Beware the Yellow Peril

Baser Instincts

In New Zealand we have had our share of muck racking, venal, xenophobic politicians who pander to the worst instincts of the bitter and twisted.  Immigration seems to hit all the right buttons for these closet racists and the populist politicians who exploit them.

Racism is a strong word--sadly overdone in many quarters.  It is not an epithet to be used lightly.  We struggle to avoid its use here.  It's hard to come to any other conclusion, but we will try.  David Cunliffe, erstwhile leader of the motley crowd of divisives, temporarily coalesced under the Labour party banner, has come out opposing the sale of a large North Island high country farm to a Chinese company.  This is normally the political territory of the one or two populist politicians who can find electoral traction few other ways.  Anti-Chinese sentiment--which is racist insofar as it appears to apply to no other immigrant ethnic group or nation--is the final bolt hole of a desperate, cynical politician or one who is a genuine racist.  Now it has become the resort of the Labour leader. 

We prefer to believe the evidence points to a cynical, desperate politician, rather than a genuine racist.  Surely Cunliffe cannot be that degenerate.  Its his desperation that is leading him to play the race card, and the xenophobe card, and any other card, for that matter.

It turns out that China, the Chinese, and New Zealand have a long history.

Letter From America (About Hamas's Tunnel Strategy)

Stories From The Battlefield

Hamas Tunnels Used To Target Israel’s Kindergartens

Mordechai Ben-Menachem

The Daily Caller

27 July 2014

Multiple media outlets report that Hamas’s offensive tunnel network – now known to have been composed of over forty attack tunnels dug underneath Israel’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip – was set to be activated during the Jewish High Holidays (September 24^th) as a mass terror attack.

The attack was meant to generate as many as ten thousand casualties, men, women and particularly children and hundreds of captives.  Explosives were particularly placed underneath kindergartens to make certain that these “institutions” would be the first struck, even before any thing else.

The IDF recently published the below map showing that tunnels were created in pairs, to empty out on both sides of nearby communities.  The known cost of the infrastructure – each tunnel costs upward of some $1 million – clearly shows that Hamas was planning a coordinated mega-attack.  It must be understood that use of even one tunnel would inevitably trigger Israeli retaliation against the entire network.

A map of a small portion of the tunnels meant to be used 9 weeks from now.

Revelations regarding the planned tunnel attack magnitude played a decisive role in the Israeli government’s rejection of a ceasefire proposed late Friday by Secretary of State John Kerry.  Unbelievably, Kerry actually proposed in his latest “cease-fire proposal” – none of which have been honored by Hamas so far – that Israel refrains from degrading remaining attack tunnels.  This mind-boggling concept would necessarily be rejected by any sane government, of any country.

Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow

The Politics of the Tithe

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

August 5, 2014

I think it was Luther who said that a man required two conversions, the first of his heart and the second of his wallet. Have you ever noticed how some people are preeminently quotable, such that all sorts of pithy sayings get attributed to them whether or not they said it? So Luther, or maybe Chesterton, or Churchill, or maybe Oscar Wilde. It fits best with Luther though, so let’s run with that.

I want to begin by summarizing in a paragraph what I understand our obligations with regard to tithing to be, and then to briefly expand on each one of those points.

The tithe is a continuing moral obligation for the people of God (1 Cor. 9:13-14). The lawful recipients of the tithe are those who labor in the ministry (1 Cor. 9:14), the poor (Dt. 14:29), and the merchants who supply the goods for your thanksgiving feasts (Dt. 14:23-29). The tithe is owed on the increase of wealth (Dt. 14:22), not on the wealth itself. The tithe is to be paid on the increase that is brought into your barns, and not on the part of the crop that the locusts ate, which has ramifications for the old net/gross question. And last, the church is to teach authoritatively on the obligation to tithe, but is not to do so in any way that could reasonably be interpreted as a self-serving merchandizing of the gospel (Phil. 4:17).

So let’s work through these.

