A Brief Meditation on Charity: In Continuation of the Last Post

I think we are hopelessly muddled up in thinking about charity today. This one word is shot through with contradictions and used in so many different ways that nobody knows what it means anymore.

To begin: charity is good. Charity is those with enough sharing with those in need. This is a virtue and it is good for both the giver (who is liberated from the vice of greed by sharing) and for the recipient (who has a pressing physical need like hunger met which would otherwise go unmet). Charity of this sort ought to produce the virtue of gratitude in the recipient as well as the virtue of generosity in the giver.

But when a system encourages people to become dependent on charity, then it is attacking human dignity. To come to rely on charity when one could do something else destroys self-respect, decreases initiative and leads to self-loathing. So to accept charity when one does not need charity is destructive of one's character. And to give charity when it is not needed is to place oneself in a position of patronage and power over the recipients. It is to assume a parental role toward them that infantilizes them and disempowers them.

So charity is a good thing when it is needed because of unavoidable circumstances beyond the control of the recipient and when its intention is the short-term relief of real, physical needs that would not otherwise be met. But when charity is systematized into the modern welfare state so that entire underclass of dependents is created and people are locked into multi-generational poverty and dependency, then what we have is the creation of a monster state lording it over its subjects through its bureaucracy.

Getting people off welfare, not preserving, making permanent and expanding the welfare state, should be the goal of all those who care about human dignity and actual poor people. The socialist critique of capitalism cannot be that it does not foster the welfare state; that is its strength not its weakness. Socialism does not occupy the moral high ground here.

Michael Moore, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Irrational Hatred of Capitalism

Some time ago Daniel Hannan noted how frequently the Left resorts to language of evil when discussing capitalism. In "Michael Moore and the unquestioning self-righteousness of the left" Hannan quotes Moore as folllows:

“Capitalism is evil,” says Michael Moore. “You have to eliminate it.” . . .

The beauty of his position, of course, is that it doesn’t require him to come up with any alternatives. “What I’m asking for is a new economic order,” says Moore, adding feebly: “I don’t know how to construct that, I’m not an economist.”

OK, Mike, but all the people who have tried to construct it have ended up creating tyrannies.

The Archbishop of Canterbury made headlines recently by sounding like a typical left-winger by attacking the coalition government's plan to reform welfare by requiring people to work for welfare. Williams was quoted as saying:

'People who are struggling to find work and struggling to find a secure future are, I think, driven further into a sort of downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair, when the pressure is on in this way.''

Yesterday, Hannan had this to say about the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent statements criticizing the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government's plan to reform welfare along the lines that the Clinton administration and a Republican congress reformed it so successfully in the US in the 1990s.

I like Rowan Williams. He is an intelligent man who always does his hearers the courtesy of addressing them intelligently. This habit often gets him into trouble, either because he is genuinely misunderstood or because his detractors affect to misunderstand him. But he admirably refuses to dumb down.

Still, I think he was unwise to criticise Iain Duncan Smith’s scheme to make the receipt of benefits contingent on a willingness to work. IDS hadn’t come up with his plan on the back of an envelope; nor was he motivated by the need to save money. He has spent five years looking at the root causes of worklessness and poverty, and has concluded that keeping unemployed people in touch with the rhythms of a working day is likely to make them more employable as well as more content. I happen to agree with him, although, of course, you can honourably disagree. What is less honourable is to question the Tories’ motives, to call them morally wrong rather than intellectually wrong.

What the Archbishop and Moore have in common is a reflexive antipathy toward capitalism and a tendency to frame the economics debate in a simplistic manner as good (welfare state) versus evil (capitalism). This seems to be a bedrock, core conviction with people on the whole spectrum of the left which never goes away no matter how much evidence comes in to support the idea that socialism does not work. They still believe they are morally superior because they oppose capitalism even though capitalism is the only alternative to tyranny. It is hard to make sense of this position.

Christine Odone, however, in her blog post, "Rowan Williams wants to be like Thomas More but risks looking like Don Quixote," helps immensely, in my opinion:

Rowan Williams, the most interesting Archbishop of Canterbury in years, is as capable of a sophisticated analysis of Dostoyevsky as an innovative interpretation of Aquinas. Yet when it comes to politics he is a simple, old-fashioned socialist who believes the State should intervene when its citizens can’t cope. Hence his attack on the Coalition’s plans for welfare reform: Williams wants to cushion every blow for every citizen, and believes no one should ever feel the pinch of poverty or the pang of hunger.

For my colleague Janet Daley, Williams’s broadside seems a daft attack on work. The Archbishop’s target, in fact, is much more ambitious: capitalism. It is a system that he instinctively deplores, seeing in it greed-generating machine that cannot be controlled and that causes injustice and misery. Williams champions benefits as the humane face of the cruel market. . . .

Capitalism may be hugely flawed, but communism has been totally discredited, and the socialist experiments have evolved into capitalist-lite economies that owe little to Marx. Even the most hard-bitten Lefties, although they may have forgotten to tell Rowan Williams, have moved on from the “Capitalism Must Go” position.

In this new global understanding, the Christian ethic of William Temple and Rowan Williams, with its emphasis on community and mutual responsibility, still has a role to play. The Churches, with their voluntary groups and inclusive ethos, can establish themselves at the centre of the Big Society. They can provide a guiding light and a moral grounding. . . .

Instead, in a move that betrays a dangerous unworldliness, the Archbishop seeks to be the troublesome priest, the man of conscience who will make life difficult for government. It’s the wrong role, and the wrong target. It shows a misunderstanding of contemporary politics but also of contemporary principles such as “aspiration”.

