The Politics of the Cross Resurrected

Rick Santorum Tells It Like It Is

2012-02-02T13:53:00.003-05:00

Yesterday on the Hugh Hewitt radio show Rick Santorum told the uncomfortable truth about the tragedy of the Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops playing footsie with the most radically secular and anti-Christian administration in US history. Here is an excerpt from the transcript:

HH: Now I want to talk to you about two substantive issues, Senator Santorum. The first are these new regulations from the Obama administration. I read the letter from Archbishop Olmstead of Phoenix on the air. Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has written a new article in First Things. It’s shocking, actually, what’s going on. Should this be a centerpiece of whoever the nominee’s campaign is?

RS: I talked about it in every speech I’ve given today. And here’s what I said, though, Hugh. I said that I took issue with the Catholic Bishops Conference, because Hugh, you may remember, they embraced Obamacare.

HH: Yes.

RS: They embraced it and said…here’s what I said to them. Be careful when you have government saying that they can give you rights, that you have a right to health care, and government’s going to give you something, because once you are now dependant on government, they, not only can they take that right away, they can tell you how to exercise that right, and you can either like it or not. And that’s the problem. That’s what the Catholic Bishops Conference didn’t get, that there’s no free lunch here, folks. If you’re going to give people secular power, then they’re going to use it in a secular fashion. And that’s why, you know, I hate to say it, but you know, you had it coming. And it’s time to wake up and realize that government isn’t the answer to the social ills. It’s people of faith, and it’s families, and it’s communities, and it’s charities that need to do this as it has in America so successfully for so long.

HH: Rick Santorum, what do you advise Catholic hospitals, Catholic colleges, Catholic…the centers of poverty assistance, the adoption agencies? What do you advise them to do in the face of, as Archbishop Olmstead said, we cannot comply with this unjust law?

RS: Civil disobedience. This will not stand. There’s no way they can make this stand. The Supreme Court, eventually, this thing’s going to get to the Supreme Court just like the ministerial hiring issue that was just decided by the Supreme Court the other day. And it was a 9-0 decision that said the Obama administration can’t roll over people of faith when it comes to hiring. Yet in the face of that decision, this radical, secular government of Barack Obama continues to have faith be the least important of the 1^st Amendment. And I just think they fight. They fight in the courts, and they fight by civil disobedience, and go to war with the federal government over this one.

HT: Sam Dempster.

There is so much to like here: honesty, clarity and courage. But I think what stands out to me is his optimism. He quotes the recent Supreme Court case in which the court ruled 9-0 that the federal government can't make religious organizations hire atheists just because it wants to do so. Religious freedom is endangered, but not dead yet, in the United States of America.

Optimism was Reagan's greatest asset. Conservatives are easily caricatured as gloomy, pessimistic, backward-looking thinkers and Reagan made it impossible to regard him in that way. Gingrich is not the Reagan in this race and Romney is the second coming of George H. W. Bush. Gingrich only talks conservatism; Romney can't even do that without flubbing his lines. The true Reagan conservative is Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum for president!

When Science is Turned Into Religion It Makes Reasonable Debate Difficult

2012-01-30T11:49:00.005-05:00

Evidence that global warming alarmism is one of the biggest (and most expensive) hoaxes in history continues to pour in.

Here is an article that sums up some of the most important developments: "Science Continues to Cast Doubt on Global Warming" by Chriss W. Street. The study shows that it is likely the sun that has caused the earth to warm in the twentieth century rather than Co2.

Nature Journal of Science, ranked as the world’s most cited scientific periodical, has just published the definitive study on Global Warming that proves the dominant controller of temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere is due to galactic cosmic rays and the sun, rather than by man.

The article he wrote on the study published in Nature can be found here and the Nature study itself can be found here.

An article in the Daily Mail reports that the Met Office (the national British weather service) has admitted that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

And here is a good article to keep in mind the next time someone says something like "All the respected scientists agree on global warming being real . . . " In the Wall Street Journal, sixteen leading scientists sign a letter with the message: "No Need to Panic about Global Warming."

The article describes the decision by Dr. Ivor Giaever to resign from the American Physical Society over its stand on global warming:

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

Dr. Giaever is right. A scientific theory that is described as "incontrovertible" is no longer scientific; it is ideology or religion or something else, but it is not scientific. The politicized way some "scientists" talk about global warming shows that when they talk about it they do so as individual laymen, not as scientists. If they talked as scientists they would always talk in terms of "to the best of our knowledge right now," or "current evidence suggests" or "our latest theories seem to indicate." Something "incontrovertible" is something beyond the reach of empirical evidence to confirm or disconfirm and therefore not an issue that can be decided by science per se. A clash of religious commitments is not the same as a disagreement over the empirical data and their meaning.

The broader context of this issue is the impact of postmodernism and epistemological relativism in particular on science. Marxist and neo-Marxist thought (eg. Critical Theory) is so strong in contemporary Western universities that the whole truth question is becoming sidelined in favor of analyses of which social group benefits from which theory. The idea is that, since truth per se is unknowable, the important thing about a theory like, say capitalism or sexual orientation or global warming or evolution is not whether the evidence supports it but who benefits from society holding it as true.

It is enough to make me long for the good old days in the 70s when I was taught in Philosophy of Science that Christianity is untrue because empirical evidence was against it. In those days, all you had to do to defend the faith was appeal to the facts; it was not just that, but the facts were to some extent relevant.

I thought it was a challenge then, but today it looks relatively easy! Today, the "facts" make no dent in the mindset that believes that objective truth is nothing but disguised self-interest. And when the facts are as useless as a squirt gun, one realizes how difficult the whole "preaching the Gospel" thing actually is.

It is just a good thing we have the Holy Spirit!

Liberal Catholics Wake Up to Find That Obama Played Them for Fools

2012-01-21T15:50:00.005-05:00

In the 2008 election Obama used a collection of both liberal Catholic and Left-wing Evangelicals (the technical terms is "useful idiots") to help him get elected. Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Brian McLaren helped fool many Evangelicals into thinking that Obama was a moderate, a centrist, a liberal but not a socialist in order to help get him elected in a center-right country.

Now, however, liberal Catholics who voted for Obama and refused the pleadings of conservatives to recognize Obama as the left-wing ideologue that he is are beginning to realize how foolish they were to fall for the propaganda. They were warned that Obamacare would trample on religious liberty and that it would force insurers to cover abortion. Liberal Catholics scoffed. Now it is clear how sadly mistaken the liberals were.

The Editors of National Review sum up the ruling by the Health and Human Services Department:

"The Supreme Court decided decades ago that access to birth control is a constitutional right. Now, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has decided that access to “free” birth control is a right, too. Under new HHS regulations, which the department is authorized to create under Obamacare, insurance plans will be required to cover birth control — including the morning-after pill “ella,” which seems to work as an abortifacient in some cases — with no co-pay. The rule will take effect Aug. 1, 2012, or later.
Of course, insurance companies don’t provide anything for “free.” Any time they cover a new service or eliminate co-pays, they charge higher premiums to make up the lost revenue. So the department is forcing people who do not use birth control to subsidize it, through higher premiums, for people who do."

The issue here is religious liberty. There is to be no conscientious objection: Caesar is telling the Church to go against its moral beliefs and fall into line.

Michael Sean Winters, a liberal Catholic who supported Obamacare is appalled at the heavy-handed betrayal:

One sentence in the statement from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stands out: “The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good.”
What can those words “fully committed” possibly mean? They have punched Sr. Carol Keehan and Fr. Jenkins and many other Catholics who have taken shots for this Administration in the nose. They have jumped over the First Amendment to coerce religious organizations to do something we find morally objectionable. They have given people who loved the Affordable Care Act reason for pause, great pause. They have given the Republicans a huge battering ram with which to beat swing voting Catholics over the head.
I say “they,” but the full responsibility for this decision rests with the President. NCR has learned that the President called Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, this morning to tell him the news. Wouldn’t you have liked to be on an extension to listen in on that conversation. The president looked Dolan in the eye in November and said he would be pleased with his decision. I am guessing that Dolan is not pleased. He is not alone.

Winters followed up this blog with a post in which he declared that Obama had lost his vote forever, here.

Thomas Peters, a conservative Catholic blogger, cannot help saying "We told you so." (Who can blame him?)

Winters is right that this decision is a huge blow to liberal Catholics who have tried to cover for Obama. But Winters is wrong that the President’s decision comes as any sort of surprise. Of course Obama would throw his liberal Catholics supporters under the bus to please his leftist secular supporters. Obama’s wedding with liberal Catholics has always been one of convenience and he just filed the divorce papers. I therefore find it hard to sympathize with liberal Catholics who are shocked by this decision, because I’ve been warning for years that their relationship with Obama was bound to end in heartbreak.

But you know things are getting weird when Father Z has kind words to say about Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles as he does here. Why? Well, Cardinal Mahoney is bitter about Obama's betrayal too:

In probably the most expansive decision on the part of the US Federal government ever, the Department of Health and Human Services has issued an "interim final rule" to require virtually all private health plans to include coverage for all FDA-approved prescription contraceptives, female sterilization procedures, and related "patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity."

These are listed among "preventive services for women" that all health plans will have to include without co-pays or other cost sharing--even if the insurer, the employer or other plan sponsor, or the woman herself object to such coverage.

This decision from the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] is from the highest level of Federal government, and I cannot imagine that this decision was released without the explicit knowledge and approval of President Barack Obama.

And I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience than this ruling today. This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic Community can muster.

From what he says in the rest of the blog post, Obama has lost Cardinal Mahoney's vote too and when Obama loses a liberal like Cardinal Mahoney, well it looks like he will be facing a united Catholic hierarchy as an enemy in the Fall election. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a response here.

All I can say to the liberal Catholics is, welcome to the fight against the most anti-Christian president in American history and what took you so long? But, better late than never.

As for the Evangelical Left, I can only wonder what it will take to wake them up.

On Teaching Students to "Think For Themselves"

2012-01-20T18:44:00.003-05:00

Here are three questions every university professor must answer:

Should university education be "unbiased"?
Should professors teach students "what to think" or should they teach them "how to think"?
Should a student expect a professor to come to class, lay out a range of conflicting views on a certain topic (eg. economic theories about creating jobs in a recession, whether Aristotle is misogynist, whether the British Empire was a force for good or evil in the world, various views on abortion or euthanasia or war, Milton's view of free speech, or Mill's no harm principle) and then invite the students to choose which one to accept?

I think each of these questions is more difficult to answer than one one might think at first glance.

First, let's take the third question, which asks about what I call the "cafeteria approach to forming one's opinions." Now, I understand that many of my students come to my classes expecting professors to function like the operators of the campus cafeteria. Here are four (or three or five) views on this subject: pick the one you like best.

They think this way for several reasons. For one thing, they have never experienced any form of education that did not avow this as the goal except for the hard sciences, which most of them have not studied at a rigorous level. Even those who understand that the hard sciences do not traffic in personal opinions seem to think that the humanities and social sciences are completely different on this point. So even if they are not relativists about the hard sciences, they usually are about ethics, literature and politics. (This often applies even to students who are committed Christians!)

If there is one lesson most students learn from twelve years of public school it is that they have the personal right to choose - except when they don't. The point is that in matters concerning their own bodies they have the right to be total, postmodern relativists and make up their own morality, but in matters of government, taxes, money, language and politics they must conform to group think. This is what contemporary educational theory is designed to teach and does teach very effectively.

All reality is divided into the realms of the "private" and the "public." They are convinced that it is perfectly fine to hold any view you choose on "private" issues and utterly heinous to depart from group think on "public" issues. On private issues you can have any opinion you like; on public issues you must think like the herd. However, they never get around to thinking about why various issues get assigned to each category. It never seems to intrigue them that sexual behavior used to be private and sexual morality public and now it has been reversed so that sexual behavior is public and sexual morality is private. Why is that? "Dunno, just is" many would say.

Thus, they are essentially confused about the foundations of truth, goodness and beauty. But they think their mixed-up views are sane and logical simply because they derive their opinions from the majority of authority figures in the culture.

When they encounter me, however, they are often quite shocked to realize that I do not think they have the right to choose their own truth in private matters and I actually encourage rebellion against the group think known as "political correctness" on public matters. I'm authoritarian where they have been taught to glorify the romantic rebel against authority and rebellious where they have been taught to be meekly submissive!

Unlike secular, public educational theory, I believe that there is a vast difference between the right to choose for yourself and the right to think for yourself. I believe that everyone has the right to think for himself, but also that, having thought carefully about an issue, one must bow to the objective truth on that issue instead of choosing the view that is most congenial or comfortable to oneself.

It is "pedagogical prostitution" simply to teach what the "customer" wants to hear and it is irresponsible in the extreme to present a range of true, partly true, partly false and false opinions as if they were equal in status. In fact, to teach this way is to teach epistemological relativism in practice no matter what one says in theory.

Does this mean one only teaches the "one, true view" of every issue? No, of course not. It simply means that, even when presenting views one does not hold, one recognizes and admits openly that one is coming from a particular perspective. I notice that this makes some students uncomfortable and, when that happens, the most common response is to accuse me of "bias" as if I wasn't supposed to have any - or more realistically - was not supposed to admit openly that I have any. It is as if the mere assertion that one is unbiased does the trick. But of course it doesn't in actual practice. To avoid accusations of bias, it has to be followed up by a relativistic listing of options and an invitation to the student to choose according to his own, personal, irrational preferences. As soon as it becomes clear you won't do that, the accusation of bias comes back like a shot.

As for the second question, it should be clear by now that it presents a false dilemma because the only way to teach students how to think is to challenge the late modern and false idea that discovering truth is an act of the will - a choice - and advocating the traditional and true idea that discovering truth is an act of submission of the will to reality itself. It is not submission of the will to the professor any more than it is a submission of the will to "political correctness," "leftist media elites" or "the authority figures of pop culture." We teach students to think by getting them to think instead of lazily just choosing. Our goal is to teach them to think, not to merely to let the exercise of the will lazily substitute for rational deliberation. The more they actually think the more they will come to see the poverty and nihilism of just choosing.

As for the first question, it would seem that we have a paradox: the university can only be truly unbiased by being biased. How so? A professor must be biased toward the truth as he honestly and sincerely sees it, but he he must make it clear that his opinion is not the standard of truth in itself. How can this be done?

Most importantly, a professor must, (like the preacher), point away from himself to something that stands higher than any individual opinion and try to get the student to see it for himself. Now, the fact that the student does not, at any given moment, see the truth in the same way is not as important as that the student understands that the truth itself is different from both the professor's opinion and the student's preference. The student must learn that this is so even when the professor's opinion happens to be true, just as much as it is when the professor's opinion happens to be false. Helping students develop a reverence for, and submissive spirit before, the truth is the greatest challenge of pedagogy. It is a delicate high wire act and extremely easy to mess up. For this reason, many professors lack the courage to teach well.

But if the professor seeks to exhibit no bias whatsoever, he must therefore treat truth and falsehood equally and to do this is to be a practicing relativist. And that is an ignoble betrayal of the teaching profession, for which love of wisdom and truth is the highest value.

So there must be academic freedom for both professor and student. Academic freedom for the professor will allow him to dissent from political correctness, majority opinion and cultural values that are false and in conflict with Christian truth. It thus frees the professor to stand for the truth as he sees it. Academic freedom for the student allows him to dissent from the professor's view without losing marks as long as the student has reasonable and fact-based arguments for doing so.

The grey area in adjudicating this delicate balance will arise from a clash of worldviews: the commitment to absolute truth that one hopes the Christian professor professes and the commitment to personal choice as higher than truth on private matters and the necessity of conforming to political correctness on public matters that the student has imbibed from secular education and the contemporary culture at large.

The result is a paradoxical situation: teaching students to think for themselves will necessitate a vigorous defense of truth and a refusal to allow students to say that it doesn't matter what a person chooses to believe because it is a personal choice. Some students will have to be drug through this door kicking and screaming and it won't feel to them like being made more broad-minded. It will feel like being indoctrinated - a curious paradox! But until they realize that the truth is not personal opinion - either their own or their professor's - they have not even learned that they need to think for themselves, let alone how to do so with excellence.

I tell my students that a real university education involves learning to detect, and allow for, biases because biases are everywhere - in the textbooks they read, in blog posts, in their professors, in their peers, in pop culture, in contemporary, public education etc. To expect a professor to be a safe island of objectivity in a seas of bias is unrealistic. I also tell them that open, professed, argued-for, biased beliefs are much less dangerous to them than unacknowledged, denied, presumed, biased beliefs. It is the latter for which they should especially be on the lookout.

When someone tells you that he is just "trying to help you learn to think for yourself," rather than "telling you what to think" your BS antennae should go up and a little red light should start flashing in your mind. For what comes next is likely to be either (1) a bid to get you to accept the idea that truth is a function of your personal choosing (inculcation in moral relativism) or (2) an attempt to persuade you that you have to accept the dicta of the politically correct police because that is what all right-thinking people do (inculcation in secularism).

Life is full of paradoxes.

Is Ron Paul a Conservative?

2012-01-08T14:39:00.005-05:00

No, Ron Paul is a libertarian and that is why I utterly despise his political philosophy and regard it as being as great a danger as socialism. Libertarianism is incompatible with conservatism and incompatible with Christianity.

Many people are confused by Ron Paul's clever hijacking of the Republican Party's presidential nomination process to use as a platform for his nefarious ideas, but Ron Paul is no conservative and it is important for every Christian to understand the difference between what he stands for and what true conservatism is all about. I believe that a Biblical Christian must be a conservative of some sort and cannot be a consistent socialist or libertarian without compromising the Faith. But definitions are essential for understanding. But these terms need definition or my statements will be misunderstood.

William D. Gairdner has the best brief explanation of the difference between socialism, conservatism and libertarianism in his book, The Trouble with Canada. . . Still! (Chapter 6) Here is how he explains it.

Think of our society as having three layers. At the top is the State, the governing power. At the bottom are individuals considered as individuals only. In the middle layer are a multitude of intermediate institutions and structures which are collectively called "civil society." These range from the relatively shallow and ephemeral ones such as bowling leagues and gardening societies to the family, which is pre-political, universal and rooted in nature not culture. The Church is also part of civil society and both Church and Family are prior to the State, which is to say that the State can only recognize their integrity and right to exist but has no power to alter, ban or attack them. Historically and logically (and ontologically) the Church and Family precede the State.

Socialism:
Now, we can define our terms. Socialism is a form of statism, which means that socialists believe that society should be governed from the top down by an elite class of scientific planners with the chief goal being equality of outcome so that everyone has roughly the same income no matter how talented or hard-working each one is. This belief is what makes socialism a form of "statism" and all forms of statism are bad including absolute monarchies, communism, fascism and big-government, welfare-state liberalism. The idea that government should be a rational, top-down operation is the essence of the problem and this idea comes out of the Enlightment. All the various forms of statism are variations on a theme; all are oligarchic in nature.

Libertarianism:
Libertarianism is the exact opposite of statism and statism's sworn enemy. Libertarians focus on the individual and ignore the middle layer of civil society.

Because of the state's monopoly on violence, libertarians have to acknowledge the existence (and grudgingly even the limited legitimacy) of the state. But their ideal is to limit the state as much as possible, keep taxes low and provide individuals with as much liberty as possible. The only justification for the state making and enforcing a law is to protect one person from harming another. But anything that does not harm someone else should be legal. This is why Ron Paul is in favor of legalizing drugs, for example. The argument that weak people will get addicted and be exploited by drug pushers makes cuts no ice with libertarians. Their attitude is a Nietzchean indifference: "Too bad for gullible idiots."

Conservatism:
Conservatives are different from both of the above two political philosophies in that conservatives do not have an ideology. Conservatives do not make either individual liberty or equality the first principle from which all political decisions flow, as do libertarians and socialists respectively. Conservatives do not believe in top down or bottom up governance, but instead focus on the preservation and nurturing of civil society. Conservatives believe that manners and customs are important and that law should evolve slowly up from thousands of individual court decisions. Therefore, conservatives support English common law rather than French-style code law.

Conservatives believe that a Hobbsian war of all against all, such as libertarianism would foster, is extremely bad, but they also believe that the statist cure of Nanny Government riding to the rescue at the expense of personal freedom is a cure worse than the disease. (This last point explains why, despite their disagreements, conservatives and libertarians can make a tactical alliance against all forms of statism.)

But conservatives believe that it is Family, Church and other forms of local community that give life meaning rather than individualism or collectivism (two modern ideologies). Conservatives believe that we need a state, but that it is severely limited in what it can accomplish. Most of what the state legitimately does is negative: punishing crime, defending the borders etc. But the postive shaping of virtue and individual lives should not be done by the state, but by civil society, primarily the Family and the Church. The reason for this view is that conservatives believe that morality and the meaning of life is not determined by the State.

Conservatives believe in a transcendent moral order (whether conceptualized as Divine commands, natural law or Tradition) that must be recognized. All religions and even virtuous irreligious people agree on basic morality (what C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man terms the Tao.) This means that conservatives accept limits to Utopian efforts to make the world perfect and also limits on personal freedom.

In fact, for conservatives real freedom is not the ability to enact one's whims or satisfy one's appetites at every moment; real freedom is the ability to realize our telos, to achieve our purpose as human beings. Christians believe we have both a natural telos as humans and an ultimate telos consisting of the beatific vision. In other words, we were made by God and for God. But we discover our true nature as human beings not as members of the mass society governed by statist planners or as individuals choosing our own values, but through religion, family and community.

Liberalism:
There is one more term whose meaning is very difficult to pin down and which causes a lot of confusion. That term is, of course, "liberalism." What is liberalism?

Classical 19th century liberalism was a political philosophy that emphasized limited government, free markets and individual liberty with a recognition of Christianity as true and as the source of parliamentary democracy, human rights and political liberalism. This political philosophy, which has influenced much of the world through the influence of the British Empire, has been the greatest means of gaining freedom, prosperity and justice for whole societies that the world has ever seen.

The problem is that in the 19th century Europe lost its faith in Jesus Christ, as did a large chunk of the governing elites in the US, Canada and the rest of the West. This loss of faith, known as "secularization," has removed the foundation of political liberalism and has caused political liberalism to decay and rot.

During the 20th century one strand of liberalism decayed into libertarianism. With nothing more solid than the conceptually incoherent utilitarianism of J. S. Mill to sustain it, this kind of liberalism without God glorified "choice" and "the individual" until it could not avoid falling into the Nietzschean glorification of the "will to power." This is the philosophical basis of the "right to choose" slogan of the abortion wars.

In the 20th century another strand of classical liberalism decayed into pseudo-socialism. These liberals lost their grip on a transcendent concept of justice (natural law) and fell into epistemological and ethical relativism. Multiculturalism and socialist attempts at re-distribution of wealth by the state were policy results.

One strand of liberalism made an idol out of "choice" and the other made an idol out of "equality" and then eventually these two strands came together in what we can call "libertarian socialism." This is a political philosophy in which the sexual revolution meets Karl Marx with the result that contraception, pornography, promiscuity, divorce, abortion, homosexuality etc. create the illusion of "freedom" for the individual while the state confiscates an ever-increasing percentage of his income in taxes and creates an endlessly-increasing number of regulations, legal requirements and administrative laws take the place of the morality taught by the Church and inculcated by the Family.

Statists don't believe that "Father knows best" but rather that "Government knows best." And they have the nerve to mock those of us who think a flesh-and-blood father relating personally to his blood relations is dispensable while government bureaucrats performing impersonal social engineering on us is perfectly normal!

Classical liberalism is a good thing. But the word has been corrupted by those who like to hide behind it while acting as libertarian socialists. If Obama is a "liberal" then the word has lost its value. The irony is that the only people who stand today for real liberalism are conservatives.

One last point is important. I believe that a Christian must be a conservative in our historical situation because Christianity has shaped Western civilization in such beneficial and life-giving ways: limited government, parliamentary democracy, free markets, the rule of law, free speech, religious freedom, the public recognition of God, the natural law as the basis of positive law, the common law system and so on. European culture has been shaped by the uniquely Christian doctrine of the division of powers reflected in the separation of church and state. This is not a doctrine of the marginalization or privatization of church as in secularism, but a doctrine that says that both church and state have valid, though different, roles to play is sustaining a liberal democracy.

The key points to recognize are (1) that liberal democracy does not work without Christianity and (2) that Christianity must be mediated to society through civil society. Therefore a secularized liberal democracy will always degenerate into the individualistic chaos of libertarianism or the suffocating bureaucracy of statism. As Yeats put it "The center does not hold."

This is why libertarianism is so bad. Ron Paul may be a Christian; I don't know. But libertarianism is pernicious. It is what you get when you take individual liberty to such an extreme that you eliminate the structures of civil society that make society civilized.

Cross-posted at The Bayview Review.

Newt Exposes the Media's Anti-Catholic Bias

2012-01-08T14:17:00.004-05:00

Give Newt Gingrich credit for exposing the anti-Christian bias of the secular media and highlighting the fact that it is the Christian Church that is facing more bias and discrimination than homosexuals are today.

Last night, in answer to a typically loaded question by the moderator, Gingrich said:

"I just want to raise -- since we spent this much time on these issues, I just want to raise the point about the news media bias. You don't hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won't accept gay couples which is exactly what the state has done. Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won't give in to bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivering of service because of the bias of the administration? The bigotry question goes both ways. There's a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. None of it gets covered by the news media."

You can see the video clip of this answer here. The point is that the secular media is not interested literally in "bias" or "discrimination" or "fairness," but rather in advancing the sexual revolution agenda and undermining the foundations of our culture. That is the real problem.

By the way, Mitt Romney had a great line too. He said that when he was Governor of Massachusetts the Supreme Court found that the Constitution required the state to recognize marriage between two people of the same sex. Then he said, "John Adams, the author of the Constitution would undoubtedly be very surprised to hear that!" No doubt.

An Introduction to Rick Santorum

2012-01-07T18:46:00.003-05:00

Here is Rick Santorum's speech in Iowa the other night after the results showed that he had tied Mitt Romney for first place after a miraculous rise in the polls late in the campaign. This speech introduces Rick Santorum to the American public and it is extremely good. In fact, it made me cry. Regardless of all the problems and all the brokenness, America must be a wonderful place if it produces men like this and voters who vote them into public office.