Daily Devotional

August 08

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

‘... since Jesus came into my heart ...’
Is my life different?

Does my Christian faith affect my view of life and control it in all matters? I claim to be Christian, and hold the Christian faith; the question I now ask myself is, ‘Does that Christian faith of mine affect my whole detailed view of life? Is it always determining my reaction and my response to the particular things that happen?’ Or, we can put it like this. ‘Is it clear and obvious to myself and to everybody else that my whole approach to life, my essential view of life in general and in particular, is altogether different from that of the non-Christian?’ It should be.

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes. They describe people who are altogether different from all others, as different as light from darkness, as different as salt from putrefaction. If, then, we are different essentially, we must be different in our view of, and in our reaction to, everything. I know of no better question that a man can ask himself in every circumstance in life than that. When something happens to upset you, do you ask, ‘Is my reaction essentially different from what it would be if I were not a Christian?’

Let us remind ourselves of the teaching ... at the end of the fifth chapter of [Matthew’s] Gospel. You remember that our Lord put it like this: ‘If ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?’ That is it. The Christian is a man who does ‘more than others’. He is a man who is absolutely different. And if in every detail of his life this Christianity of his does not come in, he is a very poor Christian, he is a man ‘of little faith’.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 139–40

Welcome to our Socialist Paradise

The Long Game

New Zealand is a socialist country--at least ideologically.  By which we mean that the grand majority think in socialist categories.  The vast majority of the population endorse the state being the sole educator of children, as well as a state controlled, run and rationed healthcare system,  and one of the most "generous" state welfare systems in the world.  Not surprisingly, almost all social problems and challenges are expected to be solved by the state.  Equally not surprisingly, just on sixty percent of government expenditure goes to health, education, and welfare [1].  The overwhelming majority of the population, if asked, "What must we do to improve social welfare, health, and education in New Zealand?" would argue that the government needs to spend more money in these areas. 

Now, if one asked the "man-in-street" whether New Zealand was a socialist country, he most likely would be offended at the question.  Of course not, he would reply.  That's because the country believes fervently in socialism without doctrines (as historian Michael Bassett put it).  The practices of applied socialism are so entrenched no-one needs defend or advocate for them any longer. The frog in the pot has well and truly boiled, whilst experiencing no discomfort.

Given that New Zealand is a socialist paradise without doctrines and that all political parties without exception live with this reality (even the most conservative and libertarian minor parties seek to make changes only at the margin), how does an professedly socialistic party fare, politically?

Letter From the UK (About Dawkins's Dogmatism)

Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?

Dawkins in 2014 is a man so convinced that he possesses God-like powers of omniscience that he can’t understand why everyone is angry at him for pointing out the obvious

Eleanor Robertson
The Guardian
30 July 2014

Another day, another tweet from Richard Dawkins proving that if non-conscious material is given enough time, it is capable of evolving into an obstreperous crackpot who should have retired from public speech when he had the chance to bow out before embarrassing himself.

“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse,” huffs Dawkins. Seeming to have anticipated, although not understood, the feminist reaction this kind of sentiment generally evokes, he finishes the tweet: “If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

. . . . Dawkins has been arrogant for years, a man so convinced of his intellectual superiority that he believes the one domain in which he happens to be an expert, science, is the only legitimate way of acquiring or assessing knowledge. All of his outbursts in recent years follow from this belief: he understands the scientific method, a process intended to mitigate the interference of human subjectivity in data collection, as a universally applicable way of understanding not just the physical world but literally everything else as well.

Daily Devotional

August 07

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Christ shall give thee light

... there is but one treatment which can heal that diseased eye. We need waste none of our time in trying anything else. We need spend no further money on that which is not bread. We can cease to travel round to the various spiritual spas in our search for health and wholeness. The world has done its utmost to clear its own spiritual eye. Patent after patent has been brought out. Lenses and spectacles of all colours, shapes, and sizes have been offered to us, and have been loudly recommended by great and well-known leaders....