For the unworldly Dr Williams, aspiration lies somewhere between unfettered ambition and greedy accumulation. It’s about having and achieving worldly goods which, in the great scheme of things, should not matter a jot. Aspiration smacks of “me”, not the caring sharing “we” that is at the heart of the Christian message.

This is why, when the Coalition – and in particular Iain Duncan Smith – argue that the present welfare system stifles aspiration, their words make no impression on Dr Williams. He refuses to consider that withdrawing some benefits might enable some citizens to create their own good fortune; in his view, a government that wants to reduce its role as provider is ducking its responsibility.

In fact, as Duncan Smith has argued, aspiration is as much about the single mum on the council estate wanting to improve her children’s chances as about the City banker gunning for the big Christmas bonus. Judicious, carefully targetted benefits do not hold back the citizen fizzing with get up and go. But a benefits culture, in which welfare guarantees you a better lifestyle than you can earn through hard graft, risks clogging the arteries of even the most eager, leaving them paralysed if not lifeless.

The Coalition is working to change this culture: the disadvantaged will benefit from its success. That is why the Archbishop of Canterbury must rein in his Don Quixote tendencies.

I have quoted Odone extensively here because she is so utterly lucid about what is the problem with old-fashioned left-wingers like Moore and Williams. As she explains, their relentless opposition to the notion of "aspiration" ends up hurting the very people they purport to be wanting to help. They cannot keep a firm grasp what is good, noble and humane about the virtue of working hard to support oneself and one's family because they cannot separate the idea of "aspiration" from those of greed, immoral manipulation and hoarding.

I think Odone is profoundly right on this and she has put her finger on the central problem of the old-fashioned socialist critique of capitalism. It fails to value highly enough something that is intrinsic to human nature: the need for self-respect that arises from working hard to gain a living. This self-respect must be earned; it cannot be received as a gift. This is a profound insight into human nature that seems to have escaped the socialists.

Capitalism needs to be defended as more than a necessary evil; it needs to be defended as being in harmony with the essence of human nature itself and not merely fallen human nature.

More on this theme will follow.

The New Conservative Reality in America

Nile Gardiner has a very good piece on his Daily Telegraph blog today on "The decline and fall of Barack Obama: five key factors that drove the midterm election." Here is a snippet and below are the five key factors.

Last week’s midterm elections were without doubt a stunning political revolution, which will transform the political landscape in Washington in the second decade of the 21st Century, and possibly for the next generation.

The Republicans increased their seats in the House of Representatives by the biggest margin since 1948, with a significantly bigger win than 1994, gaining 61 seats. They surely would have taken the Senate as well, had all of the seats been up for re-election, instead of just 37. At the gubernatorial level the GOP now controls 29 governorships compared to just 19 for the Democrats. Republicans also picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, the highest figure in the modern era according to figures provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The midterms were largely a referendum on Barack Obama’s policies and his leadership, and represented a remarkable reversal of fortune for a president who just 21 months ago seemed unassailable.

Here are the five factors he mentions as responsible for this stunning turn-around:

1. America is a conservative nation
2. US voters are unwilling to accept the idea of American decline
3. The Tea Party sparked a political revolution
4. The liberal elites dramatically lost influence
5. The Obama presidency has behaved in an imperial fashion

Gardiner mentions this Gallup Poll, which shows conservatives outnumbering liberals in America today by a factor of 2.5 to 1. That is right, 48% self-identified as conservative, 32% as moderate and only 20% as liberal. That 48% figure for conservatives is up from 40% in 1994 and 42% in 2006. It is a long-term trend.

Victorino Matus at The Weekly Standard explains that the Democrat loss is worse than it appears. Redistricting due to populations changes is coming in the wake of the 2010 Census. He quotes Charles Lane of the Washington Post as follows:

Since the U.S. population continues to flow South and West, reapportionment will probably add House seats in red states and subtract them in blue states. Thus, the Census looks like a setback for Democratic chances to win the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president.

Texas, which has voted Republican in 9 of the last 10 elections will gain 4 electoral votes, according to projections from preliminary Census data by Polidata.com. The other gainers—one vote each—include Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina and Utah. All of these states have voted for the GOP candidate in at least 7 of the last 10 elections.... Meanwhile, eight states that usually go blue in presidential elections—Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota—are projected to lose one electoral vote each.

Or in other words,

Take the 22 states that voted for John McCain as the GOP base in the 2012 presidential election. That base is about to grow from 173 electoral votes to 180. And if Republicans hold it, they could get to 271 by carrying just six more states—Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, Virginia and Nevada—each of which has voted GOP in a majority of the last ten elections.

A permanent conservative governing majority for conservatives looms on the immediate horizon. The only question is whether the Republican Party will be its vehicle or not. If the Republican Party was smart, its 2012 presidential ticket would come from the six states mentioned above - say Indiana and Florida.

Historians will look back on Obama's administration as a desperate, last-gasp attempt to resurrect the old failed policies of the New Deal and as writing the obituary for the century long American progressive movement's attempt to turn America into a social democracy. The momentum is now in the other direction: toward a revival of constitutionalism, a renewed commitment to American exceptionalism, a revival of the family, and principles such as limited government and free enterprise.