Just three quick comments.

1. He is careful to distinguish himself from libertarianism as much as from socialism, to which I can only say "Amen." This is refreshing and extremely important. Of course it raises questions about how he would hold the Republican coalition of traditional conservatives, Evangelicals, libertarians and national security hawks together if he distances himself from the libertarians. But my impression is that most of Ron Paul's supporters will vote Democratic or Libertarian Party anyway.

2. He has a clear linkage between social issues, especially the family, and economic issues. Jay Cost has more on this intriguing aspect of his position here:

Asked a question about how he would stop members of Congress from insider trading, Santorum began by saying that we shouldn’t need a law to prevent legislators from profiting off of non-public information, because such actions are unethical. But because our representatives don’t act ethically and morally, he said, we’ll have to pass a law to force them to do so. And then we’ll have to hire people to enforce the law. And congressional offices will swell with these new hall monitors. And the entire system of enforcement will cost Americans money.

You see, Santorum said, earnestly, “People say, ‘All we need to care about is cutting taxes and cutting government and everything will be fine.’ But if people don’t live good, decent, moral lives, government is going to get bigger. And that’s why I say families and faith is an important part of the foundation of economic limited government.”

It’s an elegant formulation—marrying values and morality to smaller government—and, superficially at least, it’s quite compelling. Santorum is the only man in the race selling this idea. The audience in Rockingham loved it.

3. Would Rick Santorum be another big government Republican president like the two Bushes? I don't think so. I think his conservatism is serious and real. He just knows how to explain why conservativism is actually compassionate, not when it imitates big-spending liberalism, but when it limits government and respects the "little platoons" of civil society.

And, besides all this, he is hated vociferously by all the right people.

Summer Job Opportunity for Pro-life Students

2012-01-06T17:07:00.002-05:00

The Center for Bio-ethical Reform has a terrific-looking summer job opportunity for students interested in making their summer count. See the details here.

This combination of learning and activism looks like a fantastic opportunity for a motivated student who wants to stretch and grow. Spread the word.

Rick Santorum is Civilized and So He Must be Destroyed

2012-01-06T16:34:00.004-05:00

Observers of American politics can see how the Left is completely bereft of ideas and arguments by the way they practice the politics of personal destruction as their only method of winning elections. One by one, from Sarah Palin to Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich, the leftist media and the Democratic machine have attacked every Republican conservative candidate who appears to pose a real threat to Barack Obama. Flimsy accusations and ginned up charges characterize the crude, vicious, gutter-level attacks on conservatives. Rick Perry is not racist, Herman Cain is not stupid and so on. But such accusations are the only reasons leftists can think of to offer as a justification for re-electing Obama with his failed policies and clueless trashing of America's economy.

Now it is Rick Santorum's turn. It isn't because he is a bad person; it is just that his poll numbers make him a threat to win. Peter Wehner has the best commentary on the hate-filled hatchet job launched this week against him. The Left went after him - not for his economic proposals or his foreign policy ideas or his views on the issues of the day - no, they actually went after him for the way in which he and his wife chose to deal with the death of their baby 15 years ago. Yes, the best argument the Left has as to why Rick Santorum should not be president is that he didn't just throw his baby in the dumpster as, apparently, the Left thinks is the right way to do it.

First it was Alan Colmes; now it is Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, who went on MSNBC to mock Rick Santorum for how he and his wife Karen dealt with the death of their son Gabriel. (A severe prenatal development led to his very early delivery, and Gabriel died two hours after his birth.)

“He’s not a little weird, it’s that he’s really weird,” Robinson said of Santorum. “And some of his positions he’s taken are just so weird, um, that I think that some Republicans are gonna be off-put. Um, not everybody is going to, going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the, the, the stillborn ah, ah, child, ah, um, whose body they took home to, to kind of sleep with it, introduce to the rest of the family. It’s a very weird story.”

You know what is really weird? Political commentators trying to gain some partisan advantage by mocking a family in grief. Now that is kinky. It betrays a basic character deficiency in a person who would stoop that low and it shows a poverty of logic and reason. They apparently have nothing intelligent to say about politics when it comes to conservatives. All they can do is attack the character of one of the most decent men in the race. Sad.

Wehner puts it in perspective:

On these comments I have three observations to make, the first of which is that spending time with a stillborn child (or one who died shortly after birth, as in the Santorum case) is commonly recommended. The matter of taking the child home for a few hours is less common, but they did it so that their other children could also spend a little time with the deceased child, and that is definitely recommended. For example, here’s the official page of the American Pregnancy Association (an association of health-care providers that treat pregnant women) about stillbirth. It recommends that parents spend time with the child, as the Santorums did, and the APA writes:

With the loss of your baby, your family members will also grieve. Your baby is someone’s granddaughter, brother, cousin, nephew or sister. It is important for your family members to spend time with the baby. This will help them come to terms with their loss. If you have other children, it is very important to be honest with them about what has happened by using simple and honest explanations. It is your decision whether you would like the children to see the baby. Ask for a Child Life Specialist at the hospital; these are trained professionals who can help you prepare your children for the heartbreaking news, and prepare them to see the baby if you wish.

This is basically what the Santorum family did. They also had a funeral, which is often done in these kinds of situations. It seems to be enormously helpful to people in a moment of terrible pain. So Robinson, like Colmes, was speaking out of a seemingly bottomless well of ignorance.

Robinson and Colmes are the weird, ignorant hillbillies, not Rick and Karen Santorum. Robinson and Colmes don't deserve to be on TV and in print and most likely would not be there if they didn't have the "politically correct" opinions and weren't willing to serve as the attack dogs of the Left. They are well-paid for what they do; one only wonders how they sleep at night.

Wehner is finished yet, however:

The second point is the casual cruelty of Robinson and those like him. Robinson seems completely comfortable lampooning a man and his wife who had experienced the worst possible nightmare for parents: the death of their child. It is one thing to say you would act differently if you were in the situation faced by Rick and Karen Santorum; it’s quite another to deride them as “crazy” and “very weird,” which is what commentators on the left are increasingly doing, and with particular delight and glee.

We are seeing how ideology and partisan politics can so disfigure people’s minds and hearts that they become vicious in their assaults on those with whom they have political disagreements. I would hope no one I know would, in a thousand years, ridicule parents who were grappling with unfathomable human pain. Even if those parents were liberal. Even if they were running for president and first lady.

This point is well-made. The Left talks about being non-violent but that is just talk. You can see the violence in their speech and the hate in their line of attack. The Left has the blood of millions of innocents on its hands while it calls us "war-mongers." This is hypocrisy on a grand scale.

The third point is it tells you something about the culture in which we live that in some quarters those who routinely champion abortion, even partial-birth abortion, are viewed as enlightened and morally sophisticated while those grieving the loss of their son, whom they took home for a night before burying, are mercilessly mocked.

It certainly does tell us something about our culture when you realize that this sort of animalistic ferocity does work in elections. But Wehner could have gone on to make explicit the point that our culture has been coarsened and vulgarized and hardened morally and emotionally by abortion itself. And that is really what lies behind these attacks.

The Santorum's baby, Gabriel, was born prematurely at an age when many babies are murdered. And so for them to show respect, tenderness and love toward such a child throws into stark relief the heartless cruelty of abortion, which is the sacrament of the religion of the Left - the ritual in which they worship the autonomy of the individual self and the primacy of the will to power. All the Santorums did was act in a normal, civilized manner toward their baby and that was enough to enrage the barbarians who celebrate killing as "necessary" and "their right."

It is worth reflecting on why it is that the Left believes that conservatives must not merely be defeated - they must be utterly and ruthlessly destroyed - and what that fact tells us about the enemy we face in these dark days.

Thoughts on Iowa (For US politics junkies)

2012-01-04T16:49:00.004-05:00

Well, Christmas is over, as much as I hate to admit it. Over the past two weeks it has been all family and church around here and not much time for blogging. Surprisingly, the world has managed to keep on going while I was otherwise occupied.

I will get the 2012 New Year's Predictions up soon (and grade myself on my 2011 predictions). Also, I plan to do a series on "The Christian Mind" to be cross-posted at the Bayview Review. And I will continue to comment on the US election right up to November because I believe this coming election is an event of incalculable importance to the future of Western civilization. Overall, however, I'll be blogging less this year because I want to concentrate on writing two books at once between now and summer. It should be a fun half-year!

1. Mitt Romney: I have never thought Mitt Romney would be the nominee right from the beginning. Nothing that has happened so far has convinced me that I'm wrong on that score. If the Republican Party is stupid enough to nominate him it may be the end of the Republican Party. If he repeats McCain's weak and insipid campaign and loses to Obama, there will likely be in response either a total and complete conservative take-over of the Republican Party or the rise of a new, third party, which will quickly replace the Republican Party. At the moment it should worry establishment Republicans immensely that 75% of the Republican voters (even counting the Democrats and liberal Independents who came out to vote for Ron Paul) continue to vote against Romney every chance they get.

2. Ron Paul: The spectacle of an extreme liberal (aka a Libertarian) running for the leadership of a conservative party is bizarre. What next? Sarah Palin challenging Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination? That would not be as weird as Ron Paul trying to pretend to be a Republican. The conservative-libertarian alliance is only tactical and depends entirely on the imminent threat of a common enemy. It is Churchill and Stalin against Hitler. But once Hitler is out of the way, the cold war is on.

3. Rick Perry: It is sad and unfortunate for the United States that Rick Perry entered late, stumbled and never recovered. He only got 10% of the vote for one reason only: people could not envision him holding his own in a debate with Obama. His policies are good, his record is good and his character is good. But he simply was not ready for the heavy debate schedule from September on. It is too bad.

4. Michele Bachmann: In a way, it is sad that she is now out of the race but not because I think she should have won. She was a voice of clarity and she clearly forced Romney to the right on some issues. She stood for continuing the Reagan Revolution and rolling back the new expansion of the welfare state under Obama and that is what the 2012 election will be all about. Her voice will be missed and if her message is sidelined in the interests of "electability" then the US will suffer as a result no matter who wins in 2012.

5. Newt Gingrich: His whining about the unfair negative advertising is in one sense perfectly justified, but in another sense pointless. He would have gotten far worse from Obama, with Obama's billion dollar negative ad machine and his leftist surrogates in the media. Of course it was odious. But it was also inevitable; if it hadn't happened now it would have happened later and it is good for Republican primary voters to see now how Newt reacts while there is still time to choose someone else. The real question is how is the (that is, any) Republican nominee going to stand up against it? Newt has one more chance to show he can fight back effectively against slander and gossip. If he can't deal effectively with Romney, he would be toast against the Chicago machine anyway. Somebody tell Newt that . . . quickly.

6. Rick Santorum: This is a good and decent man who has yet to be attacked by the biased, left-leaning media in the way that Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich were as each one rose in the polls. The one outcome that the leftist media do not want is for the Republican Party to nominate a true conservative and, especially one who is patriotic and religious, because that would mean too clear and obvious a contrast to Obama. In a contest between a real conservative and Obama, Obama loses decisively and the Republicans take over the Senate as well. And that means the end of Obamacare and the whole leftist agenda. Santorum's rise in the polls came too late for the smear machine to roll into action, so now look for it to fire up and go after him.

7. Jon Huntsman: He was irrelevant in Iowa and is irrelevant in general. He seriously mis-read the mood of the electorate when he tried to run to the left of Romney, who was busy trying to run to the right of real conservatives. Unlike Huntsman, Romney at least is smart enough to understand that in order to win in 2012 one has to at least pretend to be a conservative.

Summary:
Where does the race go from here? There are many possible scenarios and nobody really knows what will happen. But let me toss out one possible path for a Santorum victory.

Suppose that Santorum manages to come second in New Hampshire, beating Huntsman and Gingrich. He will start to gain money and momentum. Then suppose that Perry and Gingrich both finish behind Santorum in South Carolina. That could leave Santorum as the last conservative standing and facing only the libertarian Paul and the moderate Romney in Florida. In that scenario, Santorum might well pull it out and turn it into a long, drawn-out two man race with Paul as an irrelevant third-place nuisance candidate. Romney might still win that race, but I predict it would be close.

Barren Old Women: The Contrast Between Christmas and the Culture of Death

2011-12-24T14:44:00.004-05:00

Christmas is a Christian holiday that celebrates life. No wonder leftists hate it so much - babies, hope, God - all the stuff they detest. But Christians love it: the wonder of new life, the joy of fertility, the hope for the future represented by all babies, but especially this one.

Mark Steyn has a wonderful column in the National Review today. Here is how it begins:

"Our lesson today comes from the Gospel according to Luke. No, no, not the manger, the shepherds, the wise men, any of that stuff, but the other birth: “But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.”

That bit of the Christmas story doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it’s in there — Luke 1:13, part of what he’d have called the backstory, if he’d been a Hollywood screenwriter rather than a physician. Of the four gospels, only two bother with the tale of Christ’s birth, and only Luke begins with the tale of two pregnancies. Zacharias is surprised by his impending paternity — “for I am an old man and my wife well stricken in years.” Nonetheless, an aged, barren woman conceives and, in the sixth month of Elisabeth’s pregnancy, the angel visits her cousin Mary and tells her that she, too, will conceive. If you read Luke, the virgin birth seems a logical extension of the earlier miracle — the pregnancy of an elderly lady. The physician-author had no difficulty accepting both. For Matthew, Jesus’s birth is the miracle; Luke leaves you with the impression that all birth — all life — is to a degree miraculous and God-given."

Steyn goes on to talk about how contemporary Western culture is old, barren and increasingly concerned with managing its own decline rather than building culture. It is striking how derivative and decadent so much of our own culture is today. The best music, architecture, theology and poetry are centuries old. And economic decline is our current lived reality. Steyn writes:

"The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that it’s old and barren. Which explains why it’s broke. Take Greece, which has now become the most convenient shorthand for sovereign insolvency — “America’s heading for the same fate as Greece if we don’t change course,” etc. So Greece has a spending problem, a revenue problem, something along those lines, right? At a superficial level, yes. But the underlying issue is more primal: It has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren — i.e., the family tree is upside down. In a social-democratic state where workers in “hazardous” professions (such as, er, hairdressing) retire at 50, there aren’t enough young people around to pay for your three-decade retirement. And there are unlikely ever to be again."

During the centuries of European colonial expansion the main export of Europe to the rest of the world was people; the excess population of Europe spread across the globe. But now:

As Angela Merkel pointed out in 2009, for Germany an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. The Continent’s economic “powerhouse” has the highest proportion of childless women in Europe: One in three fräulein have checked out of the motherhood business entirely. “Germany’s working-age population is likely to decrease 30 percent over the next few decades,” says Steffen Kröhnert of the Berlin Institute for Population Development. “Rural areas will see a massive population decline and some villages will simply disappear.”
If the problem with socialism is, as Mrs. Thatcher says, that eventually you run out of other people’s money, much of the West has advanced to the next stage: It’s run out of other people, period.

In the Bible, children are a precious gift from God. The human race is commanded to be fruitful and multiply in Gen. 1 and Israel joyfully obeyed this command. But now, selfishness gets in the way of the most obedience to God of all: reproduction.

In Italy, the home of the Church, the birthrate’s somewhere around 1.2, 1.3 children per couple — or about half “replacement rate.” Japan, Germany, and Russia are already in net population decline. Fifty percent of Japanese women born in the Seventies are childless. Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of Spanish women childless at the age of 30 almost doubled, from just over 30 percent to just shy of 60 percent. In Sweden, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, 20 percent of 40-year-old women are childless. In a recent poll, invited to state the “ideal” number of children, 16.6 percent of Germans answered “None.” We are living in Zacharias and Elisabeth’s world — by choice.

What was for Elizabeth and Zacharias a tragedy and sorrow is for us a lifestyle choice made by so many people today that the very existence of our people is threatened.

The fact is that as societies cast off the Christian beliefs of their ancestors and embrace selfish hedonism as the meaning of life, those societies die. This is not an argument for the "usefulness" of Christianity, however. One thing is clear: people cannot believe in Christianity just because it is useful. You either believe it or you don't.

But it is also clear that when a culture or a country or a nation decides to reject Christianity, the only alternative is the culture of death. The truth of Christianity can be seen in the fact that those who reject it do not find life, vigor and joy, but long, slow, economic and demographic decline into extinction.

There is a way that seems right to a man; but the end thereof is the way of death.

Christmas is the festival of those who have chosen life. Merry Christmas!

Is There Too Much Government in Our Lives?

2011-12-19T11:08:00.003-05:00

If you are interested in a civil, extended debate on the issue of how big government should be between articulate representatives of both the Left and the Right today, you should check out this 40 minute debate between George Will and Paul Ryan, for the Right, and Barney Frank and Robert Reich, for the Left, moderated by Christiane Amanpour of ABC.

I thought that Ryan and Will were good, but not able to articulate some key points that would have enabled them to put the real issues on the table. Barney Frank is a good debater (a true Sophist) and was able to frame the debate in such a way as to disguise his support for big government control of the lives of ordinary people. For him, citizens are reduced to clients of government. Yet, by harping on conservative support for basic sexual morality, he was able to portray liberals as the libertarians. This is a major point on which people generally are confused today.

If you want to get to the section on individual liberties, go to the third segment. About a third of the way in or so, Frank starts ranting about anti-drug laws, marriage laws etc. and puts the conservatives on the defensive as defenders of intrusive "big government," which clearly makes them very uncomfortable.

You can check out the debate here.

What Will and Ryan Should Have Said

Will and Ryan missed the chance to say something like this to Frank after his big rant about how libertarian the socialists like him are:

"What you are doing is expressing the new view of liberals, which is "Libertarian Socialism." The classical liberalism of the 19th century depended on Christianity to uphold a social consensus on personal morality, which allowed for the extension of liberty in more and more areas of life. Anarchy and social breakdown was prevented by the existence of church and family and the morality inculcated through these institutions. But now, contemporary liberals have broken with Christianity and its traditional support for the defense of human life, traditional marriage and the family and have thrown in their lot with the cultural Marxism that seeks to destroy private property, the family and the church as obstacles to the Socialist Revolution. So an alliance has arisen between individual libertarianism in matters deemed private - sex, drugs, the family, etc. - and intrusive, big-government socialism in all matters deemed public - money, taxes, education, the military, etc.. This is a new phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century to the present: Libertarian Socialism.

What Libertarian Socialism does is to provide cover for the collectivists who want a ruling class of "experts" to have totalitarian control over the lives of everyone else. It does so by creating the illusion of freedom. When people are told they can have as much sex as they want with whomever they want any time they want, they can fall into the trap of believing they are, therefore, free. But this is not true freedom. It is a lie. It is an illusion of freedom, a parody of true freedom. True freedom is the ability to achieve one's telos, the end for which one was created. It is to become what one was created with the potential to become. Just as the telos of an acorn is to grow into a mighty oak tree, so the telos of the human being is to grow into a mature, responsible, moral agent who consistently chooses what is objectively good instead of being distracted into making choices that prevent one from attaining the good.

Libertarian Socialism prevents humans from becoming fully human in two ways. It infantilizes people and it removes their ability to make moral choices. It infantilizes them by assuming that the government take care of them. So we have socialized medicine in Canada, socialized education, government welfare cheques to replace fathers in the home and so on. Socialism creates a permanent, dependent class of clients who gradually lose the ability to govern themselves and, as that happens, they become happy to be governed from above. A good example of this is the massive intrusion of "family court judges" into the minute details of the lives of families down to determining their daily and weekly schedules as a result of granting the so-called "freedom to divorce easily." This is freedom? It looks more like a government take-over of the family.

Libertarian Socialism removes the ability of people to make good moral choices in two ways. First, it encourages them to make bad choices. Today government makes money out of encouraging gambling, drunkenness, pornography and, soon, prostitution. Libertarian Socialism professes to regard the individual freedom to commit consequence-free adultery as sacrosanct, but thinks it is only right to take money away from the middle-class tax payer to give to its cronies in socially-approved industries such as wind power.

If the goal of socialists is to have a ruling class of "experts" control every aspect of life in order to create a Utopian society free of poverty, crime and inequality, then libertarianism in the area of personal sexual morality is a double benefit to their cause. For one thing, it breaks down personal responsibility and encourages people to simply give in to their appetites, which makes them dependent clients without the personal discipline to demand freedom in other areas. For another, it destroys the family, which is the main bulwark against the tyranny of the total state.

The real agenda of Libertarian Socialism is not individual freedom at all, but rather a government so big, so intrusive, so controlling and so pervasive that individual freedom is destroyed forever. The logical and inevitable outcome of Libertarian Socialism is portrayed in Aldous Huxley's prophetic novel: Brave New World. In this horrifying portrait of the society of the future, our humanity has been all but erased and people are but children, wards of the state. The family has been abolished, promiscuity is a social duty and drug-taking is a way of life for all." In pursuit of Utopia, our basic humanity is diminished and our status as responsible moral agents is destroyed. Libertarian Socialists ought to understand that in the long run the Socialism will swallow up whatever libertarian ideas are embraced today.

Contemporary liberalism does not deserve to be called "Liberalism" because it is not about liberty any more; it is a movement designed to destroy liberty. This is what Ryan and Will should have said.

The Last Superstition

2011-12-16T14:06:00.004-05:00

If there is one book I wish everybody would read, it is Edward Feser's The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. It is about much more than the annoying zit on the face of modernity known as the "new atheism." It is actually a history of Western philosophy that explains how some a movement as intellecually vacuous as the "new atheism" could become so popular in our society.

This book shows how it is that most of what are usually known as "the problems of philosophy" are actually the result of modern philosophers' rejection of the classical synthesis of philosophy that developed from the early church fathers through Augustine to Aquinas. It shows that the problem of atheism is a result of nihilistic tendencies built into the founding assumptions of modern philosophy and how classical philosophy had already provided answers to these problems.

If you read this book, you will not be able to take modern and postmodern philosophy seriously again as superior to ancient and medieval philosophy. Which, of course, is a good reason to avoid books like this one if you do not wish to be convinced of the truth of Christianity. As C. S. Lewis said, a young atheist cannot be too careful in his choice of reading material. But if you don't fear the truth and you have an open mind, read this book.

A terrific, short precis of the book has been published in the Montreal Review here.

Defending Calvinism

2011-12-16T14:03:00.003-05:00

There is not much time for posting these days: I'm heavily into marking and my grandchildren have now arrived from Alberta for Christmas. So I'll try to post the odd thing here and there.

You can read my response to my colleague Dr. Richard Davis's attack on Calvinism here on the Bayview Review. It was just posted today. It is called "In Defense of Calvinism."

A Review of "Nearing Home" by Billy Graham

2011-12-16T12:15:00.002-05:00

Billy Graham has my vote for "Man of the Century." When we think of the many iconic figures of the past century, it is astounding how many of them are negative: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao come to mind immediately. Others are mixed in their impact: FDR and John Kennedy for example. In science one cannot help but think of Albert Einstein. In business many great entrepreneurs and inventors come to mind including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. An unlikely trio of allies conspired to overthrow the "Evil Empire" and deserve honorable mention: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. History may judge the latter to have saved the Roman Catholic Church from becoming just another declining liberal denomination.

But my vote goes to Billy Graham. He preached the Gospel to more people face to face than anyone else in history. He preached faithfully for an entire (long) lifetime without so much as a whiff of financial or sexual scandal. His biggest failing was allowing himself to be used by US presidents who loved his coattails but did not always take his message seriously. But that is surely a minor flaw.

He integrated his crusades early on and he proved that he, at least, could work with a diverse group of Christian sponsors in his crusades without compromising the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was the closest thing Evangelicals have had to a pope and many Evangelicals would agree that if you could guarantee that all future popes would be like him they would gladly become papists!

Billy Graham, like the Apostle Paul, used every possible medium for getting his message out: city-wide crusades, radio, TV, books, magazines, the internet etc. But now, at age 92, Graham has written yet another book and once again he preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every way possible.

Nearing Home: Life, Faith and Finishing Well is a book sure to appeal to a wide audience, but especially senior citizens and those contemplating retirement. In it, Graham reflects on his own experience and consults Scripture on how to develop godly attitudes toward the challenges of growing old. He begins by writing: "I never expected to live this long." But of course none of us control how old we get; that is in the hands of our Creator.

In ten chapters, Graham discusses such topics as not retiring from life just because you retire from a job and how to cope with a decline in physical vitality and strength. He finds aging humiliating, but at the same time character-building for learning to accept our weakness and rely on God's strength is near the heart of the Christian life.

Graham also discusses death, something most people prefer not to think about too much. But his living and vital faith shines through as he is able to look death in the eye and know it will not have the last word. In many ways, more so that his other books, this book is Billy Graham's personal testimony to the grace of God in his life. As he ages he still finds that he believes what he has preached all his life and that, after all, is the real test of authenticity is it not?

Billy Graham is a great man whose greatness lies in the fact that he views himself as an ordinary man who serves an extraordinary God. His genuine humility, faith and love for Jesus Christ come through in this unusual book. What a great Christmas present it would make for anyone who expects to grow older.

A Glimpse into the Future of the Episcopal Church

2011-12-14T12:57:00.006-05:00

For over 40 years Episcopalian Bishop John Spong has been on the cutting edge of the development of theological thought in the Anglican Communion. He has always been a controversial figure simply because he is always out in front proclaiming the heresies that will be taken as conventional wisdom a decade later by the mainstream of the Episcopal Church. He has been on a journey in which the boundaries of what is tolerated within the Church are ever expanded outward in a never-ending movement toward paganism.

Of course, it is taxing to find enough outrageous things to state so that one can stay ahead of the wild and whacky world of Anglican thought and practice. But to give the man credit, he has never been confronted with an envelope he could not push. Creativity is his strength and he never seems to run out of ways to upset even the most left-leaning mainstream leaders of his church.

