The Rage Against God, Part II

Christopher and Peter Hitchens on Capitulating to Islam

The Hitchens brothers, speaking at a news conference, discuss the capitulation to Islamic intimidation by Western elites.

Oh, This is Rich . . .

Dr Michael Cullen to be Appointed Chairman of KiwiRail

This is one of those ironies that produce involuntary belly-laughs. Sorry--we cannot help it. Some media are reporting that Dr Michael Cullen, former Finance Minister of New Zealand under the Clark Government, is about to be appointed chairman of KiwiRail.

Some bloggers have spat bilious outrage into their cornflakes at the news. We consider it to be delicious. Let's just recap the facts.
Dr Cullen bought KiwiRail from Toll Holdings, an Australian company for $700 odd million, in a deal that the Aussie's quickly dubbed the "Sale of the Century". Toll Holdings could not believe their luck that a politician could be so stupid and commercially naive to pay that amount for a run down, ramshackle rail business--but Cullen and Clark were determined.

Within a year the business was written down to $300m or so; moreover, it turns out (as everyone with an ounce of commercial literacy knew) that in order to operate at even a modicum of efficiency, let alone profitability, KiwiRail required billions of capital expenditure. All up the cost to the tax payer would end up in the three to four billions. This, of course, did not concern the ebullient Finance Minister at the time. After all, it was taxpayers money--and that came cheap. Moreover, he was on a spending binge anyway in an attempt to undermine the National Party's election pledge of tax cuts. You cannot cut taxes when the previous government spent all the fiscal surplus. Cullen wanted to leave the incoming government with an unexploded fiscal landmine.

We will never forget Cullen's crowing in Paliament--"I have spent it all!" as he ridiculed National's pledge of tax cuts.

The incoming Key government has faced hard choices over KiwiRail. It could front up with the required billions of capital investment. Impossible. It could sell it off to some other fool. Impossible. Commercial businesses operating in the real world would never buy the thing it is so derelict. Or, it could manage the company into the ground, letting it gradually run down. The government has accepted this course.

What better outcome than to put Cullen in as Chairman, forcing him to preside over its long, slow, lingering death. It is a Machiavellian master stroke--and one must credit Stephen Joyce, Minister of NZ Rail as an archetypical Prince. Already the Government has indicated it is going to start to close down unprofitable lines. With Cullen now advocating the cause, no-one on the Left can demur. Meanwhile, having bought a lemon, Cullen will have to take significant responsibility for overseeing its rotting away.

Sure, it's not an inexpensive joke. It has cost this country a great deal of money it did not have, and we are all the more poor as a result. But at least this way, there is an ironic revenge, of sorts. Rotting lemons are acutely bitter, yet sweet in a decomposing kind of way. Cullen will have to suck it every day from now on.

Why Things Will be Okay if Health Care Passes

Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, March 20, 2010 4:36 pm

Now it should be kept in mind that I am writing this brief note as a high Calvinist, one who believes that, at the ultimate level, things are always okay. God is always on the throne. But this particular song is not being written in that key. I am considering why things will be okay down here, where the decrees do not always appear bright and shiny.

For the statists, this whole thing is (for the next four years) a lose/lose proposition for them. They are doing it as a calculated risk, because they are thinking long-term. They never met an entitlement that didn't work for them.

But either way this vote goes right now will be very difficult for their long term plans. If the health care bill does not pass, we will be blessed with a lame duck period of three years for the Obama presidency, which is probably a record. And if it passes, which it sure might, there is every indication that the statists will be facing the fury of a lot of motivated voters in the next several elections.

And by fury, I mean that every candidate who wants to capitalize on the sentiment will need to commit to repealing the bill, and the demand will be that the party poobahs commit to a strategy that depends on electing enough men of integrity (who know how a calculator works) to override a presidential veto.

In other words, it appears to me that the statists are betting the farm on this. That means there is a good chance they could lose their farm.

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Living by Different Bearings

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?
II Corinthians 6: 14--16

The very thing which the Apostle here presses upon our apprehension is the absolute conflict between the standards of the world and the standards of Christians; and the precise thing which he requires of us is that in our association with the world we shall not take on our necks the alien yoke of an unbeliever's point of view, of an unbeliever's judgment of things, of an unbeliever's estimate of the right and wrong, the proper and improper.

In our association with unbelievers, we, as Christian men, are to furnish the standard and we are to stand by our Christian standard in the smallest particular, unswervingly. Any departure from that standard, however small or however desirable it may seem, is treason to our Christianity. We must not, in any case, take the alien yoke of an unbeliever's scheme of life upon our necks. . . .

The reason, then, why a Christian must not take on himself the alien yoke of unbelievers is just because it is to him alien; he is in and of himself, because a believer in Christ and, therefore, a temple of the living God, a different, a contrary, an opposite kind of being from the unbeliever; and it is therefore incongruous in the extreme for him to put his neck in the same yoke with an unbeliever, seek to live on the same plane, or consent to order his life or to determine questions of conduct by his standards, in any degree whatever. . . .

There are then, according to the Apostle, two kinds of men in the world, believers and unbelievers; and these two kinds of men stand in contradiction to each other. One may conquer and eliminate the other; but there can be no mixture between them. The ultimate source of the fundamental difference between them he finds in the indwelling in Christians of the Holy Ghost: "Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we"--emphatic here, in contrast with unbelievers, "as for us, we are a temple of the living God." The influx of the Holy Spirit into the heart constitutes, then, a new humanity. Over against those who have not the Spirit,and who are, therefore, as another Scripture puts it, earthly, sensual, devilish--the children of Belial, as this Scripture suggests,--those who have the Spirit are a new creation, with new standards and new powers of life alike. There can be no compromise between such opposites.

It has become customary among theologians to speak of these two kinds of men as . . . once born and twice born men. They who are born of the flesh are fleshly; and they only who are born of the Spirit are spiritual; and to the spiritual man belong all things. The message Paul brings to us in this passage is, then, that we who are spiritual, because we are believers in Christ Jesus, have in principle the righteousness which belongs to Him, and though it may not yet appear what we shall be, we must in all our walk comport ourselves as what we are, the temples of the living God, having the powers and potencies of a new, even a Divine, life with us.

The ultimate reason why the Christian man is not to compromise with the world is, because as a Christian man, he is a new creature, born from above, with the vigour of the Divine life itself moving in him and with an entirely new life course marked out for him. Why should--how can--such a one put his neck incongruously within the yoke of worldly policy for self-seeking, or evil-living with unbelievers; and seek to deflect his Spirit-given powers to a life on this lower plane and for these ignoble ends?

B.B. Warfield, Faith and Life, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), pp,249-255.

Doug Wilson's Letter From America

With Apologies to Lord Byron . . .

Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, March 16, 2010

THE DESTRUCTION OF OMAMACARE

The nannies came down like the wolf on the fold,
Their promises gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their foreheads was like grease on the road,
Where a blue Hummer hit a nocturnal toad.

Like the leaves of the forest when the Fed is in bloom,
That host and their trillions came fluttering doom:
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn has blown,
That huge pile of money lay withered and gone.

For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of this mountain of cash;
And the eyes of the bankers waxed deadly and chill,
And their loans, once so mighty, grew sluggish and still.

And the national debt with his nostrils all wide,
Lay dead on the turf, with no breath to his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the ground,
As cold as the interest for the yen or the pound.

And there lay Obama distorted and pale,
With China all nervous, preparing to bale.
So his speeches are silent, his lies now alone,
His spinners unbooked, the soundbytes unblown.

And the widows of Wall Street are loud in their wail,
And the bankers are broke in the temples of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Has been deemed as now melted in the glance of the Lord!

The Truth About The Tolerant

Urban Myths About Christian Fundamentalists

If you were to be given a list of various categories of people and be asked to rank them according to least tolerant to most tolerant, and "Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalists" was one of the category groups, we suspect that most people would think that they would feature as one of the least tolerant of social or religious groups.

We were intrigued to read the following in a book published by MatthiasMedia in Sydney on some research that has been carried out on this very question:

In a book called The Religious Factor in Australian Life, Gary Bouma analyses the results of an extensive "values survey" that was carried out in Australia in 1983.

One part of the survey dealt with "tolerance" by asking people about their attitudes to various "undesirable" groups. People were asked: "Would you object to your next door neighbours being--people with a criminal record; people of a different race; students; left-wing extremsists; never-married mothers; heavy drinkers; people with large families; right-wing extremists; emotionally unstable people; members of minority religious sects or cults; immigrants/foreign workers; unemployed persons; aborigines; homosexuals?"