But still mankind cannot see, and continues in sin and in misery. The strain is too deep. The nebulae and the mists are not outside the eye but actually within the organ itself. All our own efforts and all our best remedies leave us precisely where we were. Indeed, we find ... that the experts themselves cannot see, and often end their lives, as did the German philosopher Goethe upon his deathbed, with the cry, ‘More light!’ ... Is there no cure? Are we all doomed therefore to perpetual blindness and darkness?

The Deeper, Greater Cause

Feminism Underpinned by Marxist Ideology

Feminism as an ideological and political movement has largely become a dissolute spent force.  About the only issue feminists continue to get wound up about is abortion.  Any hint that abortion "rights" might be curtailed or reduced will stir up the old militancy and hatreds.  Our intention here is not to debate the fruits of feminism.  Rather, it is the ideological origins of Western feminism that interest us.

A number of folk have observed a strange connection between the ideology of leftist Marxism and feminism.  At one level that is easy enough to understand.  Simplistically, feminists believe women are oppressed; Marxists believe the working classes are oppressed.  Therefore, both Marxists and feminists want to dismantle the power structures of such oppressions.  They are "natural allies".  But which is more important: the feminist or the Marxist materialistic cause?

One clue is provided by the "feminist" response to the oppression of women in Islamic countries.

Letter from the UK (About Wearable Police)

Booze bracelets? 

Even Orwell did not foresee this dawn of the wearable policeman 

Brendan O'Neill
The Telegraph
July 31, 2014

Even with all their dystopian prescience, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or Philip K Dick did not foresee a future state that would monitor its citizens' sweat for signs of deviant, boozy behaviour. I mean, what kind of swirling mind would it take to think up a system whereby citizens would walk around with sweat-reading gadgets attached to them so that anytime they sunk a pint of beer the authorities would be alerted and could take action?

How about the swirling minds of London's current rulers. Yep, not content with filming our every move on CCTV, and banning the consumption of alcohol on public transport and the smoking of cigarettes pretty much everywhere, London's behaviour-policers masquerading as politicians are now trialling "booze bracelets" to analyse the perspiration levels of certain offenders and let the powers-that-be know if their sweat shows signs of alcohol. Welcome to the era of the wearable policeman, of the ever-present copper on your cuff monitoring your every move.

Starting life in the US, booze bracelets are hi-tech electronic devices that are attached to the ankle or the wrist and can analyse air and perspiration emissions from the skin. Starting today, they are being trialled in four South London boroughs on offenders who have committed alcohol-fuelled crimes and have thus been banned from drinking.

Daily Devotional

August 04

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

The Life of Faith

[Some apparently Christian people] are worried about food and drink; they are always talking about wealth and position and their various possessions. These things really control them. They are made happy or unhappy by them; they are put out by them or pleased by them; and they are always thinking and talking about them. That is to be like the heathen, says Christ; for the Christian should not be controlled by these things. Whatever may be his position with respect to them, he is not finally to be controlled by them ... because that is the typical condition of the heathen, who is dominated by them in his whole outlook upon life and in his living in this world.

This is a very good way, therefore, of increasing our faith and of introducing ourselves to the biblical conception of the life of faith. God’s people, God’s children in this world, are meant to live the life of faith; they are meant to live in the light of that faith which they profess. I suggest therefore, that there are certain questions which we should always be putting to ourselves. Here are some of them. Do I face the things that happen to me in this world as the Gentiles do? When these things happen to me, when there seem to be difficulties about food, or drink, or clothing, or difficulties in some relationship in life, how do I face them? How do I react? Is my reaction just that of the heathen, and of people who do not pretend to be Christian? How do I react during a war? How do I react to illness and pestilence and loss?

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, p. 139

The Justification of Knowledge and Truth, Part III

 Adding Zeroes to Zero

Unbelief has strained over the years to find a suitable and adequate justification for knowledge--the problem of knowing that what we know is true knowledge or truth.  Unbelieving thought--that is, philosophies which reject from the outset the existence of the Living God, His self-revelation in Nature, and the Scriptures--have struggled to find an adequate foundation for truth.  Every rational proposal collapses at some point into irrationalism.

