Letter From the UK

Ignorant Luddites and Their Greek-Chorus Government

On extracting gas from rock, or putting it in there, the greens are equally confused  
The push for 'carbon capture' and the row over 'fracking' are both misguided. 

Christopher Booker  
The Telegraph

A delightful parable unfolded last week over the scarcely believable shambles we are making of our national energy policy. Ever more people are waking up to the fact that “renewables” such as windmills are absurdly expensive and hopelessly inefficient. Meanwhile, our nuclear plans have been thrown into disarray, our North Sea gas is fast running out, and we have turned our back on coal, even though it still often provides us with half our electricity. So how will we keep the lights on?

There were headline stories last week from two areas of energy policy that highlighted our predicament.

Delicious Irony

Life Outside the Beltway

The folly of Kiwibank, along with its parent NZ Post, is becoming more and more obvious by the month.  Both alike face a long, lingering death.  Neither can overcome the commercial challenges facing them.

Let's consider NZ Post first.  It has long been part of received wisdom that the government must ensure a functioning reliable, inexpensive postal service.  Consequently, most postal services around the world have been government owned and operated.  New Zealand took a gigantic step forward some years ago when it was decided that NZ Post needed to run along commercial lines.  It was made a State Owned Enterprise, which meant that it had to function as an independent commercial entity and make a profit for its owner, the government.

It did.  So far so good.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Five More Volleys on Effeminate Worship 

 Liturgy and Worship - Liturgical Notes
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 24 April 2012

A short while ago I posted something about effeminate worship that has since that time excited some comment. The original piece was here, and you can see a couple of responses here and here.

This is not so much a point-by-point refutation as it is getting out a wetvac to clear up some misunderstandings. Once we understand each other, it is unlikely that this will bring about sweet concord on the subject, but at least we should be closer to the heart of the actual disagreement.

First, effeminacy and femininity are not synonyms.

Biggest Casino Makes a Deal with A Minnow

Gamble Away

Historically, gambling has been judged sinful, evil, a violation of God's law.  The question is, On what grounds?

One modern school of thought is that gambling is just another form of entertainment--a kind of competitive sport by proxy.  Just as one goes to the cinema, one can attend the local horse racing meet, place bets to give some "edge" to the entertainment, and thereby make the whole experience more participatory, exciting and diverting.  At the other edge is professional poker playing, which clearly is a participative, competitive sport, requiring finely honed skills to be successful.  We grant both points. 

For the Christian, the issue is not one of entertainment: there are plenty of ways to relax and find exhilarating enjoyment.  The issues are stewardship, covetousness, and the love of money--which is the root of all kinds of evil (I Timothy 6:10).

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Your Worship Service Might Be Effeminate If . . . 

Liturgy and Worship - Liturgical Notes
Written by Douglas Wilson
 Monday, 16 April 2012

For a number of interesting reasons, Christian worship in the West has become increasingly effeminate. Leon Podles outlines some of these historical reasons in his fine book, The Church Impotent. Ann Douglas makes a fine addition to the discussion in her book, The Feminization of American Culture.

To emphasize masculinity in worship is not a practice that excludes women. Rather, it includes them, brings them along, and makes them feel safe. If you reach the men, you will reach the women. Moreover, you will find yourself reaching the worthiest of women, the true mothers in Israel. Think tent pegs and mallets.

This being the case, and in the spirit of those lists you see from time to time -- "you might be this or that if . . ." --  I would like to offer a small checklist for pastors and elders, in no particular order.

Ideological Civil War

We Have a Voice! . . . Finally

An ideological war has broken out within the Commentariat in New Zealand.  It does not happen very often, making it all the more diverting.  The field of battle is the government education system. 

On one side are the Allies--a fighting coalition of three powers which has held sway in our education system for four decades or more.

The first of the Allied powers are the Marxist education theoreticians and their followers who argue that the power structures and their ideologies in New Zealand must be broken down if the New Society is to be built.  Therefore, education is a process of teaching a student to criticise everything, accept nothing, and reject everything (except Marxist dogma, of course).