The answers were analysed according to various social and religious groupings and an "index of tolerance" was calculated showing, on average, the tolerance level of different groups. In the religious category there were five groupings:

-Roman Catholic
-Anglican
-Presbyterian, Methodist, Uniting
-Right Wing Protestants
-No Religion

Can you guess which group was the most tolerant?

The survey results ranked them as follows, from most to least tolerant:

1. Right-Wing Protestants
2. Anglican
3. Presbyterian, Methodist, Uniting
4. Roman Catholic
5. No Religion

The result surprised everybody. The hardline, fundamentalist, Bible-bashing Christians turned out to be the most tolerant group by a significant margin. Those with no religion came last, also by a significant margin. We might well wonder why this is the case.

Why indeed? Here is our take on it. Bible-believing Christians have a clear view on what is right and wrong. Such things are defined by Holy Writ. Therefore, they will have convictions that such practices as abortion, homosexuality, and drunkenness are wrong and sinful. People naively assume that having such strong convictions means that Bible-believing Christians will be intolerant and uncaring of people taken in such sins.

But Bible-believing Christians also are deeply convicted over their own sinfulness and sins. Because of the gracious on-going work of the Holy Spirit in their lives they constantly see the logs in their own eyes. When face-to-face with one taken in such sinfulness, they are more likely to have a sorrow over sinfulness, rather than a haughty disgust and condemnation.

Moreover, all Bible-believing Christians hold to the redeeming love of Christ towards sinful men and that whosoever comes to Christ will be saved from their sin. Therefore, living next to notoriously sinful people or interacting with others in general tends to be framed by an over-arching desire that they, too, would come to know the Lord. Bible-believing Christians know that "there but for the grace of God, go I" and that at best they are nothing more than one beggar telling another beggar where he can find food.

Hence, while the survey results may surprise those who subscribe to the urban myths about "fundamentalist Christians", they will certainly not surprise those who walk in fields of grace.

Doug Wilson's Letter From America

Funny Business In Excelsis

Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The president dreams,
The Senate schemes,
The House then deems
And we are sunk,
Or so it seems.
Jubal Tarbox

So we are on the threshold of a momentous . . . I was about to say vote, but no, it isn't that exactly. In economic terms, the House is poised to spread disaster and desolation. Speaking in constitutional terms, this bill looks like a corpse that has been in the water for several days. Speaking in parliamentary terms, this is a brown parking lot puddle covered over with some scum. This is funny business in excelsis.

There are multiple issues involved in all of it. The Democratic leadership appears to be all in, because they know they are not simply passing an onerous bill. It is not as though they are requiring that all Americans report to a clinic within three months to have their toenails pulled out. That would precipitate a revolt simpliciter. No, they are trying to pass, if you want to call it that, a measure which is a front-loaded entitlement. Once implemented, it will have a die-hard constituency -- the kind of constituency that no mainstream pol, Republican or Democrat, will want to offend. The counsels of prudence will then prevail, or so the thinking goes, and the entitlement will be preserved -- and those who gave it to us will be heroes.

The Dems are playing for the long term. They know they will take a bath in the mid-terms for doing this, but if they can get this thing established as a fixture before then, it is worth it to them. The Republicans are very, very bad at reversing things like this, and the Democrats are counting on that ineptitude. They have no reasons not to count on it.

On the bright side, pigs don't fly. As Margaret Thatcher once put it, God bless her,
the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money. We are about at that point -- the money we are spreading about with such

wanton abandon right now is money which is, for the most part, non-existent. That means we are at a place where the jolly man, who is broke, who has nonetheless been buying drinks for the house, is going to have go outside for a minute to stick somebody up. That somebody is you, mon frere.

One of the things that Calvin's lesser magistrates (governors and state legislatures) will have a responsibility to do in this crisis is pass and sign legislation that declares the health care monstrosity to be null and void in their respective states, and to declare that their citizens have no responsibility to pay any attention to it whatsoever. That is starting to happen in various states, and it needs to happen in all of them.

As it does, one of the things that Christians will then have to work through is their understanding of civil disobedience on issues like this. Christians will have to abandon their simplistic understanding of "Romans 13." As I have been preaching through Romans, I have now come to that chapter. The intro to that subject will be posted at CanonWIRED soon, and we are going to work through the rest of that section very carefully.

But, as I mentioned in that intro, before Christians run off to join their local tea party, it is crucial that they resolve to avoid one common motive for these protests (panic), and to ground another common motive (anger) on the only proper foundation for such anger, which is repentance. We are not getting anything from our rulers that we do not richly deserve and, as one parishioner said to me after church last week, we may still be thankful that we are not getting all the government we are paying for.

But in the meantime, the spectacle of our Kangaroo Congress doing their thing ought to make the intelligent observer feel like he has a couple dozen spiders crawling around on the back of his neck.

When a City Downsizes

Back to the Future

Ghost towns used to be quaint historical relics. Most often towns emptied out and became a mere shell of their former vibrancy when the source of the original boom failed. Usually the boom had been caused by discoveries of gold, silver, or other minerals; once the discoveries played out, the towns died.

Given reasonably consistent economic and population growth, it is rare to see modern ghost towns. But it is likely to become more common as the great debt-deflation winds its way through--particularly in the case of cities which have been long subsidised by government through protective tariffs for industry, subsidies, and entitlements. As governments come under fiscal pressure and reduce spending, or as dying industries finally downsize or expire due to relentless economic and competitive pressure, once thriving cities are becoming ghost towns.

Detroit in the US is one such city. Long propped up by the automotive industry, it has now fallen into an inevitable decline as the US auto industry moves away from the subsidised "Big Three" of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Like its shrinking industries, Detroit is now actively planning to downsize, according to a recent article in the Washington Times. The plan is to turn Detroit, once a mighty industrial city, into a semi-rural town.

Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile.

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Since the decline of Detroit is now regarded as permanent, the issue becomes one of planned downsizing, versus haphazard declension. The city wants to downsize in an orderly fashion.

Politically explosive decisions must be made about which neighborhoods should be bulldozed and which improved. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars will be needed to buy land, raze buildings and relocate residents, since this financially desperate city does not have the means to do it on its own. It isn't known how many people in the mostly black, blue-collar city might be uprooted, but it could be thousands. Some won't go willingly.

The city simply cannot continue to service neighbourhoods and houses that were built to accommodate twice its current population. Whole city blocks are going to have to become turned into rural land once again.

Now, a city of nearly 2 million in the 1950s has declined to less than half that number. On some blocks, only one or two occupied houses remain, surrounded by trash-strewn lots and vacant, burned-out homes. Scavengers have stripped anything of value from empty buildings. According to one recent estimate, Detroit has 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots.

Several other declining industrial cities, such as Youngstown, Ohio, have also accepted downsizing. Since 2005, Youngstown has been tearing down a few hundred houses a year. But Detroit's plans dwarf that effort. The approximately 40 square miles of vacant property in Detroit is larger than the entire city of Youngstown.

Faced with a $300 million budget deficit and a dwindling tax base, Mr. Bing says the city can't continue to pay for police patrols, fire protection and other services for all areas.

The current plan would demolish about 10,000 houses and empty buildings in three years and pump new investment into stronger neighborhoods. In the neighborhoods that would be cleared, the city would offer to relocate residents or buy them out. The city could use tax foreclosure to claim abandoned property and invoke eminent domain for those who refuse to leave, much as cities now do for freeway projects.

The lesson for cities is adapt or die. If successive federal, state and local governments had not sought to protect Detroit's industries from competition from the outset, the American auto industry would have adapted far sooner, and probably would have survived much longer. In the end, no city or country can shut out secular economic reality. The quicker adaptation takes place, the more sustainable the future going forward.

But this is too much to ask in the case of nations which have required their governments to be partial to the economic well-being of their voting citizens. Such nations become subject to a predominant culture of bribery and the inevitable corruption and waste that comes with it.

The Rage Against God, Part I

The Story of Peter Hitchens

Addicted by Choice

Once and Addict, Always an Addict. Yeah, Right.

Long ago the medical and political establishments persuaded themselves that human addictions were diseases. It is easy to see how they came to that conclusion. If it is universally believed, as an article of faith, that the only reality is matter, all human experience and conditions must, in the end, be reduced to electrons and their peculiar behaviour.

If someone is addicted to, say heroin, it is because the electrons are functioning a certain way. To deliver the afflicted addict one has to treat the syndrome, using the same medical methods and disciplines as one would approach the treatment of other corporeal diseases such as heart disease or Alzheimers.