So if you want to see what the Episcopal Church (and whatever is left of the Anglican Communion) will be saying in 10 or 20 years, you should listen to John Spong today. Several decades ago he was denying the authority of Bible and Creeds when it was not taken for granted in liberal circles. And three decades ago he was pushing homosexuality when it was still controversial among liberals. And he was unitarian before unitarianism was cool. So it pays to note where "the cutting edge of progressivism" is going in the future.

Bryan Owen has a report on a recent lecture by Spong over at Virtue Online:

I see from the Episcopal Divinity School Fall 2011 newsletter that Bishop Spong gave a lecture in St. John's Memorial Chapel back on October 21 entitled, "Shifting the Paradigm - From Rescue to Expanded Life." Here's some of what the newsletter article reports: In his address, Spong declared Christianity's "old symbols increasingly are bankrupt ... [and] the new symbols have not yet fully arisen so that they are recognized." He compared the present day with that of Augustine, Aquinas, or the 16th-century Reformers - a moment of "paradigm shift" that "calls for the death of what has been and the birth of what is to be - and that is never a comfortable time." In particular, he said, the titles "savior," "redeemer," and "rescuer" applied to Jesus in liturgies, hymns, and sermons have "become bankrupt, useless, and even distorted ... I think all of them have got to go."

"What is the problem with these titles?" Spong asked. "They all imply a particular definition of human life, which I think is false. ... [W]e are constantly insulting our humanity out of a particular theological frame of reference. We are beggars approaching God. We are telling God how unworthy we are." Such a theological construct, said Spong, is "simply not true. ... It is therefore bad anthropology, and no one can build good theology on bad anthropology."

"Our problem is not a fall into sin," maintained Spong. "It is that we have not yet achieved our full humanity."

The source of acts of evil, said Spong, is found in humanity's survival instinct, "the evolutionary baggage that every one of us carries." Because it is part of human nature, "our only hope is that we are lifted beyond it. We have to be called, we have to be merged into a humanity that somehow finally escapes survival as our driving force."

Words like savior and redeemer and rescuer "simply lock us into the old paradigm," Spong argued. Instead, telling the story of Jesus "as the source of love calling us to love beyond every boundary, to love wastefully, to give it away, to never stop and count the cost: that's a new image of what it means to be human."

Spong is always good for a laugh: "no one can build good theology on bad anthropology." Why is he still interested in theology again?

But he has a point about "redeemer" and "saviour" language. Why liberal Protestants would hang on to that sort of language is hard to understand. If they are going to be consistent, they need to join the Humanist Association and wind up the whole church things altogether. But that would be too big a step to take all at once. First, deny the authority of Scripture. Second, deny miracles. Third, deny the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Fourth, focus on the social gospel and dismiss the soul, heaven and hell as "out-dated." Fifth, start turning Christian morality upside down and affirm everything Christianity says is sinful and condemn everything Christianity says is good. [This is where liberal Protestantism is now.] Clearly, the future is to eliminate every trace of a religion of redemption from sin by the grace of God in Christ. Then Pelagius can become a saint, Augustine a heretic and the Bible-burning can commence.

Don't try dismissing Spong as a crank or an extremist. That used to work back in the days when nobody thought an actual church accepting the goodness of homosexuality was even worth talking about as a possibility. Now he must be regarded as a barometer of liberal Protestantism. He is not crazy; he can just see over the next hill.

The only fresh horizon he won't share with you is the one consisting of a vast lake of fire which burns eternally but never burns out. He will keep that one to himself until it is too late for you to turn back.

This Christmas: Pray for Christians Under the Boot of Islamic Oppression

2011-12-14T11:31:00.004-05:00

Latma TV is a satirical site with a serious message. Here is their take on Christmas in Bethlehem.

(Thanks to Scott Masson for pointing out this video for me.)

All over the Western world, we allow Muslims to enter our countries, build mosques, stay in cliques speaking a foreign language and remain under the malign influence of fire-breathing, fundamentalists leaders funded by Saudi Arabia.

In the Middle East, Christians are being persecuted, hounded out and ethnically cleansed. In Iraq the ancient Church (which pre-dates the rise of the Muslim heresy) is nearly extinct. In Egypt (which was a Christian country until being taken over by violent jihadists) Christians are struggling to hang on against persecution and violence. In Judea and Samaria the Palestinian Authority is gradually pushing Christians out. And we send them foreign aid.

I think we should take no more immigrants from and send no more foreign aid to countries that do not offer complete freedom of religion to Christians. Instead we should place them under a trade embargo and seek to isolate them in the court of world opinion.

Islam opposes freedom of religion categorically; Islam therefore is a totalitarian political system which must be opposed by all who love freedom. Islam must change; we must resist.

Pray for our brothers and sisters under the heel of Islam this Christmas. May this be the last Christmas that Muslims rule over Christians anywhere on earth.

Machen Foresaw Dawkins Clearly in 1923

2011-12-12T11:33:00.005-05:00

J. G. Machen's little book, Christianity and Liberalism, written in 1923, was prophetic in that it predicted accurately the course liberalism would take in the future. It ends with Richard Dawkins wanting to make belief in God illegal - or at least handing on that faith to the children of believers.

Here is Machen:

"Admitting that scientific objections may arise against the particularities of the Christian religion - against the Christian doctrines of the person of Christ, and of redemption through his death and resurrection - the liberal theologian seeks to rescue certain of the general principles of religion, of which these particularities are thought to be mere temporary symbols, and these general principles he regards as constituting 'the essence of Christianity.'

It may well be questioned, however, whether this method of defence will really prove to be efficacious; for after the apologist has abandoned his outer defences to the enemy and withdrawn into some inner citidal, he will probably discover that the enemy pursues him even there. Modern materialism . . . is not content with occupying the lower quarters of the Christian city, but pushes its way into all the higher reaches of life; it is just as much opposed to the philosophical idealism of the liberal preacher as to the Biblical doctrines that the liberal preacher has abandoned in the interests of peace. Mere concessiveness, therefore, will never succeed in avoiding the intellectual conflict. In the intellectual battle of the present day there can be no 'peace without victory;' one side or the other must win. (p. 6)

How can anyone deny that things have played out just as Machen predicted in the 90 or so years since he wrote this book?

Islam and Communism are great threats to the survival of our culture, yet the materialism of a Dawkins is a greater threat still - mainly because it emanates from within the heart of the culture rather than from the outside. And if Machen is right, only one side will emerge victorious in the culture wars. If the conservative side loses - as it very well might - then the bright flame of liberty and justice that has flashed across the sky in the West will dim and burn out.

In that case, God and His Church will stand forever, but in Africa and Asia, not in the West.

More Evidence that Atheism Makes You Stupid

2011-12-09T11:15:00.002-05:00

Richard Dawkins is a fool. If you don't believe me, see Psalm 53:1. It is a scandal that such a willful ignoramus should hold a chair is a prestigious university such as Oxford. Only a decadent, declining society could honour such a man.

There is no excuse for treating him with kid gloves. He is actually a totalitarian who would love to make it illegal for Christians to raise their own children in their own faith and he deserves to be marginalized and ignored by the media. That his books sell well and he gets rich throwing bombs at Christians is more of an indictment of the low level of education in our society than a reliable gauge of anti-Christian sentiment in our society.

In his Daily Telegraph blog today, Rev. Peter Mullens has this to say about the Elmer Gantry of atheists:

Richard Dawkins says that David Cameron is “not really a Christian”. The fact is that it is only God to whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid. So Dawkins has no means of telling whether Cameron is a genuine Christian or not.

We can, however, know that Dawkins is not a proper atheist – that is an intelligent atheist – from his own puerile writing and pathetic attempts at philosophical theology. For example, he writes: “Either God exists or he doesn’t. It is a scientific question. The existence of God is a scientific question, like any other.”

This is idiotic. Science investigates material phenomena, observable entities in the universe. No competent theologians or philosophers – not even the atheist ones – have ever declared that God (if he exists) is an object in his own universe. Perhaps there is no God, and intelligent Christians readily admit that there may be some legitimate doubt. But if the Judaeo-Christian God exists, then he is the maker of the universe and not an entity within it

It may be that Christians are tragically misled and that there is no God. But before you rush into atheism, you have to know something about philosophical reasoning and how theology works. In other words you have to know what it is about and what it is not about. When he discusses religious belief, Dawkins does not know what he is talking about. And to fire off ignorant opinions is only the first mark of a fool.

To say that the existence of God is a scientific question (in the narrow sense of science as the investigation of empirical reality by experimental methods), is the worst sort of scientism. Scientism is the elevation of science to the status of a religion by saying that only empirical science can discover truth and any truth not within range of empirical science is not important and unreal. Scientism is a heavily freighted philosophy which depends on highly controversial and not empirically demonstrable axioms. In other words, it rests on a foundation of what Richard Dawkins wishes were true.

Dawkins cannot tell the difference between metaphysics, science and religion and so he simply asserts that they all come out to the same thing. In his atheist tract, The God Delusion, he treats the metaphysical arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas in 2.5 pages and actually imagines he has debunked the arguments for the existence of God. In an age of low educational standards but almost universal literacy, he gets away with it so long as he is not called on his stupidity. So it is necessary for those who know how much he does not know to say so openly and loudly.

Mullens goes on to compare Dawkins to David Hume, who was an atheist but not a bitter, old, hate-fulled campaigner against Christians. Anthony Flew was an atheist for most of his life, but he never descended to the hatefulness and spite of a Dawkins. There just is no need of it.

Atheists and Christians alike should join in denouncing Dawkins for his bigotry and stupidity. This intellectual charlatan is merely a poorly-educated, angry, old man with an ax to grind and little intellectual firepower with which to grind. It is very sad to watch.

Liberal Government Puts Political Correctness Ahead of the Welfare of Ontario's Children

2011-12-06T23:40:00.005-05:00

Unfortunately, the Liberal government here in Ontario is resuming its radical, sexual revolution indoctrination program for children in Ontario schools against the will of Christian parents. Why? Because the election is over. We had our chance to vote them out and we didn't.

The Globe and Mail reports:

Ontario's Liberal government says it is not prepared to abandon the sex-ed component of a pending anti-bullying law, despite criticism by some religious leaders Tuesday that it is an affront to traditional family values.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives say they agree school bullies must be stopped, but they can't condone a requirement under the legislation proposed to deal with it that schools promote sexual tolerance through gay clubs.

“To force, especially Christian classrooms or schools, to have homosexual clubs would of course be an affront to their family values,” Charles McVety, of the Institute for Canadian Values, told a joint news conference.

“And what does this have to do with bullying? Nothing.”

Mr. McVety, who led the fight against the Liberals' last attempt to update the province's sex-ed curriculum, says Premier Dalton McGuinty is using the problem of bullying to advance “his radical sex education agenda.”

The religious leaders say that agenda is driven by gay activists.

“When you are forcing teachers, Christian teachers, Jewish teachers, Muslim teachers, to teach things that are contrary to the values that they hold, to teach that there are six genders and that you are not attached to the gender of your anatomy, do you not find that that may be an offence to a lot of Ontarians?” asked Mr. McVety.

Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of Chabad Flamingo Synagogue in Toronto said he also believes that parts of the anti-bullying bill aimed at making schools inclusive and tolerant of gay lifestyles are offensive to many families.

“This legislation proposes that children be indoctrinated to reject their parents' faith and their parents' family values, and that's an affront,” said Mr. Kaplan.

“What nobody here in good conscience can support is a law that calls on people of faith to abandon the beliefs that we consider sacred, all in the name of political correctness.”

Let us be clear: the issue is not really bullying. This is a poll-tested bit of emotional manipulation used by the radical, sexual revolutionists used by them to slip radical changes past the public and to intimidate the conservative opposition.

The result of this policy is going to be our schools basically doing what the schools in the old Soviet Union did: indoctrinating the children with anti-family, anti-religious propaganda so as to turn them against their parents' belief systems.

This is evil and dispicible. Dalton McGuinty is a cynical, compromised, venal politician who should be disciplined by his Church. Only the cowardice of Roman Catholic bishops allows such a man to trawl for votes by subtly flaunting his Catholicism at election time and then turn against the Church (and all religious people) when it suits his political agenda.

Protestant leaders are no better. Where is the EFC? Where are leading Evangelical pastors and leaders of major Evangelical institutions? I'd say that we get the government we deserve, but our children do not deserve to be authority figures in positions of trust.

Vulnerable, confused children will be encouraged to be "gay" through this program and, as a result, we will see increases in depression, sexual experimentation, vulnerability to adult sexual predators, drug abuse and suicide. The children are collateral damage in the Revolution.

The Marxists are winning without firing a shot.

What I Can't Believe

2011-12-06T18:40:00.003-05:00

I believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. But there are a lot of things in which I simply cannot bring myself to believe.

I wonder at the credulousness of people today. As literacy and critical thinking skills decline due to "progressive education" it seems to me that most people are more gullible and less inclined to reject that which is incoherent and implausible. There is more of a herd mentality and the most astonishing things are taken for granted by the "in crowd" of new class knowledge professionals that form the core of the modern bureaucratic state.

Here are some things relating to Marxism that I find silly, dumb, unworthy of serious intellectual consideration by thinking people and, yet, which many people apparently endorse with a straight face. It is just about impossible to take seriously anyone who believes, or acts as if he believes, in the things on this list.

1. The myth of primitive communism.
2. The "iron laws of history."
3. Marx's failed predictions about the collapse of capitalism.
4. The labor theory of value.
5. The Marxist concept of ideology.
6. The withering away of the state.
7. The oppressiveness of the traditional family.
8. The coming classless society.
9. That the state is evil.
10. That private property is morally wrong.
11. That private property protects the rich more than it protects the poor.
12. The ideal of income equality.
13. The existence of rigidly fixed classes.
14. The human nature of socialism.
15. The benign intentions of socialist agitators.
16. That communism has never really been tried yet.
17. That the state can be trusted as the overwhelmingly dominant power center in society.
18. That capitalism is an immoral system.
19. That religion keeps people down and prevents progress.
20. that the Party can be trusted to act in our best interests.
21. The perfectibility of man.
22. The humane nature of socialism.
23. The moral imperative of rewarding sloth.
24. That the welfare state is good for poor people in good health.
25. That there is enough money in the world for government to use to replace the family.

My two questions to any actual Marxists who might happen to read this list are:

(1) Which of the items on this list would you care to defend and how on earth would you do it?

(2) If we can't believe in the items on this list, what is left of Marxism and other forms of socialism? Why not adopt a free market, limited government, liberal political economy?

I'm just wondering - seriously.

"The End is Near" - C. S. Lewis

2011-12-01T16:40:00.005-05:00

You know the cartoon with the guy in the robe holding a placard that says "The End is Near"? You can view a selection of cartoons of this type here.

Well, here is a quote from C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man in which he sounds just like the guy in the cartoon.

"The practical result of the education in the spirit of "The Green Book"
must be the destruction of the society which accepts it."
(C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p. 27)

Yes, you read that right: C. S. Lewis is saying that any society which educates its young people by debunking the notion of objective value will thereby destroy itself. Lewis argues in this prophetic book that there is such a thing as value (goodness, truth, beauty) in objects themselves totally apart from our subjective evaluations of those objects. What he calls "The Green Book" is a high school English textbook that teaches relativism in the course of teaching English composition. He actually thinks that such books are destroying our culture.

But then, he is an Augustinian who accepts the Platonist-Christian synthesis that dominated the church for well over a millennium until the decline in realist metaphysics and the rise of nominalism in the later part of the high middle ages (Christendom) prepared the way for the rise of Modernity. He believes that the Divine Logos which created the world left the imprint of his rationality upon it and, since we bear the Divine image, we can rationally understand some of the truth about reality and we can discern the good and the beautiful, despite our having fallen into nature and the consequent loss of some of our rational capacity.

Lewis believed that value is not merely subjective. In The Abolition of Man he talked about the Tao, the common core of moral value held in common by Plato, Aristotle, Confucianism, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. The lectures published in this book were delivered to a secular audience so he avoided excessive reliance on terms usually associated with one religious tradition. But he is clearly talking about what the Western tradition has referred to as "natural law." Lewis ends chapter 2 by raising the question as to whether or not traditional morality can be retained by a society that rejects all supernatural bases for it.

Lewis does not answer this question due to the context of his lectures but it is clear that he thinks it cannot - at least not in Europe. Europe has been Christian for two millennia and it has no other soul or religion. It is either Christianity or secularism for Europe and Lewis argues that the relativistic, subjectivist secularism of mid-twentieth century Britain is an insufficient basis for traditional morality.

But to say it is an "insufficient basis" is not strong enough. Lewis is literally predicting the fall of Western civilization if it does not regain its soul, that is, if it does not experience a widespread and profoundly deep revival of the Christian religion in the near future. One senses without difficulty that the hour is much later than when he wrote these words in 1944 and that his prediction is coming true rapidly. A widespread and sincere acceptance of relativism spells the doom of the society that sinks to this state.

When a mild-mannered, Oxford don pulls on the burlap and digs out his "The End is Near" sign, it might be time to sit up and take notice.

Modernist Architecture: The Spirit of the Age as Rebellion Against God

2011-11-29T20:51:00.005-05:00

This an incredibly interesting article linking 20th century modernist architecture to the will to power. It is by Nikos Salingaros and James Kalb and is at the Witherspoon Institute's Public Discourse blog. It entitled: "Against the Architects of Empire: Contemporary Architecture is Profoundly Anti-Natural." Here is the first section:

Architecture is the setting for how we live and the expression of how we think. It reflects our shaping of the world in order to inhabit it, and the geometry of what we build is far from neutral. The built environment, like the biological and other natural systems that it engages, needs to function reliably in complex and adaptive ways on many different levels. Such adaptive and sustainable systems have similar characteristics that, despite distinct origins, develop in a broadly similar manner.

The need to provide shelter from the elements and serve everyday needs led to the construction of roofs and walls that defined spaces adapted to human use. Traditional buildings and cities were assemblies of such basic components, put together in ways that had been found to promote particular and overall functioning. The New York row house, the New England village green, and the Mediterranean arcade and plaza all suit the setting and way of life in which they grew up.

More importantly, going beyond mere function, those structures combined ornament and other details that somehow seemed necessary. Even when structures were designed as a whole, their form and organization followed the evolved principles that had led to successful construction in the past. The results included the great historical styles of architecture, and the most-loved and most functional buildings and cities East and West.

Times change, and not always for the better. The advent of architectural modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century suppressed traditional styles and complex evolved forms in favor of simple concepts and striking images. The result was an approach to the built environment that lent itself to public relations and propaganda—it played well in manifestos and glossy architecture magazines—but was less functional, less adaptive, and less human and engaging.

What happened, why did it happen, and why do people stick with an approach to building and design that evidently does not work to engage our complex faculties? The answer goes to the nature of science and of freedom: whether they have to do with understanding reality and living in accordance with it, or with the imposition of arbitrary will.

Modernity is about imposing human will on nature in such a way that nature is regarded as mere "raw material" for the human will instead of being understood as reality and respected as our home, the world in which we play a part. The imposed utopian vision that characterized American Progressivism as much as European Fascism and Communism was essential to modernity.

Modernist architects just drew forms on paper that looked like machines and those in power built them.
The motivation was essentially political and oriented toward domination. The revolutionary movements that followed World War I wanted a break with the past, and especially the look of the past. The world revolution would rebuild humanity through industrialization, so these movements embraced buildings that looked like the machines of the time: sleek, white, and metallic. States, both on the left and on the right, loved this depersonalized approach to building, where the individual no longer matters and everything is sacrificed to an imposed utopian vision. Aspects of architectural modernism are prominent in Nazi and Soviet architecture, and the capitalist state also turned the machine into an icon. When Le Corbusier died both Lyndon Johnson and the Soviets expressed their sense of profound loss.

For years I have been calling the ugly, imposing, anti-human Robarts Research Library on the campus of the University of Toronto a good example of "Stalinist architecture." This article justifies and explains the truth of that judgment.

This modernism is not only anti-natural, it is also anti-God.

The outcome of these developments is something resembling a totalitarian system that unites immense financial and industrial interests with a pseudo-religious fanaticism. There are governments and corporations that wish to flaunt their power through monstrous and arrogant building schemes, industries that produce very expensive high-tech materials, developers who want to make their money work but have no moral constraints, and architects who are willing to do anything to obtain a commission. Politicians get pulled into supporting the ideology by the chance to gain media coverage and campaign contributions. And the gullible public naively believes all it reads in the conformist media.

There is something profoundly anti-natural about the results. By contradicting traditional evolved geometries, modernist and contemporary architecture and urban planning go against the natural order of things. When an architect or planner ignores the need for adaptation and imposes his or her will, the result is an absurd form—an act of defiance toward any higher sense of natural order. There is no room for God in totalitarian design. What religious believer is helped to greater devotion by a modernist Church? Who can love materials hostile to our touch and sight, surfaces and oppressive spaces that sometimes suggest violation and death? Architectural modernism implies a sort of cosmic rebellion against order and life.

It is anti-nature, anti-human and anti-God. To fight geometry is to fight God. If there is a class of professionals in the contemporary world whose work causes them to rank lower than lawyers, it must be architects. But what does it say about the spirituality of a society that would accept these ugly monstrosities? What does it say about the morality of such a society? What does it say about the politics of our society?

Whatever it says, it is shameful.

From Conception to Birth: An Amazing Video!

2011-11-27T15:12:00.003-05:00

Here is an amazing video that everyone should take time to watch. Modern technology allows us to see the development of a person from insemination to birth.

"I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well."
(Ps. 139:14)

The Bayview Review

2011-11-26T20:27:00.005-05:00

I'm two weeks late getting in this plug for a new venture that three of my faculty colleagues from Tyndale and I have started. It is a group blog called "The Bayview Review" and the purpose is stated on the blog as follows:

"The Bayview Review is an online magazine that attempts to be a resource for historic Chrisitan thought in relation to culture, government, philosophy, politics, and theology. While the authors of The Bayview Review agree on many things it would be a mistake to think we agree on them all and even when there is an agreement that some particular conclusion is correct it is very likely there will be widespread disagreement as to why that conclusion is correct. At The Bayview Review one should expect to see a broad diversity of views that all remain within the boundaries of historically orthodox Christianity.
In sum, the aim of The Bayview Review is to demonstrate that the conservative mindset is not only intellectually defendable against attacks from the Left (whether Secular, Liberal-Protestant, or Evangelical) but it is actually intellectually preferable to those alternatives."

Contemporary Evangelicalism arose out of the Fundamentalist movement in the 1940s and at first all Evangelicalism was Conservative Evangelicalism. Over the past few decades, however, as Evangelicalism has experienced numerical, financial, intellectual and institutional success, it has also become very diverse. Today there are many kinds of Evangelicals on a left-center-right spectrum plus many diverse sub-cultures within the overall movement.

Theological diversity within Evangelicalism is of two kinds. On the one hand, there is diversity in denominational traditions such as Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal and other traditions but with all of these being rooted in historic Christian orthodoxy. On the other hand, there is also a developing Evangelical Left which crosses denominational lines and consists of those who are on a journey similar to that taken by the mainline denominations a century ago.

So, Conservative Evangelicalism is not a particular denominational or regional branch of Evangelicalism, but simply a continuing movement that believes what the Fundamentalists and the later Evangelicals have believed from the beginning of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy in the 19th century. The Bayview Review is designed to promote an intellectual version of a Conservative Evangelicalism that desires not to live in the 1940s so much as it desires to be in communion with the 1500s and the 400s. What others may consider to be "out-of-date" we consider to be "grounded in historic orthodoxy." That which some may see as "progressive" we see as "lame cultural captivity". We want to be both Evangelical and Catholic because we believe this is the only way to be Biblical and because we believe that this is the future of Christianity.

In the future, I'll be cross-posting some of my posts there as well as here. Also, I'll be posting some of the best of my posts here at The Politics of the Cross Resurrected over there from time to time. The first of these is available now and is called "In Praise of the Lecture."

I hope you take time to visit The Bayview Review.

What We Evil Capitalists Actually Believe

2011-11-26T12:02:00.003-05:00

Daniel Hannan (who is always delightful to read for his wit, clarity, incisiveness and unapologetic conservative convictions) has a very helpful post up called: "Memo to the Occupy protesters: here are ten things we evil capitalists really think."

I think he is right that the Occupy Wall Street folks really don't understand the capitalist position; heaven knows they caricature us continuously. So, in the interest of actual communication and dialogue, let me list his ten points. I'll just give the first sentence of each paragraph; if you are intrigued you can go to his post here and read the whole paragraph or two he gives on each point.

If the Left-leaning folks could ever bracket their massive self-righteousness and self-assurance long enough actually to listen to what we conservatives have to say, they might find fewer straw men to knock down and more moral complexity than can fit into slogans designed to be chanted by mobs. I know, it is probably a vain hope . . . sigh. But in case any open-minded people read this post, here goes:

1. Free-marketeers resent the bank bailouts.
2. What has happened since 2008 is not capitalism.
3. If you want the rich to pay more, create a flatter and simpler tax system.
4. Those of us who believe in small government are not motivated by the desire to make the rich richer.
5. We are not against equality. . . Our objection is not that egalitarianism is undesirable in itself, but that the policies required to enforce in involve a disproportionate loss of liberty and prosperity.
6. Nor, by the way, does state intervention seem to be an effective way to promote equality.
8. Capitalism, with all its imperfections, is the fairest scheme yet tried.
9. Talking of fairness, let’s remember that the word doesn’t belong to any faction.
10. Let’s not forget ethics, either. There is virtue in deciding to do the right thing, but there is no virtue in being compelled.

Read elaborations of each point here.

My guess is that most of those led astray by Marxist Utopianism either do not understand capitalism or do not wish to understand it. But simple-mindedness is no virtue in matters of morality. There is a vast difference between child-like faith, (which Jesus commended) and a childish refusal to apply one's mind to difficult problems out of a sense that solutions to the most complex of life's problems ought to be simple and obvious.

One last point: it cannot be stressed enough that the defense of capitalism is, for me and most conservatives, based in moral principles rather than a counsel of despair that simply gives up and says that the world is bad and nothing can be done to improve it. For Hannan, and most of us conservatives, the issue is which economic system leads to the most wealth for the most people, the most social equality, the most opportunities for the poor and the best standard of living for the most people. History shows that capitalism is best according to these deeply moral measures by a wide margin.