We have seen this to be the case in two leading tendencies attempting to justify knowledge: rationalism and empiricism (see here, and here.)  The third tendency is subjectivism.  This offers the principle that all knowledge and truth is ultimately self-justified by the subject--that is, we who know.  Now there is a lot to commend subjectivism, as opposed to rationalism and empiricism at first blush.  In the first place, logical argument (the champion of the rationalists) often fails to convince.  John Frame describes the problem:

Gun Control

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

Gun prohibitionism appears to rest on unassailable foundations.  The more guns there are in the community, the more people will have access to guns.  The more guns will be used to commit crimes.  Since guns are lethally effective, it is inevitable more people will die, the more accessible guns there are in a society.  And so on.  Persuaded? 

If so, Switzerland will stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

Switzerland: Peaceful but... Armed

By Laura Secorun Palet

Acumen

Switzerland has earned its reputation as a safe, neutral nation. Yet it’s hardly pacifist or gun-averse.
In fact, the small and stable country has the highest firearm ownership rate in Europe —

46 guns for every 100 people

— and the third-highest in the world, outdone only by the U.S. (89) and and Yemen (55).

Daily Devotional

August 05

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Living on the bare Word of God

Faith means taking the bare Word of God and acting upon it because it is the Word of God. It means believing what God says simply and solely because He has said it. Those heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 believed the Word of God simply because God had spoken. They had no other reasons for believing it. Why, for example, did Abraham take Isaac and go with him up that mountain? Why was he on the point of sacrificing his son? Simply because God had told him to do so.

But living by faith means even more than that. It means basing the whole of our life upon faith in God. The secret of all those Old Testament characters was that they lived ‘as seeing him who is invisible’. These men staked all on God’s Word.

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Not the West's Finest Moment

Hamas and Israel are at war.  Hamas claims that Israel is shelling civilians and killing them.  The Western media and most politicians accept this at face value and the vitriolic reactionary bile pours forth.  Israel is a child-killing nation.  Hamas said so, and clearly children and non-combatants are being killed. 

The chattering classes and the Commentariat accept Hamas's statements and claims at their face value.  They assume their veracity.  But why?  The old adage has it that when war commences, the first casualty is the truth.  Surely the Western media and its Commentariat would not be so gullible or naive?  Well, unfortunately the West is just that gullible and naive. 

On one level it's understandable.  The vast majority of Western scribes and pundits have never experienced nor lived through a war.  They live in a culture which, due to its Christian vestiges, still values truth telling and condemns deceitful and misleading behaviour.  Politicians and media exposed as liars are usually rejected, losing all credibility.  The Commentariat projects these perspectives and experiences on to Hamas and Israel.

Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow

America’s Udder

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

July 29, 2014

The reason we have an immigration problem is not because we are welcoming people to America, but rather what kind of America we are welcoming them to. This in turn has an effect on what kind of people seek to be welcomed here, which then provokes the wrong kind of reaction on our part, and which results in a series of actions and reactions not unlike a child’s party balloon that was not tied off yet but was over-inflated, and then let go.

We have two presenting issues on our southern border. One is the border security itself, and the other is all the stuff we are doing that creates the need for border security in the first place. What we are doing wrong would include, but not be limited to, anchor babies, food stamps, other forms of welfare, free education, and so on. You get more of what you subsidize and less of what you don’t. There are very few things quite as destructive as American good intentions. If we then add to the mix the problems caused by American bad intentions, everything gets really complicated. What would happen to the drug cartels if Americans quit snorting their happy powder? And, incidentally, that problem is not going to be solved by a federal “war on drugs,” what a joke, but rather by Americans doing what previous generations of Christians used to quaintly call “repenting.” A whole host of our “political” problems have no political solution.