Every so often, however, someone from within the Academy rages against the machine. The latest is Gene M. Heyman, whose book Addiction: A Disorder of Choice has just been published by Harvard University Press. Sally Satel, reviewing the book for The New Republic, commences with these arresting paragraphs:

n 1970, high-grade heroin and opium flooded Southeast Asia. Military physicians in Vietnam estimated that between 10 percent and 25 percent of enlisted Army men were addicted to narcotics. Deaths from overdosing soared. In May 1971, the crisis exploded on the front page of The New York Times: “G.I. Heroin Addiction Epidemic in Vietnam.” Spurred by fears that newly discharged veterans would ignite an outbreak of heroin use in American cities, President Richard Nixon commanded the military to begin drug testing. In June, the White House announced that no soldier would be allowed to board the plane home unless he passed a urine test. Those who failed could go to an Army-sponsored detoxification program before they were re-tested.

The plan worked. Most GIs stopped using narcotics as word of the new directive spread and the vast minority who were detained produced clean samples when given a second chance. More startlingly, only 12 percent of soldiers who were dependent on opiate narcotics in Vietnam became re-addicted to heroin at some point in the three years after their return to the states. “This surprising rate of recovery even when re-exposed to narcotic drugs,” said the epidemiologist who collected the data, “ran counter to the conventional wisdom that heroin is a drug which causes addicts to suffer intolerable craving that rapidly leads to re-addiction if re-exposed to the drug.”

The story of returning Vietnam veterans overturned the conventional wisdom of “once an addict, always an addict.” The data were hailed as “revolutionary” and “path-breaking." Alas, the lesson became a casualty of generational amnesia. “Once an addict, always an addict” has merely been replaced by a newer and more sleekly scientific version of the same concept, namely, “addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease.”

Satel claims that Heyman's book is a "devastating assault on the brain-based model of addiction". While it is certainly true that drugs cause changes in the brain's functioning and behaviour--changes which can be measured and observed--it is most certainly not true that drug addiction is in the same category as genuine disease. The reason is that taking drugs remains a voluntary act, whereas Alzheimer's clearly is involuntary. How do we know that?

Heyman’s answer is that "voluntary activities vary systematically as a function of their consequences, where the consequences include benefits, costs, and values.” Take, for example, the case of addicted physicians and pilots. When they are reported to their oversight boards they are monitored closely for several long years; if they don’t fly right, they have a lot to lose (jobs, income, status). It is no coincidence that their recovery rates are high. Via entities called drug courts, the criminal justice system applies swift and certain sanctions to drug offenders who fail drug tests—the threat of jail time if tests are repeatedly failed is the stick—while the carrot is that charges are expunged if the program is completed. Participants in drug courts tend to fare significantly better than their counterparts who have been adjudicated as usual. In so-called contingency management experiments, subjects addicted to cocaine or heroin are rewarded with vouchers redeemable for cash, household goods, or clothes. Those randomized to the voucher arm routinely enjoy better results than those receiving treatment as usual.

Contingencies are the key to voluntariness. No amount of reinforcement or punishment can alter the course of an entirely autonomous biological condition. Imagine bribing an Alzheimer’s patient to keep her dementia from worsening, or threatening to impose a penalty on her if it did. This is where choice comes in: choosing an alternative to drug use. Heyman realizes how odd this might seem. How can otherwise rational people choose self-destruction unless they are diseased? This question was raised in colonial America. Dr. Benjamin Rush, also known as the father of American psychiatry, was among the first to promote the notion that alcoholism was a disease. And he did so not on the basis of medical evidence, Heyman reminds us, “but rather [upon] the assumption that voluntary behavior is not self-destructive.”

The classic mistake of Dr Rush and his (now) legion of followers was to assume that human beings will not willingly choose death and destruction--as a lifestyle choice. Their naive model dismissed the existence of human sinfulness. "Those who hate Me," says the Lord, "love death". Dr Rush said that could not possibly be the case. If someone acted so as to destroy himself, it must be against his will; it had to be involuntary; it had to be a clinical disease.

It may strike some as insensitive to insist that addiction is a disorder of choice. “I have never come across a single drug-addicted person who told me [he or she] wanted to be addicted," Nora Volkow, the current director of NIDA says. Exactly so. How many of us have ever come across a person who wanted to be fat? So many undesirable outcomes in life are achieved incrementally. In a choice model, full-blown addiction is the triumph of feel-good local decisions (“I’ll use today”) over punishing global anxieties (“I don’t want to be an addict tomorrow”). Let’s follow a typical trajectory. At the start of an episode of addiction, the drug increases in hedonic value while once-rewarding activities such as relationships, job, or family recede in value. Although the appeal of using starts to fade as consequences pile up—spending too much money, disappointing loved ones, attracting suspicion at work—the drug still retains value because it salves psychic pain, suppresses withdrawal symptoms, and douses intense craving.

At some point, however, even these benefits come to be outweighed by adverse fallout. The balance shifts and the addict tips into recovery. The idea is to accelerate the process by, as Heyman says, “chang[ing] … conditions that markedly reduce the value of the drug relative to the nondrug alternative.” This can be achieved through treatment, imposing credible threats—recall the case of impaired pilots and physicians—or the development of new modes of gratification that compete with drugs.

In treating addictions a fundamental watershed is to recognise its voluntary character at root. If the addict wants to change, then there is something to work with. The objective then is to help the addict discover those things which are more valuable, more important than the "benefits" of the drug and which the drug will destroy (career, community respect, love of family, etc.) The underlying theme always has to be, "You are responsible. You make the choices. The buck stops with you." Ironically it is a message underpinned with a belief in human dignity and freedom, whereas the consensus view of the Academy is a message of slavery and tragedy. Instinctively we all know that one can be both dignified and heroic in succumbing to a genuine involuntary disease--and whilst battling a genuine sin, in the case of a voluntary addiction.

But there is nothing dignified and heroic in succumbing to alcoholism or heroin addiction.

A Matter of Pride and Prejudice

Christopher Hitchens as Deity

In a recent edition of Vanity Fair, atheist Christopher Hitchens attempts to revise the Ten Commandments into something more suitable for modern man. He is not unmindful of the extreme hubris which necessarily attends such an enterprise. Accordingly he attempts to guild the lily with a self-deprecatory patina, but nonetheless Hitchens is serious--and, given his militant atheism, he needs to be. Intractable issues over whether there can be any ground for ethics and morality continue to dog all evolutionary atheists. Hitchens knows this.

Now it is pretty clear that there is plenty of stuff which Hitchens believes to be immoral. But before we consider his ruminations and suggestions, it is apt to consider the being and person of our new lawgiver. There are actually two Hitchens. The first is Hitchens according to his self-revelation or self-narrative. (We shall denominate this Hitchens as Hitchens-II.) He believes himself to be a creature of the evolution of matter--a process which has resulted in life forms moving from the simple to the horrendously complex over endless periods of time. As such, Hitchens II purports to believe himself (along with his contemporaries) to be the latest off the evolutionary production line--the biggest, brightest, and best yet seen in the universe--at least the universe as we see it.

We do not offer this summary of Hitchens-II's' self-revelation as a criticism per se; it is certainly not exclusive to him. It is a belief shared with millions upon millions of people, predominantly in the West. When it comes to ethical systems specifically, Hitchens-II believes quite consistently that all historical ethical systems are passe and, by definition, primitive. They are radically relative, situational, limited, temporary, and prejudicial. Thus, the Ten Commandments reflect an ancient, primitive, and ignorant world.

When it comes to lawgiving--which is what Hitchens-II turns himself to in the Vanity Fair article--he is thus not to be taken seriously. He knows that his new commandments ought not to be given any more than a scintilla of reflection, and only then, to be dismissed as a passing, temporary curio. Hitchens-II, if consistent, would ask for nothing more.
For Hitchens-II would acknowledge that, along with all other men, he is due to depart this celestial orb in rather short order. He will be replaced by forthcoming generations of the human race who will not be subject to the same temporary, limited, situational, and prejudiced conditioning as Hitchens-II was, and will have very different--and much more advanced, superior, ideas about morality, ethics, and law. Things like that happen in a random universe that is "ruled" by an evolutionary process of inevitable advance. Hitchens-II would insist that the views forthcoming in the future will be better than his own, because that's what evolution is all about.

So, the law-code of Hitchens-II must be considered a rather insipid affair. It has no law-giver worthy of fear. Why would mankind ever fear Hitchens-II? There is no sense of true moral guilt attached to the law-code of Hitchens-II. There can be no true guilt, nor meaningful or just punishment for sins against the code of Hitchens-II. At best it consists of a bunch of suggestions as to how we may proceed--without any consequences if we demur or move in other moral directions. After all, movement away from Hitchens-II is not only inevitable, he has to deem it as "good".

