintended consequences of this approach have been disastrous to date, exacerbating many existing problems and creating massive new calamities.

Secondly, there is no short term solution: it has to be an intergenerational solution, working from the bottom up.

Third, solutions have to be familial and mirco-orientated, personal, face-to-face, focusing upon parents, children, employment, training, education. This necessarily means that the approach must be uneven in application and results. Some will benefit; others will get no opportunity. Sorry, that is the way it has to be. Otherwise, some big bwana will have to run a government or NGO programme, and a towering tsunami of corruption will sweep in.

Fourth, and most importantly, the light of the Gospel needs to dawn in the hearts of Haitians. That benighted place needs an army of Christian missionaries proclaiming and living the light and healing of the Gospel of God's mercy to Haitians in a dark, dark world. It would be good to have Haitian ex-pats making up a large proportion of these divine emissaries--people who themselves have become Christians and who yearn for their countrymen.

It's a Mad World--This World of Morbid Eco-mania

Mark Steyn On the Ridiculous, the Bizarre and the Ironic

Mark Steyn steps back and takes a longer, broader, and deeper perspective on Climate Change fanaticism. Whilst it has never been sublime, it is most definitely ridiculous.

Why climate change is hot hot hot

According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice.

Oh, wait. That was the last “scientific consensus” on “climate change,” early seventies version, as reflected in a CIA report from August 1974, which the enterprising author Maurizio Morabito stumbled upon in the British Library the other day. If only the impending ice age had struck as scheduled and Scandinavia was now under a solid block of ice. Instead, the streets of Copenhagen are filled with “activists” protesting global warming, some of whom torch automobiles in the traditional manner of concerned idealists. As long as it’s not my car, I can just about live with these chaps, preferring on balance thuggish street politics to the spaced-out cultish stupor in which many of their confreres wander glassy-eyed from event to event.

On the Internet, there is a telling clip of Christopher Monckton interacting with a young Norwegian from Greenpeace who has come along to protest the former’s “denialism.” Monckton is a viscount—i.e., a lord, like his fellow denialist, the former British chancellor Lord Lawson. Now that’s what I call peer review! (House of Lords joke.) Lord Monckton has the faintly parodic mien of many aristocrats, whereas the Greenpeace gal was a Nordic blond. If there were empty stools adjoining both parties at the Climate Conference bar, you’d head for hers before some carbon-credit travelling salesman swiped it. Big mistake. Monckton was the soul of affability, gently suggesting places where she could check out the data. She, by contrast, seemed barely sentient, clinging to rote emotionalism and impervious to reason, data, facts, inquiry.

As I always say, if you’re 30 there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school after a lifetime of eco-brainwashing, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. None. After the leaked data from East Anglia revealed that Dr. Phil Jones (privately) conceded this point, Tim Flannery, one of the A-list warm-mongers in Copenhagen, owned up to it on Aussie TV, too. Yet, when I reprised the line in this space a couple of weeks back, thinking it was now safe for polite society, I was besieged by the usual “YOU LIE!!!!!!!” emails angrily denouncing me for failing to explain that the cooling trend of the oughts is in fact merely a blip in the long-term warming trend of the nineties.

Well, maybe. Then again, perhaps the warming trend of the nineties is merely a blip in the long-term ice age trend of the early seventies. I doubt many of my caps-lock emailers are aware of the formerly imminent ice age. It was in Newsweek and the New York Times, and it produced the occasional bestseller. But, unlike today’s carbon panic, it wasn’t everywhere; it wasn’t, in every sense, the air that we breathe.

Unlike Al Gore’s wretched movie, it wasn’t taught in schools. TV networks did not broadcast during children’s time apocalyptic public service announcements that in any other circumstance would constitute child abuse. Unlike today, where incoming mayors announce that as their first act in office they’re banning bottled water from council meetings, ostentatious displays of piety were not ubiquitous. It was not a universal pretext for recoiling from progress: back in the seventies, upscale municipalities that now obsess about emissions standards of hot-air dryers were busy banning garden clotheslines on aesthetic grounds. There were no fortunes to be made from government grants for bogus “renewable energy” projects. Unlike Al Gore, carbon billionaire, nobody got rich peddling ice offsets.

The man with the sandwich board announcing the end of the world on Jan. 7 is usually unfazed when he wakes up on the morning of Jan. 8. He realigns the runes, repaints the sign, and reschedules Armageddon for May 23. The rest of us, on the other hand, scoff.

But not with this crowd. First it was the new ice age. Then it became global warming. Now it’s “climate change.” If it’s hot, that’s climate change. If it’s cold, that’s climate change. If it’s 12° C and partly sunny with a 30 per cent chance of mild precipitation in the afternoon, you should probably pack emergency supplies and head for higher ground because global milding is rampaging out of control, and lack of climate change is, as every scientist knows, the defining proof of climate change.

Indeed, our response to climate change can itself cause climate change that manifests itself in lack of climate change. A couple of days back, the Guardian ran the following story: “The hole in the earth’s ozone layer has shielded Antarctica from the worst effects of global warming until now.”