Conservatives believe that it works because it accommodates itself best to actual reality. As in experimental science, when predicted results occur as a result of an experiment that constitutes confirmation of the theory. Capitalism can be thought of as an economic theory that has be tested in the laboratory of history with excellent confirming results compared to other theories. So it works best because it is truer than the rival theories. That is what conservatives claim regardless of how viciously the propagandists impugn our motives.

What Socialism, Pacifism and Sex Have in Common

2011-11-24T10:01:00.005-05:00

What do these three things have in common? It is a very simple principle:

"each can be very good in its proper place, but highly destructive when
allowed to flow into contexts for which it was not designed."

Let's take them one at a time.

First, sex is easy. Natural reason tells us that sexual activity is oriented to and leads to procreation and that marriage naturally is the best context for procreation to occur. A child is best off with its biological parents. So it is hardly surprising that every culture has some form of marriage based on the mother-father-child triangle. Sex belongs in marriage and every serious form of natural law or religious morality affirms this conclusion. But sex outside marriage is destructive of personal communion, social stability and children.

So we have in human sexuality a very good thing as long as it remains in its proper context. Yet that very good thing can become perverted, twisted and destructive as soon as it bursts its channels and floods into promiscuity or adultery.

Second, socialism is in many ways a high and noble ideal. As practiced by small, disciplined, voluntary communities, for example, monastic ones, it can be a good way of life. Socialism is not bad except when it bursts its natural bonds and becomes an ideology which is imposed by coercion on society as a whole. I would go so far as to say that coercive socialism is as bad as coercive sex.

Socialism is utopian in the sense that it is incompatible with the fact of original sin. The reason that socialism always leads to tyranny, poverty and atheism in this world is because of the tragic flaw in human nature - not because of the idea of socialism itself. As an idea, it is wonderful. But when implemented in a society of fallen sinners, it becomes horribly destructive.

Third, pacifism is also in many ways a high and noble ideal. As practiced by small, disciplined, voluntary communities, for example, the Amish or monastic orders, it can be a good way of life. Pacifism is not bad except when it bursts its natural bonds and becomes an ideology which is imposed by coercion on society as a whole. I would go so far as to say that coercive pacifism (i.e. the government adopting a pacifist stance on behalf of a population containing both pacifists and non-pacifists) is as bad as coercive sex or coercive socialism.

I call pacifism for modern nation states "liberal pacifism" to distinguish it from the vocational pacifism which has taken various forms in the history of the church. Twentieth century liberal pacifism is rooted in liberal Protestant theology, which is to say that it is Pelagian and Progressive in its character. This kind of pacifism makes war more likely because it encourages Christian countries to disarm and not practice deterrence and it corrupts theology by highlighting the worst features of heretical understandings of human nature and history. It even reconstitutes the doctrine of God by denying Divine wrath and judgment in the name of defining God by means of the abstract principle of non-violence supposedly derived from Jesus.

One other feature that all three of these things have in common is that they are all highly attractive to sentimentalists. All have an enticing, naivety about them that draws us to them as ideals. We see the pull of the passions at work in sex and often tragic results flow from naive young girls mistaking aggressive lust for romantic commitment in their boyfriends. Yet, I for one, would not want completely to reject or condemn romance.

Socialism and pacifism are romantic notions that, like sex, make one feel good. That is the secret of their attractiveness. Affirming pacifism and socialism, especially in the exuberance of adolescence, is like a drug that makes one feel pure, innocent, superior and at one with all things. It is a substitute for genuine love for mankind, which is always tempered with a realistic assessment of human nature and the limits of human and social perfectibility in this fallen world.

Real love sometimes disciplines, sometimes challenges, sometimes rebukes and sometimes accepts despite the on-going flaws in the beloved. Sentimentalism wants everything to be perfect all the time and is devastated by failure to live up to the highest ideals one can imagine. For this reason, it tends to be destructive of personal relationships and social bonds.

All of this is to say that love is opposed to sex, socialism and pacifism whenever they overflow their banks and escape the boundaries meant to contain them.

Am I against socialism, pacifism and sex? No, as long as they remain in voluntary, limited, contexts and are not imposed on others without consent. I affirm them as goods but recognize that all evil is the perversion of and lack of the good.

Judas the Socialist

2011-11-13T08:25:00.003-05:00

Peter Hitchens sums up what is wrong with socialism, starting with the phoney, envy-based relative method of measuring poverty, and identifies Judas as the prototypical socialist in a hard-hitting but clear blog post entitled "Judas the First Socialist and Other Issues:"

I’ll get on to Judas Iscariot in a moment. I am asked how I define poverty. I would define physical poverty as severe want – not enough food to eat, no access to clean water, absence of proper shelter either from great heat or from cold, inadequate clothing, untreated sickness and no possibility of medical help, conditions so squalid that cleanliness is impossible, severe overcrowding. These are the features of poverty that I have seen in various forms on my many travels into remote parts of the world.
I had an interesting discussion about this on Nicky Campbell’s Radio Five Live programme a few weeks ago, and was encouraged by a contributor from Africa who agreed with me that poverty of this kind does not really exist in this country. But he added that hardship undoubtedly does exist. Of course much of that hardship stems from not having things that others do have, and from a feeling of injustice and rejection. But this is not poverty, which in my view is an absolute condition of severe material want, not a comparative condition of being worse off than your neighbour. I would add, as I often do, that I suspect that there may be something very close to absolute poverty among the lonely old people of this country, trying to make ends meet on no more than their pensions, regarding any further appeal to the welfare state as a shameful (and therefore unthinkable) form of charity which they are too proud to accept.

Many of these live very pinched and deprived lives, though even they are materially rich beside the rural dwellers of North Korea or millions of the less fortunate in Africa and parts of India. But the measure of poverty as an arbitrary proportion of average income is just a device by which socialists justify their unending raid on the possessions of the wealthy and productive, to finance the unproductive and penniless state in its vote-buying projects. Some of these projects may incidentally do good. But their aim is not to do good, but to make their authors feel good about themselves, while increasing their power. It also incidentally shrinks the power of the productive middle-class to be charitable in their own right, as they have handed over a large part of their charitable duty to the state.

That is why I am so fond of Christ’s rebuke to Judas, and the account as a whole. The passage is as follows: The Gospel according to John, 12th Chapter, beginning at verse iv; Mary (not Mary Magdalene, but Mary, sister of Lazarus), has just taken a pound – or 454 grams in the Rocky Horror Bible - of very costly Spikenard ointment and wiped Jesus’s feet with her hair, ‘and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment’. ‘Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him : ‘Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?’ This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus :’Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always’.
As so often, there’s a lot packed into this, notably the realistic recognition that there will always be poor people in the world , and those who wish to help them will always have the opportunity to do so. But it is the biting observation that Judas, like so many since, is pretending a concern for the poor to cover up other, less noble motives, that really goes home with a satisfying thud. There is no new thing under the sun.

[bolding is mine]

The only caveat I would add to Hitchens' remarkably concise analysis of the true nature of socialism is to stress that there is a difference between hard core socialist ideologues and the naive, idealistic, often young, fellow travelers drawn in by socialist rhetoric that seems to exude genuine concern for the poor. The latter group is motivated by a wooly-headed, but sincere, desire to "help people" that arises out of genuine human decency and a sense that the Biblical mandate to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God is fulfilled by some sort of welfare state program.

The ideologues deserve nothing but scorn and mockery coupled with determined opposition to their schemes and machinations. The naive fellow travelers can be reasoned with, confronted with arguments and sometimes rescued from the grip of socialist ideology. We should do all we can to ensure that young, evangelical Christians become followers of Christ on the model of Peter and Paul, rather than of Judas.

Why I'm Wearing a Poppy Today

2011-11-11T15:04:00.005-05:00

It is the crazy time of term: marking to do and I'm away at ETS/AAR next week. So blogging has been slow. But I wanted to get this up for Remembrance Day.
__________

For years I was conflicted about Remembrance Day and found it difficult, especially as a pastor. For as long as I can remember I have struggled with the issue of war and whether Christians should participate in it. For about 15 years, from the start of my doctoral work until about 5 years ago, I embraced pacifism, to which I had always been vaguely inclined. But after I completed 12 hectic years of academic administration in 2004 and had a chance to read, reflect and pray systematically about the theological implications of the pacifist position, I gradually changed my thinking.

Theologically, I have always been conservative, Reformed and Evangelical. On moral issues like sexuality, marriage, the family, abortion and euthanasia I have always held firmly to the traditional, biblical positions. But for a period of my life I departed from the conservative consensus on two points: war and economics. Over the past few years, having had time to reflect on these issues more thoroughly, I have come to reject liberal pacifism and socialism as incompatible with a biblical worldview. I have been deeply influenced by my reading of Augustine over the past few years, whose thought on matters relating to Christianity and culture I now regard as the most profound in the history of the Church.

I admire the Amish and their separatist way of life, just as I admire the venerable tradition of monasticism, even if neither pacifism or celibacy is my personal calling. Like celibacy in the monastic tradition, socialism can be a positive thing if it is voluntary and limited to a specific community like the Amish or the monastic orders. But to impose either socialism or pacifism on the modern nation state, which means imposing it in unregenerate people, is folly and the theology that teaches we ought to try is, in the end, heretical.

The reason for my change of mind is not practical but theological. I have no problem seeing that a moral position may be true and right even if highly impractical and hard. But it was when I began to think through the theological implications of the position that the Church should be calling the nation to adopt a pacifist stance that I lost my pacifist faith.

First, there is the Pelagian optimism about human nature that one must have if one seriously believes that a nation can become pacifist without causing a disaster. One must take seriously all that old social gospel rhetoric about abolishing war, disarmament and so on. Is human society susceptible to being reformed to that extent in this age? To the extent that war becomes a thing of the past? No it is not, I now believe, without a tyrannical, absolutely totalitarian, total world government - in which case the cure is much worse than the disease.

Second, the tendency toward pacifism involves an over-realized eschatology in which the kingdom of God becomes a human project achievable by human effort here and now. Since there is no evidence to suggest that this is an actual possibility, the determination to achieve it hovers precariously between triumphalism and nihilism. The anti-war stance can become a nihilistic, fatalistic, stubborn call to abandon the defenses of civilization, let the wave of evil roll over the culture, and give up the ambiguous work of fighting against barbarianism with all its shades of grey in favor of morally clear but grim determination to die heroically.

Third, where my pacifist faith really went off the rails was when I realized that the very nature and character of God is at stake. Non-violence becomes an absolute higher than good and evil themselves; in fact, for the liberal pacifist God is non-violence. All judgment must be then considered unworthy of him. God does not fight against or punish evil; he simply absorbs them until they stop. Why they should ever stop is never explained; it is just assumed. But in any case, God does not judge sin or conquer it except by suffering from its effects.

I came to realize that non-violence, while certainly a very important good, has been turned into an idol. In fact, it has become God. The old God of wrath who acted in history to reveal his wrath against sin and his mercy for sinners has been turned into an abstract principle of non-violence. Pacifism is the appropriate way to worship the God who is non-violence. There is no grace in such a God because there is no holiness. There is no love, because there is mere passivity. The passive tolerance of modern liberalism finds its ultimate sanction in the God who passively suffers but never acts to conquer.

To embrace liberal pacifism, that is, to advocate pacifism for Christians and non-Christians alike and for the nation state in this age is to embrace liberal Protestantism and its deformed, modern doctrine of God. To advocate liberal pacifism for the state is to become liberal. It is to have a Pelagian doctrine of human nature, an over-realized eschatology, a passive, suffering God who is no longer the righteous judge of all the earth and a view of salvation as essentially a human, social accomplishment.

I noted in my book, Rethinking Christ and Culture, that General Dwight D. Eisenhower entitled his memoirs of his experience of World War II as supreme allied commander, Crusade in Europe. I criticized World War II as a crusade on the grounds that it bore a resemblance to the Medieval crusades to liberate the holy land from Muslim invaders. If the Medieval crusades were wrong, so must the modern one be wrong. But it was my assumption about pacifism that was wrong: both the Medieval and so, logically, the modern crusades were justifiable, though tragic, wars. To fight against the neo-pagan death cult called Nazism and save civilization from its nihilism and terror was the right thing to do. Of course it involved great evils, but once Hitler started invading one country after another great evils were set in motion and would have continued regardless of how the West responded.

I wear a poppy today in honor of the brave men who gave their lives for freedom, civilization and peace in that war. War is always horrifying and always involves sin and evil. It is never a matter of absolute good and evil; both sides are made up of sinful people. But nevertheless, as Augustine recognized long ago, there is a need for good people to do their duty even when duty is compromising, morally ambiguous and tragic. And it always is and always will be until that great day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory to end all opposition to his rule and bring peace once and for all.

Occupy Wall Street as an Heretical, Medieval Cult

2011-11-05T12:33:00.006-04:00

If you check out the coverage of Occupy Wall Street from conservative sites like Big Government, America Spectator and The Weekly Standard, instead of relying strictly on the mainstream media, it becomes clear that there are three main groups of people involved in the uprising:

1. There are relatively ordinary people, especially idealistic young people, with cell phones, high student debts and often no job. They have been taught in university that capitalism is evil, socialism is benign and communism badly misunderstood. They don't have a clue what really is wrong or how to fix it. They are the focus of the mainstream media, however, because they seem like a group that a large number of independent voters can relate to.

2. There are street people, petty criminals, mentally disturbed people and sexual predators mixed in among the others and causing havoc. Here is a "rap-sheet" for OWS, a compilation of stories about various crimes committed or alledged against people involved in the anti-capitalist movement. No wonder the latest poll shows the growing unpopularity of OWS; its approval rating is not down to 30%.

3. There are ideologically aware, left-wing agitators who range from the Communist Party, the Democratic Socialists of America to union organizers, environmentalists, and anarchists. Here are their signs from the Occupy Oakland general strike march. See here, for example, and here, or just google "Democratic Socialists of America + Occupy". They are using the naive "dupes" for their own ideological purposes.

Absolutely nothing new has been said by the OWS movement. It is important to realize that it is just rehashing the same old anti-capitalist rhetoric the kids learned in university classes from tenured, aging hippies like Bill Ayers who have been predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism - any day now - since the 1840s.

If anything coherent is behind OWS it is Marxism in its most day-dreamy, extreme, religious form. Marxism is actually nothing new in Western culture. It is another expression of millenarian cults that have risen up periodically with a radical message that society is corrupt and the end of the present order is near since the 13th century.

Norman Cohn's book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, is not about Marxism. But it is essential for understanding Marxism. (I scored a copy of the 3rd edition for $4.00 at the Trinity College booksale a couple of weeks ago, thus enabling me to remove it from my Amazon cart.) Originally published in 1957, this remains the only book on its subject: "the tradition of revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism, as it developed in western Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries." (p. 9)

Chapter 6 deals with "The Emperor Frederick as Messiah" and discusses the emergence of the heretical thought of Joachim of Fiore, which was a forerunner of Marxism. Cohn writes:

In the course of the 13th century yet another kind of eschatology appeared alongside the eschatologies derived from the Book of Revelation and the Sibylline Oracles - alongside them at first, but soon blending with them. The inventor of the new prophetic system, which was to be the most influential one known to Europe until the appearance of Marxism, was Joachim of Fiore (1145-1202). Ater many years spent in brooding over the Scriptures this Caliabrian abbot and hermit received, some time between 1190 and 1195, an inspiration which seemed to reveal in them a concealed meaning of unique predictive value. (p. 108)

Joachim forecast a new interpretation of history as consisting of three stages: the age of the Father (or Law), the age of the Son (or Gospel), and the age of the Spirit, which "would be to its predecessors as broad daylight compared with starlight and dawn, as high summer compared with winter and spring." (p. 108) Whereas the first age had been the age of fear and the second of faith and filial submission, the third would be an age of joy and freedom when all men would know God directly. The world would be a vast monastery in which all men would contemplate God mystically and ecstatically.

Cohn points out that the long-term influence of Joachim's vision can be traced right down to the present day, most clearly in the 19th century 'philosophies of history' of Schelling, Ficte, Lessing and Hegel, as well as in Auguste Compte's ideas and the Marxist scheme of primitive communism, class society and a final communism "which is to be the realm of freedom and in which the state will have withered away." (p. 109) Cohn also points out that the idea of the "Third Reich," first coined in 1923 by publicist Moeller van den Bruck, would not have had the emotional resonance it had in the European mind if it had not been for this "phantasy of a third and most glorious dispensation" which had "entered into the common stock of European social mythology." (p. 109)

Marxism stands in a long tradition of millenarian movements that range from the "children's crusades" to the Taborites to Thomas Muntzer and the millenarian cults in the English revolution like the Levelers and the Diggers. (I'm leaving out far more than I'm mentioning.) As such, Marxism is, for all its scientific pretensions, essentially an irrational, mystical, millenarian cult. It is eschatology for those who have lost their orthodox, Christian faith.

Occupy Wall Street is thus a dream come true for historians and anthropologists who want to study an actual contemporary example of one of these social movements in the form of living, breathing, 'true believers' rather than in dusty historical records.

In the 13th century the mainstream Church followed Thomas Aquinas in his orientation to Augustinian orthodoxy and rational (Aristotelian) science rather than Joachim and his mystical anarchism. The Church has been on the side of science and reason ever since, whereas Marxism stands in the tradition of the irrational, mystical, cultic, free-spirited, perfectionism and millenarianism stretching back centuries.

In the final analysis, it is not possible to reason with those who believe they have received a Divine revelation not accessible to most ordinary people and who believe they are on the cutting edge of history, which is about to be transformed into the kingdom of God. Like the Iranian mullahs and Adolf Hitler, the Marxists believe that no act of violence is unthinkable when the result is going to be the kingdom of God on earth!

Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that Divine revelation coheres with natural law and reason and therefore can be debated, discussed and understood by all who wish to engage in study and dialogue. Marxism, by way of contrast, like all heretical cults, requires the sacrifice of the intellect, the acceptance of secret revelation and irrational belief in the goodness of man, the imminence of the millennium and the need for purifying, revolutionary violence as the doorway to utopia.

It is little wonder that people who believe such things had to be suppressed by force by the public authorities in previous centuries and it is likely that free and rational societies will need to defend themselves against the forces of lawless disorder again in the future. We would do well to heed the warning from the OWS Oakland sign: "We came unarmed, this time."

Will a culture sunk deep into postmodern relativism, sexual promiscuity, hedonistic materialism, uncontrolled public debt and declining educational standards be able to muster the strength to resist the anarchistic cultists? And will it be able to do so without falling into tyrannical dictatorship? Do we have it in us to overcome another Nazi death cult without losing democracy?

These are the questions that should preoccupy all of us today.

Why Religious Leaders Who Endorse Left-wing Politics Look Ridiculous

2011-11-02T09:44:00.003-04:00

Evangelicals used to have a strong suspicion of anyone who got mixed up with politics. Now they have a strong suspicion of anyone who gets mixed up with conservative, pro-capitalist politics. Lefties, though, get a free pass and are regarded as "compassionate" and "missional."

But the truth is that religious leaders who endorse left-wing politics, whether they come from the "Evangelical Left" or the older Liberal Protestant or Roman Catholic Left, just make themselves look ridiculous.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the latest example. He has a piece in the Financial Times of London echoing the left-wing rhetoric of the protesters in front of St. Paul's. Here is a take-down of his intervention by Toby Young of the Daily Telegraph:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has an article in the Financial Times this morning in which he urges us to "take seriously the moral agenda of the protesters at St Paul’s":
The protest at St Paul’s was seen by an unexpectedly large number of people as the expression of a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment that shows no sign of diminishing. There is still a powerful sense around – fair or not – of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of impatience with a return to ‘business as usual’ – represented by still-soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices.

So what is the "agenda" of the St Paul's protestors? If you look at the "initial statement" issued by #occupylsx, it's pretty clear. The statement brands "the current system" "undemocratic and unjust", rejects "the cuts", attacks "the banks", calls for "an end to global tax injustice", supports the "student action" planned for 9th November, supports "the strike" planned for 30th November, supports "actions" intended "to protect our health services, welfare, education and employment, and to stop wars and arms dealing", demands "authentic global equality", expresses "solidarity" with the "global oppressed" and calls for "an end to the actions of our government and others in causing this oppression". It ends by saying, "This is what democracy looks like. Come join us."

Not an unfamiliar agenda, then. It's the agenda of the Trotskyist left – almost all of these points are made with tedious regularity by the Socialist Workers Party, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Socialist Party (formerly the Militant tendency). The problem with this agenda, as any student of politics knows, is that it's impossible to realise without a massive escalation in state power. Indeed, it's hard to see how you could end "global tax injustice" or bring about "authentic global equality" without some sort of global super-state with far-reaching powers – and, presumably, a corresponding loss of British sovereignty. This is what democracy looks like, apparently.

Like most revolutionary socialists, I don't suppose the St Paul's protestors have thought very deeply about this problem. They fondly imagine that, untainted by capitalism, mankind is essentially good. A modicum of state control may be necessary in the early years of the revolution, when men are still in the grip of greed and selfishness, but this is just a “transitional phase”. Once a fully-fledged socialist society has sprung into being, people will cast off their wicked habits and the state – or global super-state – can wither away.

In reality, of course, the “transitional phase” never ends. Mankind is incapable of shedding those bad habits for the simple reason that they’re hard-wired into our DNA. Self-interest will always trump altruism. Family ties will always have a stronger claim on our loyalties than some abstract ideal. We will always struggle to gain a competitive advantage over our neighbours – which is why the Tobin Tax is such a bad idea. Far from withering away, the socialist state becomes ever more powerful in a vain attempt to suppress these instincts and preserve "authentic global equality".
Any political movement that legitimizes an escalation in state power, however well-intentioned, must be resisted. Whatever abuses men inflict on each other under free market capitalism will always pale into insignificance next to the abuses of the state. From Moscow to Havana, a utopian vision always ends with a boot stamping on a human face.

It is important to remember that the communists have been talking about the perfidy of the bankers for over a hundred years non-stop. The bankers, especially those "Jewish bankers" are the stock whipping boys for the International Socialists and National Socialists alike. The current economic crisis just makes ordinary people, who wouldn't normally give the Marxists a glance sideways, sit up and pay attention. This rhetoric gets a hearing when the mob is stirred up and looking for somebody to blame. In this sense, left-wing politics is a parasite and a disease on the body politic. It may lie dormant in healthy times, but can goad the mob into a witch hunt when the crops fail.

Religious leaders who play up this emotion-driven, fear-ridden, angry need to blame someone for the problems we face are playing a very dangerous game. Civilization is always fragile and dark passions lurk just beneath the surface in all human beings. Right now, the Archbishop of Canterbury looks merely ridiculous. If things were to degenerate, as they have many times in the past, he would go from looking ridiculous to looking irresponsible to looking malicious and evil in quite short order. Those with a platform and an office should be careful what potions they brew and what spirits they call up in the name of "democracy" and "social justice."

Should Christians Be Concerned about Income Inequality?

2011-11-01T20:05:00.005-04:00

I am amazed, not only at how many people think that the answer to this question is yes, but at how many people think it is obviously and incontrovertibly yes and that anyone who can not see how blindingly obvious it is that justice requires income equality is either stupid or evil.

Actually, income inequality is not a very important issue at all for those concerned about the well-being of the poor. It is a red herring, a distraction from the main issue, which is poverty and its causes. There is such a fog of unwarranted assumptions surrounding this idea that it is second only to the phrase "social justice" in being useless if clear thinking is the goal.

I want to try and untangle some of the issues surrounding the question of whether or not Christians should be concerned about income inequality and it is going to take some time. The position I am putting forward is based on logic, facts and historical evidence and, unlike the opposing position, cannot be reduced to a few slogans ready to be chanted by mobs. (I am not going to document every assertion but if challenged on a particular point I will point you to some resources.)

The position I will put forward requires careful thinking and the ability to follow a chain of argument for several steps before arriving at the conclusion. If you wish to argue, you are welcome as long as you stick to actual arguments.

1. Defining Poverty:
First of all, we need to understand that there are two ways of defining poverty: absolute measures and relative measures. To measure poverty in absolute terms is to list what a family of four needs in order to have the necessities of life but no luxuries: shelter, transportation, food, clothes, education etc. This amount will obviously vary from place to place and can be skewed by such factors as amount of real estate owned if any and so on. The analysis can get extremely complicated but for measuring differences over time it can be simplified and standardized.

The other method is to peg the poverty line to a percentage of the median income. This means that the poverty line will go up and down depending on the income of the highest earners in society, which often fluctuates from year to year depending on the state of the economy. All sorts of distortions occur in this type of measure. For example the poverty line may go down in a year like 2008, which would mean that a family of four living in Toronto might be considered no longer to be under the poverty line even though its income for that year actually dropped due to the loss of an extra part-time job. But chances are, food etc. is no cheaper, so common sense tells us that can't be right.

2. The Goal: Helping Poor People Become Better Off
Another problem with the relative measure of poverty is that it has a buried assumption that income equality ought to the be long-term goal of our society. But let me propose a different goal: helping poor people become better off. You might say that you thought pursuing income equality automatically does this, but the example I gave above shows that this is not true. If we want to succeed in social policy, our goals must be crystal clear.

I suggest that if the average income of the poorest 20% of the population increases over time relative to inflation and the number of people living in poverty declines, we should count that as progress even if the average income of the middle 60% or the top 20% grows even faster. Why? Because the goal is to make sure that the average income of the bottom 20% does not drop.

3. What makes the poor even poorer?
Well-intentioned social democratic economic policies that involve high taxes and large social welfare programs can hurt the poor even more than benign neglect. The fact is that policies intended to help the poor often end up hurting the poor. Let me give two examples from the past; they are not theoretical but actually happened.