Here is my proposed campaign slogan — Open Borders, But No Freebies. If any politician wants to use it, he can have his staff contact my people.

Back to immigration. In the current set-up, conservatives have a point when they say that we need to get control of the border first, and then talk about what to do with the millions of ille . . . oops, almost did a bad thing . . . undocumented ali . . . oops . . . what a klutz I am being this morning . . . undocumented personages. Ah, for the halcyon days when folks could just say wetbacks and nobody minded!

Daily Devotional

August 04

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Living on the bare Word of God

Faith means taking the bare Word of God and acting upon it because it is the Word of God. It means believing what God says simply and solely because He has said it. Those heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 believed the Word of God simply because God had spoken. They had no other reasons for believing it. Why, for example, did Abraham take Isaac and go with him up that mountain? Why was he on the point of sacrificing his son? Simply because God had told him to do so.

But living by faith means even more than that. It means basing the whole of our life upon faith in God. The secret of all those Old Testament characters was that they lived ‘as seeing him who is invisible’. These men staked all on God’s Word.

More Steps in the Right Direction

Internal Decay and Mounting Indifference

The government in the UK is taking aim at restoring some of its sovereignty which had been traded away by the previous Labour government.  In 1998 Labour passed the Human Rights Act which contained a clause subjecting the UK to human rights decisions made by the European Court.  The Cameron government is planning to reverse that decision, thereby making British human rights legislation the sole preserve of Britain and even giving a possible veto to MP's over controversial EU human rights decisions.

Long overdue, is our response.  It is now becoming more evident that Cameron's recent Cabinet reshuffle has not weakened the drive towards re-establishing British sovereignty.  It appears to have turbo-charged it. This, from the Telegraph:

Unable to be Translated

Learning From Bodies

Nora Calhoun
First Things


The baby in my arms lacks the majority of his brain. He was born just fifteen minutes before this moment, and he is likely to die before another fifteen minutes pass. He has taken no first breath and will give no first cry. He cannot see. He cannot hear. He does not feel the warm weight of my hand as it rests on his chest and belly. I quietly weep and pray as the last gift of oxygen his mother’s body gave him dwindles and his rosy newborn glow fades to gray. His soul gently slips out of his body, and his life ends.

Ability is not what makes death significant. At birth this baby had capacities below that of a healthy fetus at ten weeks. Holding his body, living and then dead, proves to me that it doesn’t matter how early the human heart beats, how early it is possible to feel pain, or when the senses develop. No ability or strength confers human status—not being viable or sentient or undamaged or wanted. Being of human descent is enough; you cannot earn or forfeit your humanity. If this baby’s death does not matter, no death matters.

But bodies speak a different language; they teach in different terms. The images and touch memories of the small body of that severely damaged baby boy whom I held as he died only minutes after being born could not be explained away, caricatured, ignored, or debated.

I have not always seen this so clearly. A gut repugnance and horror of abortion, which I felt from the time I first heard of it as a nine-year-old, kept me from ever being fully pro-choice. But even after my conversion to Christianity at eighteen, I didn’t want to express full opposition to the opinions of almost everyone I knew, my family, teachers, and friends. I wanted to avoid the taboo of “judgmentalism,” widely imputed to those who oppose abortion, and to maintain credibility among the feminist friends I cherished.

Daily Devotional

August 02

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Thou shall be turned into another man (1 Samuel 10:6)

What a miserable thing self is, what an ugly thing, what a foul thing. We are all guilty of this, every one of us, in some shape or form.... Self needs to be exposed for what it is. Sin in its ugliness and foulness needs to be unmasked.... It is the greatest enemy of the soul, and it leads to misery and un-happiness....