Remember the ozone layer? It was all the rage back in the old days. It was caused by spray-on deodorants, apparently. So we packed ’em in, and switched over to roll-on deodorants. And, because we forswore the sinful spraying of armpits, the hole began to heal. Which is tough on the Antarctic ice cap. Because the only reason it isn’t melting is because the ozone hole isn’t fully closed up. Once it is, more hot air will remain trapped and melt the ice. It may be time to start spraying your armpit hair again.

Why did “climate change” remain the boutique scare-story of a few specialists last time round, and gain global traction this time round? In the Spectator, Maurizio Morabito puts it this way: “Is the problem with the general public, who cannot talk about climate except in doom-laden terms, and for whom the sky is the last animist god?”

That last part explains a lot. Forty years ago conventional religious belief was certainly in decline in what we once knew as Christendom, but the hole was not yet ozone-layer sized. Once the sea of faith had receded far from shore, the post-Christian West looked at what remained and found “Gaia.” Not long ago, in Burlington, Vt., I got into a somewhat heated discussion about global warming with a lady who accused me of ignoring “science.” She then drove away in a car with the bumper sticker “THE EARTH IS YOUR MOTHER.”

In Quebec City for the Summit of the Americas in 2001, I sought a breather from the heady scent of Sûreté du Québec tear gas and idled away half an hour among a display of brassieres promoting “sustainable development.” One (a 54D, as I recall) read “THE EARTH IS MA MÈRE.” In flagrant breach of Quebec’s Bill 101, the francophone right cup was not twice the size of the anglophone left cup. If the earth is our mother, who are we to dictate to the goddess?

As Lord Monckton pointed out to that Norwegian CO2-head, we’ve had climate change for four billion years. But now apparently there is an ideal state that Ma Mère has to be maintained in. A belief in a garden of Eden which man through sin has despoiled sounds familiar. But this time we get to pick. Not the Medieval Warm Period that causes the “scientific consensus” such problems, and not presumably the bucolic state the planet was in when Canada was 150 feet under, but some pristine condition somewhere in between.

When man was made in the image of God, he was fallen but redeemable. Gaia’s psychologically unhealthy progeny are merely irredeemable. Anti-humanism is everywhere, not least in the barely concealed admiration for China’s (demographically disastrous) “One Child” policy advanced by everyone from the National Post’s Diane Francis to Sir David Attenborough, the world’s leading telly naturalist but also a BBC exec who once long ago commissioned the great series The Ascent of Man. If Sir David’s any guide, the great thing about man’s ascent is it gives him a higher cliff to nosedive off.

Very few sciences could survive being embraced as a religion. Imagine the kind of engineering or math you’d get if it also had to function as a “faith tradition.” What’s also changed since the seventies is the nature of the UN and the transnational bureaucracies. Once it became obvious that “climate change” represents an almost boundless shakedown of functioning jurisdictions by dysfunctional basket cases, the die was cast. “Aid” is a discredited word these days and comes with too many strings attached. But eco-credits sluiced through an oil-for-food program on steroids offers splendid new opportunities for bulking up an ambitious dictator’s Swiss bank accounts.

And, because of this malign combination—corrupted science, ersatz religion, Third World opportunism—global warming took off in a way the old ice age never did. It would perhaps be too much to expect a generation of brainwashed schoolkids to shake off their brain-dead conformism. And so, between the anti-human left and an alliance of rapacious dictatorships, it now falls to a handful of economically expansive emerging nations—India, China, Brazil, a couple of others—to save the developed world from itself.

Cracks in the Jihad

Global Jihad Evolving Into Conventional Criminality

Thomas Rid has written an interesting piece in the latest Wilson Quarterly on the current state of jihad and the decline of Al Qaeda. Below is a summary of some of the more interesting observations.

1. Al Qaeda's popularity in the islamic world is falling quite dramatically.

In the years since late 2001, when U.S. and coalition forces toppled the Taliban regime and all but destroyed Al Qaeda’s core organization in Afghan­istan, the bin Laden brand has been bleeding popularity across the Muslim world. The global jihad, as a result, has been torn by mounting internal tensions.

2. Jihadism has now split into three distinct ideological and organisational niches. Al Qaeda has been unable to spread itself across all three, or link all three together.

The first niche is occupied by local Islamist insurgencies, fueled by grievances against “apostate” regimes that are authoritarian, corrupt, or backed by “infidel” outside powers (or any combination of the three). Filling the second niche is terrorism-cum–organized crime, most visible in Afghanistan and Indonesia but also seen in Europe, fueled by narcotics, extortion, and other ordinary illicit activities. In the final niche are people who barely qualify as a group: young second- and third-generation Muslims in the diaspora who are engaged in a more amateurish but persistent holy war, fueled by their own complex personal discontents.

Al Qaeda’s challenge is to encompass the jihadis who drift to the criminal and eccentric fringe while keeping alive its appeal to the Muslim mainstream and a rhetoric of high aspiration and promise.

It is a challenge that Al Qaeda has failed to meet, and will likely continue to do so.

3. The outcome of the "war" in Afghanistan is now made irrelevant, since it will not affect in any significant way, the splintering of these three niches, nor Al Qaeda's inability to coalesce them into a coherent global jihad.