Here, then, is the law-code of Hitchens-II:

Still, if we think of the evils that afflict humanity today and that are man-made and not inflicted by nature, we would be morally numb if we did not feel strongly about genocide, slavery, rape, child abuse, sexual repression, white-collar crime, the wanton destruction of the natural world, and people who yak on cell phones in restaurants. (Also, people who commit simultaneous suicide and murder while screaming “God is great”: is that taking the Lord’s name in vain or is it not?)

It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.

Hitchens-II quite consistently tells us that he has no basis to declare "Thou shalt not." But he wants to. He clearly believes it is appropriate to lay down imperatives such as, "do not ever use people as private property." But this is nothing more than question begging--why not? we find ourselves asking, over and over. We invite Hitchens-II to lay aside all the emotive baggage, and explain the ground of his imperatives from within the Hitchens-II world-view. The best that world-view would provide is reference to convention, habits, current practices, and pragmatic utility. But the precepts must ever remain qualified, tentative, suggestions, relevant only to a certain time and place, of temporary validity only. They can never reflect any more validity than administrative codes, such as road rules. One day we drive on the right side of the road, but the next day, the law may change to driving on the left (as happened in Samoa recently). This is why the law-code of Hitchens-II is nothing more than a curio and cannot be taken as a law-code at all. It can never be anything more than personal cant. Hitchens-II's precepts are not precepts at all, but preferences, and personal ones at that.

All talk of judgment in the Hitchens-II code has to be a non-sequitur. When he writes:

Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife.

we are bemused. If one is successful in robbing people with a false prospectus and getting away with it, one ought to be respected and congratulated. Success, after all, is the ultimate affirming ethic in the Hitchens-II perspective. To have survived is the final affirmation of superiority of being in the evolutionary world-view, which Hitchens-II espouses.

But there is a second Hitchens, whom we will denote as Hitchens-I. Hitchens-I is made in the image of the Living God and he cannot help speaking in terms of moral absolutes and eternal law, even though he realises the incongruity of doing so in light of Hitchens-II. He cannot help fulminating against, for example, violence to, and harm of, children. He wants to present it as something nauseating, disgusting, horrific--worthy of judgment, even damnation--yet Hitchens-II will not bear such weight.

Hitchens-I knows the being and character of the Living God and fears him above all else. This is the real Hitchens, underneath all the charades and masks (Romans 1: 18--23). He knows that he has repeatedly and perpetually rebelled against Him, and broken His laws. His only defence is to hide away from God. Hitchens-II is the result. Hitchens-II is Hitchens-I with fig-leaves on. Yet, like a child playing a game of hide and seek, who believes that when you cover your eyes, no-one else can see you, Hitchens-I cannot stop intruding into Hitchens-II. He cannot bring himself to face up to the face that, although he hates with all his being doing harm to children, and wants to say so loudly, expressing his abhorrence at the idea, Hitchens II will never allow him to offer it as anything more than a suggestion for discussion.

Hitchens-II is nothing more than Hitchens-I covering his eyes, and thinking that he is invisible to everyone else. It is a sad and tragic thing. But, then again, so is all self-willed blindness, by which men try to hide away from the God who made them and in Whose image they are.

Postscript:

Christopher Hitchens has a brother, Peter. Like his brother, Peter has been for many years an atheist. Then, by the grace of God, his eyes were opened and his chains fell off, and he has become a Christian. He is about to tell his story in a book to be published by Zondervan, entitled The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith. More on this to come. Marvellous indeed are the works of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

21 Principles a Christian Citizen Must Know (In the Age of Obama)

Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, March 15, 2010

INTRODUCTION:

Because the teaching of the apostle Paul on civil authority is widely misunderstood and misrepresented, we are going to take our time going through this section. And because the instructions here are to Christian citizens and subjects, we are going to begin with a scriptural introduction to this entire subject. And because of who is addressed here, it is important to remember something that Abraham Kuyper once said: “In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sensual pleasure, and so loses the power of his own initiative.”

We are going to therefore consider 21 principles on civil government that the Christian must understand.

THE TEXT:

“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1).

21 PRINCIPLES:

1: Civil government and rule is a blessing from God, and not a necessary evil. “The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain” (2 Sam. 23:3-4). We are not anarchists.

2: God establishes a righteous throne with majesty. “It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness” (Prov. 16:12). “And the LORD magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel, and bestowed upon him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel” (1 Chron. 25:29; Dan. 4:36).

3: The law of God is the soul of a good ruler. “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens” (Ex. 18:21). Rulers who don't fear God will try to be God.

4: God requires true humility of His rulers. “That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel” (Dt. 17:20).

5: Our basic demeanor toward civil rulers should be one of honor. “Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king” (1 Pet. 2:17). What the kings of the earth bring into the New Jerusalem is not a sham or a pretence (Rev. 21:24).

6: Tyrants love moral corruption, and hate virtuous men. As Chesterton once put it, free love is the first and most obvious bribe to offer a slave. Tyrants therefore love public entertainments and private vices because they love an enervated people. “But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication” (Rev. 2:14). Porn is therefore politics, and reveals your true political allegiances.

7: Absolute perfection in our rulers is not the point. “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11). David had forfeited his throne, as Saul had, and he knew it. When Saul's dynasty fell, it was because the Spirit had departed from him. But God in His mercy allowed David to remain as the king, despite this gross imperfection. And it is said of a number of kings that they were good, like Asa, but that they did not remove the high places (1 Kings 15:14). In Scripture, a king can get a B minus and still be a good and godly king.

8: Tyranny is a judgment from God for the sins of the people. “And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take . . .” (1 Sam. 8:11). But remember that the God who sends tyrants to chastise us may also send a deliverer to save us.

9: Every manner of civil government is under the authority of God. God rules in His own name, and princes rule by derivation. Civil rulers are the lieutenants of God. Here in Romans 13, the word for deacons is used of them several times (Rom. 13:4). The ruler is therefore an appointed, delegated, and deputized servant.

10: Civil disobedience is required when matters of worship and the gospel are concerned. “But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (Dan. 3:18). “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

11: Civil disobedience is lawful in other areas as well. David honored Saul (1 Sam. 24:5), but did not turn himself in (1 Sam. 24:22). Neither did Peter turn himself in (Acts 12:11), or Paul for that matter (2 Cor. 11:32-33). Examples could be multiplied.

12: Civil government is covenantal, and has a double covenantal nature. It involves God, the magistrate, and the people (2 Chron. 23: 16).

13: No human authority, civil magistrates included, can be absolute. God alone has absolute authority; man’s authority is always limited and bounded. This is what Nebuchadnezzar confessed—when his sanity returned (Dan. 4:35).

14: Not everything that is legal is lawful (Rev. 13:17).

15: Faithful believers will often be accused of lawlessness and treason. Ahab was the troubler of Israel, and so that is what he accused Elijah of being (1 Kings 18:17). But the cause of the trouble is the problem; the solution is not the problem (2 Chron. 23:13).

16: The Bible teaches the principle of the “consent of the governed.” Rehoboam was elected to be king (1 Kings 12:1), and he was no anomaly.

17: The lot of the people and the character of their rulers is linked together. “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (Prov. 29:2).

18: Resistance of tyranny is not the same thing as resistance of the established civil order. Jehoida defended the throne by removing someone from it (2 Chron. 23:11).

19: Lesser magistrates obeyed Jehoida, and they were right to do so (2 Chron. 23:1-3).

20. We must care what company our rulers keep. Panders, whores, flatterers and “other mushrooms of the court” are to be despised. “Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness” (Prov. 25:5).

21: And last, Christian history matters. Included in our definition of “the powers that be” (Rom. 13:1) must be things like: the Constitution, the will of the people, the lesser magistrates, and the balances of powers.

Will the Euro Survive?

The Piper Must be Paid

The Euro is under considerable stress. There is now open debate about its survival. The stresses are pretty evident, and the causes plain. The euro is a federal currency; but individual European countries within the federation have been allowed to run monetary, economic, and fiscal policies virtually as they pleased. Now that about five countries, Greece being the worst, have run up huge debts to fund profligate entitlements they are turning to the European Community to bail them out (in the same way that California has turned to the US federal government to bail out its debts). This is something which the treaties and agreements surrounding the Euro explicitly forbid.

An article in Slate magazine, entitled Germany Is Tired of Paying Europe's Bills documents the palpable anger in Germany over the payout proposal.