The second member of the triumvirate is the oh-so-trendy "pomos"--the post-modernists--who argue that there is no truth, only narratives, stories.

Modern Prejudice

Chronological Snobbery and the Spirit of Our Age 

Justin Taylor

J. I. Packer describes the heretical spirit of our age, which holds that:

• the newer is the truer, 
• only what is recent is decent, 
• every shift of ground is a step forward, and 
• every latest word must be hailed as the last word on its subject.

This is what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery” (a lesson he learned from his friend Owen Barfield.

The Destruction Wreaked by Faux Human Rights

Righteous Anger Over Chinese Poppies

In New Zealand our veteran's association is called the Returned Services Association, or the "RSA".  Anzac Day is the statutory holiday when we remember our veterans and express our thankfulness for their service to us all.  In the last couple of years controversy has swirled around the Anzac season.  It has to do with the Chinese.

Well, indirectly.  The RSA raises funds at this time of the year by selling artificial red poppies which the public buy in large quantities and pin to their coats.  It is an effective visible way of showing respect for our veterans and our commitment to the memorial Anzac season.  It also funds the on-going activities and services of the RSA.  Two or so years ago, the RSA decided to get its red poppies manufactured in China. People resent that.  Previously the poppies were manufactured in New Zealand.  Now the job has been exported; working people in New Zealand have missed out.  Folk are protesting the "Chinese poppies" as an alien, unwanted, exploitative violation of the true spirit of the Anzac season.

The back story, however, is far, far more sinister.

Romney's Moral Antennae

Bloodshed and Buggery 

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 22 April 2012

So Mitt Romney hired Richard Grenell as his foreign policy spokesman, and Grenell is an "out and proud" homosexual. Well, who could have seen that coming?

The issue is how these things get mainstreamed. There is a certain kind of conservative who, in Dabney's immortal phrase, is the shadow that follows radicalism to perdition. It makes a gruff show with a respectable amount of growling, but in the end acquiesces to the last set of the left's innovations, and runs on the hard right conservative platform of trying to make socialism work. It has no idea, Dabney said, of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.

It is not just about elections.

The Decline of the Republic

Patronage Politics

The last decades of the old Roman Republic were replete with corruption, big money politics, intrigue, murder, and vaunted arrogant ambition.  Naturally, the Republic eventually broke down, to be replaced by the Empire.  (If you are a non-specialist, and want a ripping, riveting good read about the decrepit latter days of the Republic you can go no further than the historical novels by Robert Harris about the life and times of Cicero, Imperium and Lustrum.)

At times we get a sense that the Republic of the United States is echoing the decline and fall of the ancient Republic of  Rome. There are adumbrations of that failed Republic at almost every turn.

Breivik's Brethren

 The Spirit of Terror in the West

Notorious killer, George Zimmerman has been released on bail.  Thus far, his notoriety derives from the apoplectic narrative coursing through sections of the US media.  Zimmerman, a community crime watch patrol member, has been arrested for shooting a black late-teen.  Whilst the public does not know what happened that night, racial demagogues have insisted that the shooting was a racist, murderous act. Fools rush to judgment.

Zimmerman's release on bail has resulted in a rise of vigilante sentiment.

Salutary Leadership

 Evoking Thatcher


Judith Collins is an unusual politician.  There is a "no-nonsense" aura about her that is redolent of Margaret Thatcher in her prime.  We suspect that her instincts on issues are conservative and, more-often-than-not, right.  We still marvel at the progress she made as Minister of Police in, firstly, depoliticising the NZ Police force--an essential constitutional protection perverted by former Prime Minister, Helen Clark--and appointing real policemen and women to head the department--as opposed to the political lapdogs appointed by Clark.  She, like Thatcher, is a "lady not for turning".  Like Thatcher, she does not tolerate fools lightly. 

Recently it has been the Accident Compensation Scheme ("ACC") which has been feeling the crush of her embrace.