The most visible divide separates the local and global jihadis. Historically, Islamist groups tended to bud locally, and assumed a global outlook only later, if they did so at all. All the groups that have been affiliated with Al Qaeda either predate the birth of the global jihad in the early 1990s or grew later out of local causes and concerns, only subsequently attaching the bin Laden logo. . . .

By joining Al Qaeda and stepping up violence, local insurgents have long risked placing themselves on the target lists of governments and law enforcement organizations. More recently, however, they have run what may be an even more consequential risk, that of removing themselves from the social mainstream and losing popular support.

This is what happened to Al Qaeda in Iraq during the Sunni Awakening, which began in 2005 in violence-ridden al-Anbar Province [in Iraq] and its principal city, Ramadi. Al Qaeda had declared Ramadi the future capital of its Iraqi “caliphate,” and by late 2005 it had the entire city under its control. But even conservative Sunni elders became alienated by the group’s brutality and violence. One prominent local leader, Sheikh Sattar Abdul Abu Risha, lost several brothers and his father in assassinations. Others were agitated by the loss of prestige and power to the insurgents in their traditional homelands. In early 2006, Sattar and his sheikhs decided to cooperate with American forces, and by the end of the year they had helped recruit nearly 4,000 men to local police units. “They brought us nothing but destruction and we finally said, enough is enough,” Sattar explained.

4. Local islamic jihadi groups are increasingly branding Al Qaeda as un-islamic.

One after another, former firebrand imams, in so-called revisions, have started questioning the theological justifications of holy war. The trend may have begun with Gamaa al-Islamiya, Egypt’s most brutal terrorist group, which was responsible for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 and the slaughter of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor in 1997. As the Iraq war intensified during the summer of 2003, several of Gamaa al-Islamiya’s leaders advised young men not to participate in Al Qaeda operations and accused the organization of “splitting Muslim ranks” by provoking hostile reactions against Islam “and wrongly interpreting the meaning of jihad in a violent way.”

Another notable revision came in September 2007, when Salman al-Awda, an influential Saudi cleric who had previously declared that fighting Americans in Iraq was a religious duty, spoke out against Al Qaeda. He accused bin Laden in an open making terror a synonym for Islam.” Speaking on a popular Saudi TV show on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, al-Awda asked, “My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed . . . in the name of Al Qaeda?”

Other ideologues have followed, including Sajjid Imam al-Shareef, one of Al Qaeda’s founding leaders, who used the nom de guerre Dr. Fadl. “Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers,” he wrote in the London-based newspaper Asharq Al Awsat.

5. Local tribal concerns bear most weight and importance in Afghanistan. In fact, so localised and splintered is the country that one can speak of valleys, rather than tribes, as the primary identity of locals.

In the remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan that produce many of today’s radicals, however, local and tribal affiliations are powerful. One U.S. political adviser who worked in Afghanistan’s Zabul Province, a hotbed of the insurgency, describes prevailing local sentiment as “valleyism” rather than nationalism. It is a force that drives the tribes to oppose anybody who threatens their traditional power base, foreign or not—a problem not just for the Taliban and Al Qaeda but for any Afghan government.

Remind us again why the US is fighting a war in Afghanistan?

6. Young disaffected Muslims who are part of the diaspora in Europe are susceptible to Al Qaeda's global jihad propaganda.

The grievances and motivations of European extremists and the rare American militants tend to be idiosyncratic, the product of unstable individual personalities and a history of personal discrimination. Many take the initiative to join the movement themselves, and because they are not recruited by a member of the existing organization, their ties to it may remain loose.

7. Many isolated jihadi groups are morphing into criminal gangs.

A budding insurgency has only a limited window of opportunity to grow into a serious political force. If the cause withers and loses its popular gloss, what remains as a rump may be nothing but a criminal organization, attracting a following with criminal energy rather than religious zeal, thus further damaging jihad’s status in the eyes of the broader public. For some groups, this already appears to be happening. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb funds itself through the drug trade, smuggling, extortion, and kidnappings in southern Algeria and northern Mali. Indonesia’s Abu Sayyaf Group and the Philippines’ Jamiyah Islamiyah engage in a variety of criminal activities, including credit card fraud. The terrorist cell behind the 2004 Madrid bombings earned most of its money from criminal activities; when Spanish police raided the home of one of the plotters, they seized close to $2 million in drugs and cash, including more than 125,000 Ecstasy tablets, according to U.S. News and World Report.

If the analysis Rid presents is accurate it implies that responses to jihad need to reflect actual local conditions and the kind of jihad being promoted and by whom, and will therefore vary widely from locale to locale. The remaining threat would appear to be disaffected islamic youth throughout Europe and counter terrorism efforts should focus upon them. It is likely that increasingly these recruits will turn to more traditional forms of lawlessness and crime.

Local terrorist insurgencies, such as Hamas, should be largely ignored as far as concerns over global jihad are concerned. After all, Hamas executed Al Qaeda operatives pronto when they turned up in Gaza.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

He Has Done It Already

Douglas Wilson, Saturday, January 02, 2010

Everyone here wants things, and there is no problem with that. That is a design feature; it is how God made us. But there are frequently deep problems with how and why we want things. And the central problem is that we tend to want things that God gave to someone else, simply because that is what He did. This is not simple creational desire; it is what the Bible calls sin, in particular the sin of envy.