First, there is inflation. When budget deficits are high due to high government spending the temptation is very strong for governments to let interest rates rise, increase the money supply and pay off debts (or, more realistically, continue to increase deficits) using devalued currency. Thus 2011 dollars are borrowed and spent but repaid in devalued 2021 dollars. But, surprise, surprise, lenders are wise to this game (which we saw played out horrifically in the 1970s) and demand higher and higher interest rates.

Meanwhile, ordinary people (the bottom 60% especially) are hurt the most by high inflation. Wages seldom keep pace with inflation and most people see their purchasing power eroded. Those living in the tightest margains (the bottom 20%) suffer the most. So keeping government deficits low, national debt low as a percentage of GDP and inflation under control is extremely important. High inflation over time can undo the net effect of higher welfare payments and leave both those on welfare & unemployment, as well as the working poor, worse off despite ever growing government spending on poverty.

Second, the Great Society programs in the 1960s in the US destroyed the black family. Young women were given a financial incentive to move out on their own and have babies without being married. The gap between white and black income had been closing the late 50s but immediately and permanently (so far) began to widen. The gap between white families headed by single mothers and ones with married couples raising their biological children also widens steadily, suggesting that the cause is family structure not race.

The socialists and liberals who supported welfare saw themselves as compassionate and generous, but they hurt ordinary, working class people, diminished economic mobility and created a multi-generation underclass. This is tragic. Poverty rates for intact families has long been in single digits, while the rate for families headed by single women is north of 35%. Obviously, liberal support for the sexual revolution has contributed to the problem as well; sexual liberation for white, upper-middle class women is much more benign in terms of economics than it is for those in the bottom 20% of income levels.

4. Another Problem in Measuring Poverty:
It is a truism that you will never be able to fix a problem you can't even define. And defining poverty is tricky. If you divide the population into 5 groups by annual income: bottom 20% etc., then it is easy to forget that most people move through different income brackets as they move through the life cycle. Young people in their twenties typically do not earn as much as those same people do in their forties and fifties. And retired people don't earn as much as they did previously and they don't need to in order to maintain the same lifestyle.

In order for poverty statistics to mean anything they must measure two things: the number of people who never move out of the bottom 20% and how much mobility there is between the five groups. If a society has high mobility (eg. 60% of those in the bottom 20% in 1990 are in the highest or second highest group in 2010 and only 10% are still in the bottom 20%), then you are looking at a just society in which most people are getting ahead during their lifetimes. If an individual does not make it up the income ladder under those conditions, then the fault likely lies with the individual's lifestyle or character or some sort of physical or mental handicap. Prison may be the only alternative for some and charity will be necessary for others.

My retirement adviser tells me that most people only need about 65% of their pre-retirement income in retirement. Most retired people have their mortgages paid off, do not have the expenses associated with working and are not saving for retirement. My point is that they do not live on two-thirds of their previous income by eating cat food. Their lifestyle is roughly the same. Such people should not count in statistics defining poverty. Another example is a family in which husband and wife both work for 3 years after marriage and live on one income while saving up a down payment on a house. Then the wife gets pregnant and quits her job. Their income drops and they go out and buy a house! Like a long-anticipated retirement, this is not a failure in terms of a family dropping from one income group to another; it is a good planning.

5. Defining poverty not entry level job compensation:
So my point is that we need to focus on what happens to the bottom group, but even there we can let our romantic notions trump good economic sense. A good example of this is the fallacy of higher minimum wage laws helping poor people. Any solid economics textbook (like Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell) can explain in detail why raising the minimum wage does not help the poor.

Think of it this way. Not all jobs play the same function. Some jobs are good entry level jobs that pay low wages but offer the opportunity for young people to gain invaluable work habits, experience and content for the resume. Such jobs need to pay low enough wages so that there will be lots of them around for young people just starting out to get a first job. They should also provide incentive for people to gain marketable skills and try for better jobs.

If the lowest wage jobs are converted to high pay jobs there will be fewer of them. That will make the statistics look like income went up for the bottom 20%, but in reality what went up was unemployment and that is not good for poverty reduction.

6. What about those filthy rich?
I've saved the most important point for the last: isn't it unfair for the rich to get richer faster than the poor get richer? No, it isn't unfair, it isn't bad for society as a whole and it is actually a good thing for the poor. Let me explain.

For most of human history income disparity was not as great as it is now for a very good reason: the total wealth of the human race was only a tiny fraction of what it is today. In the past 2 centuries - for the first time in all of recorded history - billions of people have moved out of abject poverty and the middle class has exploded. What is the cause of this? It is not socialism, but rather capitalism - the biggest and most successful anti-poverty program in human history!

Throughout human history most people (over 90%) lived a hand to mouth subsistence lifestyle. Only a wealthy, privileged few lived anywhere close to the level of lower middle class working people today. And even when the king and nobility amassed most of the wealth in a given nation, they still didn't have that much compared to the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffets and so on of our day. The gap keeps getting bigger because of the success of capitalism and we should not be concerned about that reality.

A much bigger concern should be the possibility of economic policies that prevent people from rising from the lower income groups to the top 1% of income earners by inventing useful goods that people want or need and are willing to pay for. In fact, I suggest that income mobility is far more important as an indicator of whether a society is just than poverty measures in themselves.

The poor need rich people to be rich and to grow richer by investment. Why? As Thomas Sowell might put it: "A poor man never gave me a job." The engine of economic growth in a just society is small businesses and the biggest problem entrepreneurs with a good idea face is a lack of capital investment. If capital gains taxes are too high (they actually should be abolished) then investors will not be able to get a rate of return sufficient to justify the risk.

If an investor wants to invest in 10 companies that want to start up or expand, he knows that 3-4 are likely to go bankrupt. Some of the rest will stagnate and provide little return and hopefully a few will be successful and provide a high return sufficient to cover the losses and give an overall rate of return higher than less risky investments like government bonds. If not, investment capital will dry up, businesses will stagnate, and employment will go down instead of up.

Who gets hurt in such a scenario? The person looking for a job who is unemployed is hurt significantly. The rich, on the other hand, have options. They can buy real estate or gold, invest off shore, or invest in the government bonds that are paying ever higher rates because the federal deficit is exploding. The point is that economic policies that appear to help the rich actually help the poor. The Democratic Party in the US and the Liberals and NDP in Canada successfully demagogue those who argue for business-friendly policies as insensitive to the poor when their opponents are, in fact, the ones promoting policies that help the poor. When the Republicans and the Conservatives promote policies that help small and medium sized businesses, they are doing the best things possible to help the poor.

Of course, Big Business and Big Government often are in bed together colluding to stifle competition and replace capitalism with mercantilism or state capitalism (which is not really capitalism) or cronyism. They often keep small businesses down by increasing regulation that the bigger corporations can afford to comply with but small ones cannot. Excessive government regulation of all kinds can damage the economy and hurt the poor. I do not understand why those who profess to care about the poor are not as suspicious of government as they are of business. Both need to be controlled and watched. Governments do not operate under market discipline so they are prone to do stupid things to the economy and voters are often so uninformed and unthoughtful that they are easily manipulated by slogans and heartfelt assertions of good intentions. Only results should be considered, not intentions.

Countries that pursue high tax policies that keep the rich from amassing large pools of capital in the name of "social justice" and "income equality" are successful in damaging the economy, increasing unemployment, creating inflation and freezing income inequality into rigid classes that keep people from being able to advance in life by hard work and individual initiative.

Governments have no money of their own; all they have is what they take from citizens. But governments famously waste about half the money they tax and spend, which is a tremendous drag on the economy. Private individuals and businesses, guided by market disciplines, create much more of real economic value for every dollar they spend than governments do. Yet every welfare state or socialist policy idea ever advanced advocates increasing the size of government.

Rich people invest their money, when tax and other government policies are rational enough to encourage them to do do, in money-making endeavours that are also job-creating endeavours. We should not "eat" the rich; we should honour them and respect them.

If people get rich by doing illegal things, that is of course different. But working hard, having good ideas, starting and growing businesses are all socially beneficial behaviours that ought to be encouraged.

As Christians, we should think more about how to create a business friendly environment, how to increase economic mobility and how to reward socially beneficial behaviours than about income inequality. As long as the poor are getting ahead in real terms and opportunity exists for all, we have as just a society as is possible under the conditions of the Fall.

Who Won the Cold War?

2011-10-30T15:04:00.004-04:00

Remind me again, which side won the Cold War between the Communist East and the Liberal Democratic West? Let's see, the official version is that the Liberal Democrats won the economic war, thus bringing the USSR to its knees, but it is becoming more apparent every day that the Communists won the war of ideas and that victory is now bringing Liberal Democracy to its knees in Western Europe.

Social democratic Europe is turning into the Soviet Union.

The long, relentless, one-step-at-a-time march of socialist ideas first through the hearts and minds, and then through the institutions, of Western Europeans has brought the European Union to the point where economic survival now requires the surrender of national sovereignty and responsible government in Europe.

Janet Daley, of the Daily Telegraph, has an illuminating and unusually honest assessment of the events which took place in Europe last week. Her blog post, entitled "This was the week that European democracy died," looks at the latest twist in the long drawn out train wreck that is the European Union:

Democracy went down in a blaze of glory last week. Both the German Bundestag and our own House of Commons put up one hell of a fight against the dying of the light. Maybe history will record that fact in an elegy on the demise of the great 18th-century experiment in government by the people: they were eloquent to the end. Because at the end, eloquence was all they had.

Trying to hold back the resurgence of oligarchy – the final dismantling of democratic responsibility in the governing of Europe – has been looking pretty hopeless for a long time. That eruption of excellent rhetoric and faultless argument which sprang to the defence of the rights of the governed (and in Germany’s case, of constitutional legality) made the loss seem all the more tragic, but no less inevitable.

So this is where we are. The agreed EU “stability union” triumphantly paraded before the media in Brussels will have the power to approve or disapprove budgets of countries in the eurozone – that is, to vet and police them – before they are submitted to the elected parliaments of those countries. In other words, parliaments which are directly mandated by, and answerable to, their own populations will not control the most essential functions of government: decisions on taxation and spending. Even without the ultimate institutions of economic and political union, which still elude the EU, actual power over fiscal policy will be taken from the hands of national leaders. And if, as a voter, you cannot influence your prospective government’s tax and spending policies, what exactly are you voting for?

Britain being outside the eurozone, we will not have to present our fiscal arrangements for authorisation before submitting them to the scrutiny of our legislators (and their constituents). But since our own economic recovery relies so heavily on the stability of the euro, we find ourselves (or at least, George Osborne has found himself) enthusiastically supporting this rape of democratic principle in countries which regard their freedom and self-determination as precious in much the same way, remarkably enough, that free-born Englishmen do.

The implications of what has happened will take some time to sink in. But eventually it will become clear that what has happened is that a centralized, EU bureaucracy has become sovereign, just as socialist theory says it should. And the reason why it should is the ineptness of old-fashioned, liberal-democratic governments to do the job. Capitalism (neo-liberalism) has failed; where have we heard that before? And so, therefore, democracy must give way to socialist central planning.

This is being put forward as a "solution"! In the year of our Lord 2011! Surely, as Daley wisely points out, the purported solution itself is a bigger problem than the problem it was brought forward to solve.

And among those hapless, soon-to-be-disenfranchised peoples, hatreds have been awakened that the EU was, ironically, designed to bury. The Greeks hugely resent what they consider to be the implicitly racist contempt of the Germans: the political opposition in Athens on both Left and Right rejects the idea of being “bailed out” of a crisis (with all the compliance that entails) that they believe to have been caused by the artificial constraints of euro membership rather than by national character flaws. Even their moderate spokesmen are beginning to characterise Germany’s economic impositions as a revival of its wartime attempt at conquest.
When Angela Merkel warned last week about the possible end of the blessedly long post-war peace in Europe, she meant that the failure of the euro (and thus of the EU project) would precipitate economic chaos and possibly lead to war. But she and her colleagues seem oblivious to the resurgence of hostility that is being brought about by every move closer to “successful” European integration.

Indeed, it is often quite eerie how the statements and mannerisms of EU officials, seemingly so dedicated to being the precise opposite of earlier, infamous generations, end up echoing (or parodying) the more memorable moments of the war-torn 20th century. When the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, proclaimed, “I am pleased to stand before you this morning and confirm that Europe is closer to resolving its financial and economic crisis… We are showing that we can unite in the most difficult of times”, I half expected him to wave a piece of paper in the air and proclaim economic stability in our time. . . .
Far from being an antidote to the ideological delusions of the past century, a trans-national superstate is the same sort of utopian, unnatural, ahistorical folly that earlier generations attempted to foist on the recalcitrant populations of Europe. Its doctrine of “co-operation” is simply coercion by another name. It relies on unswerving belief and enforced conformity, just like all the “year zero” political movements that ended in totalitarianism and terror in the past. The one hope is that the great mass of the people, unlike most of their political leaders, seem to understand all this quite clearly. It remains to be seen whether they will have to go out on the streets to make their case.

Only bureaucrats, academics and Marxists believe that there can exist a bureaucracy that serves no political master, that is, a professional cadre of technical experts dedicated only to solving all problems. It is a vision of politics as consisting of nothing but mathematical problems requiring only expert mathematicians to manage all the issues efficiently. What a dream: the benign rule of the technocrat!

The European super-state will fall apart much more quickly than the USSR did because the leaders of the EU likely will not have the stomach for murdering tens of millions of people. So it will not take anything like 70 years for the whole thing to collapse. In truth, the USSR only lasted a few decades, if that, before it lost all credibility. But its fall was a long, drawn out affair mainly because of the violence used to sustain it.

We can expect no such resort to violence from EU leaders because they, unlike those deceived by Lenin and Stalin, are not true believers in Utopia. Today's leaders believe in Utopia because all "right-thinking people" do and when the riots come they will acts more like the befuddled generals of the USSR in those last chaotic days than like the disciplined cadres of true believers who could slaughter millions with a good conscience in the name of making a better world.

The Evangelical Left's Nostalgia Trip Down Wall Street

2011-10-29T11:32:00.005-04:00

Mark Tooley, who is always worth reading, has some thoughts on the embrace of Occupy Wall Street by left-wing leaders. (Why, by the way, are those leaders always jumping on secular bandwagons to prove their relevance?)

In an article entitled, "Religion Flocks to Wall Street" he writes:

Because they are Americans, the Wall Street Occupiers are suffused with messianic purpose, as are nearly all our nation's American political crusades. But the often raggedy Occupiers themselves do not seem specifically oriented towards organized religion.

Not to worry. Religious Leftists of all sorts have rallied to the Occupiers' bedraggled banners. Guided by the Social Gospel's emphasis on social justice over theological details, these religionists discern God's Kingdom among the squatters' tents and sleeping bags. One group of clergy visited while carrying a mock golden idol shaped like the dreaded Wall Street Bull, the very incarnation of greed.

Praising the Occupation is a gamble for liberal evangelicals, who have tried so hard to appear centrist in recent years, anxious to softly persuade suburban churchgoers to abandon their conservative voting habits. Oldline Protestant elites, along with left-wing Catholic activists, of course welcome the Occupation as a long overdue 1960s revival.

After reviewing the police lineup of the usual suspects from the Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ and Methodist church hierarchies, Tooley comes back to left-wing Evangelicals.

This call towards utopia, enshrouded simultaneously in grievance, entitlement, idealism, and youthful naiveté, has understandably seduced old-style street activists like Jim Wallis of Sojourners, or even Brian McLaren of the emergent church movement. "When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus," Wallis has pronounced, even before himself visiting the Occupation, which doubtless only amplified his excited nostalgia. "'The occupation of God has begun'" might inspire the same fear and hope among people today as 'the Kingdom of God is at hand' inspired in the first century," gushed McLaren, after attending his own local Occupation protest.

Indeed, I'll bet Jim Wallis is re-living his old Students for a Democratic Society days as he basks in the glow of the nostalgia. Is Brian McLaren even aware of how much he sounds like old-fashioned, early 20th century social gospelers when he compares the latest social trend to the kingdom of God?

I sometimes wonder if they grasp just how out of date they really are; the leftists who operated in the pre-World War I era and pre-Soviet era could be excused to some extent because they had never seen the fruits of Communism (although they should have been warned by the orgy of violence that was the French Revolution). But to gush about "equality" and "building the kingdom" with secular protest movements today is to have one's feet embedded in the cement of nostalgia while the parade passes by.

Representing a newer generation of Evangelical liberal is Shane Claiborne, a winsome young white man who typically sports dreadlocks, a bandana, and a rustic smock, while proclaiming good news for the poor to attentive middle class evangelical students. "In a world where 1 percent of the world owns half the world's stuff, we are beginning to realize that there is enough for everyone's need, but there is not enough for everyone's greed," he recently insisted. "Lots of folks are beginning to say, 'Maybe God has a different dream for the world than the Wall Street dream.'"

The dubious statistic about the wicked "1 percent" aside, Claiborne speaks some truth. But he and the other religious enthusiasts for Wall Street aren't calling for individuals to shed their wealth for God's Kingdom. Of course, they primarily want an all powerful state to seize and redistribute wealth according to some imagined just formula, after which the lion will lie peaceably with the lamb. It's a utopian dream, not based on the Gospels, always monstrous when attempted, and premised more on resentment than godly generosity. But it's a message that will always have an audience in a covetous world.

What strikes me is the insight Tooley offers in the last sentence. Is it not transparently obvious that the whole appeal of the OWS protests to the ordinary, fuzzy-minded, college kids with iPhones and $100K of student load debt is nothing other than plain covetousness? The Gospel is about generosity; socialism is about forced redistribution. Why is this? Because the Gospel changes lives while socialism fiddles around with social structures. Socialism cannot make people generous; only the indwelling Spirit of God can do that.

But really, religious leaders promoting covetousness??? I suppose it is no stranger than religious leaders promoting fornication . . . or divorce . . . or murdering pre-born babies. Breaking the Ten Commandments seems to be just what the Religious Left does.

A Clash of Civilizations - Between Christianity and the Dictatorship of Relativism

2011-10-28T22:00:00.002-04:00

Todd Starnes of Fox News has a story on a lawsuit brought against Catholic University of America for being too . . . Catholic!

The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University violated the human rights of Muslim students by not allowing them to form a Muslim student group and by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers.

he investigation alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism – e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.”
A spokesperson for the Office of Human Rights told Fox News they had received a 60-page complaint against the private university. The investigation, they said, could take as long a six months.

Father Z gives this story a little fisking:

Muslims say crosses at Catholic University Violate “Human Rights”

The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University violated the human rights of Muslim students by not allowing them to form a Muslim student group and by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers. [Lemme get this straight. They enroll in a Catholic University... and it isn't a surprise that it is "Catholic" given that it is called "Catholic University of America". Then they complain that there are Catholic symbols everywhere!]
The investigation alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism – e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.” [Perhaps they should enroll at Islamic University of America?]

A spokesperson for the Office of Human Rights told Fox News they had received a 60-page complaint against the private university. The investigation, they said, could take as long a six months. [Could they have had a little help writing the complaint?]
The complaint was filed by John Banzhaf, an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School. [Ahhh,,,,] Banzhaf has been involved in previous litigation against the school involving the same-sex residence halls.

And Bill Donahue of the Catholic League puts this story in its proper context:

Catholic University of America is being sued by George Washington University professor John Banzhaf because it does not accommodate Muslim religious practices.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

John Banzhaf needs to be sued for bringing a frivolous lawsuit. He has no complainants—not a single Muslim at Catholic University has come to him complaining about seeing pictures of the pope or the display of crucifixes in campus buildings. Nor has a single Muslim registered a complaint with the administration of the university. This lawsuit, which follows a recent one filed by Banzhaf against Catholic University for moving towards single-sex dorms, stands not one iota of a chance of ultimately winning. Its purpose is to harass.

When Catholics enroll at Yeshiva University in New York City, they expect to see the Star of David and portraits of Moses. When Protestants enroll at the American Islamic College in Chicago, they expect to see the Crescent and Star and portraits of Muhammad. And when Muslims enroll at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., they expect to see crucifixes and portraits of Jesus. Those who attend these private schools and object to such displays need to leave and apply to a community college or a state university.
The impression is being left in the media that Muslim students are behind this assault on the First Amendment. It thus behooves Muslim leaders to denounce this lawsuit immediately. The bigot is Banzhaf, not Muslims.

The obvious lesson here is that things are often not what they seem at first glance. Critical reading of the news media is crucial to understanding contemporary events.

A story about persecution of Muslims . . . . . . turns into a story about militant Muslims demanding that a Catholic university compromise its faith . . . . . . . . turns into a story about a Catholic university being persecuted by a pro-nanny state liberal who decides what is in the public interest and uses lawfare to get it.

The clash of civilizations in this case is between the Judeo-Christian basis of Western civilization and the new barbarism that a certain, high-profile person labelled "the dictatorship of relativism."

W. B. Yeats and the Question of What Comes After Christianity in the West

2011-10-28T15:00:00.005-04:00

Western culture has lost it soul. Its soul, of course, is Christianity. Twenty centuries of Christian influence on the West has produced a civilization which is, if not in a deep and profound sense Christian, nevertheless deeply and profoundly influenced by and shaped by Christian Faith. Augustinian Christianity holds that the City of God will never be realized perfectly on earth in the current age in the Church, in the State, or in the society in which a Christian Church and Christian State together guide the culture. Neither the State nor the Church can be completely purged of sin in this age; the City of God must descend out of heaven after the Return of Christ after this age comes to its conclusion.

Yet the sense in which Western civilization can be described as a "Christian civilization" is neither superficial nor trivial. There is a middle ground between the extremes of viewing Western civilization of merely co-opting Christianity to serve as a thin veneer over an essentially pagan essence and viewing Western civilization as the Kingdom of God on earth.

Western civilization is Christian, or rather, was Christian, in the sense in which it felt guilty for failing to live up to the moral standards of the Bible and this is neither trivial nor superficial. It is perhaps the deepest and most important way in which a civilization can be Christian in the present age between the first and second comings of Christ.

But now, Western civilization is crumbling because it has lost its collective faith. We see this process, named by sociologists as "secularization" and by political philosophers as "liberalism," beginning in the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century on the continent, delayed for a century by the Evangelical Awakening in Britain and America in the 18th century but coming to fruition in the 20th century in Europe and after the 1960s in North America.

Western civilization has no other religious-philosophical worldview or set of first principles to draw upon. The Enlightenment was a reaction against Christian metaphysics, epistemology and ethics and the embrace of the idea of equality as the sine qua non of morality. This idea of equality, combined with a romantic philosophical anthropology and a Utopian eschatology, led 19th century Marxists and 20th century Neo-Marxists to attack the Christian foundations of the West in the name of the new religion of Humanity.

The question of what is to come after Christianity remains murky. Surely they are correct who argue that post-Christian paganism will be extremely different from pre-Christian paganism because the former will have embedded within itself fragments of Christianity. Post-Christian paganism will have a conversionist zeal, a method of purification and redemption and a moralistic sternness that did not characterize the old, tired, paganism supplanted by Christianity in the first millennium of Western civilization.

We see a picture of what this post-Christian paganism looks like in the Nazi, Fascist and Communist movements of the 20th century. Liberalism degenerates into the will to power and the excrescences of religiosity left over after the death of orthodox Christian Faith degenerate into a bloodthirsty, neopagan, religious fanaticism.

I view W. B. Yeats' poem, The Second Coming, published in 1921, as prophetic.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The first 8 lines describe the anarchy, out-of-control violence and irrationality of the Great War. The "best" who lack all conviction are the secularized children of believers in Christ who believe in nothing more than liberal tolerance. The "worst" who are full of passionate intensity are those who are inflamed by nationalistic or simply bloodthirsty passions. We can see such people in charge by looking back to the French Revolution or forward to the rise of the Third Reich.

The next 8 lines look to the future; if Christian civilization died in the trenches of the Great War, what will replace it? No civilization can endure long without a soul; something must fill the void. A Second Coming must occur, but if Christian Faith is dead there can be no question of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ on the clouds of heaven in power and glory. That is precisely the Faith which has died. So whatever is to come must be an expression of the Spirit of the Age, which is antithetical to authentic Christian Faith.

The last 4 lines describe a new birth in Bethlehem, suggesting the founding event of a new religion that replaces the old, dead Christian Faith. What is born must incarnate the Spirit of the Age and therefore can be described as a "rough beast." It slouches toward Bethlehem to be born even now, but it has not been born yet. Out of the political, economic, religious, philosophical, ethical and military chaos - in short, civilizational chaos - of 1914-18 will emerge the "New Thing" that will replace, Christianity, the "Old Thing."

What happened in Nazi Germany is the logical expression of the decadence, madness and evil that fills a body whose soul has died. Old, Christian, Western civilization rose up one last time and spent nearly its last ounce of strength slaying the "rough beast" in World War II, but could only do so by making an alliance with another beast, which was nearly as bad. While the West could be said to have won the Cold War against Communism in a superficial, external sense, the tragic reality is that the Spirit of the Age - clothing itself in the ideal of Equality - has entered the Western bloodstream and infected it fatally.

Western civilization - Modernity - is dying. Europe is just playing out the string, while the United States fights for its life against the same infection that felled Europe. What comes next is difficult to describe because it is not a rational, logical, worldview like Christianity, but rather, the antitheses of such a worldview. It is the will to power with a clear conscience that is struggling to be born.

This all sounds extremely pessimistic and it is. But if one asks "Is there any hope?" the answer is always "Yes." But hope can only be found in that which the West has already rejected. Christianity is the only hope for the survival of Western civilization. We must not rule out the possibility of revival and rebirth because we are not fatalists or determinists. God's Providence is unpredictable and surprises may yet await us - especially in the United States where Christianity remains a living community of Faith.

But the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born - whether it is called the Spirit of the Age, the Antichrist, the Will to Power or Neopaganism - has clearly been born and is fighting for control of Western civilization. Its nihilistic, romantic, Utopian, anarchistic lust for blood and the destruction of the social order is dangerous and demonic. Christians will have to resist it by being willing embrace martyrdom. Revival will entail war.