Capitalism and Eschatology: Part I Method

A Quick Review: This post is part of a dialogue/debate between Matthew Anderson and me that began when Matthew wrote a post entitled "Wallis versus Brooks: The Debate That Wasn't" in which he discussed the recent debate between Jim Wallis and Arthur Brooks at Wheaton. He noted the similarities between the two and suggested (quite rightly in my opinion) that Wallis' real problem is his underlying theological anthropology. I wrote a post in response entitled: "Capitalism, Socialism and Theological Anthropology" in which I commended the turn to theological anthropology but worried about the Utopian strand in Matthew's post. He then replied with: "Utopia and Capitalist Christianity" to which this post is a reply. The reason I want to keep this discussion going is because Matthew and I share a lot of common ground, especially with regard to our admiration for the theological anthropology of John Paul II, and I believe this common ground allows us to push the discussion further than most such debates do.
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In his own defense in reply to my charge of Utopian traces in his thinking, Matthew says:

My worry is that inasmuch as capitalism takes its anthropological cues from an unnatural order (namely, humans under the domain of sin), it will ultimately undermine and work against the witness of the gospel through the Church. . .

Again, I am not equating capitalism and socialism. I am more interested in the question of whether capitalism is commensurate with Christianity, and how. Perhaps there’s a Barthian streak to my critique, but I want to maintain a healthy wariness of any system that ultimately comes in competition with an ethic that is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. My sense–and I posit this all quite tentatively–is that our economics needs to be eschatalogically oriented without immanentizing the eschaton. That probably opens me up to the Utopian critique, but it is a charge I might be willing to accept. Jerusalem may be the pattern, but I make no claims about who constructs it or how it is built.

There is so much to agree with here that to pick it apart may seem pedantic, but I think there are a couple of small problems that need to be identified. I think Matthew and I will end up in agreement if we talk this through to the end, especially if we think about how John Paul II treats marriage as offering some clues on how we should think about economics.

Matthew says that, although he does not want to immantize the eschaton (which is where Utopainism comes from), he does want to have an eschatologically oriented economics and avoid letting an "unnatural order" determine our economics. Here I agree completely with his goals but I suggest there is an unnecessary "either/or" at work. We need an economics that is rooted in creation, which takes sin into account, and which is eschatologically oriented as well.

If we look at the structure of John Paul II's theology of the body, we find that part one is built around the three words of Christ. In the first chapter on part one, he examines the response of Jesus to the Pharisees' question on divorce in Matthew 19 in which Jesus points them back to Genesis 1-2 (in the beginning it was not so). Jesus tells them that Moses gave them laws allowing divorce because of the hardness of your hearts (i.e. because this is a fallen world) yet Jesus affirms the Divine ideal as revealed in creation before the fall (for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh, Gen. 2:24).

The third chapter of part one focuses on Jesus' words to the Sadducees in Mark 12:18f where, in response to their attempt to trap him, he tells them that they know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God and that in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor give in marriage. Here Jesus looks forward to the final state in which our resurrected, spiritualized, divinized, glorified bodies will attain a higher state. While we will still be male or female, which is fundamental to our identities, we will no longer need to procreate and therefore will not marry. John Paul II examines Paul's teaching on the resurrection body in I Cor. 15 in some detail.

For John Paul II, marriage belongs to creation and to this fallen world, this plane of existence we now inhabit, but will be transcended in the eschaton. Yet the eschaton is by no means irrelevant to the Christian understanding of marriage in this life because what marriage points to - the full and perfect communion of persons - is what draws Christian life on toward its fulfillment.

The second chapter of part one is an Augustinian reflection on life in the tension of the "already-not yet" life in the Spirit lived by the Christian who is simultaneously immersed in this fallen and sinful world and also filled by the Spirit of God. John Paul II probes what it means to live as a person in the process of being redeemed in the midst of a fallen and sinful world.

Then, in the second part of the theology of the body, John Paul II meditates on Ephesians 5, in which the creational reality of marriage becomes an analogy of the eschatological destiny of the Church and we see that even though marriage as we know it with sex and procreation is not part of the eschaton what we might call "the creational intent or trajectory" of marriage is fulfilled in the eschaton. Ultimately, there is continuity in the form of good and better, prototype and finished product, potential and realization between the creation and the eschaton.

Now, with this as background, let me suggest that in economics we need to identify what is rooted in creation, what is perverted by sin, and what is promised as eschatological hope. But then, we need to go further and try to discern how what is given in creation is fulfilled in the eschaton. And then, a final step will still be necessary: that being to meditate upon how the eschatological fulfillment of the creational intent should affect the way Christians should think about economics today. The result will be that we identify a way of living in the tension of the battle between flesh and spirit in the already/not yet age between the first and second comings. This entails resisting both the danger I identified as so prevalent today, namely that of immanentizing the eschaton by buying the snake oil hawked by socialists who glibly assume that a federal program can take care of the sin problem, and the danger Matthew points to, namely that of holding a set of convictions about economics that are based only on this sinful order and therefore sub-Christian. The former is Wallis' temptation and the latter is Brooks' temptation.

Matthew and I agree, I think, that the goal is to have a properly formed philosophy of economics that is informed by creation, fall and redemption in the way that John Paul II's theological anthropology is so informed.

Since this post is getting long, I will postpone my discussion of how to follow this method to the next post.

I Have a Crazy Theory about Obama

At the press conference yesterday President Obama dutifully said the words his advisers undoubtedly begged him to say like "shellacking" (has a populist, down to earth ring) and "humbling" and "carefully reflecting on the message from the voters." He also said "I take responsibility." He was careful not to criticize the voters as he did throughout the campaign, nor did he call them frightened ninnies, over-wrought or irrational. There were no references to "bitter clingers." No, he tried to appear humble, chastened, and respectful of democracy and the voting public.