Some desires are given to us by God so that He might fulfill them. The created world is full of created things, all fashioned by the wisdom of God for the delight of man. But the world is also full of created others, who are helping themselves to those created blessings, and we don’t like how the lines formed. This is source of all of our conflicts.

I speak particularly to you young people. Take this coming year as a time to learn the difference between those desires that you should simply fulfill, and those desires that you should simply mortify. You should fulfill the desire to eat dinner, to sleep, to scratch what itches, to stand in the sunshine, and to get in out of the rain.

You must mortify the desire to be like her, to get ahead of your brother, to win that prize so that she won’t, to compete for your mother’s approval. All of that must die, if you want conflict to die.

And how are such things to be mortified? Glory to God, He has done it already. You cannot die in this way, but one has died on your behalf. Look to Him.

Western "Rights" Have Become a Sick Joke

What Happened to the Wagons?

Several days ago a conscientious Muslim attempted to murder Kurt Westergaard, a Dane. He broke into his home armed with an axe and a knife with malice aforethought. That Muslim is now facing charges of attempted murder. Kurt Westergaard is no ordinary Dane. Well, actually he is. He is an ordinary citizen, who is a professional cartoonist. He is the one who drew the cartoons that were allegedly offensive to Muslims several years ago and published in a Danish newspaper.

A fatwa was issued against the newspaper and all involved--including the cartoonist. A fatwa, you recall, is an official Islamic judgment--in this case a death sentence. It is the duty of all conscientious Muslims to carry out the judgment. Hence the attempt on Westergaard's life. The attempted murderer will have won high honour and respect amongst all conscientious Muslims everywhere in the world.

Western Europe has been through this before. About twenty-two years ago, author Salmon Rushdie published The Satanic Verses. We confess we have never read the book, having been warned off by a reviewer who called it dull. But nonetheless its author was deemed by an Islamic judge to have maligned and impugned the honour of Mohammed. Consequently, as a recent editorial in Spiegel Online pointed out

Its publication led the Iranian state and its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to issue a "fatwa" against Rushdie and offer a hefty bounty for his murder. This triggered several attacks on the novel's translators and publishers, including the murder of Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi. Millions of Muslims around the world who had never read a single line of the book, and who had never even heard the name Salman Rushdie before, wanted to see the death sentence against the author carried out -- and the sooner the better, so that the stained honor of the prophet could be washed clean again with Rushdie's blood.

The response in the West was palpable: the literatii, the glitterati, the cognoscenti, the educated classes, and the elites to the very last man condemned Islam and its fatwa. They circled the wagons into a defensive laager around Rushdie. Not a few boldly and fearlessly declared the superior way of Western liberalism, with its higher legal traditions of freedom of speech and the most glorious human freedom right to give offence.

Over the ensuing twenty years, however, the threats and dangers to the elites and the cognoscenti in the West had come a little bit closer to home. After all, the chattering classes had observed 9/11, the London bombings, Madrid, Bali, Jakarta, and Djerba and concluded that these Islamic people were actually serious. Moreover, during those two decades the framing and discourse about calls to Muslims to murder people in the West had changed. The reaction of the Islamic world to Western criticism of its religion and its leaders came to be

interpreted as a reaction by the Islamic world to its degradation and humiliation by the West.

Therefore, when the Danish cartoons were published four years ago (there were twelve of them, and they were exceedingly mild) and the fatwas were issued, amazingly and tellingly the wagons in the West no longer circled into a defensive laager. Instead the they raced over to stand with the fatwa, joining the chorus of disapproval. The glitterati, the cognoscenti, and the literati expressed solidarity with the Muslim mobs protesting in major European cities calling for the death of the magazine editors and the cartoonist. Whatever happened to the so-called higher and superior right of free speech?

This time, however, in contrast to the Rushdie case, hardly anyone has showed any solidarity with the threatened Danish cartoonists -- to the contrary. [Novelist Gunter] Grass . . . expressed his understanding for the hurt feelings of the Muslims and the violent reactions that resulted. Grass described them as a "fundamentalist response to a fundamentalist act," in the process drawing a moral equivalence between the 12 cartoons and the death threats against the cartoonists. Grass also stated that: "We have lost the right to seek protection under the umbrella of freedom of expression."

"I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong," commented then-British Home Secretary Jack Straw, referring to the decision by several European media organizations to republish the caricatures. Meanwhile, Vorwärts, the party organ of Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party -- one of the country's two largest political parties -- defended freedom of expression in general, but gave the opinion that in this special case, the Danes had "abused" the freedom, "not in a legal sense, but in a political and moral one." . . . .

Prominent German psychoanalyst Horst-Eberhard Richter advised: "The West should refrain from any provocations that produce feelings of debasement or humiliation." Of course, Richter left open the question of whether "the West" should also refrain from the wearing of mini skirts, eating pork and the legalization of same-sex partnerships in order to avoid causing any feelings of debasement and humiliation in the Islamic world.