7 Billion People on Planet Earth!

2011-10-26T09:50:00.004-04:00

The Malthusian myth of overpopulation continues to grow in the fevered swamps of anti-humanism and radical environmentalism. (See here for a relatively tame example and here for a more aggressively anti-human one.) Many people are wringing their hands right now because we have just passed the 7 billion mark in the world's population. I am amazed at the number of people who think that we would all be happier and more prosperous if only we could cut the population in half.

In actual fact, the greatest crisis facing the world in the 21st century is the specter of population decline, with all the wars, economic disasters and drops in living standards likely to accompany such a calamity.

If you don't understand the statistics, here is a great little two minute video which explains how the world's population is on pace to peak by the mid-21st century and then decline sharply.

For more information on population studies, go here.

In a nation of stagnant population (such as Japan) there is also economic stagnation. In a nation that is declining in population (such as Russia) there are even worse economic problems. Economic stagnation leads to cultural decline but economic instability leads to social unrest, dictatorships and war. In a nation where men vastly outnumber women (such as China) the likely outcome is some sort of war of conquest or even civil war.

Seven billion people does not feel crowded to me; the anti-human hype is just part of the culture of death. The reality is that we need to have an average of 2.1 children per woman just to maintain population levels and in over 70 countries we do not have that high a fertility rate. We are aborting and contracepting ourselves out of existence and disobeying the Divine command to be fruitful and multiply. This is nothing short of collective suicide and the fact that it will take several generations to accomplish should not make it acceptable.

Think about it.

Defund Abortion Rally

2011-10-25T21:44:00.003-04:00

On Oct. 23 a rally was held at Queen's Park to protest the use of taxpayer funds for abortions. It was sponsored by Campaign Life Coalition and featured mostly young people. About 2300 people attended, but I heard no word of it in the secular media. Here is a taste of the rally:

The contrast with the Occupy Wall Street nonsense is stark. Since the mainstream media share the anti-capitalist worldview of the OWS crowd, they are guaranteed favorable national coverage on a nightly basis.

We need to push this issue harder and force the media to notice. I think we greatly underestimate how many Canadians hate the scourge of abortion and wish it could be stopped. It is time for Evangelicals to get involved in swelling the numbers of the annual March For Life in Ottawa in May.

Richard Dawkins is a Coward

2011-10-25T20:06:00.004-04:00

Tim Stanley has a nice piece on Richard Dawkins cowardly refusal to meet William Lane Craig in public debate about the existence of God. Presumably Dawkins has access to the internet and has watched a few YouTube videos of Craig making mincemeat out of atheist philosopher wannabes. No wonder he is desperately seeking excuses to avoid what would surely be a world class humiliation.

Stanley writes in the Daily Telegraph:

Finally, Richard Dawkins has given his reasons for refusing to debate the American theologian William Lane Craig. We have waited a long time for this. The invitation to discuss the existence of God at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre was extended to Dawkins many months ago. Craig is an excellent speaker who has made mincemeat out of better men, including Christopher Hitchens. He has a witty, deliberate style that often makes his opponents look (and probably feel) a little ridiculous. Therefore, everyone just presumed that Dawkins refused to debate Craig because he’s scared. He is, after all, only human (or a talking monkey, depending on your point of view).

But Dawkins is a proud man (or arrogant chimp), and the accusation of cowardice probably ate at him from within. Finally, on Thursday, he gave a proper excuse for his no show to The Guardian. Its intellectual emptiness says so much about his particular brand of atheism.

It seems that Dawkins has been doing a little internet trolling. He has dug up an online debate in which William Lane Craig apparently defends the massacre of a city of heathen Canaanites ordered by God in Deuteronomy 20:13-15. “Listen to Craig,” Dawkins writes, as if imagining Craig were a demon sitting on his shoulder. “He begins by arguing that the Canaanites were debauched and sinful and therefore deserved to be slaughtered. He then notices the plight of the Canaanite children [and concludes] … ‘We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.’” Dawkins writes that he is so disgusted with Craig's thesis that he cannot possibly agree to meet him in person. “Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context," he adds. "What context could possibly justify them?”

Actually, the context is called “Christian apologetics”, and it’s been around for centuries. It's the attempt by scholars to present a rational basis for belief in God. Part of that process is running difficult bits of the Bible past the tests of reason and ethics. To return to the entire post that Dawkins quotes from (because, contrary to what he wrote, context does matter to a serious thinker), Craig begins thus: “These stories offend our moral sensibilities. Ironically, however, our moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people unconsciously, shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value of human beings, the importance of dealing justly rather than capriciously, and the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime. The Bible itself inculcates the values which these stories seem to violate.”

Ergo, Craig’s purpose in writing this piece is to unravel the paradox of a moral Bible that also includes lashings of apparently random violence. Craig stresses that these passages of the Bible are difficult for us to read because we are not of the age in which they are written – they are just as alien to us as Beowulf or the Iliad. That’s because Christian society has been shaped by the rules of life outlined in the New Testament, not in the section of The Bible in which this massacre occurs. Far from using this passage to celebrate the slaughter of heathen, Craig is making the point that the revelation of God’s justice has changed over time. The horrors of the Old Testament have been rendered unnecessary by Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. That’s why the idiots who protest the funerals of gay soldiers or blow up abortion clinics aren’t just cruel, they’re bad theologians.

The irony is that Dawkins is outraged - outraged I tell you - about Canaanite babies 3500 years ago, but he thinks that blood-stained abortion clinics all over a modern country like Britain are perfectly normal and necessary. He is a total prisoner of intellectual fashion and thinks that the offending of modern sensibilities is the sine qua non of what constitutes a knock-down argument. It is the equivalent of "Well, all the best sort think this way, you know darling."

That he uses such a transparent dodge to evade being decimated by a debater who simply knows far more about philosophy and theology than he will ever know would be excusable if it were not for Dawkins' air of smug Oxbridge superiority, which he assumes with regard to ordinary Christians.

He is the classic school yard bully who runs home to momma when the older brother comes back to invite him to pick on someone his own size.

"The fool has said in his heart that there is no God" . . . and he refuses to debate opponents who are too smart.

Global Warming Alarmism as a Religious Movement

2011-10-24T09:24:00.005-04:00

Michael Barone has a very good article at Real Clear Politics on the religious character of the global warming movement entitled: "Cult of Global Warming Losing Influence".

Religious faith is a source of strength in many people's lives. But religious faith when taken too far can prove ludicrous -- or disastrous. . . .
They have an unshakeable faith that manmade carbon emissions will produce a hotter climate, causing multiple natural disasters. Their insistence that we can be absolutely certain this will come to pass is based not on science -- which is never fully settled, witness the recent experiments that may undermine Albert Einstein's theory of relativity -- but on something very much like religious faith.
All the trappings of religion are there. Original sin: Mankind is responsible for these prophesied disasters, especially those slobs who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and drive their SUVs to strip malls and tacky chain restaurants.

The need for atonement and repentance: We must impose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which will increase the cost of everything and stunt economic growth.

Ritual, from the annual Earth Day to weekly recycling.

Indulgences, like those Martin Luther railed against: private jet-fliers like Al Gore and sitcom heiress Laurie David can buy carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon-emitting sins.

Corporate elitists, like General Electric's Jeff Immelt, profess to share this faith, just as cynical Venetian merchants and prim Victorian bankers gave lip service to the religious enthusiasms of their days. Bad for business not to. And if you're clever, you can figure out how to make money off it.

Believers in this religion have flocked to conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Copenhagen, just as Catholic bishops flocked to councils in Constance, Ferrara and Trent, to codify dogma and set new rules.

But like the Millerites, the global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom -- and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd.

If carbon emissions were the only thing affecting climate, the global-warming alarmists would be right. But it's obvious that climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.

Skeptics are often denounced as anti-science, but it is not anti-science to be skeptical. The heart of the scientific method is skepticism; without it science could not progress. Skeptics are not saying that there is no global warming; obviously, global warming has been going on since the last ice age. And skeptics do not deny that human activity affects the environment, though to what degree is less clear.

What skeptics are saying is a bit more complicated than a sound bite or slogan. They are saying is that there is no way to be sure that we know exactly how the climate will change in the future because we do not understand clearly enough all the factors that influence climate change. Given the limits of science at the moment, it makes more sense to keep researching and put money into mitigating the effects of climate change as necessary, rather than seriously harming our economy in an attempt to reduce human effects on climate that may or may not be decisive for climate.

Barone puts this well:

In recent years, we have seen how negative to 2 percent growth hurts many, many people, as compared to what happens with 3 to 7 percent growth. So we're much less willing to adopt policies that will slow down growth not just for a few years but for the indefinite future.

Media, university and corporate elites still profess belief in global warming alarmism, but moves toward policies limiting carbon emissions have fizzled out, here and abroad. It looks like we'll dodge the fate of the Millerites, the children's crusaders and the Mahdi's cavalrymen.

If we have protesters in the streets because of the recent recession, imagine an economic slowdown worse than what we have experienced being made permanent by deliberate government policy - and then imagine the anger.

No wonder governments have seen fit to back off the extreme measures being pushed by the environmentalist movement.

So How is That Lovely Anarchy Working Out in NYC?

2011-10-22T16:55:00.003-04:00

New York Magazine has an interesting article entitled: "The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuchotti Park" in which the "order" that is supposed to arise organically from the bottom up is not exactly producing a society of love, harmony, equality and peace. I read Orwell's Animal Farm a month or so ago and it occurs to me that it is no wonder that book has been so widely read. Life resembles it. [my comments in square brackets and in red]

All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. [Remember? "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others?"] In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective. [divisions and, gasp!, hierarchies arising spontaneously in the midst of people who deny that hierarchies are necessary - say it ain't so, Uncle Karl!]

As the protest has grown, some of the occupiers have spontaneously taken charge on projects large and small. But many of the people in Zuccotti Park aren't taking direction well, [you don't say!] leading to a tense Thursday of political disagreements, the occasional shouting match, and at least one fistfight.

It began, as it so often does, with a drum circle. The ten-hour groove marathons weren’t sitting well with the neighborhood’s community board, the ironically situated High School of Economics and Finance that sits on the corner of Zuccotti Park, or many of the sleep-deprived protesters.

“[The high school] couldn’t teach,” explained Josh Nelson, a 27-year-old occupier from Nebraska. “And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out," said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.

But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly. [Forced? You mean like unpopular health care legislation being forced through Congress? But, I thought this was the alternative to that . . . I'm confused.]

“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.” [She wasn't named Nancy Pelosi, was she? It could have been a disguise.]

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.” [I feel like occupying something to express how much I ache for the poor, oppressed drummers.]

The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting." [Can you say anything worse to a person in that movement? A low blow indeed.]

All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. [Is it just me or do I detect a faint note of sarcasm in this sentence? I mean, this is the mainstream media, after all. They are not supposed to take the Revolution lightly or fail to support it in every possible respect.] The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.

But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You’re going to break my f******* tent, get that s*** off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.

Daniel Zetah, a 35-year-old lead facilitator from Minnesota, mounted a bench. “We need to clear this out. There are a bunch of kids coming to stay here.” One of the hoodied men fought back: “I’m not giving up my space for f******* kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.” [I don't think he understands socialism. So many people don't at the moment they are being asked to sacrifice for the Revolution.]

Other organizers were more blunt. “If you don’t want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.” Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We’re all big boys and girls. Let’s do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children." [Light shines into the darkness!] The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”

“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” [Is he for real, or is he a refugee from a comic strip?] a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”

Another argument broke out next to the pile of appropriated belongings, growing taller by the minute. A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.” [It belongs to the pigs. They hold it in trust for all the animals.]

And as I spoke to Michael Glaser, a 26-year-old Chicagoan helping lead winter preparation efforts, a physical fight broke out between a cleaner and a camper just feet from us.

“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.” [Its true - irony is dead!]

In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant." [Oh my goodness; they have already got bureaucracy! That is obviously making their lives better and happier.]

From today’s battles, it’s not yet clear who will win the day: the organizers or the organized. But the month-long protest has clearly grown and evolved to a point where a truly leaderless movement will risk eviction — or, worse, insurrection.

As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn't hold back.

“Someone has to be told what to do," she said. "Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this f******* place.” [But once you abolish "civilization" and demolish hierarchies, the order will bubble up spontaneously from below and it will be better, much better, than what we have now. It's true. I read it on a website.]

Lech Walesa Says "No Way" to Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-21T22:38:00.004-04:00

Lech Walesa was rumored to be heading to New York to address the Occupy Wall Street protest, but it turns out that once he found out the true nature of the organizations behind it he backed out - in a hurry. From the Big Government blog:

The Polish champion of freedom and liberty, founder of Solidarity, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and first President of modern Poland Lech Walesa had been rumored to possibly be traveling to New York to stand with Occupy Wall Street protesters. Press accounts reporting this “breathless” news had given all of us pause.
We suspected that the European news media had filtered out accurate information about the genesis of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

When Walesa’s comments hit the AP wire last week, my team immediately reached out to our Polish contacts. We made the point that the political themes of Occupy Wall Street may have started out with some of the principles that we share, but OWS themes were rapidly being morphed into anti-freedom and anti-liberty messages. At the core is the want for a big, powerful central government to dominate the lives of individual citizens.

Using biggovernment.com plus other news sources, rapidly we painted an accurate picture of the groups training, leading, and organizing the “movement.” The movement is organized by anarchists, Code Pink, the American Communist movement, jihadists, anti-Israel, socialist, and anti- free enterprise interests. OWS folks are politically to the left of President Barack Obama.

At the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, they were thankful to receive this information.

Based on our discussion and intervention, President Walesa is not going to get involved with the OWS. He is not comfortable with the “organizations” behind the movement. It was not a difficult discussion.

The lifetime of good work exercised by President Walesa has lifted people around the world fighting tyranny. Through the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, Walesa has supported freedom and liberty around the world. As a man primarily responsible for vanquishing communism in Poland, Walesa has a personal bent toward helping the underdog and the downtrodden.

This spring, when President Obama visited Poland, President Walesa refused to meet with him.

Lech Walesa is a genuine hero of resistance to the totalitarian state. Getting him to speak would have been a tremendous propaganda coup. But unfortunately for the leftists behind the movement he has been around the block a couple of times and isn't going to fall for their tricks.

I especially noted the part about President Walesa refusing to meet with President Obama. Obama has treated Poland abominably over the whole missile defense system issue. A free Poland should be a valued ally of the West and the US in particular.

Maybe we ought to be as concerned as Lech Walesa about the hard left manipulation of the OWS protest.

If You Want to Spout Modernist Heresy, Leave Jesus Out of It

2011-10-20T20:56:00.007-04:00

I was recently asked by a reader about the website, "Jesus Radicals" and their teaching on anarchism. So I went there and did some reading. Here is what jumped out at me.

1. Socialism: Under the "Economics" tab they say:

Classical anarchism is socialist. That means the the means of production should be owned by the workers and all decisions that affect their work (salaries, what to produce and how, etc) should be made by the workers as well, not a boss. These two pillars would significantly reduce the gap between rich and poor and and also go a long way towards a more egalitarian and democratic society.
A recent example of anarchist economics is developed by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel in the late 1990′s, called participatory economics (parecon for short). They envisioned this economic model as an alternative to capitalist market economies as well as state-based socialism. Participatory economics would strive for human and worker solidarity (rather than isolation and selfishness), equality (rather than disparity), and self-management (rather than having a boss) . . .

This type of anarchist vision is in stark contrast to capitalist free market economies where workers have little say in their own pay, hours, what they produce, and experience an instability in their work since their jobs could be moved at any time if a more profitable location were discovered by the owners, who exploit their labor for profit.

This is the exact opposite of the truth. Ask the workers of the former Soviet Union how much choice workers have in where they work and working conditions under socialism. Under capitalism, workers can individually choose to move from job to job according to what wages and benefits are offered and working conditions. Under socialism these decisions are made by groups over which the individual worker has virtually no control. Socialism is an idea that does not work in reality.

Socialism is bad for everybody. Wherever it has been tried the result has been increased poverty, atheism and tyranny. Socialism is old news; these folk need to get out of the 19th century.

2. Civilization: On this topic the so-called "Jesus Radicals" reach back behind Marx to another figure who is highly influential on modern thought: J. J. Rousseau.

We risk the extinction of all species so we can have momentary comforts. Thus, “green anarchism,” or “anarcho-primitivism,” traces the origins of the problem lie far back in human history with the first domestication of plant and nonhuman animal life. Repeating much of what anthropology has known for years, green anarchism shows that agriculture was the first step in human exploitation of the earth and one another. It was out of this sedentary existence that patriarchy, war, and other forms of social domination arose. As such, we ought to be looking at what anthropologists have found out about nomadic bands. Though not completely free from all violence, many of these bands have never known warfare and are arranged in an egalitarian fashion. There are no kings and rulers amongst them who dominate.

Thus, civilization is a target of green anarchism because at its root, civilization is inherently violent and sets up various relationships of domination.

This is utter, romantic, heretical nonsense. It is actually a heretical doctrine of the Fall of man, in which the Fall occurred not because of disobedience to the law of God but because of the rise of civilization. Thus the nature of sin is relocated from the human heart to the structures of society. Thus, social reform can overcome sin and that is why anarchism advocates the tearing down of the carefully built up structures of civilization that prevent social destructiveness.

People who advocate tearing down civilization are enemies of the people. They are dangerous, but fortunately not numerous enough to put their destructive ideas into practice. But they bearing watching.

Conclusion:
Much of what is on this site is inconsistent with the historic Christian faith. All of it is derived from modern thought, which has been drifting further and further away from the Bible and orthodoxy for centuries now.

I saw nothing on this site dealing with Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross for our sins or the need to confess, repent and believe the good news that Jesus died for us so we could be saved. I saw nothing about the need to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but plenty about typical, boring, secular, left-wing ideas from environmentalism to feminism to revolutionary politics.

So what do they mean by Jesus? Is it the Jesus of the New Testament? Is it the Jesus of the orthodox creeds? Is it the Jesus of traditional Christianity? No, "Jesus" here is a symbol used to baptize left-wing secular thought. "Jesus" as used on this site means "an evocative religious word that symbolizes to us the best intentions of modern radicalism."

But the road to hell is paved with our best intentions.

An Occupy LA Organizer Refuses to Condemn Anti-Semitism: Defends it as Free Speech

2011-10-20T18:12:00.004-04:00

If you are going to protest and call for change, you have to be against some things and for some things. The OWS movement is quickly losing credibility by refusing to be honest about what it wants. They hide behind "democracy" and claim that no one person can speak for the group, which means that they don't officially want anything. Well, they got nothing. So why don't they go home now? They got exactly what they wanted.

The point is that OWS is not really interested in participating in the democratic process; they actually want to subvert it. Well, fine if that is what they want they are an enemy of all democratic people and we need to keep them under control so they don't succeed. Hitler succeeded in subverting democracy and so did Lenin. But we won't let it happen here.

The other day an OWS protester was filmed spouting Nazi-like anti-Semitic garbage. She was a part-time teacher with the LA School Board. She has now been fired, which is appropriate.

But in this clip from a local LA news station, she is unrepentant. The clip also features an interview with an "organizer" of Occupy LA, who is asked to denounce her. The organizer refuses.

Now if you asked the organizer to denounce the banks or the 1% she would, of course, have no problem doing so. Why? Because there is consensus in the OWS movement. But she won't denounce anti-Semitism. Why not? Obviously, there must not be consensus about that issue.

So this seems to me to establish quite clearly that anti-Semitism is (1) present in the OWS movement and (2) tolerated in the OWS movement.

Therefore, I denounce the OWS movement as immoral, hateful and prejudiced and I call on all moral people to do the same.

Can anyone see any flaws in this reasoning?

Officially Going Pelagian: Let's Get it Out in the Open

2011-10-20T17:06:00.003-04:00

It has been some time since we last checked in with the Episcopal Church in the US, which continues to implode and decline at a rapid rate.

The latest development is the move by some in the Diocese of Atlanta to officially adopt Pelagian heresy as the official doctrine of the Church. David Virtue of Virtue Online reports:

If the Rev. Benno D. Pattison, Rector, the Church of the Epiphany in Atlanta, has his way, the 5th Century heretic Pelagius, declared so by the Council of Carthage, will be reinstated at the next and final Diocese of Atlanta annual meeting presided over by Bishop Neil Alexander.

Nearly 500 clergy members and parish delegates will gather in Rome (Georgia) Nov. 4-5 for the 105th Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta and vote on reinstating Pelagius who denied original sin as well as Christian grace.

Pelagius was an ascetic who denied the need for divine aid in performing good works. For him, the only grace necessary was the declaration of the law; humans were not wounded by Adam's sin and were perfectly able to fulfill the law apart from any divine aid. He denied the doctrine of original sin as developed by Augustine of Hippo. Pelagius was declared a heretic. His interpretation of a doctrine of free will became known as Pelagianism.

According to Pattison, the historical record of Pelagius's contribution to our theological tradition is shrouded in the political ambition of his theological antagonists who sought to discredit what they felt was a threat to the empire and their ecclesiastical dominance. "An understanding of his life and writings might bring more to bear on his good standing in our tradition."

Pattison wants to see Pelagius's "restitution as a viable theological voice within our tradition might encourage a deeper understanding of sin, grace, free will, and the goodness of God's creation, and that the history of Pelagius represents to some the struggle for theological exploration that is our birthright as Anglicans.

"The church needs to reclaim his voice in our tradition," concluded Pattison.

Of course, the issue isn't "reclaiming his voice." That is entirely unnecessary as the voice of the Episcopal Church been loudly Pelagian for years now. The point is, rather, to openly embrace heresy and make it official.

I can't help but thinking this is a good thing. It gets tiresome listening to these Anglican/Episcopal bishops running around mouthing submission to the ecumenical creeds as a pro forma matter all the while trashing the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy by their actions. This at least has the virtue of openness and honesty.

Persecuting the orthodox has already begun in South Carolina, so to make it official is to let everybody know exactly where things stand. I suppose making Arius a saint and openly repudiating Athanasius and the Nicene Creed can't be far off for this formerly Christian sect. When your "church" has no problem with John Spong, Pelagius and Arius don't seem like a stretch.

If You are Thankful for Your Job, Hug a Billionaire

2011-10-20T10:40:00.002-04:00

OWS and the Obama administration are continuing their juvenile class warfare rhetoric designed to trick the stupid into thinking they really care about poor people and the middle class. But the more they talk about how much money they should allow the "millionaires and billionaires" to keep, the more they resemble a gang of thieves sitting around talking about how much stuff they should take when they break into your house tonight and how much they should leave in place.

A healthy society is a free society and in a healthy, free society there will be more millionaires and billionaires every year. This is a good thing and a sign of a prosperous society. In a static or declining society the number of millionaires and billionaires will stay the same or shrink year by year and that is not a good society for anybody to live in.

Millionaires and billionaires (hereafter M&B's) play an essential role in the economy and in a capitalistic society there is an incentive for them to invest their wealth in socially beneficial ways rather than hoarding it. The capital gains tax is too high in the US right now, which discourages risky investment in the kind of start-up companies that could employ more people if given a chance to succeed. But Warren Buffet wants to increase it further, which would be sure to increase unemployment. Yet he is seen by socialists as a hero! This is nonsensical.

Look, when a person goes to invest his money there are lots of blue chip stocks and bonds that offer low to moderate returns and little risk. There are also other possible investments in start-up companies or ones that want to expand. They offer a possibility of high returns but say 3 out of every 5 will go bankrupt. So in order for it to be worthwhile investing in the risky options the return on the investment in the 2 of 5 risky businesses that don't go bankrupt will have to be higher than the safe return on blue chip stocks and bonds. The rate at which this investment will be taxed is crucial. It is one of the big variables in deciding what is rational to do. It is a matter of math, not emotion.

So, if a country has lots of M&B's and a low capital gains rate, then its small businesses that want to start up or expand will have a ready pool of investment capital available and the result will be job creation, which is good for the poor and the middle class. But if a country decides to tax the M&B's down to middle class levels with high capital gains and other taxes, then the economy will stagnate, which is bad for the poor and the middle class.

Giving a few hundred dollars to middle class people, as Obama wants to do by extending the payroll tax break, does nothing to provide investment capital for small businesses. That money will get saved, used to pay down debt or, in the best scenario, spent on consumer goods. The most it can do to help the economy in the short term is to stimulate demand for consumer goods. But it cannot help spur investment.

The problem is that OWS and the Democrats are framing this issue in emotional/moral terms. They claim it is an issue of fairness. Do you want to help the M&B's save money or do you want to help struggling middle class families? But it is not that simple. What if the best way to help provide employment is to stimulate investment by lowering the capital gains tax? But that messes up the overly-simplistic narrative the liberals/socialists construct to justify higher the taxes needed to pay for increasing entitlement programs.

Every time I hear the "Tax the 1%" meme, I feel personally threatened. I feel as though someone is out to destroy the economy and create the kind of conditions in which I could, potentially, lose my job. The war against the rich is really a war against the middle class and it is based on emotional manipulation, rather than reason. The people who are involved in it may be sincere, but they are much too gullible.

Maybe economics should be a compulsory subject in high school and maybe we ought to start purging socialists out of our universities so that free market principles once again dominate the curriculum. OWS and liberal/socialist propaganda is getting out of hand and people are getting hurt.

In the meantime, if you are thankful for your job, hug a millionaire or billionaire. Or at least don't demonize them.

Greed is Not Limited to the One Percent

2011-10-19T10:51:00.003-04:00

Tasha Kheiriddin has an excellent column in the National Post today entiled: "Greed Doesn't Stop at the 1%" She begins:

Oh, that nasty 1%. Based on the global protests inspired by Occupy Wall Street, they are the source of all the world’s ills. The placards say it all: “End corporate greed”; “Paycheques not credit card bills”; “Banks for the 99%!”

But what about that 99%? What responsibility do they bear for the situation the world finds itself in? The answer is: plenty. Greed doesn’t just live on Wall Street: it finds a home on Main Street too. And when people think it’s perfectly OK to take out mortgages they can’t afford, or rack up credit card debt to buy flat screen TVs, clothes and appliances, or draw on their home’s equity to finance cars and vacations, well, as they say, you reap what you sow.