It didn't work.

The questions from the press were much tougher than he is used to being asked, especially on live TV. Ben Fellers of AP started by asking: "Are you willing to concede at all that what happened last night was not just an expression of frustration about the economy but a fundamental rejection of your agenda?" Instead of the usual big, fat, slow one down the middle of the plate, this was some high, inside heat. You can listen to his four minute answer (roughly 7 min. 30 sec. to 11 min. 30 sec. mark from C-Span here), and you can see that Obama does not back down, blink or concede any such thing. His whole point boils down to the Marxist analysis that the election results can be explained by economic frustration. Isn't economics amazing; it explains everything! It is not about political philosophy or policies or morality or American exceptionalism; it is totally a "not enough in the paycheck" issue, period. The people want bipartisanship in Washington and economic solutions and it is up to government to give them what they want (not get out of the way so business can lead the recovery).

The next question, from Savannah Guthrie of NBC was even sharper. She asks if he is not reflecting on his policies, as opposed to the economic frustration of the people, is it possible that he is just "not getting it?" His scowl says it all. Watch his body language and tone. (11 min. 25 sec. in). He is not a happy camper and his famous "cool" shows a little crack here. (That Obama scowl would, in relative terms, be the equivalent of a 10-12 minute rant from a sweat-stained, weeping Glenn Beck).

When pressed yet again by another question as to what areas of policy he would be willing to compromise on that he wouldn't have been willing to do so before, he claimed that he had been compromising all along (tell it to the voters!) and then finally, to his credit admitted that Cap and Trade is dead and signaled an openness to talk about energy self-sufficiency. But this has to be more than electric cars. We will see if he is willing to walk back his opposition to economically-feasible energy sources or not.

But overall, Obama continued to blame the Republicans for not accepting his policies (his idiosyncratic definition of bipartisanship) and refused to consider repealing the health care bill. I think Guthrie nailed it: he does not get what the voters wanted him to get from the election.

Peter Wehner offers a similar assessment in Commentary:

The message from the voters, according to Obama, is that The Car (to use his beloved, overused analogy), while still in the ditch, is undeniably moving in the right direction. We just have to go faster than we are. Democratic losses can be explained because they lost the optics war: in pursuing so many wise and prudent policies all at once, you see, the hyperactive president and his administration only appeared as if they were profligate spenders and champions of big government. And what Mr. Obama most needs to do, we learned, is to get out of “the bubble” (read: Washington) more than he has. A few more trips to Idaho and Wyoming, it seems, and all would be right with the world once more.

And what set of Obama remarks would be complete without the requisite lecturing — in this case, on the importance of “civility in our discourse” and the importance of being able to “disagree without being disagreeable.” This admonition comes after Obama, during the last few days of the campaign, referred to his opponents as “enemies,” hinted that the Tea Party Movement is tinged with racism, charged Republicans with being dishonest, and accused, without a shred of evidence, the Chamber of Commerce of using illegal money to support Republican candidates across the country. But never mind. After his victory in 2008, Obama’s message to Republicans was: “I won.” Today, after his party was throttled, Obama’s message is: “Come let us reason together.”

Holy cow! He sounds like Saruman talking to Gandalf in that silky voice from up on the tower after the destruction of Isengard.

I think this means he is a one-termer for sure. But more importantly, it now seems to me that he knows full well that he is going to lose in 2012 (how could he not?), but he does not care. Why not?

People assume he is motivated - like most politicians - by a lust for power and therefore will modify his policies to get re-elected. I don't think he is an ordinary politician. I think he is such a rigid ideologue that he will do what he has to do to fend off a challenge from the left in the primaries (from say Howard Dean or Russ Feingold) and he will choose to endure another election defeat like this one if necessary without departing one iota from his ideological rigidity. But why?

When I read this story, I got a crazy idea for an answer to this puzzle. Like I said, it is crazy, but hear me out just for the fun of it.

Right after the press conference Obama is leaving for a trip to India which is as lavish and over the top as anything I have ever heard of in the history of the world. Stacey Webber at Newsreel Blog writes:

The cost of the Obama trip is estimated at 200 million dollars a day. The budget includes 40 jets, 34 war ships, 400 cars, a presidential limousine, 800 rooms at the Taj Hotel and Hyatt, 3 helicopters, 3 luxury jets, an entourage of 800 personnel, Air Force One and the cost of coconut removal from the trees due to the potential hazard they cause to the president. Just in case you were wondering, the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for tab.

The billion dollar price tag for this ten day trip begs the question of “Why?”. When asked about the reason for the president’s visit, Jeff Bader, Senior Director for Asia Affairs at the National Security Council for the White House said that Obama

specifically wanted to celebrate Diwali and to do so with the Indian people.

Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights. It is interesting to note that the same White House so eager to celebrate the Diwali with Hindus in India, will not be wishing Americans a “Merry Christmas” but “Season’s Greetings” on their CHRISTMAS cards this year.

He wanted to celebrate Diwali with the Hindu people? Come on . . . seriously?

One of the first major speeches he made as president was addressed to the Muslim world. He wowed crowd in Berlin, fought for Kyoto, won the Nobel Prize for being a left wing American president, pushed nuclear disarmament and has sought to exemplify the Leftist worldview of the Europeans and other cultural elites who run the United Nations. When asked about American Exceptionalism he rejected it - naturally.

I think he is running for President of the World. I believe he actually sees the presidency of the United States as a stepping stone to higher and greater things. He may be the first person in history with an ego that large. But it sure would explain a lot of things that right now seem impossible to understand. And if the wheels all come off in 2012, what better qualification could someone possibly have for running the United Nations than having been rejected by the ignorant, backwoods, cowboys who make up the electorate of the United States of America?