What is Unbelief?

Foolishness Indeed

This, from St. Hilary of Poitiers (c. AD 315-67):


All unbelief is foolishness, for
it takes such wisdom as its own finite perception can attain,
and measuring infinity by that petty scale,
concludes that what it cannot understand must be impossible.
Unbelief is the result of incapacity engaged in argument.”

—De Trinitate, III.24, cited in Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 19.

Chuck Colson

. . . Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy 

We have often reflected on the Apostle Paul's "former life" where he persecuted Christians, hauling them into prison, inflicting punishment, and killing them.  Then, for the rest of his life, after his conversion to Christ, he laid down his life many times over, serving the very people he once persecuted.  His entire post-conversion life became a trophy to God's mercy and glory.

In our day, Chuck Colson--who died after a brief illness over the weekend--showed the same pattern.  Once a hard-nosed criminal political enforcer, he was confronted by the risen Lord Jesus Christ.  Thereafter his life was lived serving the very people he once despised.  Paul's particular sphere of service was the Gentiles.  Colson's was to inmates, prisoners.  He, like Paul, has been a trophy of God's mercy and glory.  We thank God for Chuck Colson.

In this obituary, we present some brief comments from national political leaders in the United States, together with reflections from one of the most widely read columnists in the US.

Letter From America: Too Stupid to Survive?

What’s Your Plan?

The “Buffett Rule” is just another pathetic sleight of hand.

By Mark Steyn
April 14, 2012
National Review Online

In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the “war on women,” the Republican theocrats’ confiscation of your contraceptives, or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. 

Flamboyant, Irresponsible Scientist

The Capricious Dr. Hansen

By Charles C. W. Cooke
April 16, 2012
www.nationalreview.com 

In 1988, the longtime head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) gave an explosive performance in front of the U.S. Congress’s Science, Space, and Technology Committee, during which he claimed that America and the world were on the brink of disaster. The earth’s surface temperature, Professor James Hansen contended, was rising in concert with carbon dioxide emissions, and the consequences would be increased drought, rising oceans, and an average rise in global temperature of ten degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. If the United States government did not act now, it would be sanctioning catastrophe, he warned. With this testimony, invited by the committee’s chair, Senator Al Gore, Hansen effectively started the modern climate-change movement.

Professor Hansen came across as a scientifically minded Inspector Poirot, assembling the family in the library to explain how the murderer among them had hidden his crime. But within ten years, he had morphed into the hapless Inspector Clouseau.

Siren Songs of Populism and Easy Money

Becoming Serfs in Our Own Country

Economic xenophobes.  Welcome to the wonderful world of New Zealand populist politics.  Actually, it's a bit worse than that.  We are economic racist xenophobes. How cute to see the Green party revealing its anti-Chinese prejudice on the matter.  This from Kiwiblog:

When Bill English is over in Australia talking about how more and more Australian companies want to invest in New Zealand, and no politician says a word. But then you have a Chinese leader visit and promote investment from China, and the Greens rush out a press release. It is absolutely playing to xenophobia. Not all opposition is xenophobic, but much of it is – and politicians play to it.

But, there is an argument on the other side to be made.  The Prime Minister, John Key has said that he does not want a New Zealand where citizens are serfs in their own country.  That is a powerfully visceral line.  It raises a spectre that is not unrealistic at all.

Political Correctness In the Dock

Norway on Trial

Anders Breivik  is on trial in Norway for mass murder.  The court will decide his guilt--which is a pretty straightforward affair, since Breivik admits setting off the car bomb which killed eight people, and executing a massacre of young campers, murdering sixty-nine.  The trial is supposed to last ten weeks.  Since his guilt is straightforward, the only other question is his sanity.  Ten weeks to determine the sanity of Anders Breivik.  How bizarre.

What has led Norway into such a fix?  We suspect it has something to do with political correctness.