Had the Muhammed cartoons been reprinted by the whole German press, then newspaper readers could have seen for themselves how excessively harmless the 12 cartoons were and how bizarre and pointless the whole debate had become. Instead, the assessment was left to "experts" who had in the past defended every criticism of the pope and the Church as well as every blasphemous piece of art in the name of freedom of opinion, but who, in the case of the Muhammad cartoons, suddenly held the view that one must take other people's religious feelings into consideration.

What the West has shown through this spineless hypocrisy is that its arrogant pretensions about human rights are empty cant. When it comes down to it, these so-called fundamental rights of Western society are not worth dying for. Therefore, they are not worth living for, either. They are mere hypothetical abstractions, to be discarded as soon as it may end up costing the liberal elites something.

But there is another sub-text running through all of this: the nauseating paternalistic condescension amongst the Western elites which sees Muslims as ignorant, backward, and easily offended primitives. Western elites quickly justified to themselves the suspension of the rights of free speech because, by implication, Muslim people are childish and backward and it was unfair to subject them to the robust maturity that free speech requires. Just as a parent has an obligation to curb "free speech" when criticising children for the sake of a child's delicate sensibilities, so the West had a duty to condescend to the feelings of Muslim people. If a child throws a tanty when criticised, a wise and superior parent will withhold criticism--surely.

It has not yet dawned upon these elitist self-indulgent, self-congratulatory clowns in the West that conscientious Muslims do not think of the West and its elites as superiors, and themselves as backward, childish inferiors. In fact, the conscientious Muslim views Mr Jack Straw and Gunter Grass and their ilk as ignorant, perverted, depraved, backward, diabolical, and cursed. And in so many ways they are right. Both the conscientious Muslim and the conscientious Western liberal alike are ignorant, perverted, depraved, etc. Western elites in their vanity and self-absorbed arrogance and conscientious Muslims in their murderous intent are alike in that they both share a common disdain and hatred of the Messiah of God. They are peas in the same pod. Sooner or later, however, the West is going to regret its arrogance and condescension. Its policy of de-escalation will win it nothing.

The only problem is the other side isn't thinking about de-escalation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie is still in effect, and the attempt to murder Kurt Westergaard last week wasn't the first attempt to carry out a death sentence for an instance in which no crime had been committed. Islam may be the "religion of peace" in theory, but it looks different in practice.

In being confronted with conscientious Islam, Western liberal elites have unfortunately proven the truth of Islam's criticism of the West--that is, that the West consists of nothing more nor less than indulgent, pleasure seeking, self-absorbed sybarites. Poke them, threaten them just a little and they become puppets and tools.

What on Earth? . . .

The Stazi Redividus

Have you ever heard of this puppy? The National Domestic Extremism Team. Where do you get one of those? In the UK, of course.

Blogger Bishop Hill reported recently:

This morning I contacted Norfolk Constabulary with a view to finding out if they had yet ascertained whether the breach at the Climatic Research Unit was a leak or a hack. I have just received a response which is frankly amazing:

"Norfolk Constabulary continues its investigations into criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia. During the enquiry officers have been working in liaison with the Office of the Information Commissioner and with officers from the National Domestic Extremism Team. The UEA continues to co-operate with the enquiry however major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."

The National Domestic Extremism Team? Words fail me.

Britain continues to go boldly where no man or nation has gone before--in the West. Apparently the mantra now widely employed is, "Go East, young man--and back forty years. There lies our future." Methinks we need one of those puppies in New Zealand. No modern western democracy should be without one. Imagine, they could use up an awful lot of time investigating extremists like Hone Harawira.

Specious Pleading

Over Egging the Pudding

Zen Tiger, over at NZ Conservative, posted on the latest billboard put up by try-hard atheistic folk in the UK.



This is one of the most egregious examples of question begging floating around fashionable, Chardonnay-sipping circles of Unbelief. It represents either a terrible wilful ignorance or an intellectual laziness. The propaganda point of the billboard is that children deserve to the raised in homes where human autonomy and pseudo-rational thinking are the only tolerated views, which is to say that children should be conditioned to be rationalists. Since those propagating this ideology are themselves staunch believers in human autonomy and pseudo-rationalism, it's all a bit rich.

The Christian philosopher and apologist, Cornelius Van Til once wrote a pamphlet, entitled Why I Believe in God. It consists of a conversation between Van Til and a thoroughly modern Unbeliever. In it, Van Til contrasts his Christian upbringing with that of his Unbelieving friend. He describes his own upbringing thus:

Ours was not in any sense a pietistic family. There were not any great emotional outbursts on any occasion that I recall. There was much ado about making hay in the summer and about caring for the cows and sheep in the winter, but round about it all there was a deep conditioning atmosphere. Though there were no tropical showers of revivals, the relative humidity was always very high. At every meal the whole family was present. There was a closing as well as an opening prayer, and a chapter of the Bible was read each time. The Bible was read through from Genesis to Revelation. At breakfast or at dinner, as the case might be, we would hear of the New Testament, or of "the children of Gad after their families, of Zephon and Haggi and Shuni and Ozni, of Eri and Areli." I do not claim that I always fully understood the meaning of it all. Yet of the total effect there can be no doubt. The Bible became for me, in all its parts, in every syllable, the very Word of God. I learned that I must believe the Scripture story, and that "faith" was a gift of God. What had happened in the past, and particularly what had happened in the past in Palestine, was of the greatest moment to me. In short, I was brought up in what Dr. Joad would call "topographical and temporal parochialism." I was "conditioned" in the most thorough fashion. I could not help believing in God -- in the God of Christianity -- in the God of the whole Bible!