At Last: Activist Judges Given the Boot by the People!

In Iowa, several activist judges presumed to impose their morality on the entire state of Iowa by legislating from the bench in favor of same-sex "marriage." But now, voters of Iowa have removed them from the bench.

John McCormack of The Weekly Standard quotes a story from the New York Times:

DES MOINES — In a rebuke of the state supreme court with implications for judicial elections across the country, voters here removed three justices who participated in a ruling last year that made the state the first in the Midwest to permit same-sex marriage. ...

Each of the three judges received about 45 percent support with 91 percent of precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press, making Tuesday the first time members of Iowa’s high court had been rejected by voters. Under the system used here, judges face no opponents and simply need to gain more yes votes than no votes to win another eight-year term.

What an encouraging turn of events! So maybe democracy is not dead everywhere in the Western world. McCormack quotes Gary Bauer, who was involved in the campaign to make this happen as follows:

“Time and time again, the American people have rejected attempts to redefine the meaning of marriage. But liberal judges insist on pushing this radical agenda on us. Last night the voters of Iowa pushed back and rejected the justices. Activist judges everywhere have been put on notice,” said Gary Bauer, chairman of Campaign for Working Families.

“Judges do not have the right to legislate from the bench. Nor are they the supreme authority of the land. The voters of Iowa made that clear last night. Campaign for Working Families was proud to join the National Organization for Marriage, the American Family Association and Iowa for Freedom in an extensive media campaign exposing the radical record of these robed political activists. I am proud that Iowa voters stood up and said ‘Enough!’”

Well said. Well done, citizens of Iowa. This is a trend I hope we see spread everywhere.

I Told You the Tea Party was Good for Social Conservative Causes

Jim Wallis can try to portray the entire Tea Party movement as a bunch of extreme, hardhearted, libertarian individualists who don't give a fig for their neighbors, but he does not know what he is talking about. He has a fringe group confused with the broad center.

The truth is that the Tea Party movement has galvanized the conservative movement in general and there is a lot of overlap in the issues that most concern Christians and the ones that concern small-government, low-tax Tea Partiers. The outstanding results of yesterday's election with regard to abortion is a good case in point.

The Susan B. Anthony List was very active in this election cycle off-setting the highly funded pro-abortion groups like Emily's List and Planned Parenthood. On the Susan B. Anthony List website, which you can access here, they summarize their successes in the 90 races they targeted for this election. They spent over $11 million dollars on these races.

First, they supported the election of the first woman pro-life to the US Senate, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. They also supported John Boozman, a pro-lifer who replaced the pro-abortion Blanche Lincoln as Senator from Arkansas and Roy Blunt, a Republican pro-lifer who defeated Emily's List favorite Robin Carnahan in Missouri. In addition, they helped pro-life senator Charles Grassley of Iowa beat back a challenge from a pro-abortion challenger.

Second, this election saw the percentage of women in the House of Representatives who are pro-life increased by 60 percent while the percentage of women who are pro-choice decreased by 16 percent.

Third, four pro-life women were elected Governor of their states: Jan Brewer (R-AZ), Susana Martinez (R-NM), Nikki Haley (R-SC) and Mary Fallin (R-OK).

Fourth, of 48 candidates endorsed by SBA List overall, 34 won. In the SBA List-versus-EMILY’s List head-to-head races, SBA List candidates won 91 percent of the time.

Many of these successes would not have happened without the energy and enthusiasm provided by the Tea Party. While social issues like abortion are not central concerns of the Tea Party movement as a movement, it is nonetheless true that the kind of candidates the Tea Partiers vote for also happen to be, in many cases, social conservatives.

Those of us who consider the sanctity of human life to be the most urgent and tragic social issue in the Western world today need all the help we can get in advancing the conservative agenda and we aren't going to get any positive help from the Evangelical Left or from those establishment Republicans who secretly mumble "amen" when elitists dismiss the Tea Party movement as "bitter clingers."

There is good reason why the president of NARAL doesn't look so happy the day after the election. See the smile disappear here.

UPDATE 1:
Here is a story which expands on the facts that I mention in this post. This was a wonderful election for social conservatives. Those darn libertarian Tea Partiers somehow managed to elect a whole slew of pro-life and pro-marriage candidates. Amazing, isn't it?

UPDATE 2:
Jill Stanek has a great column in the Washington Post today outlining the gains made by pro-lifers in congress:

Tuesday's election garnered at least 53 new pro-life votes in the House. Conversely, only 151 winning House candidates were endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action, meaning just 34.7 percent of the 435 representatives in the 212th Congress will be reliable pro-abortion votes.

Read it all here.

Why the Tea Party Gives Hope to a Brit and a Canadian

Here is a great post from James Delingpole of the Daily Telegraph. Here is a Brit whose feelings I resonate with as a Canadian. The United States of America is not just a country; it is the embodiment of the best of Western political ideals and the home of liberty.

As Daniel Hannan, another conservative Brit, would be quick to point out: the American Revolution was a conservative revolution in favor of ideals of English freedom which were under attack by an out of touch elite. America represents the hope we all have for Western civilization and it is no wonder that the enemies of the West hate Israel and America above all.

Delingpole writes in his post "Only the Tea Party Can Save Us Now":

Arriving back at Heathrow late on Sunday night I felt – as you do on returning to Britain these days – as if I were entering a failed state. It’s not just the Third World shabbiness which is so dispiriting. It’s the knowledge that from its surveillance cameras to its tax regime, from its (mostly) EU-inspired regulations to its whole attitude to the role of government, Britain is a country which has forgotten what it means to be free.