Christians and the Classics

Camus: Representative Modern Man

Leland Ryken
Professor of English at Wheaton College
(Hat Tip: Justin Taylor)

There is no more representative intellectual figure of the mid-20th century than Albert Camus. In addition to being an influential fiction writer, Camus was at the focal point of the intellectual crosscurrents that swirled about Europe and crossed over to the United States. The underlying principles of those movements remain pervasive in Western culture, and this is part of the relevance of Camus to us today.

Born in Algeria in 1913, Camus was a restless spirit who kept on the move and pursued many intellectual and professional paths. As a literary figure, Camus is considered a French author. He is as famous as a philosopher as a fiction writer, and in fact his novels are an embodiment of his philosophical viewpoints. Camus was killed instantly in a car crash in 1960 at the age of 46.

The many-sided nature of Camus's life makes it a veritable primer on modern secularism. Camus was a political activist, pacifist, and revolutionary. He was twice married but dismissive of marriage as an institution. He lived a sensual and disordered life. That chaotic life is itself instructive for Christians. If we want to see modern man "writ large," Camus can supply our representative figure.

Feeling the Pain, Part #2

That Bus Everybody Talks About

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 12 April 2012

I like Jonah Goldberg a lot, and David Bahnsen here has done us a favor by pointing to this over there. Jonah argues his case well, and the best thing about it is that he really understands the problem a number of us have with Romney.

In addition, I know I live in Idaho, and I know that my refusal to cast a vote Romneyward will not affect Idaho's behavior in the Electoral College. I also know that if I lived in Florida I would have to sit down and ponder a bit longer.

David was very kind in his introduction to his disagreement with me and, like him, I have no desire to get into a fracas with any of those who understand the problems with Romney but who will be supporting him anyway.

Charter Schools Damned Before They Exist

Radical Utopians

Well, that's it then.  The educational establishment in New Zealand has resolved that charter schools don't work.  They fail.  We don't have any yet, but according to the Education Commentariat they will be useless from the get-go.  Worse, they will do real harm. 

Whenever this sort of thing goes down it is helpful to ask what world-view or framework the critics are arguing.  Here is one premise: if an educational policy does not produce uniform results across the entire nation, it is implicitly unjust.  Harmful.  Charter schools (being an alternative to government schools) only help some pupils, not all.  Therefore they have to be judged a failure before they begin.

Run the logic on display here: by this definition of success, no non-government schools can succeed, ever.

Letter From America

Romney Ruminations: Feeling the Pain

Now that Mitt Romney has the Republican nomination effectively sewn up, conservatives in the US are trying to rationalise supporting him.  The rationalisations run from "he's fifty times better than Obama, so let's overlook the lacunae on his resume" to "he really is a conservative--don't worry too much about his past performances because he is a recent convert".

Jonah Goldberg offers his two cents worth:

Vapid Dogmatism

Spurious Claims of the Age of Reason

Materialism is not a fact of experience or a deduction of logic; it is a metaphysical prejudice, nothing more, and one that is arguably more irrational than almost any other.  In general, the unalterably convinced materialist is a kind of childishly complacent fundamentalist, so fervently, unreflectively, and rapturously committed to the materialist vision of reality that if he or she should encounter any problem--logical or experiential--that might call its premises into question, or even merely encounter a limit beyond which those premises lose their explanatory power, he or she is simply unable to recognize it.

Richard Dawkins is a perfect example: he does not hesitate, for instance, to claim that "natural selection is the ultimate explanation for our existence."  But this is a silly assertion and merely reveals that Dawkins does not understand the words he is using.

Reformed Heritage

Book of the Month/April 2012

Engaging the Culture - Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 01 April 2012 16:48

Reformer of Basel
Diane Poythress
Reformation Heritage Books

This might seem like an odd book to get excited about (at least to some), but I have wanted to see a book like this for years. In Reformer of Basel, Diane Poythress has given us a very fine introduction to the life and influence of John Oecolampadius, the great Reformer of Basel. It is available at Amazon here, but they don't seem to have a deep bench on this title, and so you can also obtain it here.