Now it is this sort of thing which the Billboarders above get so upset about. They view this as a form of child-abuse. But, Van Til goes on to describe the conditioning of his Unbelieving interlocutor:

Living next to the Library of Congress, you were not so restricted. Your parents were very much enlightened in their religious views. They read to you from some Bible of the World instead of from the Bible of Palestine. No, indeed, you correct me, they did no such thing. They did not want to trouble you about religious matters in your early days. They sought to cultivate the "open mind" in their children.

Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased? But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by its environment. You were as thoroughly conditioned not to believe in God as I was to believe in God. So let us not call each other names. If you want to say that belief was poured down my throat, I shall retort by saying that unbelief was poured down your throat. That will get us set for our argument.

Van Til then goes on to describe his conditioning in a Christian school, but then completes the comparison/contrast with the way his unbelieving friend was schooled:

How different your early schooling was! You went to a "neutral" school. As your parents had done at home, so your teachers now did at school. They taught you to be "open-minded." God was not brought into connection with your study of nature or history. You were trained without bias all along the line.

Of course, you know better now. You realize that all that was purely imaginary. To be "without bias" is only to have a particular kind of bias. The idea of "neutrality" is simply a colorless suit that covers a negative attitude toward God. At least it ought to be plain that he who is not for the God of Christianity is against Him.

What the Billboard atheists are arguing for is the need to condition and propagandise all children into Unbelief from the outset. Their suppressed "deep-magic" assumption is that the God of the Scriptures cannot possibly exist because man is the ultimate determiner of truth. He decides these things for himself, which is to say that the God of Christianity is excluded from the get-go.

Now, we would have respect for any Unbeliever who candidly acknowledged this reality. What we cannot respect is the self-serving question begging of the Billboard atheists calling for all children to be given the right to choose. Either they do not see the logs in their eye--in which case they are to be pitied--or they do, yet dissemble and mislead--in which case they need to be called out. For your own sake, we want to say, get off your conditioned railway track "talking points" and slogans, open your closed minds, and think a bit harder and more rigorously.

Dying the Death of a Thousand Cuts

The Inevitable Downward Spiral

We certainly have a crisis every day, it would seem. In a recent Herald article were were told that the entire medical profession in New Zealand was now under threat.

And the cause of this threat? Australia has decided to remove all remaining barriers to practising medicine in Australia for doctors trained in New Zealand. Expect a rapid medical professional drain as doctors move across the Tasman in droves. Why?
Higher wages and better working conditions. We already have a doctor shortage. In the Auckland region, for example, last year one quarter of the medical positions in the regions hospitals were vacant. Association of Salaried Medical Specialists president Jeff Brown commented on the Australian move:

Certainly from a senior hospital doctors' perspective we'd see that as very frightening because Australia could soak up almost the entire New Zealand medical workforce to fill their vacancies.

This is merely one example of a much deeper and wider cancer that is eating away at New Zealand. Our ever shrinking relative economy means that more and more trained and specialised personnel vote with their feet and move offshore to work. We have referred to this hollowing out as the niueanising of New Zealand. (Niue is a small Pacific island whose population has successively moved to New Zealand to find work, leaving the island increasingly poor. Now the same reality is hitting New Zealand as the global economy sucks up our skilled labour force.)

The solutions to this slow economic bleed-out of a thousand cuts are pretty simple. Personal living standards need to rise in New Zealand to enable us to compete successfully in a global labour market. The biggest impediment by far is the bloated, ever burgeoning state apparatus and its redistributive welfare policies. Cut taxes, and cut them deeply, to provide a real increase in wages.

But the concomitant cutting of government spending and state largesse is political suicide. Therefore, it will not happen. Politicians are above all self-interested. Therefore, while there will be plenty of high sounding slogans, hand-wringing, talk-fests, committees, reports, summits, and colloquies all with the noble objective of increasing New Zealand's competitiveness and productivity, it will be a waste of time and yet another waste of money. The real solutions will remain firmly in the "too hard" basket. Cutting taxes is politically easy. Cutting off the government hand that feeds us is impossible.

If you want to survive in politics never touch an entitlement programme, except to increase it. This is why the entire edifice will collapse from the inside out, like a slowly deflating balloon. Now, when we say this we are not being cynical. The collapse is inevitable, and it is important that it actually occur. The superstructure of our nation is built upon a foundation of graft and theft: virtually the entire population insists that the state steal or expropriate from some to bestow "entitlements" upon others. It tries to sanctify this institutionalised system of theft by calling it justice! Our entire modern political system rests upon unjust and immoral foundations. It cannot succeed, for in the end there is no honour amongst thieves.