The Germans are fed up with paying Europe's bills. They don't want to bail out the feckless Greeks with their flagrantly inaccurate official statistics; they resent being Europe's banker of last resort; they object to the universal demand that they plug the vast holes in the Greek budget deficit in the name of "European unity"; and for the first time in a long time they are saying it out loud. Not only are tabloids demanding the sale of the Acropolis, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany's deeply serious paper of record, has pointed out that while the Greeks are out protesting the raising of the pension age from 61 to 63, Germany recently raised its pension age from 65 to 67: "Does that mean that the Germans should in future extend the working age from 67 to 69, so that Greeks can enjoy their retirement?'

The Euro and political treaties which undergirded it were deeply flawed from the start as a recent article in Spiegel points out.

It isn't just the culture of trickery that undermines the basis of the euro. It is also harmful that each country continues to pursue its own financial policy, lowering taxes or government spending as it pleases. As a result, a level economic playing field has not developed among the member states as hoped. In fact, they have drifted further apart.

On the one side are the EU's heavyweights, headed up by Germany. The new currency has made them more competitive, and they now produce far more than they consume. On the other side are countries like Spain and Ireland, which attracted large amounts of foreign capital, and where wages and asset prices rose rapidly. In the past, these countries' central banks would have promptly devalued the peseta or the Irish pound, thereby strengthening exports. But this safety valve has been sealed off by the common currency.

Another design flaw in the Maastricht Treaty is the no-bailout clause. Under this principle, each country must take responsibility for its own national debts. Of course, this rule has never been credible.

The current state of play is that Germany and France and others have been pressuring Greece to cut its fiscal deficit drastically. The Greek government has consequently entered an austerity programme, causing thousands to protest in the streets. It is an open question as to whether the austerity programme will survive the protests. The West hath no fury like an entitlement threatened.

If the austerity programme fails, the stronger economic nations are almost certain to step in and guarantee Greece's loans, public denials notwithstanding. The Spiegel writers claim that plans are already being made behind close doors. This is likely to generate a significant backlash in Germany's electorate. It will also mean far greater centralization of power in Brussels; nation states in Europe will become more like the United States of Europe. Either that, or the Euro will likely disintegrate.

A lot of smart money is on the latter. Large international hedge funds have been betting accordingly. Thankfully, were it to occur, it is an economic and political dislocation from which New Zealand should be fairly well insulated, although there will be some impacts to be sure. If the disintegration scenario were to play out, expect a rapid appreciation in the US dollar, and a consequent devaluation of our own currency. Global interests rates will likely rise. Global economic power will shift more rapidly to the East.

However, it is not yet clear which alternative will play out. Our inclination is to the greater centralisation scenario--since the overwhelming temper of the West is inclined in that direction. In the West, Government is god. Society will not easily tolerate the failure of its petty deities.

Haitian Orphans

Pawns For Propaganda and Political Theatre

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti a group of ten American Christians from a church in Idaho were arrested in that country for trying to take children out of the devastation. Dark rumours of child trafficking, sexual slavery, and other foul practices swirled. The Christians were portrayed as preying upon the weak and vulnerable.

Eventually, eight of the ten were released. The remaining two are in Haiti awaiting further developments--as far as we know.

We do not wish to pass any comment on the legality, or prudence, or wisdom of what the folk from Idaho did. The best case scenario is that they were moved with genuine compassion and wanted to make the most effective contribution they could--which was to provide adoptive homes to children facing devastation.

One of the objections raised by the Haitian politicians and "government officials" was that at least some of the children were not genuine orphans: they had parents who were living.

Al Jazeera has done a follow up story, and claims that the children in question have not been re-united with their parents, but remain in an orphanage in Haiti. It appears they have either been abandoned by their parents, or the "government" authorities have little interest in reuniting them with their birth parents. It smacks of the "government" exploiting the children's circumstances when it was useful for propaganda purposes, but having no real commitment to the long term welfare of the children at all.

Haiti's 'orphans' kept from parents

Eight of the 10 Christian missionaries that were detained in Haiti after they illegally tried to take 33 Haitian children across the border - following January's devastating earthquake - have been freed and are now back at home in the US.

They were released after some parents of the Haitian children came forward to the court admitting that they willingly gave away their children to the US missionary group in hopes of providing them "a better life".

However, the children have been living in limbo waiting to be reunited with their parents in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

"I wouldn't say things are not good here ... but I want to see my mum and dad", one of the children said about the orphanage where he is staying in the mountain village of Callebasse.

SOS orphanage, asked by the government to care for the abandoned children, is also unsure about their future.

"Honestly we don't know. I mean the kids have been in our care for five weeks," Line Wolf Nielson, a worker at the orphanage, said.

"As it is we have no timeframe on when we can reunite the kids with their families."

The parents of the children say they have been met with hostility by Haitian authorities over requests to get their children back.

"We feel like the government is punishing us for what we did," one parent said.

"The childcare workers are rude, they ignore us and they keep giving us the runaround."

When Al Jazeera's Steve Chao tried to talk to child welfare services to get some answers about the fate of the children, he was refused an interview.

One imagines that if amongst the "ten" had been Madonna, or Brangelina, the authorities would have long ago released the children and cheered them on their way. The drama being staged at Political Theatre Haiti would have had a very different ending. Almost certainly some government officials would have had bulging wallets as they "blessed" the departing children.

Abortion and Racism

Cry the Beloved Country

There is a new billboard campaign in the US which draws lines of connection between racism and abortion. It hyperbolically asserts that abortion is so disproportionately high amongst black women in Georgia that black children risk becoming an endangered species. The new campaign has drawn the attention of the NY Times and the LA Times.

The statistical data on how abortion is disproportionately decimating black America is disturbing. In her 2006 book The Politics of Abortion sociologist Anne Hendershott writes that “the statistics on race and abortion are indeed a concern for anyone who cares about the African American community.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, more than 43 percent of all African American pregnancies end in abortion. Since 1973, the number of abortions by African American women has totaled nearly twelve million. Every day in the United States, more than 1,500 African American women choose to end their pregnancy through abortion. Although African Americans represent only 12 percent of the American population, they account for more than 35 percent of all abortions. As a result, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 per year) for African American women is 2.9 times that of white women. Put another way, for every 1,000 African American women, 32 have abortion, as compared with 11 for every 1,000 white women. Comparing the number of abortions per 1,000 live births by race, we find that the abortion/birth ration for white women is 184 abortions per 1,000 live births; for African American women, it is 543 abortions per 1,000 births. (pp. 31-32)

(Hat Tip: Justin Taylor)

It is clear that historically the eugenicists targeted blacks in the United States. Regardless of the predominant intent now, the actual effect is clear: blacks are killing their children off far more than other racial groups.

We believe this will have far more to do with an underclass mentality that consigns people to poverty, living for the moment, family breakdown, social disintegration, and self-gratification. Race has nothing to do with it. In other words, the causal link is as follows: blacks in the United States are disproportionately represented amongst the socio-economic underclass and therefore disproportionately abort their own children.

But welfare policies and provision of abortion services only make the matter far, far worse. They serve to lock-in the attitudes and world-view of the underclass. The underclass is characterised above all else by an attitude of living for the present and an absence of future orientation. Abortion is an act of ultimate self-gratification, and a denial of one's duty to live for the sake of the future.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Tornado With Boots

Christian Dualism
Written by Douglas Wilson

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

The perennial temptation for modern Reformed Protestants, especially after they get college degrees, is to float toward the sky in wisps of gnostic vapor. Doctrinalism is one kind of gnosticism, and pietism another. Literary structuralism is yet another one. Note that I did not say doctrine, of which the apostle Paul approved, and I did not say piety, of which my mother approves. Nor did I say literature, which feeds the right kind of soul.

I have often quoted that glorious passage in Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, where a junior officer in the War Between the States was being reprimanded by the general for his unit's reluctance to charge. "Sir," the hapless lieutenant replied, "I am convinced that any further demonstration of valor on the part of my troops will bring them into contact with the enemy."

The early Reformers were not like this at all. They were about the most un-gnostic bunch ever assembled in the history of Christendom.
They were the most Christ-loving, world-affirming, money-making, beer-drinking, sword-wielding, music-making, kingdom-overthrowing, love-making, poetry-writing bunch of Christians the world had ever seen up to that point. And they kept it up, by and large, for several centuries.

But then the drift set in. Many of their intellectual heirs have become wan and pale in the more recent centuries, despite the occasional nuisance of eruptions of people like Kuyper. People like that come into the story like a tornado with boots, and they have all the history and all the theology on their side. Nothing can be done about it, so the curators of the Reformed museum are discomfited for a time, and do a sort of twiddly thing with their toe in the carpet, and wait for this affliction to pass. In their patience, they possess their deracinated souls.