That brings me to the cure. What is the treatment? It is to understand the controlling principle of the Kingdom of God ... in the Kingdom of God everything is essentially different from everything in every other kingdom ... the Kingdom of God is not like that which you have always known, it is something quite new and different. The first thing we have to realize is that ‘if any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new’. If only we realized as we should, that here we are in a realm in which everything is different! The whole foundation is different, it has nothing to do with the principle of the old life.... We must say to ourselves every day of our fives, ‘Now I am a Christian, and because I am a Christian I am in the Kingdom of God and all my thinking has got to be different. Everything here is different. I must not bring with me those old ideas, those old moods and concepts of thought.’ We tend to confine salvation to one thing, namely to forgiveness, but we have to apply the principle throughout the Christian life.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 128–9

---

“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”

Justification of Knowledge and Truth (Part II)

A Bold Plan for Perpetual Ignorance

How do we know that what we know is actually true?  Wittgenstein and the post-modernists argued that we never will know absolute truth; all we can have is perspectives (including this one).  This has not sat well with traditional philosophers, but it has certainly had a field day in the world of academia.  We now have endless lists of perspectives as subjects for study: queer literature, minority art, feminist politics, proletarian ethics, trans-gender discourse, and so on, ad nauseam.  The end result is lots and lots of insignificant jobs for post-modern academics.  Lots of heat, but not much light.

We have argued that rationalism--one of the traditional justifications of knowledge--elides into tautologies and irrationalism.  The second major tendency to justify knowledge as being true-truth is empiricism.  This is probably the tendency which is most popular today--largely, due to the widespread belief that science (which employs the "empirical" method) delivers the truth.  As Frame explains:

Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow

A Pretty Firm Grip on the Ears

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

July 28, 2014

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to preface my remarks with any of these qualifications, but then again, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have our perennial crisis in the Middle East. And so it would be that I would not have to say anything at all . . . in a perfect world.

But here are the qualifications. Israel is a sinful nation, and they need to hear the message of Christ desperately. They are a Western nation, transplanted by Zionists into a troubled part of the world, said transplanting not commending itself to me as having been a good idea. They share the strengths of the West, as well as all the decadent weaknesses. They are in an extraordinarily challenging situation, largely created by the lords of the earth drawing hubristic lines on the map after the First World War. In short, they have a grizzly bear by the ears. On the bright side, they currently have a pretty firm grip on those ears, but the long term prospects are not rosy.

Daily Devotional

August 01

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

The nature of meekness

[Meekness] is not a natural quality. It is not a matter of a natural disposition, because all Christians are meant to be like this. It is not only some Christians. Every Christian, whatever his natural temperament or psychology may be, is meant to be like this. Now we can prove that very easily. Take these various characters whom I have mentioned, apart from our Lord Himself, and I think you will find that in every case we have a man who was not hake this by nature. Think of the powerful, extraordinary nature of a man hake David, and yet observe his meekness. Jeremiah similarly lets us into the secret. He says he was almost like a boiling cauldron, and yet he was still meek. Look at a man like the Apostle Paul, a master mind, an extraordinary personality, a strong character; yet consider his utter humility and meekness. No, it is not a matter of natural disposition; it is something that is produced by the Spirit of God....

A Good News Story

 Progress At Last

Separation and divorce is painful enough for adults, many of whom remain permanently scarred.  In hindsight not a few come to regret their decision to split apart and look back at the conflict and circumstances that led them to that fateful decision, concluding (now) that it was all small change in the grand scheme of things. They regret their immature decisions and hasty actions.  But we have learned that the children of such divorces often are damaged for their entire lives. 

This bad situation is made ten times worse if the divorce is acrimonious.  Far too many divorces have ended up that way, even if the decision to separate initially was reasonably amicable and mutual, due to the involvement of the Family Court.  Courts require lawyers, and lawyers' stock-in-trade is disputation and argumentation, getting the best-deal-no-matter-what for their client.  The resulting anger and bitterness can last decades, inflicting yet far more needless damage upon children. And, not a few lawyers have preferred a long drawn out process because of the higher fee payoff. 

Finally, the NZ government has introduced some reforms which are deconstructing the hostilities.  The Minister of Justice, Judith Collins has announced:

Letter From the UK (About the Left's Anti-Semitism)

Is the Left anti-Semitic? 