John Piper in Angola Prison

"I was in Prison And You Came to Me"

According to Wikipedia,

The Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola and "The Farm") is a prison in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Corrections. The prison is the largest maximum security prison in the United States with 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members. It is located on an 18,000 acre (73 km²) property that was previously the Angola and other plantations owned by Isaac Franklin in unincorporated West Feliciana Parish, close to the Mississippi border. . . . Current Warden Burl Cain maintains an open-door policy with the media, which led to the production of the award winning documentary The Farm.

Angola Prison, under the leadership of Warden Cain, encourages an active Christian ministry throughout the prison, which is actually one of the largest working farms in the US. Many of the prisoners are "lifers": while not on death row, their prison sentences are so long, they will die in prison. Many prisoners have been converted. A mission training institute has been set up, and missionaries have gone from Angola into other prisons in the US to spread the Gospel amongst prisoners in other prisons.

In the video below, visiting Pastor John Piper conducts a 30 minute Q&A session with prisoners. The calibre of the questions would put many contemporary Christians to shame. When you consider the background of the audience you cannot but marvel at the wonder of God's redeeming grace in Christ. God alone can do what man cannot do--save sinners.



Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

Ten Worst Persecuting Nations

Taking Stock, Tearfully

The Open Doors organization has just published its global review of the state of oppression and persecution of Christians. It has identified the fifty top persecuting states in the world. What would be your guess for the three worst persecuting nation-states in the world?

The full publication can be read here:



This infamous list and its attendant commentary by Open Doors is very helpful for focusing prayer and concern. A glance at the list shows that unsurprisingly the most common feature is that Islamic nations are engaged in the systematic persecution and oppression of Christians. However, the worst persecutor, the country that tops the infamous fifty list is North Korea.

In first position on the World Watch List 2010 is again North Korea, the country where every religious activity is recognized as insurrection to the North Korean socialist principles. The situation for Christians is extremely harsh at this moment, even though the North Korean regime is slowly and steadily losing her iron control on North Korean society, and Kim Jong Il's physical health worsened after his stroke. . . . (M)any Christian believers were exposed during North Korea's strict searches. During the mentioned campaigns, the North Korean regime especially targeted secret Christians all over North Korea to arrest and kill them.

They have arrested and tortured Christians in various horrible ways, such as sometimes using them as a means of testing biological or chemical weapons. In spite of these inhuman circumstances, Christianity is growing and chances to hear the gospel are growing, especially for those who live in cities nearby China.

When the North Korean government arrests a Christian, they also extend it normally to three generations, arresting the children and grandparents as well.

In second place is Iran--which has stepped up systematic persecution of Christians and churches since the internal unrest and protests against the Ahmadinejad regime.

Many church services are being monitored by the secret police. Believers that are active in churches or the cell group movement are being questioned, arrested, beaten and put in jail. Individual believers are being oppressed by society under pressure of the authorities.

In third place is Saudi Arabia.

Religious freedom does not exist in the Wahhabist kingdom where citizens are only allowed to adhere to one religion: Islam. No legal protection is provided for freedom of religion, nor does this protection exist in practice. The legal system is based on Islamic law (Sharia). Apostasy – conversion to another religion – is punishable by death if the accused does not recant. Although the government recognizes the right of non-Muslims to worship in private, the public practice of non-Muslim worship is prohibited.

Non-Muslim worshippers who engage in such activities risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture. Believers from a Muslim background also run the great risk of honor killing if their family or social environment discover their new faith.

As the Word of God declares, when one member of the Body of Christ suffers, we all suffer. Their pain and anguish and suffering is to be ours as well. This is no time for being found at ease and in comfort.

Foaming At the Mouth

Secular Humanist Derangement


We recently posted on semi-retired senior news anchor, Brit Hume daring to wish and urge Tiger Woods to seek the Lord in his troubles. Hume, of course, raised in a Christian environment, repented and was converted in later life during a time of intense family trouble--namely the suicide of his son.

The outrage at Hume's politically incorrect public pronouncements was predictable. He seems completely unfazed by it, and good for him. Peter Wehner, writing in National Review Online overviews the storm-in-a-teacup, providing some useful perspective.

Hume’s Gentle Witness
We should welcome honest talk about faith.

By Peter Wehner

Brit Hume’s comments on Fox News Sunday — “I don’t think that [Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith,” and, “My message to Tiger [Woods] would be: Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world” — have unleashed a torrent of criticism from the Left, including the various circus acts over at MSNBC and the Washington Post’s Tom Shales.

Shales’s criticisms in particular are manifestations of a mind that is enraged and slightly unhinged; they are ad hominem and, in some respects, unserious. But there are two lines of argument worth examining as they relate to what Hume said. The first is that he “dissed” all Buddhists; the second is that urging Woods to turn to the Christian faith is inappropriate, offensive, and out of line. Let’s examine both claims in turn.