But here is the odd thing. At the time of the Reformation, if there had been a gnosticism susceptibility line on the blackboard, on a scale of 1-to-10, the papists would be hitting the eights and nines. The monks would be sweating out sexual temptations in their dreary cloisters while the Puritans with plumes in their hats and lawn tops on their boots were striding home to make love to their wives.

But in recent years, most of the intellectual heirs of the Reformation have decided to switch places on that line, ceding the fight against gnosticism to the conservative Roman Catholics. It makes me want to say things like, "Hey!" Historically embarrassing, that's what it is. And if any of us plunge into the fray, and get one of the horns on our helmet knocked off, we are likely to hear about it at presbytery. "Not very confessional."

Modern airy-fairy Reformed theology, whether the conservative or liberal kind, wants to float off like a helium balloon, and if you want to anchor it to Christ's love for this world, this earthy world, you will need more than stout beer and pipe tobacco to do it. That kind of thing teaches seminary students to feel very anti-gnostic because they can talk heady theology through wreaths of smoke -- but they still leave the heavy lifting of world-engagement and real gospel proclamation (to actual sinners) to the baptists. And they learn to watch with real dismay if any of their Reformed brethren start to show signs of wanting to make actual contact with the enemy. It is enough to make them suspicious. Wielding a sword is a form of works, is it not?

The Twilight Years, Part VIII

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

This is the final post in our series on Britain during the Inter-War years, which interacts with Richard Overy's recent history of the period.

Overy concludes his work on Britain in the Inter-War years (Richard Overy, The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars [New York: Viking/Penguin, 2009]) by focusing once again upon the gathering clouds of war, as 1939 approached. The chapter is entitled “Voyage of the 'Death Ship'”. He makes the point that the prevailing pessimism of the age made it seem as if another war-to-end-all-wars was inevitable. Ironically that belief made the matter itself far more likely.

The discourse on war defined the nature of future conflict not as limited police actions or small-scale intervention but always in millennial language. This meant that any crisis faced by the British public in the latter half of the decade would be interpreted in the most acute terms, and bound the idea of war indissolubly with the fate of the world rather than with short-term political or territorial readjustment.

The result was a complex and shifting relationship between ideas of peace, war and civilization which eventually locked both politicians and public into an existential dead end in which the civilized world was faced with the real prospect of a destructive war that no one wanted but everyone talked about. It is against this background that the international dramas of the last years of peace were played out.” (Overy, p. 319)

Note that the dominant apocalyptic “end of civilization and of the modern world” discourse paralyzed the nation, stopping it from prudent preparations for national defence. To take such serious steps would have been tantamount to willing participation in the destruction of the world, and had to be avoided at all costs. Only a madman would want to engage in such a thing--or so the dominant discourse ran.

It was this immobilising paralysis which fuelled the strong and popular pacifist movements of the period, and which ironically made war almost inevitable. Contrast this with the Swiss who had armed and trained to the point that they could deploy a marksman behind every tree. The Swiss avoided the war by implicit and explicit armed force, as the Second World War raged all around them; Britain, while being geographically far farther removed from the original seat of conflict, became ineluctably sucked in. Being militarily weak, it came to believe it had to join with allies against Hitler before it was too late for everyone. It was its prevailing apocalyptic pessimism which had made it so. Britain believed it was sailing on a death ship, and worked unconsciously to make its fears come true.

Ironically, in the end, as pacifism waned before the growing threat of a war to come, Britain decided that it had to enter the war because civilization itself was at risk. The perceived apocalyptic nature of the threat meant that non-participation was not an option. We note that the threat of the Soviet Union to “civilization” was not deemed equally serious at the time. Yet the reality is that the parallels between Hitler and Stalin are extraordinarily eerie, as Overy himself has demonstrated in his book, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (London: Allen Lane, 2004).

In the end, the British public capitulated and accepted war as inevitable.

This fatalism had much to do with Hitler who was demonized as the agent of destruction, but the sense of certainty that war was coming and the futility of opposing it any longer derived from a popular discourse that saw war for all its arbitrary destructiveness as a possible means to resolve not just narrow issues of foreign policy but other issues to do with the political future and the progress of European civilization . . . (Overy, p.348)

War was now deemed "worth it", because the stakes were so high.

These sentiments, mawkish as they now sound, were essential for many of those who made the passage to war because they could only accept it if the historical justification appeared sufficiently profound to transcend the terrible costs of the conflict (Ibid)

The account by Overy of a pervasive pessimism in Britain in the Inter-War years, leading to self-fulfilling prophecies of extreme “solutions” justified by an abiding view of a coming chiliastic war between light and darkness is a cautionary tale. With fulminations against climate change sceptics being morally equivalent to Holocaust deniers ringing in our ears, we realise that things have not changed much.

But it does serve to highlight the profound differences between Belief and Unbelief on these matters. Christians remain profoundly pessimistic about the future of Unbelief and the civilizations upon which it is built. But, at the same time, Christians are profoundly optimistic for the future, since the kingdoms of this world are being made the Kingdom and realm of the Christ.

Moreover, Christians are not naively simplistic. The evils of Unbelief's culture are not univocal, but legion—in every place, complex, interwoven, interlocking and mutually dependant. The culture of Unbelief, like all human culture, is not thin but thick. The changes which our Lord is bringing to pass are likewise complex, profound, interlocking, gradual, as yeast gradually insinuates into the dough and leavens the loaf. We do not look for “the one Ring” to solve all problems and make all changes by brute, radical instruments. That way is always the way of the Enemy. It speaks of its war(s) to save civilization; its war(s) on poverty; its war(s) against injustice; its war(s) upon ignorance; its war(s) against terrorism; and its war(s) to establish and defend human rights.

But as the Kingdom comes, His yoke ever remains gentle and His burden light. This is a divine imperialism which brings laughter as His Kingdom transpires in human history. It establishes the only civilization that will last forever. While it may experience reversals and declensions from time to time, nothing can bring it to an end, nor destroy it. For the Divine civiliser holds everything in His hands, and commands every atom, every quark and all other realities in creation. So gradually all His enemies are placed under His feet.

Bizarre

Defence in the Modern World

Porkulus is alive in the Australian military, it would appear. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australian "taxpayers are funding hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cosmetic surgery and fertility treatments for Defence Force personnel". Presumably this is because it pays to look good when you are in action defending your country.

Several plastic surgeons who specialise in breast augmentation and rhinoplasty are retained by the Department of Defence to perform hundreds of general plastic surgery procedures each year.

Most of these operations are for reconstructive surgery after physical trauma, hand surgery and the removal of skin lesions or cancers, but Defence also routinely funds breast reductions and tummy tucks.

The Herald has also confirmed that taxpayers have paid for several breast enlargements which were not needed to address a physical ailment.

Of the 35 breast augmentations paid for by taxpayers between 2004-05 and 2008-09, five were ''for psychological reasons'', a spokesman has confirmed.

One woman in the navy had her breasts enlarged eight years ago because she was embarrassed when changing in front of her colleagues, the Herald has learnt. (Emphasis, ours.)

One wonders whether a similar rort operates in the NZ Defence Forces.

Going, Going, Gone!

Three Strikes Law

If some "experts" are to be believed, a terrible injustice is about to be foisted upon vulnerable victims. Criminals are going to be victimised by being inflicted with an 11,000 percent increase in their prison sentences. It has to be the case because the NZ Herald has told us so, via a febrile headline.

The government is about to pass a "three strikes" sentencing law. It will result, say the critics, in horrendous injustices. The idea is that if you are a repeat offender, committing multiple criminal acts, your sentences will become much longer. Now, there are three kinds of objections to this proposal. The first has to do with whether successive crimes receiving a progressive harsher penalty is intrinsically unjust. The second had to do with "unusual case" objections that result in manifest injustices. The third objection rests on unintentional consequences. We will deal with each in turn.

The burden of proof for those who argue that it is intrinsically unjust to punish successive crimes with harsher penalties rests firmly upon those who make the assertion. If a criminal repeats his offending after being punished for a crime, then to the second or subsequent crime, the evils of stubbornness and contumacy can be added to the subsequent acts. The subsequent crimes therefore become more blameworthy, bear greater guilt, and must be punished more severely. To argue against this would undermine the very notion of a scale of punishments due to the varied wickedness and seriousness of crimes.

The law of Moses recognises this principle when it codifies a crime of habitual criminality and attributes the most extreme sanctions against it. (Deuteronomy 21: 18--21)

Unusual case objections point to prima facie cases of injustice occurring under "three strikes laws", such as where a succession of minor offences can result in life imprisonment for the third offence, albeit a petty infraction. Most of the sensational cases trumpeted in the Herald represent this second objection. Clearly this would be a concern.