God how I wish I were American right now. In the US they may not have the Cairngorms, the River Wye, cream teas, University Challenge, Cotswold villages or decent curries. But they do still understand the principles of “don’t tread on me” and “live free or die.” Not all of them, obviously – otherwise a socialist like Barack Obama would never have got into power. But enough of them to understand that in the last 80 or more years – and not just in the US but throughout the Western world – government has forgotten its purpose. It has now grown so arrogant and swollen as to believe its job is to shape and improve and generally interfere with our lives. And it’s not. Government’s job is to act as our humble servant.

What’s terrifying is how few of us there are left anywhere in the supposedly free world who properly appreciate this.

Delingpole laments the degradation of the once proud British Conservative Party into a party that merely advocates socialist decline more gradually.

Rarely have I felt more despondent about the world’s future than I do right now, Britain’s especially. At least when Blair and Brown were in charge, busily ruining things, there was always the consolation that soon would come the backlash which would see a decent, small-state, conservative administration regaining power and the country’s fortunes restored. This hasn’t happened. The similarities between the Eton Grocer’s Coalition and the New Labour government he ousted are far greater than the differences. All are run by a professional political mandarin class in the interests of the professional political mandarin class.

This is not a man who loves a foreign country more than his own; it is a man who sees the best ideals of his own country no longer characterizing his own country but being preserved elsewhere. He concludes:

Sure there’s no comparison (well not that much) between Obama’s US and Stalin’s Soviet Union; Coalition Britain and Mao’s China; Julia Gillard’s Australia and Queen Ranavalona’s Madagascar; sure the war we’re currently fighting doesn’t involve mass destruction like that of World Wars I and II. But it’s precisely because the ideological struggle we’re currently engaged in is so seemingly democratic and innocuous that it is in fact so dangerous. With Hitler and Stalin it was easy: the enemy was plain in view. Today’s encroaching tyranny is an of altogether more subtle, slippery variety. It takes the form of the steady “engrenage” – ratcheting – of EU legislation; of the stealthy removal of property rights and personal liberty under the UN’s Agenda 21; of the eco-legislation created by democratically unaccountable bodies like America’s Environmental Protection Agency; of the stealthy encroachment of the Big Government into the most intimate recesses of our daily lives – not just under barely disguised socialist administrations like Obama’s even under notionally “Centre right” ones such as Cameron’s or Sarkozy’s. When the Enemy is as sly and insidious as that, it’s much much harder for the increasingly oppressed populace to rouse itself to the appropriate state of alarm and rebellion.

That’s why today I say: “Thank God for the Tea Party!” Though it has been typically misrepresented by the liberal media as a rattlers’ nest of gun-toting fruitcakes who want to ban masturbation and abortion, it is, of course, nothing of the kind. It is – whatever the increasingly redundant Moonbat may claim – a genuine grass roots movement inspired by the one great political cause truly worth fighting and dying for: the cause of liberty.

Our ancestors fought and died to preserve Western freedom against the hard totalitarianism of the fascist and communist regimes of the mid twentieth century. But now we, their decadent children, are in mortal danger of surrendering to the soft totalitarianism of the nanny state. But this is to narrowly avoid Animal Farm only to fall into Brave New World.

To my American friends I would say this on election night: you won't realize what riches you had until you suddenly realize they are gone. Don't trade liberty for security; it is not a good deal.

US Midterm Elections: A Stark Choice

To all US readers: don't forget to vote today. This is an unusual election in that there are issues of great substance at stake and the choices are stark. Thomas has an interesting article on a new book about the Great Depression. Here is how it starts:

Guess who said the following: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work." Was it Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Karl Rove?

Not even close. It was Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of FDR's closest advisers. He added, "after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . And an enormous debt to boot!"

This is just one of the remarkable and eye-opening facts in a must-read book titled "New Deal or Raw Deal?" by Professor Burton W. Folsom, Jr., of Hillsdale College.

Ordinarily, what happened in the 1930s might be something to be left for historians to be concerned about. But the very same kinds of policies that were tried-- and failed-- during the 1930s are being carried out in Washington today, with the advocates of such policies often invoking FDR's New Deal as a model.

Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed the country's woes on the problems he inherited from his predecessor, much as Barack Obama does today. But unemployment was 20 percent in the spring of 1939, six long years after Herbert Hoover had left the White House.

Read the rest here.

The election today can stop Obama from doing more damage, but unfortunately Obama will still be able to stop congress from fixing the economy if he is obstinate. This is why the scope and depth of the Republican win today matters so much. The bigger the wave, the less likely Democrats can stand in the way of smaller government, lower taxes, reductions in spending and confidence building measures for small businesses, which are the engine of the US economy.

I have already predicted a Republican win long ago but today I sense something historic building in momentum. I have a feeling that the polls have underestimated the size of the wave. By early tomorrow morning we will know.

In the meantime, I think I'll order this new book. I'm afraid it is going to be a relevant book for a while yet.

The New McCarthism of the Left

We have listened to President Obama calling a sector of the electorate "enemies" in recent days. When John Boehner, Jon Stewart and John Podesta all agree you should not have said something, chances are there is a pretty wide consensus on that point! Now even Obama agrees that he should not have said "enemies." But this is just one example of the divisive, polarizing and hyper-partisan rhetoric emanating from an increasingly-desperate president whose coalition is falling apart and who is on the verge of losing congress.