What Shales reflects here in his umbrage at Hume "dissing" Bhuddhists is the prevailing humanist cant that all public criticism and ridicule of Christ and His Kingdom is fair game, but criticism of any other religion is not. As to Shale's indictment of Hume's remarks as being "inappropriate, offensive, and out of line" we would merely observe that we Christians are not much interested in the lines of secular humanism, nor what is offensive or considered inappropriate to devotees of that particular idolatry.

What Hume said about Buddhism is, I believe, accurate. Whatever its virtues, Buddhism does not offer the kind of forgiveness and redemption that are central to Christianity. Buddhism’s hallmarks are (among other things) reincarnation; the belief that wisdom, discernment, and enlightenment can emerge through meditation, self-control, and self-denial; that suffering ceases with the achievement of Nirvana; and that the path to liberation is found through the extinguishing of human desires and passions. One of the many theological differences between Buddhism and Christianity is that the former does not entail a belief in God, if God is defined as a personal being who created the universe by design; and it asserts that “the human self . . . has no soul,” in the words of the religious scholar Huston Smith. Hume did not say that Buddhism doesn’t teach virtues (it does) or that there are no good qualities about it (there are). But forgiveness and redemption are not cornerstones of the Buddhist faith in the same way they are in the Christian faith.

We should note in passing that secular humanism can easily fit Bhuddhism into its tent. For Bhuddhism both lionises man as his own self-deliverer, whilst looking for salvation in self-abnegation. This rational-irrational dichotomy lies at the root of all secular humanist thinking as well: for example, the rationalist individual is absolute whilst his absolute value can only be realised through the ever tightening controls and extensions of an impersonal state. The modern secular humanist therefore finds a basic religious kinship with Bhuddhism: they are kissing cousins. Both embrace the rational-irrational dichotomy found in all Unbelief systems. Any debate between the two is only about methods and details. That is why a secular humanist, such as Shales, will ever give a respectful nod to false religions and idolatries, such as Bhuddhism.

The second argument is that Hume should not be in the business of “drum[ming] up new business” for his faith, that he doesn’t have the authority to do so, and that, in the words of Shales, “he should do it on his own time, not try to cross-pollinate religion and journalism and use Fox facilities to do it.”

Lots of commentators have offered opinions on what Tiger Woods has done and what he needs to do to recover. What was clearly motivating Hume was the hope that Woods can reconstruct his life; Hume believes Christianity, which was central to his own journey out of a terrible valley, is the best way in which to do so. (In a later, somewhat more expansive interview with Bill O’Reilly, Hume uses the example of Watergate convict Charles Colson, who turned his life around after he became a Christian.) Most people commenting on Tiger Woods deride him; Hume seems genuinely concerned for him. Is that a bad thing?

One of the most admirable things in Hume's remarks to us was the way he was able to convey genuine sorrow and care for Tiger Woods.

The intensity of offense taken at what Hume said is itself revealing. Perhaps it can partly be chalked up to shock; maybe Shales and Hume’s other critics are genuinely surprised to learn that those who hold the Christian faith do so because they believe the claims of Christ are true, that His story is real. But of course if Christians didn’t believe their faith were true, there would be no reason to embrace it, as the Apostle Paul himself understood.

Some people obviously disagree with Hume; that is certainly their right. They can offer a different remedy to Woods if they so desire. They may think that a commitment to materialism, or atheism, or pantheism, or something quite different, is what Woods needs. Or they may think what Woods did was not problematic, and that he should be free to indulge his appetites and passions. If so, let them make their case. But Hume, in the context of the discussion he was having, should be free to make his case. And one cannot help but think that if Hume had recommended that Woods embrace Transcendental Meditation, the philosophy of Deepak Chopra, or the New Age movement, instead of Christianity, Shales would not have been so offended.

Precisely. That is why the outrage is faux. It is little more than special pleading dressed up in civic self-righteousness.

I should add that when Christopher Hitchens, whom I like and whose company I enjoy, appeared on television shows promoting his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, he was far more critical of Christianity than Hume was of Buddhism. Yet I don’t recall the Left saying that those criticisms were inappropriate for public debate. In fact, they weren’t — and neither are Hume’s words. Furthermore, those who are unnerved by Hume’s “sectarianism” were untroubled by the aggressive atheism of Hitchens. . . .

— Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Why this umbrage, this foaming of the mouth at the Lord Jesus Christ and His Kingdom? One thing hated above all else by the modern secular humanist is the Christian proclamation of Christ's death as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of His people. For the secular humanist acknowledges no sin, no true moral guilt before an angry and offended God. He will admit only to foibles, failings, or inadequacies common with all mankind. The idea, therefore, that Christ laid down His life to bear the guilt of their sin is a deformed monstrosity.

To think that Someone had to suffer for them when they believe they have done nothing really wrong is offensive in the extreme. They hate the very notion that God would be so terrible as to require it. If they would admit for a moment even the possibility of its truth, their self-respect, their amour propre, their chest-beating would disintegrate. And that would be too much to bear. That is why they hate the Gospel so much. That is why they foam at the mouth so much at the mention of Christ and why they use His name as a curse-word every day.

(An excellent interview with Hume giving more background and colour to this controversy, and to Hume's faith and conversion has been published in Christianity Today, can be read here.)