However, to our mind, the New Zealand three strikes law overcomes these weaknesses--which unfortunately the Herald article neglected to mention, in its "never let the facts get in the way of a salacious story" kind of journalism.

In New Zealand, the three strikes law will apply to a stipulated set of crimes only--namely, those that are at the extreme end of offending. They will not apply to relatively minor criminal acts. According to Rodney Hide, leader of the ACT Party which has been the driving force behind the change:

The strike offences are listed. As a general rule the list comprises all the major violent and sexual offences that have a maximum penalty of seven years or more.

In other words, a petty criminal can be caught shoplifting three times, and he will not fall under the three strikes law. This approach avoids the risk of petty criminal acts being given extreme, and therefore harsh, sentences.

Moreover, the New Zealand three strikes law escalates the punishment for "strike offences" in a carefully graduated way, which means that a violent criminal will eventually suffer the maximum penalty laid down in law for that crime. (Note that this does not mean, as some assume, that the third strike will necessarily result in imprisonment for life.)

"An offender's first conviction counts as Strike One. They will serve the sentence the judge sets and be eligible for parole. A conviction for a second strike offence will count as Strike Two. They will serve the full judge-given sentence - no parole. Subsequent offending will count as Strike Three - these offenders will serve the maximum sentence for their crime with no parole. The judge sentencing a Strike Three offender will have no option but to sentence the offender to the 'max' unless it would be 'manifestly unjust' to do so.

Note also that there is a discretionary override of "manifest injustice" which will be applied as well. It seems to us that the New Zealand version of the three strikes law has been carefully crafted and is manifestly just.

The third objection warns of unintended consequences. It is argued that it will fill the prisons. This is a non-sequitur. Prison space is non-finite. More prisons can be built. It is argued that criminals who are going to have serve the maximum sentence under law without parole will become more violent, because the carrot of early release is not available to them. This also is not an argument against the rectitude or justice of the three strikes law. If it is a risk at all it can be mitigated by more effective custodial practice.

Whether the current paradigm of serving time in a prison is the right way to punish and rehabilitate criminals is not at issue here. That is a different debate. The issue is whether the New Zealand "three strikes law" is inherently cruel, harsh, or unjust, or will result in unjust outcomes, or pernicious unintended effects.

We are pleased to say that none of these objections are sustainable. They either eviscerate the concept of culpability and degrees of criminality, or they misrepresent the new law through alarmist straw-man objections, or they raise irrelevancies.

This new three strikes law is change we can genuinely believe in.

Phil Jones Slapdown

This Has to Hurt

The UK parliamentary inquiry into Climategate is now well underway; it evinces thus far a more hardnosed and objective demeanour than the whitewash investigation launched by the University of East Anglia.

Some damning stuff has come out thus far. Firstly, the University of East Anglia was exposed with its pants down trying to "spin" the decision by the authorities not to prosecute its breaches of the Freedom of Information Act due to the time under the statute of limitations having been exceeded. The University's take was that the Information Office had decides its breach was not substantial, nor criminal. The Office immediately responded to the contrary, and the University was slapped down publicly by the Parliamentary Inquiry. Embarrassing and telling.

Another gem dropped last week. Phil Jones, former Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University had defended before the Committee his decision not to release temperature data, saying that some countries had objected to their data being made public and he was obliged to respect their wishes. In particular, he named Sweden, Canada and Poland as nations which did not want their historical temperature data, as supplied to the University, made public.

Sweden responded sharply, according to a report in ClimateAudit.

All Swedish climate data are available in the public domain. As is demonstrated in the attached correspondence between SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), the UK Met Office and Dr. Jones (the last correspondence dated yesterday March 4), this has been clearly explained to Dr. Jones. What is also clear is that SMHI is reluctant to be connected to data that has undergone “processing” by the East Anglia research unit. Emphasis, ours

Ouch. Another falsehood exposed.

So, the Swedes had already made their base and raw data publicly available, but refused to allow the release of the Jones "processed and manufactured data". No doubt the Swiss have learned what the Russians discovered: their temperature data had been engineered beyond recognition by the febrile imagination of Phil Jones and his colleagues. Reputable and professional scientists, such as the Swedes and Russians appear to be, want nothing to do with such legerdemain.

The same is not true, of course, with New Zealand's temperature data under the aegis of NIWA. NZ temperature data have been manufactured, massaged, and processed to where they appear to sustain a narrative of global warming--but in our case our government scientists were more than eager to participate with Jones in the charade.

NIWA's defence is to claim their "processing" of temperature data was according to accepted international best practice standards. But apparently the Russians, and now the Swiss disagree. Not so "accepted" after all, it seems.

We will be watching the further proceedings of the Parliamentary Inquiry with interest.

Property at the Pleasure of the State, Part II

Justice and State Expropriation

Madeleine over at M&M has posted recently on the State's expropriation of minerals. This matter is of great utility in helping people discern whether they are Fabian socialists, and whether they worship at the altar of materialist egalitarianism. (Our view is that almost to a person, New Zealanders worship at that altar.)

In Part II of her article, Madeleine points out that successive statutes in New Zealand have already expropriated all mineral wealth that might happen to lie in any land which you own. This includes all gold, silver, and oil. She reviews the traditional justification for such expropriations without compensation and finds them all to be irrelevant. Arguments based upon economics or the national interest just cannot bear the heavy lifting required.

Now rumour has it that successive Prime Ministers of this country have been afflicted with a psychological disorder, known in the journals as the Clampett Syndrome. This disorder finds the notion that backward rubes might become fabulously wealthy at the discovery of oil or gold on their properties to be profoundly nauseating. The only known cure for the syndrome is expropriation by the Crown.

But here's the point. Do you think it's fair that someone might discover oil or gold on his property, and without any particular expenditure of effort or investment of capital suddenly overnight become fabulously wealthy? After all, he did nothing to deserve it. Surely wealth by such happenstance is unfair--it is something which everybody deserves to benefit from, like warmth from the sun, or oxygen in the air. Therefore, it is only just that the State take ownership by expropriation, so that all get to benefit, albeit indirectly.

If you agree to this proposition we submit that you are worshipper at the altar of materialist egalitarianism.

Now some might try to wriggle off the petard at this point by arguing that ownership of land does not include what is beneath the surface of the land. Sorry. Part I of Madeleine's article points out that common law rights of property very definitely includes what is under the soil, as well as what is above it. Consider the following:

Drawing from Talmudic Law, the jurist Accursius of Bologna wrote the phrase cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum et ad inferos (to whom belongs the soil it is his, even to heaven and to the middle of the earth) as a gloss on Justinian’s Digest. By the 16th century this maxim had become accepted common law doctrine for determining the extent of the rights enjoyed by a tenant in fee simple (“landowner”). The English Laws Act retrospectively declared that “so far as applicable to the circumstances of the Colony of New Zealand,” all statute and common laws of England became “part of the laws of New Zealand.” This was confirmed by the Imperial Laws Application Act 1988. Since 1840 to the present day there have been few instances where the court has held that a statute or common law of England was not applicable to the circumstances of the colony of New Zealand. Hence, in the absence of statutes overriding it, the maxim is part of New Zealand law.

(The original contains four source references, for those interested.)

Materialist egalitarianism always sneaks the notion of deservedness into property rights. Its most striking creedal expression is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (Karl Marx, 1875). Property ownership must be overlaid with an egalitarian rule of equality or fairness.

The Christian faith avoids this ethical monstrosity by grounding property rights, in part, in the doctrine of Providence, not egalitarianism. One man has more abilities than another; another has more needs; still others strike oil on their land. Such disparities are part of the gracious disposition of God. They have nothing to do with justice or injustice. If that offends you, it is probably a measure of how corroded your soul has become by envy.

Is it not passing strange that almost universally New Zealanders would support state expropriation of mineral wealth from landowners, yet take delight in lotteries and other games of chance? They would ardently defend the "right" of lottery winners to retain their winnings. Good luck! they say. If the government were consistent it would expropriate all lottery winnings on the grounds that it is unfair that some benefit while others do not. If it is considered not to be a blasphemy of materialist egalitarianism to allow the lottery winner to retain his earnings (even without taxing them) why not the landowner who discovers oil or gold on his land?

Ah, yes, but the ubiquitous addiction to lotteries in New Zealand does not negate the universal hold of materialist egalitarianism; it confirms it. For the lottery offers the prospect of extraordinarily good fortune to everyone, for the inconsequential price of a ticket, which amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things. "You, too, could be a winner" is the implicit egalitarian premise of all lotteries.