Sadly, it is heading that way 

Brendan O'Neill
The Telegraph
29 July, 2014

Brendan O'Neill is editor of the online magazine spiked and is a columnist for the Big Issue in London and The Australian in, er, Australia. His satire on environmentalism, Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas, is published by Hodder & Stoughton. He doesn't tweet.

There has been a lot of talk over the past two weeks about whether it is anti-Semitic to oppose Israel’s attack on Gaza. Radical Leftists and liberal commentators have insisted (perhaps a bit too much?) that there is nothing remotely anti-Semitic about their anger with Israel or their fury on behalf of battered, bruised and bombed Palestinians. And of course they are right that it is entirely possible to oppose Israel’s militarism without harbouring so much as a smidgen of dislike for the Jewish people. Some will oppose the war in Gaza simply because they are against wars in general, especially ones that impact on civilians.

However, it seems pretty clear to me that much of the left in Europe and America is becoming more anti-Semitic, or at least risks falling into the trap of anti-Semitism, sometimes quite thoughtlessly. In the language it uses, in the ideas it promotes, in the way in which it talks about the modern world, including Israel, much of the Left has adopted a style of politics that has anti-Semitic undertones, and sometimes overtones.

This is a recurring theme in anti-Israel sentiment today: the idea that a powerful, sinister lobby of Israel lovers has warped our otherwise respectable leaders here in the West, basically winning control of Western foreign policy.

The key problem has been the Left’s embrace of conspiratorial thinking, its growing conviction that the world is governed by what it views as uncaring “cabals”, “networks”, self-serving lobbyists and gangs of bankers, all of which has tempted it to sometimes turn its attentions towards those people who historically were so often the object and the target of conspiratorial thinking – the Jews.

Yes, one can hate Israel’s attack on Gaza without hating the Jews. But there’s no denying that the hatred being expressed for Israel’s attack on Gaza is different to the opposition to all other acts of militarism in recent times.

Daily Devotional

July 31

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Be still, and know that I am God

... we worry about things. If only we realized God’s loving concern for us, that He knows everything about us, and is concerned about the smallest detail of our lives! The man who believes that can no longer worry.
Then think about His power and ability. ‘Our God’, ‘my God’. Who is my God who takes such a personal interest in me? He is the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He is the Sustainer of everything that is. Read again Psalm 46 to remind yourself of this: ‘He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder’. He controls everything. He can smash the heathen and every enemy; His power is illimitable. And as we contemplate all that, we must agree with the deduction of the Psalmist when, addressing the heathen, he said, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’. [‘Be still”] means, ‘Give up (or ‘Give in’) and admit that I am God’. God is addressing people who are opposed to Him and He says: This is My power; therefore give up and give in, keep silent and know that I am God.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

July 30, 2014

The Dems are talking up the prospect of impeachment for the president right now because they know what a loser issue that would be for the Republicans, and the Democrats desperately need for the Republicans to obtain for themselves a loser issue that can be wrapped around their necks. They are able to talk it up because even though the Republican leadership is (wisely) dismissing such talk with contempt, there is a high level of frustration with the president’s behavior in the Republican base. The leadership is attempting to vent this frustration with their lawsuit, seeking to head off any talk of impeachment. The last go round with all this, when Clinton was impeached, was disastrous for the Republicans, because they treated ordinary politics as though it were something else. When you start killing ants with a baseball bat, the rest of the story will not go well for you.

For our foreign readers, in our system a president is impeached when the House of Representatives brings articles of impeachment. It is like being indicted — the trial is yet to happen. The House prosecutes the case, and the Senate serves as the jury. Thus when a president is impeached by the House, he will then be convicted (or not) by the Senate.

As St. Augustine once succinctly put it in his treatise on just war, don’t start what you can’t finish.

Up to this point in our history, impeachment has only been on the table three times.