I call them the lost Reformers. Men like Luther and Calvin are the A team, and men like John Knox are right behind them. The B team would be men like Zwingli, Bucer, and Bullinger -- the names are generally known to those who know the period at all, but not a lot is known about them. And then . . . the lost Reformers.

Setting the Record Straight

Vague Talk of Medieval Science

There is a narrative coined by Enlightenment philosophes which presents the classical era of ancient Greece and Rome as the greatest golden period in human civilization.  The emergence of Christianity undermined this glory as a fifth column.  Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire largely blames Christianity and the Christian Church for Rome's rotting away.

In this fictional narrative the classical era was a profuse explosion of of science and mathematics, only to have it all snuffed out by the rank darkness of a benighted Europe labouring, in turn, under the superstitious ignorance of the Christian religion.  The Renaissance and the Enlightenment represents a throwing off of the cloak of religiously-enforced ignorance and an enlightened recovery of ancient scientific and technological knowledge.

It's a great story.  Imaginative fiction.  But profoundly ignorant of actual history.  But the story has one happening to give it the appearance of credence: the Western church's conflict with Galileo.  David Bentley Hart gives a more accurate and truthful account:

Expectations

What Happened Right After

Books in the Making - Chrestomathy
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 20 March 2012

"Virtually all the books of the New Testament have an expectant air about them. They are all waiting for something drastic that will happen soon, and not one of them even mentions the most cataclyismic event in Jewish history -- the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 -- as being past. That event was the destruction of the old Judaic order and its replacement by the Christian church, the new Israel" (Heaven Misplaced, p. 111).

Letter From America

Blacks Under Attack

The Murders That Don’t Count

By Rich Lowry

March 30, 2012

National Review Online

Delric Miller IV died in a hail of bullets a month ago. When someone fired 37 AK-47 rounds into his Detroit home at 4:30 a.m., he was mortally wounded while dozing on the couch. He was nine months old. No one made the multicolored teething ring he got for Christmas or his toy hammer into a national symbol of random violence.

Last year, Charinez Jefferson, 17, was shot and killed on a Chicago street. “She begged the shooter not to shoot her because she was pregnant,” a pastor explained.

Monopolists All

Ah, Competition, Thou Art a Jewel

Milton Friedman once famously observed that enterprise owners want all their competitors to face open market competition, whilst they call for regulation of their own business.  Too true.  We have known more than our fair share of business owners spending a good deal of time lobbying government for regulations (to protect consumers, of course) in the attempt to get the "inside track" with officials, so they can secure their own financial market advantage.  Beware the business owner who speaks often about the "public interest".  More often than not the real motive is to put the squeeze on their competitors or prevent competitors coming into "their" patch. 

All business owners are natural monopolists, and should be regarded as such.

The Difference Between Faith and Fideism

God's Faithfulness

Junk Drawer - Previous Publications
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 01 April 2012


"If we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot disown Himself" (2 Tim. 2:13, NIV).

When we first catch a glimpse of the faithfulness of God, faith is the natural response. Faith is not the ladder which we climb in order to discover the faithfulness of God. It is the other way around. God is faithful, period. When we see that, faith is the natural response.

A misunderstanding concerning this shows up in many of our expressions. One that pertains to those in Christian work is the expression "living on faith." If that were strictly true, many of us would be in trouble. We do not "live on faith," we "live on faithfulness."

In Government We Trust

Puncture Wounds

Bureaucracies, it is universally believed, are costly, inefficient boondoggles.  Nevertheless, hope does spring eternal in the human breast.  Equally universal is the belief that a bureaucracy can be reformed, made better.  A tweak here, a personnel change there, a reform or two and hey presto, a new bright shiny efficient common-sense bureaucracy will emerge. 

We believe the idiocy of bureaucracy is an inevitable result when governments exceed the mandate given them by the Almighty.  Breaking divinely appointed bounds inevitably means that bad consequences will follow.  Costly, inefficient, stupid boondoggles are the consequence of expansionist government. 

New Zealand has a socialist accident compensation system.