That is why our pagan culture tolerates and promotes lotteries, whilst defending state expropriation of minerals as inherently just. Both alike rest firmly upon the established religion of the day. The former is just and legitimate; the latter is unjust and requires expropriation. Only in a world where materialistic egalitarianism is the established religion could this hold true.

The Poisonous Effects of Big Government

Disexceptionalizing America

Mark Steyn
NationalReview ONLINE


In my piece on American decline for National Review a couple of issues back, I tried to emphasize something that I think U.S. conservatives are too complacent about — the impact of Big Government on free peoples:

American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government and not witness, in enough of the populace, the same descent into dependency and fatalism. As Europe demonstrates, a determined state can change the character of a people in the space of a generation or two.

And not just Europe. John O'Sullivan once suggested the entire post-war history of Canada could be summed up in Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song": The eponymous lumberjack hymning the manly virtues of a rugged life "leaping from tree to tree . . . down the mighty rivers of British Columbia" in the preamble has morphed by the third verse into a transvestite in high heels, suspenders, and a bra. From Canada 1945 to Canada 2000 in nothing flat.

Or take Scotland. Most anywhere you go around the planet, from Hong Kong to Hudson's Bay, almost everything that works was created and developed by Scotsmen. Now the whole joint's a statist swamp where government spending accounts for 75 percent of the economy and the menfolk idle away their days on a diet of drugs and fried Mars Bars with a life expectancy in the less salubrious parts of Glasgow getting down to West African standards. They'll never make any contribution to the world again.

Or consider Geert Wilders's address at the House of Lords today, a Dutchman citing Churchill, the Mother of Parliaments, desperate victims of Nazi-ruled Europe listening on their radios for the BBC's famous "This is London . . ." To a significant percentage of the British people and to the entirety of their ruling elites, these are not inspirational evocations of their glorious inheritance but something between a lost language and prima facie evidence of why Wilders is so dangerous he needs to be put on trial.

Second Amendment types insist the same thing could never happen here, but they underestimate the transformative power of government at their peril . . .

Property at the Pleasure of the State

Begging To Be Left Some Crumbs

New Zealand has a shockingly bad history of property rights. It stems, in part, from the arrogant hubris of wanting to lead the world in applying Fabian socialist doctrines--socialism without violent revolution--since the end of the nineteenth century. The political and religious culture of the country has looked to the gummint as the solution to all problems, and has welcomed the gummint expropriating property from citizens to pay for it. It's all part of the Faustian bargain.

Couple this with a strong streak of egalitarianism, where I am as good as my neighbour by dogmatic creed. In a materialistic culture (the established religion of New Zealand, where the only reality that matters is, well, matter), being "as good as my neighbour" can only be measured in a materialistic sense--that is, in terms of property. It's the only "currency" that is meaningful.

Materialistic egalitarianism creates a drive for having the same house, car, income, wide-screen TV, health care, and education as others. This leads to a universally held belief in the gummint needing to take property of some and redistribute it to others to make things more equal. Virtually without exception, all people in New Zealand believe in this doctrine--from raving greenie socialists right through to the hardest hard-core of right wing ideologues. The only debate is one of degree or extent. To all intents and purposes, New Zealand is a socialist country by the willing consent of the governed.

"So, what's the problem, then?" we hear you say. If people want it, it must be OK. It has achieved a certain legitimacy, has it not? The problems are legion. Right up at the head of the queue is an inevitable overreaching, smothering, controlling, nannying and smothering government. The arrogations of its power expand gradually and ineluctably: there is no stopping it until the State dominates everything. In the end, the government will tell us how to raise our children, how we are to eat, what we are to think, how we are to spend our time, and what level of private income and property it will tolerate. In a word, the State will progressively decide the value to be imputed to our lives.

Now, it is a truism that such a state will succeed to incompetence; grounded upon greed, envy, and theft, wrapped up in ever expanding corruptions and injustice, the fruit rots from within. Need it be this way? No, but it is inevitable as long as the established religion of secular materialistic humanism remains regnant.

Years ago we were participating in a discussion amongst Christians on creeping apostasy and unbelief amongst certain churches and Christian denominations. One of the protagonists asserted that, like his whiskey, he preferred getting Unbelief straight. Rather the wolf, than the wolf in sheep's clothing. This is a fair point.

There is something sneaky and dirty about a so-called "property rights" political party such as National speaking out of both sides of its mouth. It continues to borrow over $250m per week to keep the government afloat and sustain its egalitarianistic redistribution of wealth. But, of course, it is politically unpalatable to pay for this largesse by putting taxes up. So, it prefers to push the burden and expropriation out into the future. Our children, many yet unborn, will have to pay for it. They will come into the world in debt--born into slavery to the self-indulgence and self-gratifying covetousness and envy of our generation. For the rest of their lives they will have to pay for our indulgence. Slavery indeed.

By "moving to the centre" John Key and his National hucksters have become more than Labour-lite. At least Labour had the "courage" of its socialist convictions and was prepared to tax "rich pricks" to fund its egalitarian madness. Key and his mob have cowardly decided that they would rather tax the silent, the yet unborn, for they can't vote.

But egalitarianism and Fabian socialism is the established religion that grips the hearts and minds of almost all in the country. So, all governments in the foreseeable future will continue to act in disregard of the freedom rights of individuals, will continue to expropriate and steal, and will continue to appeal to envy to garner popular support.

Bring back Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. At least with them we got the poison straight up. There was a modicum of integrity there, non?

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Homophobia

Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, March 03, 2010

A correspondent has asked me to comment on the "sin of homophobia." What is my take on that?

In order to address this, we have to ask some questions first. If someone asked us about the sin of eating pork, our follow-up question would be to ask what religion they were concerned with. Judaism? Islam? If they said they were asking about Presbyterians, then the reply would be that eating pork is not a sin. Sins are always defined in relation to God, and the form of worship and life He requires. False sins are, correspondingly, defined in relation to a false god, and the way of life and worship that flows out of that commitment.

In some faiths, sodomy is holy.
In the Christian faith it is unholy -- primarily because it is an assault on the image of God. God created us male and female, in the image of God He created us (Genesis 1:27). Those theologians who say they are all about the Trinity, who at the same time say the homosexual heresy is no big deal, are missing one of the central places where God has decided to reveal His nature and character. Nicea was important, but the great confession was long before Nicea. The foundational creed about the Trinity is a sexual one, and it was first confessed when Adam first knew his wife. The foundational confession about the Incarnation is also a sexual one (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:23).

There is a difference between knowledge of the triune God, and being adept with trinitarian jargon. In the ranks of the latter are a number who are, in my view, drifting toward what I like to call a perichoretic atheism. More on that some other time perhaps.

Now when I say that in some faiths, sodomy is holy and in the Christian faith it is not, does this mean "to each his own?" No -- we then have to raise the question (an old-fashioned one, I know) of which faith is correct. Which one is right? Christians confess that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Those who want every faith to be a different path winding up the same mountain are overlooking the fact that Jesus actually prayed about that possibility. He asked the Father to spare Him the passion if there was any other way to do this. The fact that the Father said no, and sent His Son to the cross means that there is no other way. The death of Jesus was not an add-on extra. It was the stone the builders rejected, the cornerstone of the new humanity.

But practitioners of these other faiths will certainly accuse the Christians (who call unholy what they have deemed holy) and say that they are full of "hate." Some of this reaction is understandable (although not defensible). We have said that their holy things are unholy. We maintain said that their gods are wood and stone. This means that they will want to call our rejection of homosexual behavior a name that is pejorative. Hence, we find ourselves dealing with charges of "hate," which is a moral failing, or "homophobia," which indicates we have a condition or a pathology that needs to be looked at -- by an ordained priest in their faith tradition. He, having conducted the investigation, will likely say something like, "Yep. Homophobic to the bone. Let's try the electric shock treatments." But for a Christian who knows His Lord, and his Bible, charges of homophobia will distress him about as much as Islam's view of his last ham sandwich.

Now having dealt with the central issue, we should conclude with a few observations about the ways in which professing Christians can and do sin against homosexuals. But it is crucial to note that the sin, in order to be sin, must be against what God told us in His Word. The Christian serves the true God, and he sins against homosexuals if he treats homosexuals in ways that God prohibits. This means, for example, that Christians sin against homosexuals if they treat them with malice (Ephesians 4:31), guile (1 Peter 2:1), railing (1 Peter 3:9), or anything like that. In short, when God said we were to love our neighbors, not to mention our enemies, this would seem to cover everybody. Christians therefore sin against homosexuals when they do not love them, as God defines and gives that love. But this is not homophobia, a fear of homosexuals. It is actually a lack of fear -- not fearing God.