The Justification of Knowledge and Truth, Part I

Knowing a Lot About Nothing Much

Ever since Wittgenstein and Foucault burst onto the scene, the justification of knowledge has been a big issue.  To Wittgenstein and the post-modernists that emerged in his wake, all knowledge is the product of perspectives and the sub-set of language which reflects and reinforces each particular perspective.  The  meaning of "linguistic signs" came from the processes of learning the language of each respective perspective, or world-view.  Thus post-modernism was born: all human knowledge is circular, conditioned, and relative.  The assertion, "This is the truth" becomes "This is my perspective"--a far less significant claim. 

One consequence has been the growing focus upon the basis for knowledge, and how knowledge itself can be justified or regarded as authoritative.  Historically, there have been three basic tendencies offered in the non-Christian world to justify knowledge.  The first tendency is rationalism.  The second is empiricism.  The third is subjectivism which is where post-modernism would probably be anchored.  John Frame argues that these three should be regarded as tendencies, rather than schools, since advocates of one of these perspectives inevitably mixes in doses of the other two.  [John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1987), 9.109]

We can illustrate this by considering rationalism.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

The Crawling Snake of Envy

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

July 25, 2014

I said recently that envy is the great invisible driver in our modern political conflicts. On what basis can I say this, and is this not a case of trying to read hearts?

First, we see the simple statements of Scripture as treating envy as public, visible, identifiable. But first, hold your horses. A bit further down, I will conclude by reconciling my point that envy is “visible,” and yet is the “great invisible driver.”

So then, where does Scripture describe envy as a public kind of sin? Pilate knew why Jesus was on trial before him, and it had nothing to do with the actual charges.

“For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy” (Mark 15:10).

Stephen, narrating the story of Joseph and his brothers, interpreted their hostility toward Joseph as driven by envy, even though the Genesis account doesn’t mention the envy by name (Gen. 37:4). The writer of Genesis says that the brothers saw that Jacob loved Joseph more, and they hated him — which is an instance of envy.

“And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him” (Acts 7:9).

Luke records the fact of mobs forming, but he is also able to tell (at a glance) why they were forming.

Daily Devotional

July 30

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

For I am myself my own fever and pain

Let us ... consider what this man discovered about himself in detail. [Psalm 73:21–2]. The first thing ... was that he had very largely been producing his own troubles and his own unhappiness ... his trouble was not really the ungodly at all; it was himself. He found that he had ... ‘worked himself up’ into this condition ... What he is saying [in v. 21] is that he has done something to himself. He is saying, ‘I have soured my heart... I was preparing for myself a piercing pain’. He had been doing it himself. He had been stimulating his own heart, he had been exacerbating his own trouble, he had been souring his own feelings. He himself had really been producing his own troubles and giving rise to this piercing pain which he had been enduring until he went into the sanctuary of God.

This is clearly a very important and vital principle. The fact is ... that we tend to produce and exacerbate our own troubles.

True Colours

Out of the Abundance of the Heart, the Mouth Speaks

One of the reasons we have such little respect for politicians is their lack of integrity.  It's an easy indictment to make and no doubt there are politicians who maintain high personal and professional ethical standards as they go about their tasks and duties.  But far too many slide into misleading and deceptive behaviour if they think it will be to their advantage in the polls.

One manifestation is the practice of "gotcha politics".  Commentator John Armstrong explains:

"Gotcha politics" is all about focusing voters' attention on the gaffes and mistakes of opponents rather than trying to win the election by winning the battle of ideas.  It is personality-based politics, not issue-driven politics. It is all about wrecking your opponents' campaign by landing major hits on their credibility.  At its worst, gotcha politics can be an old-fashioned witch-hunt dressed up in modern-day notions of accountability. None of this new, [sic] of course.  What has changed is the extent and intensity of gotcha politics.

A basic rule of thumb is whenever a politician sanctimoniously promises to focus upon the "issues" and to run a principled campaign one can be sure that they will do the exact opposite.  Thus it has proved to be the case with the Greens, whose sanctimony has become noisome and their integrity now at an invisible vanishing point.