Of course, there are people who are hurting as a result of the recession through no fault of their own, she goes on to note:

Yes, there are many people who legitimately struggle to make ends meet. Who work two jobs at minimum wage, who eschew things many consumers take for granted – cable TV, a car – and who watch every penny. For them, I have sympathy: they are the collateral damage of the market meltdown, as jobs dried up and wages stagnated.

But you only have to crack open the business pages, or watch a reality TV show like Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s “Princess” (about heavily indebted young women) to start questioning the moral purity of the 99%. Many of these people are the authors of their own misery: they consider credit to be cheap, if not free, money. The result is that even here in Canada, the ratio of household debt to personal income has hit a whopping 150%, up 78% in real terms in the past twenty years.

This is the problem: many of the OWS protesters are people who have been personally irresponsible and now want big government to bail them out. Any recent graduate of a Canadian university who has a $50,000+ student loan is irresponsible. That represents the financing of a lifestyle, not an education.

The reality of the world is that there are always going to be many good things that some people cannot afford - or cannot afford without self-denial, hard work and delayed gratification. That is reality and many OWS protesters seem to be in denial - not of self, but of reality.

Kheiriddin goes on:

Sure, it’s easy to blame the Wall Street CEOs for bundling rotten mortgages and contriving arcane debt instruments that weren’t worth the paper they were written on. But someone took out those mortgages. Millions of people, actually, who bought more house than they could afford. Did someone hold a gun to their head? No. They were just as greedy as the 1%, only on a smaller scale.

Governments are also just as guilty. In the U.S., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac granted mortgages to people deemed disadvantaged – minorities, the poor – in the hopes of increasing home ownership. This spurred the private sector to compete and fuelled the infamous subprime mortgage market.

This part is important. Several US administrations, going back to Clinton, have attempted to defy economic reality and common sense by pressuring banks to give mortgages to people who can't afford them. In the name of increasing rates of minority home ownership they have pushed for smaller down payments, longer terms and lower financial qualifications. This does not help minorities. It does not help anyone. What would constitute really helping minorities would be a growing economy in which they could actually qualify for mortgages under the old rules. But liberals cried "racism" at anyone who challenged them and the eventual result was the subprime mortgage crisis.

The subprime mortgage crisis was the main driver of the 2008 financial crisis. The problem was that too many financial institutions held worthless mortgages they had paid a lot of money for and they faced losses that threatened to sink them. They demanded that the government bail them out (using tax payer's money) because it was government that created the mess in the first place (which it was).

The moral of the story is that the old mortgage rules should have been kept in place. As a matter of fact, they were kept in place in Canada and you didn't hear about any banks failing in Canada, did you?

So it was government, coupled with individual greed, that created the mess. Wall St. just went along for the ride and it was no wonder government was so quick to bail them out. That way government can pass off blame for creating the mess to Wall St., which doesn't need to get re-elected.

That is how the world works. But the lesson is that we don't have too much capitalism; the lesson is that we don't have enough capitalism. If we had a real capitalist system the banks would have been allowed to go bankrupt, their profitable assets would have been bought up cheap by their competitors and the system would go on. But we don't have real capitalism; we have cronyism instead. If we actually had real capitalism there would have been no crisis in 2008 because the government would have stayed out of the regulating banks into giving mortgages to people who didn't qualify and there would have been no subprime mortgage crisis.

The point is that greed is indeed a problem, but greed is not limited to the 1%.

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Capitalism Always Go Together

2011-10-19T10:27:00.004-04:00

Defenders of OWS claim that the many video clips circulating on the internet of anti-Jewish signs and OWS protesters spouting anti-Semitic garbage do not represent the movement as a whole. Well, they might not represent you in particular, but if you are an OWS supporter the fact is that they do represent the movement you have chosen to identify with. The mainstream media is maintaining a discrete silence about the anti-Semitism because it wishes to aid the protesters, who align with their left-wing, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel biases.

Here is a post from Big Government reporting on how OWS Chicago joined in an anti-Israel protest organized by Code Pink, the Gay Liberation Network and the ANSWER Coalition.

Here is another post from Big Government on Lisa Fithian, a union organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, the Teamsters, the UAW and the SEIU. On May 31, 2010, she led an anti-Israel demonstration. Video of her rants is included in this post and the following comment is given:

The footage above was shot on May 31, 2010 and features Lisa Fithian shouting through a megaphone, accusing the state of Israel of “slaughter[ing] Palestinians every single day.” As Fithian, organizer of the Democratic Party’s new favorite mass protest, looks on, a menacing man decked out in a Palestinian keffiyeh leads her activists in the chant:

“Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!”

You don’t need a degree in geography to know what that means. From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea there lies a small nation named Israel. If “Palestine” were to be free within those geographic boundaries, that would mean the destruction of Israel– America’s most reliable Middle East ally, and the only true democracy in the entire region.

But the vile chants under Fithian’s leadership don’t stop there. The mindless robotic herd is also led in the chilling chant:

“Long live Intifada!”

The intifada that the Fithian troops pine for is the bloody terrorist war waged upon innocent Israelis, the latest incarnation of which claimed the lives of more than 1,000 (mostly civilian) Israelis–not to mention thousands of Palestinians killed (most of whom were combatants).

As President Barack Obama, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other Democratic Party leaders line up with the Fithian-led “Occupy” protesters, they might want to consider that they are supporting a movement headed by a woman who organizes and leads radicals who want Israel eliminated from the map.

Fithian is a moving force behind the OWS protests, which are not spontaneous uprisings nor are they a mass movement. They are organized and funded by the hard left in America and other countries and they use unemployed young people and college students as their dupes.

But as this post from FrontPageMag.com reminds us, anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism have been historically associated with one another since before Marx.

It’s a long history. As New American columnist Daniel Sayani points out, the OWS, despite self-professed notions that they are leading a new movement “are merely perpetuating the socialist belief that Jews are to blame for ‘social injustice,’ an idea that began with Proudhon.” Proudhon was a self-professed anarchist who published What is Property? Or, An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and Government in 1840. He inspired Karl Marx, who maintained a years-long correspondence with the author. In 1844, Marx himself wrote “On the Jewish Question,” (alternatively entitled “A World Without Jews”) in which he blames the Jews for the same “income inequality” and “dollar worship” that irks many of today’s protesters.

Furthermore, Sayani points out, the American Left’s favorite economist, John Maynard Keynes, whose economic policies “of bailouts, central banking, and massive governmental intervention to ‘stabilize’ output over the business cycle” was himself an anti-Semite who once stated, “It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains.”

No Christian should have anything to do with OWS, which is a hateful and negative movement that uses naive people who have grievances to advance a worldview that is opposed to Christianity.

A Review of "The Communist Hypothesis" by Alain Badiou

2011-10-18T23:17:00.000-04:00

For those of you who live a sheltered life, I have news for you: there really are real, live Communists alive and kicking today. Yes, real, live, actual "let's start the revolution, take over the government and the media, and then kill all the capitalists" type Communists. While it may be true that most people consider Communism to be passe, the supposedly dead corpse roams the earth refusing to die like a zombie out of a horror movie.

In fact, it is dangerous to think that the idea of Communism is dead when it has just gone partially underground inside the universities of the West and in the minds of many union activists, communist party activists, plus various people in many left-wing organizations including feminist and environmentalist organizations.

A vague version of the basic idea of communism continues to lurk in the minds of many people today, including those who have accepted the failure of actual communist states in the 20th century. The basic idea is that, in a just society, income ought to be basically equal and so everyone deserves to be supported by the government whether they work or not and taxing the rich is justified - in fact morally mandated - as the means to this end. It is a grave mistake to think that this basic idea of communism no longer powers action in our world just because the Soviet Union has collapsed. It is particularly dangerous to think this can be accomplished without violence and economic collapse.

It is the idea of communism that forms the subject of Alain Badiou's book: The Communist Hypothesis. Badiou is a French intellectual, writer and university professor who occupies a position on the political spectrum to the left of the Communist Party of France. A lot of people probably wouldn't even believe that there is anything to the left of the Communist Party of France! But there is and it is called Maoism. Badiou's book is even published in a small, red, hardback format reminiscent of Mao's Little Red Book.

In the middle of the 20th century Communism was in crisis. the crisis was caused by Nikita Khrushchev, who gave his famous "secret speech" to the Twentieth Party Congress on February 25, 1956 in which he exposed and denounced the purges of Stalin and purportedly inaugurated a "less repressive era" in the Soviet Union. This turned what had been a moral crisis into a public relations or propaganda crisis and led to a number of responses in world communism.

First, most of the Communist Parties in the West divided into Stalinist and non-Stalinist factions. The non-Stalinists claimed that what happened under Stalin in the USSR was not "true Communism" and tried to maintain some critical distance from the Soviet Union thereafter.

Second, some Communists underwent an intense struggle of conscience which ended with their conversion to liberalism and capitalism such as Whittaker Chambers.

Third, some of those previously sympathetic to the USSR in the West responded by becoming social democrats or democratic socialism. They attempted to distinguish between socialism and communism and tried to maintain an appreciation for Marx while viewing the Soviet experiment as the betrayal of Marx. Communists were thus Marxist-Leninists, while the non-communists were Marxian socialists. They often called themselves "Neo-Marxists" to stress the difference.

Fourth, there was the rise of the New Left in America in the early 1960s. They were more influenced by the "critical theory" of the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism than they were by communism per se. They attempted to re-formulate Marxism in a new age by focusing on oppressed minorities, Third world people struggling for liberation, women, and students instead of the proletariat. Their goal was to overthrow the cultural institutions that resist Communism: the Church, the Family, the Military and Big Business. Their method was through the infiltration of the universities, the entertainment industry and the mass media.

Fifth, there was a strong movement in France to embrace the Maoist cultural revolution and this movement had American branches in the more radical student groups of the 60s such as the Black Panthers and the Students for a Democratic Society. Many of these people went to Vietnam and proclaimed their support for the Chinese-supported North Vietnamese regime including Jane Fonda and others.

Badiou's book is a manifestation of the fifth response to the revelation of Stalin's crimes. It professes to be a different kind of Marxism from the Soviet model. It is similar in important ways to the fourth, cultural Marxist approach of the New Left, and the third approach of Neo-Marxism. It goes beyond economics to culture and it tries to be non-Stalinist. But it is different from these two approaches - which are designed for consumption in the still somewhat anti-Communist West - by its frank and open embrace of revolutionary violence.

Badiou proclaims his everlasting fealty to the movements symbolized by two dates: the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Student Revolutions of May 1968. Each is treated in its own chapter in this book and both are viewed as precursors to the Chinese Cultural Revolution in which over 30 million people were murdered between 1966 and 1976. What makes it possible to view the the 1871 and 1968 movements in a romanticized (and sanitized) light is that, unlike the Russian Revolution, these movements never gained power. Both advocated the kind of direct democracy and egalitarian approach to decision-making that we see in the contemporary Occupy Wall Street protests, which was possible since they never became responsible for the government of millions of citizens over a long period of time.

What makes Mao's cultural revolution superior for Badiou to the Marxist-Leninist revolution in Russia and to the Stalinism it produced is two-fold:

First, it is significant that Mao launched his cultural revolution from within what Badiou refers to as "the party state," which is his label for the corruption of the pure idea of communism represented by Stalinism. The "party state" is one in which the communist revolution results in a new state power, controlled by the party, which fails to live up to the ideals of localism, direct democracy, people power and freedom. Since Mao is using workers from outside the party to battle against the "bourgeois elements" within the party, his murderous rampage is totally different from Stalin's!

Second, Mao's cultural revolution was not merely about military or economic power, but about culture: how people think. What Chairman Mao implicitly recognized was the falsity of Marx's contention that economics drives culture and that once economic structures are changed by the Revolution human nature will change as well. Oddly, Mao is partially agreeing with Pope John Paul II that culture precedes economics and is the real driving force in history. In a way he even agreed with the Pope that religion is the source and basis for culture by promoting a vicious and dogmatic atheism. But it is telling that the Pope's campaign to bring down Communism in Poland was non-violent whereas Mao's cultural revolution in China caused tens of millions of murders.

What Badiou simply refuses to recognize is the inner contradiction in the idea of communism, which is that you can't get equality without destroying liberty.

By refusing to recognize the need for a state to control predatory human behaviour by coercion he tries to make it possible to dismisses all the violent, murderous communist regimes in the 20th century as not really communist. Yet, he at the same time recognizes the need for revolutionary violence to bring communism to power. And, worse, he proposes to solve the problem of human nature not changing as soon as economic structures are changed by still further violence!

As the Red Guards and workers rampaged around lawlessly murdering people for incorrect thought we see what politically incorrectness really is all about. As people are sent to re-education camps to be "taught" (forced) to think correctly we come to understand that all forms of Marxism, socialism and communism can only get so far in re-making the world without resorting to murder and coercion. As we look at the cultural revolution we see the contradiction of communism in action.

To put it succinctly, the inner contradiction of communism is that it claims to be able to build a better world by redistributing wealth but it cannot achieve this goal except by creating a hell on earth by murder. Economics is not fundamental to human society, religion and the culture shaped by religion are. And, eventually, communism must attack these mainsprings of human society and in so doing it attacks the dignity and rights of the human person created in the image of God and thus becomes anti-humanistic.

You can't produce a humane society by anti-humanism.

Badiou's book is blind to the inner contradictions of communism, but it is a valuable read because nobody can come away from having read it and think that any of the usual excuses for communist "excesses" have the slightest shred of credibility. Badiou knows that revolutionary violence is necessary in order for communism to be implemented. He even quotes (without criticism) Mao's speculation that 20 or 30 cultural revolutions might be necessary before the idea of communism really takes hold in the human heart. Badiou is honest - and that is fatal for any true communist.

More Anti-Semitism from Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-15T17:27:00.003-04:00

Here is another very calm, very coherent, very hate-filled OWS protester admitting to an interviewer that she thinks the Jews who run the bands and the Federal Reserve should be run out of the country. She talks like she thinks that everybody agrees with her and it isn't even that controversial. In her circles it probably isn't.

Tony Katz has a post in which he describes his interview on Cross Talk, which was afterward posted on YouTube. He gives a list of the some of the comments it attracted and the anti-Semitic theme was prominent once again.

HAs tony ever been punched? Id like to be the first. – MrMrEvin

The only acts of violence are by the police! don’t listen to that Jew! – murmur6666

lol, just what i expected from a tea party douche. Pull the string, get the pre-programmed ideas. Sheesh. – ForestSongUnLTD

The guillotine needs to make a comeback. – bamboo4tameshigiri

T. Katz needs a bitch slappin’. Pick me! Pick me! – phillisthebarbarian

Teabaggers need to be put in re-education camps! Roseanne Barr was right! – petersz98

Tony’s face would look good arguing from the bottom of a basket. – Will224000

What a fat f*** – arturro666

tony should be wearing a white hood… – SHACKTRESS

What a dumb Zionist tool in the bottom right corner – megamogx

will someone please violently obliterate the man on the bottom right – humanboy1221

Who is this stupid Tea Party guy. Make me want to stand up and punch his face. What a dick head!!! – nhu111

Didn't we see this movie before in the 1930s? Do you who identify as leftist not see the danger of your 1% class-warfare rhetoric? Don't you see that it has already led you to become identified with some really seriously evil people and attitudes? Do you really want to be part of this?

Remember, in 2012 in North America conservatives are neither racist nor anti-Semitic. Conservatives stand against hate and prejudice. Will those on the Left join us in condemning anti-Semitism and rooting it out of their organizations?

Would Obama Start a War with Iran to Get Re-elected?

2011-10-14T11:13:00.003-04:00

That is the question that went through my mind immediately when I first heard of the release of the information that a plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on US soil. (See story here. And see Obama talking tough here.) Why would the administration release such information right now?

For three years now the US has been appeasing Iran.

When the people rose up in the streets to protest the stolen election of the holocaust-denying, religious fanatic Ahmadinejad, Obama was silent.
When news item after news item detailed the relentless Iranian march toward obtaining both nuclear warheads and ICBM's to deliver them, Obama was passive.
Meanwhile, Obama was so busy falling all over himself to celebrate Islamic holidays that he didn't bother to issue a statement on the highest Christian holiday of Easter.

Now, has Obama experienced a death-bed conversion? Has the futility of appeasement become apparent all of a sudden even to him? Will he be asking the British government for that bust of Winston Churchill back? Has he suddenly become a neo-con hawk?

"All options are on the table" is diplomatic-speak for "you better shape up or expect some bunker-buster bombs to rain down on your head as you pick up the morning paper one of these days."

What we do know is that Obama' poll numbers are sinking and much too low for him to have a realistic chance of re-election. And without re-election much of his program to move America left-ward is in danger of being rolled back. Certainly his classically Marxist "millionaire and billionaire" class warfare rhetoric has appeased his base, but his base is too small to re-elect him. Without Independents he is toast. See this excellent article by Jay Cost, which explains why.

He won 52% of Independents in 2008 but he did so by pretending to be a centrist. Now he is polling 17% lower among Independents (at 35%) and he knows that trick won't work again. But presidents who are at war tend to win a big sympathy vote because many patriotic Americans want to support the Commander-in-Chief during a time of war.

However, to argue against myself, it is not clear that this dynamic would apply to a president who starts another war in the midst of a recession when the country is already at war. The "hatred of stupidity" factor would likely outweigh the "patriotic my country right or wrong" factor. And he would alienate his base.

Unless . . . the other nation attacked the US first and it was seen as a clearly defensive and totally necessary response. And if it was decisive and, most importantly, quickly victorious, it just might work. If you were Bill Daley or David Axelrod and you thought it was his only hope for winning re-election, what would you advise him to do?

So, are we seeing the beginnings of the laying of a foundation for a narrative that ends with the US (with or without Israel) taking out Iran's nuclear program and maybe weakening the totalitarian theocracy that currently governs the nation as well?

It is much to soon to jump to conclusions. But over the next 13 months, as desperation grows in left-wing circles over the impending Republican election victories and the prospect of a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican President, you had better believe that "all options will be on the table." As it sinks in to the brain trust in the White House and Obama's re-election campaign that they are doomed to lose, anything is possible.

If the socialist community organizer could successfully pose as a moderate centrist to get elected, why couldn't he pose as a neo-con hawk to get re-elected? One is no more absurd than the other.

Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street and Leftist Hypocrisy

2011-10-14T10:25:00.004-04:00

Some of my critics think I an being too hard on Occupy Wall Street. (See comments on the last post.) But, actually, I've been restraining myself. No, really!

There are several (probably a lot more than I've seen, but I've seen several) videos circulating on the web of evidence of gross anti-Semitism being expressed and tolerated at OWS protests. When I saw the first one, I thought it was an isolated wacko and it might be dangerous to put it up; after all, maybe the leaders of OWS have already condemned it. Then I saw more and heard nothing from the OWS leadership about it. I checked the website. Nothing.

But the Emergency Committee for Israel, which is doing yeoman's work fighting back against the Obama administration's anti-Israel agenda, has just done an ad in which excerpts from several of these videos are collected together. The point of the ad is to challenge Democratic leaders for daring to support a protest movement that is obviously deeply infested with filthy anti-Semites.

Just imagine if right-wing anti-Semitic groups showed up at Tea Party rallies and ranted against the "Jewish bankers" who control the country and if they were tolerated by the rally organizers and participants. Just imagine how big a story it would be. Just imagine what Keith Olberman, Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Matthews would say. Just imagine what Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean would say. Just imagine how vilified the Tea Party would be and how much screaming and self-righteous indignation would ensue.

Now listen to the silence from the Left over anti-Semitism at OWS: (cue sound of crickets chriping)

Here is the ad from ECI.

I think the silence is eloquent.

Note:
Don't even bother leaving comments saying that the movement can't be held responsible for every loon who associates with it and that an open, democratic movement can't police itself. That is baloney. Maybe OWS can't prevent an anti-Semitic thug from carrying an OWS sign and getting filmed spouting anti-Semitic garbage, but once that happens and they are called on it, the movement can disown, denounce and separate itself from the anti-Semitism - if it wants to do so. When that happens, let me know and I'll gladly post a notice of it.

Remember When They Said the Tea Party was Weird?

2011-10-12T10:22:00.003-04:00

Check out this interview of a Maoist and a Marxist at Occupy Philadelphia from Michelle Malkin's blog.

The Maoist thinks the figures of people killed by Communist regimes in the 20th century are "made up." The Marxist thinks we just can't know what happened. How very convenient; I wonder if he is a 9/11 Truther too.

It is interesting that Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and other leading Democrats up to and including the president are rushing to embrace Occupy Wall Street. I agree with George Will who said he hoped the movement lasts and that the Democrats continue to cuddle up to it. It will make electing Republicans so much easier in November 2012.

Clearly, the OWS movement is bringing out every weirdo in town to join in an orgy of self-pity by aggrieved self-proclaimed victims. That is the way Democrats build "coalitions" out of victim groups. But somehow I just don't think these victims will generate much sympathy from independent voters in the middle of a recession. And I can't see Mitt Romney shaking in his boots at having to go up against Barack Obama and his pal "Rainbow Boy."

Mind you, I could be wrong. Maybe gender-confused Maoists and hippie Marxists straight out of central casting will turn out to be the Democrats' secret weapon.

Why Occupy Wall Street Will End in Violence

2011-10-11T11:28:00.007-04:00

Tim Stanley is surely right about this:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is an exercise in nostalgia. It’s an attempt to recreate the excitement of 1968, when the world’s youth took to the barricades. . . .

Photos confirm what I suspected: that most of the protesters are kids looking for their Sixties rush. Naked girls are painted in psychedelic colours. Handsome boys lounge around in cable-knit sweaters. Angry, doomed youth wave signs in the faces of frustrated policemen. Numbers are exchanged; kisses are snatched behind the barricades; disease is spread. This is what every generation of liberal has tried to recreate since 1968, be it the Watergate protests, the Battle of Seattle or the Stop the War Movement.

And Stanley has a point when he predicts that this movement will help elect Republicans in 2012:

If the existential hope of the Occupy Wall Street movement is to recreate the 1960s, then the protestors need to watch out. Culturally, the Left dominates our memories of the decade. But, in fact, it was the Right who politically triumphed. In 1960s America, antiwar protests generated counter demonstrations that were often bigger. While some students occupied campuses, others held “bleed ins” to provide blood for the troops. Ronald Reagan made his name as Governor of California by facing down students at Berkeley and popular reaction against radicalism helped elect Republican Richard Nixon in 1968. On 4 May 1970, four students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at a protest at Kent State University. Shockingly, the public had little sympathy. A Gallup poll found that 58 percent blamed the students for the deaths, 11 percent blamed the National Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion. Two years later, the squares re-elected Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in American history.

But Stanley's point is limited. Yes, the right did win in the short term. As long as the hippies were smoking drugs, spreading disease and chanting hate slogans in the name of love, they did nothing but hurt their own cause (i.e. socialism). But soon after the end of the 60s, they put on suits and ties and, under the guidance of gurus like Saul Alinsky, began the Gramasican "long march through the institutions" until they became the establishment.

It is precisely the leftist establishment, which dominates the media, Hollywood, the universities, and the unions, that we have to fear and we must not underestimate the cunning of left wingers in using popular street theater for their own purposes.

"How so?" you ask. Well, consider this perspective. If, as I believe is evident, the essential goal of left-right politics in a two-party democratic system, is to move the center in one direction or the other, then the establishment left may well be able to make use of the revival of 60s radicalism to accomplish this goal.

Obama's re-election problem is how to position himself as a centrist when he pursues consistently left-wing policies. In 2008 it was easy because he had no record and he was a smooth talker. But in 2012 he has a record and it is impossible to paint it as centrist. So why would he adopt the strategy of moving leftward and "placating" his base in the run-up to the election? Doesn't that defeat his need to appear centrist?

Well, that is where the OWS protesters come in. Obama has been encouraging class warfare, divisiveness and anti-capitalism for months now and like evil spirits rising up out of the caldron we behold the old ghosts from the 60s taking shape before our eyes. Their demands are crazy; but that is the beauty of it. They call for the utter destruction of the capitalist system and the beheading of bankers, which re-defines the left and thus allows Obama to position himself as the moderate alternative. Obama just wants to tax them to death, not behead them, so he is moderate.

If the left is for "Communism Now" and that center is for "Creeping Socialism Under the Banner of Liberalism" to keep the revolution from boiling over, some cautious souls in the center of the electorate will consider Obama to be a safer choice. The goal here is to portray the Republicans as the polar opposite of the left, which makes them a polarizing choice - and therefore "dangerous."

Few conservative voters will fall for this trick, but that is beside the point. Obama needs to win big among moderates, centrists and independents, as well as among various victim groups and special interest groups. His base alone is inadequate and he will never win the 40% of Americans who are conservatives. His only hope is to repeat his trick of 2008 and appear as a moderate who can "hold things together."

But a few hippies chanting slogans in the park don't scare middle America. They are considered a joke by normal people. But news came last week of the big unions inserting themselves into the OWS movement and of hard-core anarchist agitators taking control of the leadership. They will whip up violence and sow fear and uncertainty and if they can succeed, with the help of the left-wing media, in creating an atmosphere in which events seem "out of control" then Barack Obama can step forward as the only one who can talk to both sides and calm the troubled waters.

It is a classic tactic of both fascist and communist movements. The goal is to make us think there is no alternative to Obama. If you think "it can't happen here," think again.

In this situation, the only way the conservatives of America can stop a second term of Obama and the transformation of America into a democratic socialist state modeled on the failed states of Europe is to be ready to confront violence with massive force and a cheerful willingness to let the leftist radicals take their best shot without backing down. One of the tragic paradoxes is that, in certain historical situations, free societies cannot defend themselves without meeting revolutionary violence with force (eg. the American Revolution, World War II).

The irony is that it won't take much to scare the hippies and then the hard-core anarchist agitators will have no tools to use anymore. Civil war is not necessary; a bit of fearless and implacable parenting is all that is needed. The children must be told "No." The left does not have the stomach for a real fight, but, like children, they specialize in bluffing, propaganda and rhetoric. The patient inflexible resolution of Scott Walker in Wisconsin will beat back the left every time - if only America's leaders have the courage of their convictions and stand up to bullying.