But Obama has had his enemies list for a while and has tried to de-legitimize those, like Fox News, who dare to disagree with him. And all too often his minions in the mainstream media have responded by doing everything they can to aid his cause despite their duty to be unbiased in reporting the news.

The Journolist scandal was one example. The liberal media has done a hatchet job on Joe Miller in Alaska. The firing of Juan Williams for associating with Fox News was shocking. Now, we have yet another example of the McCarthy tactics of the Left in attempting to silence those who won't be cowed into submission. Newreel Blog reports:

The Left nauseatingly pays lip service to the terms ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity.’ In reality, they are highly intolerant and they hate diversity, particularly diversity of thought. They hate free markets and really loathe free marketplaces of ideas. As such, the stompy foot temper tantrums were in full force when it was announced that Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch, Editor In Chief of Breitbart’s Big Journalism, would be participating in ABC’s election night coverage. A coordinated effort between the usual suspects immediately, and predictably, sprung up. How dare ABC include people who won’t merely spout the Left’s talking points and somehow blame George W. Bush and people too stupid to understand the “nuance” of Democrats and their policies? Oh, and racists, natch.

Read it all here.

Naturally, ABC caved in to the leftist onslaught and canceled Breitbart. So Andrew Breitbart is now officially blacklisted. He comments on his blog here and shows the email evidence of the ABC flipflop. Andrew Breitbart may be more conservative than you would like, but it is difficult to say that he does not represent a widespread set of opinions in America today. It is shocking that liberals can blacklist someone like him. Who knows, maybe by tomorrow night he will be back on again. Or maybe not.

But it is amusing to see how the liberal media keeps shooting themselves in the foot. They get accused of bias by conservatives and, as if by some sort of Pavlovian response mechanism, they immediately make an unforced error by doing something to give substance and support to the conservative charge, which provokes conservative outrage, which provokes another black list or firing and so on it goes. Eventually, the public loses faith in the liberal media and switches channels. And then, bankruptcies ensue and the liberal media destroys itself.

It is too bad. Someone should have told them that they can't keep this sort of thing secret anymore. We have the Internet now.

Capitalism, Socialism and Theological Anthropology

My friend, Matthew Anderson at Mere Orthodoxy, has a post discussing the recent debate between Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute and Jim Wallis of Sojourners at Wheaton College in which he marvels at how similar the two of them sounded. He writes:

The real story of the evening, though, was how similar Wallis and Brooks sounded throughout the night. Wallis was clear he did not want to destroy capitalism, but called it a “tool” that should be evaluated by its fruits. He spoke positively of the importance of trade at lifting countries out of poverty, and suggested he wanted a multi-faceted approach to solving income inequality. Throughout the evening, he positioned himself as a pragmatist who simply wanted to do what works. If he is opposed to capitalism, it is entirely on those grounds.

At the same time, Brooks was able to affirm that equal opportunity sometimes required intervention by the government in order to level the playing field, particularly (and maybe exclusively) in the realm of education. At that point, he took over the pragmatic mantle and suggested that government simply hasn’t done a good job in that sector. The clearest moment of agreement came when Brooks hammered subsidies for the way they give America and Europe an unfair advantage in sectors like cotton, a critique that Wallis gave full-throated affirmation to.

Not finding any great philosophical of theological difference between the two worries Anderson. He suspects that the bigger questions are ones of theological anthropology rather than economics:

I have reservations that beneath Wallis’ positions lie an anthropology that treats humans as primarily consumers, rather than creators and producers. I haven’t read enough (though I’m changing that) to know that for sure, so I register it simply as a worry. Either way, it would have been interesting for the conversation to move into those deeper questions. The question “what “works?” begs a gigantic “for what?” and that latter question is not properly the realm of economics, but is rather the sphere of theological anthropology.

On this point I heartily agree with Anderson and think that he is moving in exactly the direction we need to go. But his (admittedly tentative) conclusion somewhat surprised me.

Finally, I have become increasingly convinced that the central problems of our global society are not tied to whether our society is capitalist or socialist, but whether it is consumerist and materialist–which everyone seems to be. I am not suggesting that capitalism and socialism are equally productive of human flourishing. I happen to think they are not. But capitalism tied to materialism and consumerism may be far more destructive to society than when socialism is so tied. That doesn’t mean that we should solve the problem by substituting socialism instead. That would be simply to try to remove the symptom without curing the disease. But it does mean that we need to reflect deeply about the best ways to eliminate materialism and consumerism from our structures of thought and our habits of life.

What does it mean for society to be "consumerist" or "materialist"? What do these terms even mean? They do have a certain meaning when used within a Marxist analysis of the evils of capitalist society, but is that the same as their meaning within a Christian analysis of sin and sanctification? I suspect not. Many people use a Marxist approach to link economic growth, free enterprise, materialism and consumerism together as part of one great evil called capitalism. This seems to me to confuse matters greatly because the last two items on that list are sinful distortions of the first two items, which themselves are necessary to human flourishing.

I agree that we cannot eliminate consumerism and materialism by implementing socialism; the Eastern Europeans were highly materialistic and consumerist under Communism and one of the main things they wanted after throwing off the Soviet yoke was Western consumer goods. Where I think Matthew loses his focus a bit is in the final sentence where he seems to yield for a moment to the Utopian temptation by writing:

But it does mean that we need to reflect deeply about the best ways to eliminate materialism and consumerism from our structures of thought and our habits of life.