Occupy Wall Street will "end" in violence in a double sense: it will spawn violence and that violence will be the end of it as a movement.

Occupy Wall Street: Collaboratism in All Its Splendour and Glory

2011-10-09T19:52:00.004-04:00

The following video, which is making the rounds on the internet, was originally published on Drudge. It is from Occupy Wall Street Atlanta and it features a "People's Assembly" in action, well at least kind of.

They are in the midst of their agenda when Congressman John Lewis arrives and so someone suggests that he be permitted to address the Assembly. What follows is 10 minutes of comedy gold, except for the "repeat after me" part, which is just downright creepy. In New York, they are not allowed to use megaphones, so the repeating is to ensure people can hear. Anyway, that is the rationalization. But even though the Atlanta leader (sorry, facilitator) has a megaphone they repeat everything anyway just because they like to do so.

If you want to understand the mentality of the people leading this "movement" you simply must watch this video.

These people want corporations to be taken over by People's Assemblies. God forbid! We would be running through the fields naked starving in a month. That is, we would if everybody did not die in the civil war.

Sex Clubs are OK, Milk Clubs Must Be Eliminated! Bureaucratic Madness Over a Drink of Raw Milk

2011-10-08T22:11:00.003-04:00

It is legal in Canada to drink raw milk from your own cow, but not to sell it to anyone else. Heroin injections sites are legal in Canada. Private sex clubs are legal. Killing your unborn child is legal. But the nanny state is out to clamp down on those evil milk pushers!

Michael Schmidt is an Ontario farmer who has set up a business in which people buy shares in his dairy herd and then they get raw milk from the herd. Some people who are informed adults wish to drink raw milk. What on earth is wrong with that?

Plenty says the Ontario court of appeal. After being acquited by a judge, the Province appealed and now Mr. Schmidt has had his acquittal overturned.

Go here and see Ezra Levant interview Michael Schmidt.

You will notice his German accent. Toward the end of the interview Levant asks why Schmidt has fought for his rights for 17 years and Schmidt tells him that he grew up in Germany during World War II and saw the government take away individual rights. After the war Schmidt asked his parents and others what had gone wrong and he concluded that people need to stand up to the government whenever individual liberties are curtailed needlessly.

My hat is off to Michael Schmidt as he continues the fight. He will appeal and, God willing, he will win. It is time to fire the nanny.

Down With Those Evil Capitalists Who Made My iPhone!

2011-10-08T17:02:00.003-04:00

Occupy Wall Street is against capitalism. Yeah, sure it is!

Aleister at Big Government writes:

A person learns about an anti-capitalism protest on Twitter, attends the protest, captures a video on his personal cell phone, turns on the laptop computer he bought at Best Buy, logs in to Google, uploads his video to YouTube and then posts it on Facebook.

By the time this “protester” is getting thumbs up from his comrades on Facebook, he has participated in multiple transactions purely thanks to the excesses of capitalism.

How many of these anti-capitalist protesters would be willing to throw their iPhones into the Hudson River? How many of them will permanently shut down their Facebook and YouTube accounts in protest? None of them will, because ultimately, capitalism is fine with them as long as it serves their purposes.

They don’t hate capitalism or wealth; they just want the government to take wealth from others and give to them so they don’t have to go through the normal channels that those individuals with wealth went through — practical higher education, working above and beyond their peers, saving, investment, risk, etc.

In addition to their selective corporation hatred, the proponents of this movement voted overwhelmingly for Obama, the one person they will never blame for destroying their economic opportunities.

Yet they fail to note that Obama got more campaign cash from Wall Street than any other candidate in 2008.

They ignore the fact that Goldman Sachs was the top donor to the Obama 2008 campaign.

If the protesters got their way and capitalism was abolished none of them would be able to afford the phones, iPads and laptops they take for granted. They are advocating a backward, retrograde, irrational system that has produced poverty, tyranny and misery wherever it has been implemented, yet they call themselves "progressives."

If they want to do something about the horrible economy they should move their protests to the White House and protest the anti-capitalist policies of the president - if they actually want things to improve, that is.

The Global Warming Scare is on the Verge of Joining the Y2K Scare on the Scrapheap of History

2011-10-08T08:00:00.001-04:00

The Wall Street Journal has an opinion piece by Robert Bryce entitled "Five Truths About Climate Change." The truths are:

1) The carbon taxers/limiters have lost. Carbon-dioxide emissions have been the environmental issue of the past decade. . . . Copenhagen became the epicenter of a world-wide media frenzy as some 5,000 journalists, along with some 100 world leaders and scores of celebrities, descended on the Danish capital to witness what was billed as the best opportunity to impose a global tax or limit on carbon dioxide.
The result? Nothing, aside from promises by various countries to get serious—really serious—about carbon emissions sometime soon.

Here's a reality check: During the same decade that Mr. Gore and the IPCC dominated the environmental debate, global carbon-dioxide emissions rose by 28.5%.
2) Regardless of whether it's getting hotter or colder—or both—we are going to need to produce a lot more energy in order to remain productive and comfortable.
3) The carbon-dioxide issue is not about the United States anymore. Sure, the U.S. is the world's second-largest energy consumer. But over the past decade, carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. fell by 1.7%. And according to the International Energy Agency, the U.S. is now cutting carbon emissions faster than Europe, even though the European Union has instituted an elaborate carbon-trading/pricing scheme. Why? The U.S. is producing vast quantities of cheap natural gas from shale, which is displacing higher-carbon coal.

Meanwhile, China's emissions jumped by 123% over the past decade and now exceed those of the U.S. by more than two billion tons per year. Africa's carbon-dioxide emissions jumped by 30%, Asia's by 44%, and the Middle East's by a whopping 57%. Put another way, over the past decade, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions—about 6.1 billion tons per year—could have gone to zero and yet global emissions still would have gone up.

4) We have to get better—and we are—at turning energy into useful power. In 1882, Thomas Edison's first central power station on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan converted less than 3% of the heat energy of the coal being burned into electricity. Today's best natural-gas-fired turbines have thermal efficiencies of 60%.

5) The science is not settled, not by a long shot.

The whole global warming scare has always been about a massive transfer of wealth from first world consumers to third world governments and the moving force behind it has been Communists and Socialists who have transformed themselves into Eco-warriors as a way of obtaining results that could not be obtained in the traditional method of revolutionary action.

It is easily predictable that when the prospects of the global warming scare being a useful tool to accomplish the massive transfer of wealth envisaged through a global tax on financial transactions, then the whole scare will just die out like the Y2K one did after the turn of the century. It was never about science; it has been about politics all along.

Marxism has failed and true Marxists only occasionally show their true colors. In the US even socialism is discredited and such a vote-loser that socialist politicians must play semantic games to hide their true intentions. The environmentalist movement, with its apocalyptic rhetoric and scare tactics, has replaced the class warfare - revolutionary rhetoric.

In both cases the aim is essentially destructive: tear down existing economic structures in the Utopian hope that something better will emerge. For the past several decades Marxism has been hovering on the brink of nihilism and for all practical intents and purposes the distinction between Marxism, radical environmentalism and anarchism has become a distinction without difference.

One of the degenerate forms of 20th century Marxism is the Frankfurt School and its 'Critical Theory.' Whereas formerly socialists denounced capitalism for producing poverty, Critical Theory denounces it for producing abundance, which they label "consumerism" and claim is incompatible with high culture. But the commitment of Critical Theory to high culture is tenuous at best. Critical Theory lumps in Enlightenment rationalism, "positivist" science, logic itself and natural law and calls them totalitarian.

And one can see their point: if there is such a thing as objective truth (be it moral, scientific or logical) then the all-important, exalted, autonomous individual must bow to that fact and acknowledge it. In their romantic striving to get free of the "despotism of logic and mathematics" they stamp their feet and declare their independence of such wicked and inconvenient truths.

Lesek Kolakowski, in his magisterial history of Marxism entitled, Main Currents of Marxism (3 vols.), says something interesting in Part III: Breakdown, Chapter X "The Fankfurt School and 'Critical Theory'" that is extremely relevant to the whole global warming hoax (although he never even mentions global warming in his book). He writes:

The Dialectic of Enlightenment contains all the elements of Marcuse's later attack on modern philosophy, which allegedly favours totalitarianism by maintaining a positivist 'neutralism' in regard to the world of values and by insisting that human knowledge should be controlled by facts. . . the truth of science is subordinated to the criteria of any interest whatsoever; this simply means that anything is right which suits the interests with which the scientist identifies himself." (pp. 1088-9, my bolding)

The sentence in bold print in particular jumped out at me and I wrote in margin "eg. Global Warming." This is obviously the source of the attitude displayed in Climategate and in the sloppy, ideologically driven work of the IPCC. Science has been corrupted by people who have imbibed a corrupt, degenerate, postmodern worldview and whose twisted form of Marxism (they would likely call it 'social justice') justifies them in their manipulation of the data to accomplish what they consider to be a good end.

Kolakowski also says:

Their 'critical theory' is in fact not so much a theory as a general statement that theory is of great importance, which few would deny, and a plea for a critical attitude toward existing society, which we are invited to 'transcend' in thought. This injunction, however, makes no sense as long as they cannot tell us in what direction the existing order is to be transcended. (p. 1090)

Those insiders who know how to read the coded language know that the goal is revolution, but the vagueness allows naive idealists to read in whatever they cherish. The Obama campaign with its vacuous "hope and change" slogan was a prime example of this approach.

Marxism is already intellectually and morally bankrupt and is in the process of becoming an historical curiosity like phrenology or alchemy. Yet its hold on degenerate Western universities remains strong. Increasingly it takes on the trappings and feel of a death cult, as can be seen in the increasingly violent rhetoric of Michael Moore, for example.

Despite, the intellectual bankruptcy of Marxism, however, there will be more dangerous nonsense in the years ahead before the universities can be reformed in accordance with the classical, Western, intellectual tradition embodied in the metaphysics of the Great Tradition. We may soon look back on the 'good old days' when all we had to worry about was global warming alarmism.

Islam and Religious Freedom: It is Time to Face Some Unpleasant Facts

2011-10-07T10:18:00.004-04:00

Further to the last post, this article by Andrew G. Bostom in American Thinker, points out what serious observers of Islam have always known: namely, that the barbaric penalty of death for apostasy is deeply rooted in Islam and not merely an aberration embraced by a few, fringe, fanatical groups. What this means is that Islam is not compatible with natural law, Christianity or the Western secularized human rights tradition.

This is a serious issue that many politicians and left-wing secular and religious activists refuse to tackle honestly.

Will Mainstream American Islam Condemn Pastor Nadarkhani's "Apostasy" Death Sentence? Where is CAIR? Where is the Islamic Society of North America? - snip -
Thus far mainstream American Muslim advocacy groups-notably the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) have failed to condemn Pastor Nadarkhani's heinous death sentence. This dereliction of basic moral duty by CAIR and ISNA, so vocal in highlighting the slightest perceived "violations" of Muslim rights here in the US, demonstrates that the continued failure of Islam to uphold basic freedom of conscience extends beyond the "Near East," to Muslim communities across the entire world.
Notwithstanding transparent last minute Iranian efforts to recast the criminal proceedings against Pastor Nadarkhani with allegations of-what else-"Zionist conspiracism," or other trumped up charges, a translated Iranian Supreme Court brief from 2010 (obtained by CNN from the American Center for Law and Justice, and translated from its original Farsi by the Confederation of Iranian Students in Washington) makes plain that apostasy is the sole charge.

Mr. Youcef Nadarkhani, son of Byrom, 32-years old, married, born in Rasht in the state of Gilan is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion, the prophecy of Mohammad at the age of 19...He (Nadarkhani) has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim...During many sessions in court with the presence of his attorney and a judge, he has been sentenced to execution by hanging according to article 8 of Tahrir Al- Wasilah (a book on Islamic Law, Sharia, authored by Ayatollah Khomeini as a guide for Muslims)

The quintessence of a contemporary Shiite pronouncement on apostasy in Islam (which cites Khomeini's treatise extensively) appearing in Kayhan International, March 1986, stated openly

In Islam, apostasy is a flagrant sin and guilt for which certain punishments have been specified in Shari'a (Islamic law). Apostasy means, to renounce the religion or a religious principle after accepting it. In other words, one's departure from Islam to atheism is called apostasy. A person who abandons Islam and adopts atheism is called an apostate . . ...Apostasy is the escape from the pattern of creation and nature and that is why the word "voluntary" has been adopted for such an apostate...Can the penalty of escaping from the path and pattern of nature and creation be anything other than annihilation? This is the same thing that has been crystallized in the penal code of Islam. The anti-apostasy punishments of Islam are proper laws to rescue mankind from falling into the cesspool of treason, betrayal, and disloyalty and to remind the human being of his ideological commitments.

Iranian apostasy law is consistent with mainstream Islam's rejection of freedom of conscience since the 7^th century advent of the creed, through the clear modern dictates of the global Muslim umma's religio-political hierarchy as put forth in the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, signed by all 56 member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation).

Koranic verses, such as 2:217 and 4:89 and their classical, mainstream exegeses by seminal Koranic commentators such as Baydawi (on 4:89: "Whosoever turns his back from his belief [irtada], openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel") and Qurtubi (on 2:217: "Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group say they are asked to repent and, if they do, they are not killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik [founder of the Maliki school of Islamic Law]..It is also said they are killed without being asked to repent.")
Muhammad is reported to have sanctioned lethal punishment for apsotates in the two most important canonical hadith collections, i.e., Bukhari and Muslim, and the Muwatta of Imam Malik:

Bukhari, volume 9, #17-Narrated Abdullah: Allah's Messenger said, "The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Messenger, cannot be shed except in three cases: in Qisas (equality in punishment) for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (Apostate) and leaves the Muslims."

Bukhari, volume 9, #57-Narrated Ikrima, "Some atheists were brought to Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's messenger forbade it, saying, "Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire)." I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Messenger, "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him."

Muslim-Chapter 6: WHEN IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO TAKE THE LIFE OF A MUSLIM, Book 016, Number 4152: Abdullah (b. Mas'ud) reported Allah's Messenger as saying: It is not permissible to take the life of a Muslim who bears testimony (to the fact that there is no god but Allah, and I am the Messenger of Allah, but in one of the three cases: the married adulterer, a life for life, and the deserter of his Din (Islam), abandoning the community.

Muwatta of Imam Malik, #1410-"Zaid b. Aslam reported that the Apostle declared that the man who leaves the fold of Islam should be executed."

There is also a consensus by all four schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafii), as well as classical Shiite jurists, that apostates from Islam must be put to death. Averroes (d. 1198), the renowned philosopher and scholar of the natural sciences, who was also an important Maliki jurist, provided this typical Muslim legal opinion on the punishment for apostasy: "An apostate...is to be executed by agreement in the case of a man, because of the words of the Prophet, 'Slay those who change their din [religion]'...Asking the apostate to repent was stipulated as a condition...prior to his execution."
The contemporary (i.e., 1991) Al-Azhar (Cairo) Islamic Research Academy endorsed manual of Islamic Law, Umdat al-Salik (pp. 595-96) states: "Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst.... When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. In such a case, it is obligatory...to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed."
The equivalent, gravely negative implications of the OIC's Sharia-based Cairo Declaration are most apparent in its transparent rejection of freedom of conscience in Article 10, which proclaims: "Islam is the religion of unspoiled nature. It is prohibited to exercise any form of compulsion on man or to exploit his poverty or ignorance in order to convert him to another religion, or to atheism." Ominously, articles 19 and 22 reiterate a principle stated elsewhere throughout the document, which clearly applies to the "punishment" of so-called "apostates" from Islam: "[19d] There shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in the Sharia.; [22a] Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia.; [22b] Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Sharia.; [22c] Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith."

The universality of these Islamic attitudes affects Muslim communities in the West, including North America. Syed Mumtaz Ali, the late architect of Canada's Sharia (Islamic Law) tribunal, and law professor Ali Khan, for example both have openly advocated extending Islamic apostasy laws to the West. Mumtaz Ali, in a disturbing essay, affirmed the traditional Islamic legal viewpoint that apostates must "choose between Islam and the sword," arguing further that if Canada were to act in accord with its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian government must grant the country's Islamic community authority to punish those Muslims who apostasize, or malign their faith.

Muslim immigration to the West is creating a Fifth Column within our culture that is dedicated to destroying our freedom. We all know that many Muslim immigrants come here because they want the freedom the West has to offer and they are welcome. But those who seek to bring Sharia Law with them should not be granted the privilege of being allowed to come and live here.

Any Muslim who wishes to immigrate to the West should be required to renounce the intolerance of Sharia Law and refused entry if they choose not to do so. It is their choice; no one is pressuring them to come here in the first place. If they prefer to live in a country where freedom of religion does not exist, let them do so.

A Plea for Religious Tolernance in Iran

2011-10-07T09:25:00.003-04:00

If you want to watch a deeply Christian man speaking in the US Senate in a thoroughly Christian way about an issue Christians ought to care deeply about - watch this video. Marco Rubio, US Senator from Florida, is a inspiring model for anyone aspiring to bear a Christian witness into the public square.

This case of Youcef Nadarkhani ought to galvanize world opinion and dominate the news this week. So much that is trivial and ephemeral gets talked about in an endless loop in the media but this is a matter of life and death, rank injustice and oppressive totalitarianism.

Forces within the Iranian government are conspiring to have Youcef Nadarkhani executed for becoming a Christian. It is a moral scandal - and should be recognized by any person or any religion or no religion - that in the twenty-first century a state would presume to bind the conscience of its citizens and strip them of their basic human dignity by passing a law forbidding them on pain of death from choosing which religion, if any, to believe in personally. There is no more inhumane, cruel and intrusive act of a totalitarian regime than the act of inserting a government between an individual and God so as to attempt to bind his conscience in chains. Any state that does this de-legitimizes itself and buys itself the utter contempt of free people and nations everywhere.

Multicultural relativism is a cruel joke. It is a tool of dictators and tyrants. It is anti-human and incompatible with freedom, justice and the natural law. To say that this is Iran's culture and that Islam has different values than us and so we must not judge is to abdicate reason and morality and to lower oneself to the level of thugs and murderers. It is to sacrifice Youcef Nadarkhani on the altar of personal convenience.

The moral basis of this speech is intricately rooted deep in the Christian vision of man made in the image of God and endowed with conscience, reason and the capacity for moral choice. This vision of man has shaped the human rights tradition of the West and without Christian theology undergirding and sustaining it this human rights tradition will collapse. Already there are numerous signs that the collapse is already far advanced. You can see this fact demonstrated by the silence of liberal Protestantism - and politicians shaped by liberal Protestantism - about injustices like this in Muslin countries today. The rejection of the Christian view of man followed by the embrace of multicultural relativism leads inexorably to the silence of those who should speak out and the condoning of murder, tyranny and oppression.

The people of Iran are suffering. Europe frets about its oil supply and is mute, the US pursues its neo-isolationism under Obama and the UN continues it propaganda war against Israel instead of being concerned about genuine human rights abuses in countries like Iran. All this is reprehensible and thank-you to Marco Rubio for speaking out in a reasonable, Christian manner about one of the great issues of our time: the religious liberty of all people rooted in our nature as creatures made in the image of God.

Marco Rubio is an inspiration. May his pleas for justice not fall on deaf ears.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Republican

2011-10-05T14:01:00.003-04:00

As my mind tossed over and over the sad and sordid saga of how a certain Evangelical school recently failed the basic test of Middle Eastern hospitality toward a certain former high office holder by apparently yanking his breakfast at the last moment and the implications thereof for our little community, and seeking to discern the inscrutable ways of Providence, I instinctively reached for the paraphrase of Scripture that was not composed by Eugene Peterson, the one that I so often find comforting during such travails of the soul and read as follows.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Republican

Luke 18:9-14

(Unrevised Politically Incorrect Version)

[9] He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt. [10] Two men, er . . . that is, two non-gender specific persons, went up into the temple to pray, one a pharisee and the other a republican.[1] [11] The Pharisee standing by himself, prayed thus: God I thank you that I am not like other non-gender specific persons: Southern-dwelling, Bible-thumping, gun-toting, flag-waving, Republican-voting, war-mongering toothless hillbillies and bitter clingers. [12] I recycle twice in the week; I write countless letters asking the government to raise taxes and increase universal entitlement programs. [13] But the republican, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ [14] I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

[1] Some versions say “Tax Collector” but this is clearly an impossible reading. I mean - a Republican collecting taxes? Really now!

Technology is Fun!

2011-10-05T13:37:00.005-04:00

One of the depressing aspects of being a Marxist is having to hate (and secretly fear) the technological progress and success of capitalistic society.

When I was going through my leftist phase (I never was a full-blown Marxist, just an inconsistent fellow traveler), I used to revel in moralistic disapproval of new gadgets and gizmos that make life easier and more comfortable. Like many leftists who self-righteously take the bus to work and look down on us car drivers with a scorn that easily rivals that of the Pharisee of Luke 18, I used to think that if only we could curb the use of fossil fuels, stop buying consumer goods and services and slow down economic activity we would be morally superior, even though poorer and less healthy. I have now given up that silly superstition.

So just to flaunt my new-found freedom to enjoy the fruits of science, I thought I'd point you to this cute little ad for the new iPhone 4S. I have the iPhone 4 but this looks seriously useful and handy.

Will I get one? Well, probably eventually. But I don't believe in going in debt for luxuries like this. Enjoy all good things in moderation and all that sort of thing.

But Christmas is coming . . . and yes, family you could take that as a hint!

The Real Agenda of the Left: What Do They Really Want?

2011-10-04T20:36:00.004-04:00

I'm so glad that Barack Obama made that speech last winter about how we need a more civil tone in politics with less partisanship, less violent rhetoric and less demonizing of the opposition. I complemented him for it at the time here.

So let's just check out how things are going in terms of contemporary political discourse. I considered many statements by left-wing looney tunes but these three seemed to be the worst.

1. Here is Michael Moore calling for the government to go after rich people and lead them away in handcuffs. What for? For committing crimes? No, for being rich. He wants the US to be like countries like Cuba or the USSR where the government can just take your wealth away if they feel like doing so. I can't embed the video, but you can see it here. It is just over 2 minutes of totalitarian propaganda.

2. Here is North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue calling for congressional elections to be suspended so congress can do what it wants to get the country back on track without worrying about answering to voters. Watch it here.

3. Here is Roseanne "Robespierre" Barr advocating re-education camps and ultimately beheadings for "the rich."

So Michael Moore is a moderate Marxist because he just wants the rich jailed, whereas Roseanne Barr is the radical Marxist who wants them beheaded. And an elected Democratic Governor calls for suspending elections.

It is good every once in a while to reflect on what the opposition is like and why the culture wars matter. If good people sit back and do nothing, it is possible to see great evil unleashed in our midst. November 2012 can't come soon enough.

The Entire Christian Theological Tradition is Suspect Says the Archbishop of Canterbury

2011-10-04T19:18:00.005-04:00

As Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Willisams' sacred duty is to uphold traditional, orthodox Christian doctrine. But as a modernist and revisionist, he is doing his bit to see that the Christian tradition is torn down brick by brick and replaced with some sort of sentimental liberalism that will replace orthodoxy with paganism. The eventual outcome will be a pagan state religion for a pagan nation.

He has said some spectacularly dumb things in his day, but the statement I am about quote takes the cake in my opinion. This is a statement that undermines the Bible, the early Christian ecumenical creeds, the Reformation and the Church of England's doctrine, practices and morals including the Prayer Book of 1662. All this is put into question and made optional or debatable. The very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ as interpreted by his chosen (all male) apostles in the New Testament may very well be wrong. We just don't know. Listen to this false shepherd's teaching, as reported by Tim Ross in The Telegraph:

Speaking at a private meeting to consider the role of women, Dr Williams said bishops should reflect the full "human community".

"In arguing for and working for the full inclusion of women in the ordained ministry of the church, what we're after is not simply justice, though that's not exactly insignificant, but we are after the humanising of the ordained ministry," he said.

The work of clergy has suffered from a "malign" professionalism in which some priests take a bureaucratic approach, instead of focusing on their responsibilities and their faith, the Archbishops suggested.

"Bureaucratisation can mean perhaps taking the priesthood away from justification by faith and anchoring it in a kind of justification by box ticking."

He questioned whether it was "possible for bishops to read the Bible adequately if they're an all male group".

"It's not just a matter of being able to read the words. It's a matter of being alert to the fullest range of meanings that those words possess," he said.

"And if you're going to be alert to the fullest range of meanings you have to have the fullest range of readers. So a group whose readership is restricted is actually not going to be a fully literate group."

Dr Williams said Church of England bishops would need to prepare for a "culture change" before the first women were ordained, which would be in 2014 at the earliest.

Now assuming this is an accurate report of what he said, and he surely reads the Telegraph or has a staffer do so for him and has time to issue a statement correcting the report, I want to focus on the following perspective in particular:

He questioned whether it was "possible for bishops to read the Bible adequately if they're an all male group".

So maybe the Nicene Creed is wrong after all. Maybe the theology of substitutionary atonement taught in Cramner's Prayer Book is wrong. We just can't know right now - not with the all-male bishops the church has had for 1900 years.

Since all bishops in the entire, Christian Church East and West were all male up until the past decades or two, we shall to wait until 2014 to find out. This is, presumably, what he meant by predicting a "culture change" after the ordination of women bishops. I think he meant "theological change" and I think what he is actually talking about is the revision of the Christian tradition beyond recognition.

The gross insult to male bishops who are so inadequate that women being ordained is necessary to "humanise" the episcopacy is a slam against himself and all orthodox bishops from Athanasius to John Paul II. Does he really think that original sin only affects half the human race? This is not even bad theology; it is not even theology at all. It is the importation of secular ideology into the speech of the Church.

It is a great pity that the Church of England has fallen on hard times. But she probably has the leadership she deserves. There was a day not so long ago when one would naturally speak of the Church of England and liberal Protestantism as two different streams. Alas, there is no need to do so any longer.