Capitalism is an economic system designed for a fallen world in which Christianity has great influence and part of that influence in the cultivation of a healthy skepticism about the degree to which fallen human nature can be overcome in this age between the first and second comings of Christ. Capitalism can be viewed as a set of institutional arrangements designed to civilize greed in much the same way as marriage is designed to civilize lust. A system that understands that (1) humans are selfish and (2) humans are social and need each other to flourish and then comes up with a plan to make #1 contribute to #2 is ingenious. Admittedly, this is not a very Utopian view of the world; but that is not a bug, as they say, but a feature.

I understand the impulse that leads one to throw up one's hands in despair and pronounce a plague on the houses of both the capitalists and the socialists. Truly, both are less than the kingdom of God. But the difference is that one knows it and the other doesn't and that is the whole difference in a nutshell.

Capitalism is an economic system that can be demonic if it functions without any moral limits, but if it is kept in check by natural law, limited government, the division of powers, etc., it helps us create wealth and contributes to human flourishing. Socialism, on the other hand, is a Utopian scheme which does not recognize that human nature is fallen and is therefore dangerous.

What my argument comes down to is this: socialism has an inherent theological anthropology that is heretical and anti-Christian while capitalism has an inherent theological anthropology that is partially right (it recognizes fallen human nature as inherently greedy) yet incomplete (because it does not recognize or specify norms for human flourishing inherent in human nature). But on the whole, Christianity is far more compatible with capitalism because it is a matter of supplying the missing positive human telos to a system that at least recognizes the fallen character of human nature. In the case of socialism, by contrast, Christianity has to start out by challenging its fundamental presuppositions about human nature right from the start.

Why Christians Should Be Grateful for the Tea Parties

Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph has a very interesting article on the upcoming US midterm election in which she describes the coming election wave as as not the triumph of the Republican Party as part of the normal working of the normal two-party system, but as a revolt against cultural elites of both parties. In general, she is right on and it is interesting to see how this theme is spreading.

But when she talks about the Tea Parties (she deliberately uses the plural because they do not constitute a single movement), I think what she says is important but potentially a bit misleading. Let's listen to what she says in "Midterm elections 2010: prepare for a new American revolution."

So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of the official Opposition as well.

Nor are they simply the embodiment of reactionary social conservatism, which has been the last redoubt of the traditional Republican Right. There were plenty of people in New York who wanted to believe that Tea Partiers were just a new incarnation of the gun-totin', gay-bashing right-to-lifers whom they found it so easy to dismiss as risible throwbacks. This is a huge political miscalculation, which quite misses the point of what makes the Congressional midterm elections this week such an interesting and historic political event. This is so much more than the predictable to-ing and fro-ing of party control midway through a presidential term. What the grassroots rebellion is really about is an attempt to pull the Republican party back to its basic philosophy of low-tax, low-spend, small government: the great Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which governs least.

One of the more electorally far-reaching effects of this is that Republicanism could become the home once again of a plausible political and economic programme, rather than simply an outpost for those who seem to reject many of the features of modern life. The gun-toters and gay-bashers and pro-lifers may have jumped aboard the bandwagon, and Sarah Palin may be frantically attaching herself to the parade, but this is not their show: the Tea Party protests began (as their name suggests) as a campaign against high taxation and the illegitimate intrusiveness of federal powers. That is what they are still about.

Read it all here. Daley is trying to explain what is new about the Tea Parties and why it is wrong to just write them off as the same old social conservatives, who are perceived by the Ruling Class to have run out of steam, especially on homosexual "marriage" and related issues. This leads some liberals to dismiss the Tea Parties out of hand and Daley wants to emphasize their Jeffersonian small government roots. This is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.

Like the Left, the Right of American politics has been an exercise in coalition building. This is normal in a two-party, parliamentary democracy. In the 1950s, when the modern conservative movement got going, there were three distinct types of conservatives: traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk, the anti-communists cold-warriors and the libertarians. They did not always get along, as Kirk's essay "Libertarians: the Chirping Sectaries" demonstrates. But they disliked each other less than they disliked statists in the leftist coalition, which included progressives, liberals and socialists. In the 1970s the neo-conservatives were driven out of leadership of the Democratic Party and joined the conservative coalition and in the 1980s they were joined by the social conservatives. The conservative coalition now had five main components.

Daley is right to highlight the small government, Jeffersonian thrust of the Tea Parties, but this does not mean that the Tea Parties are not good news for the conservative coalition as a whole. In fact, the Republican Party needs all the component parts if it wishes to achieve a majority and there is a general compatibility between social conservatives and small government, low taxes types.

Granted, the most stress in the conservative coalition will come between the libertarians and the social conservatives. But it is also true that these fractures are not at the forefront of the debate at the moment, which is Daley's valid point. It is true that, at some point, if the Republican Party achieves power, these stresses will become a flash point of conflict and that will more likely happen on same sex "marriage" than on abortion, which can be addressed in libertarian terms by stressing the personhood of the fetus. At some point, however, libertarians will need to decide if they want individual liberty with limits determined by natural law or by the arbitrary decision of state-empowered bureaucrats. Some will join the Left and others will stay with the conservatives.

But overall, one should not think that the tremendous wave of small government, free enterprise, low-tax sentiment that is sweeping America today is not a good thing for Christians who wish to promote traditional morality in the public square. It is a great thing and Christians should be thankful that the principles of the American Founding are not dead because the American Founding constitutes the best possible environment for the possibility of Christian influence in the public square: a free church in a free state. And, hopefully, those Jeffersonian democrats will realize that Christianity is a key element in a country that hopes to avoid the statism and tyranny that they so heartily detest.