>ChnMind 2.20 The State an Intrinsic Part of God’s Kingdom

>Sub-Christian Views of the State

History has thrown up four different views on the place and role of the State within Christendom or God’s Kingdom. Three of these views are sub-biblical and not of Christ. Only one is true. The three sub-Christian views all draw upon pagan themes or elements and seek to incorporate them into the Christian faith. They represent an attempt to syncretise Athens and Jerusalem.

The first pagan influence is represented by popism. The medieval Roman Catholic church postulated that the pope—the head of the church at Rome—was the vicar of Christ upon earth. As Christ’s representative, it was argued that the pope carried the authority of Christ upon earth, ruling over all things. Papal ideology therefore asserted that the pope had higher authority than the State: the pope ruled over kings. An historic avatar of this claim was the papal crowning of Charlemagne on Christmas night, AD800 by the pope as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Popism represents a syncretised sub-Christian version of the ancient idea of the king or emperor being the vicar of the gods and himself semi-divinised.

The second pagan influence is represented by divine right theories. Here the king is seen as God’s representative on the earth. In this pagan variant, the king rules over all things, including the Church. The king is an implicit absolute monarch, the vicar of Christ upon earth. An historical manifestation of this pagan variant is the claim by Henry VIII to be the head of the Anglican church—a claim continued to be maintained by the British monarchy to this day.

A particular historic avatar of this sub-Christian view is the coronation of Napoleon on December 2nd, 1804. The pope blessed the crown (Charlemagne’s crown remade) then Napoleon walked forward, took the crown up, and placed it upon his own head. The symbolism was deliberate and carefully planned. This variant also is a manifestation of the older pagan view of the emperor being the vicar of the gods.

The third, and final sub-Christian view of the State is represented by the Anabaptists at the time of the Reformation. The Anabaptists asserted that while the New Testament clearly taught that the State or the civil magistrate was an office appointed by God Himself, it belonged to the realms of this world, and not the Kingdom of God. So sharp was the disjunction that Anabaptist teachers forbade Christians to hold government office. Christians, it was argued, shared the perfection of Christ and the civil magistracy was a worldly institution, belonging to the realms of this world, not of Christ.

This sub-Christian view represents the syncretism of pagan platonic and neo-platonic views and the Christian faith. The non-material, non-earthly, other worldly perspective of the Anabaptists was in fact an “anaplatonism”, an insinuation of Socrates, without his mortal coils, into the Kingdom of God.

Against all these defalcations and compromises with Athens, reformed Christianity captured and faithfully presented the Scriptural teaching concerning the State and its place and role in God’s Kingdom. We can summarise the revelation of God concerning these matters in the following propositions:

1. Universal totalitarian authority belongs to Christ alone.
2. There is no head of the Church, but Christ.
3. There is no head of the State, but Christ.
4. His Kingdom embraces all created reality.
5. Spirituality is a matter of being of the Holy Spirit, or led by the Spirit.
6. The State is an intrinsic and essential institution of the Kingdom of God
7. Christ has endless vicars upon the earth; every servant of God is a vicar of Christ.
8. Every vicar of Christ has a duty to follow his or her particular divine callings.
9. No servant of Christ can judge or reject another servant of Christ: to his own Master he stands or falls.
10. Every vicar of Christ is subject to His law and command as given in Holy Scripture.

These ten propositions mean that Jerusalem is unique in all the earth. Every other political ideology, every other version of the role of the Kingdom of God or of the State is a doffing of the cap to speculations and lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God, and are not part of the obedience of Christ.

>Mid-Week Miscellany

>Hamas and Its Friends

They say that the first casualty in war is the truth. Therefore, one needs to cultivate a healthy dose of sceptical cynicism about what we read and hear of the recent conflict in Gaza. A quick review of media content shows that on the whole the media have forgotten that truth is likely to be hard to find. Mainstream media is full of the death and injury toll in Gaza–they seem fixated with it.

However, in no particular order, let’s do a tiki tour of some of the more interesting and intriguing stories which have emerged.

The Left Wing Comprehensively Condemns Israel

From Matt McCarten to Amnesty International the left wing has condemned Israel. New Zealand has seen the usual suspects out in demonstrations, and habitual anti-war leader, Keith Locke has been prominent.

Keith is a strange man. Apparently over the past nine years there have been over nine thousand documented rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, and Keith has made how many protests–not one. Not a peep. Nor has Matt McCarten clambered on a soap box to protest. Neither can we recall Amnesty International urging the New Zealand government to take a stronger stand against Hamas’s lawless violence. Why? Even the darling of the Left, Helen Clark has deafened us with her silence throughout this whole period. What is it with the Left? How can we explain this phenomenon?

The only explanation which makes any sense to us is that the Left is drawing on its fundamental ideological cant which calls for the Left to stand with those they see as weak, defenceless, exploited and underprivileged. The Left sees these people as needing support because no-one else will support them. The Left finds moral gratification in standing up for the underdog–being their voice, their strength.

But this persistent and prevailing bias begs a question: are we to understand that the Left tolerates and condones violence and lawlessness and murder when it is the exploited and the underprivileged who are perpetrating it. In other words, the Left appears to accept violence and murder if the “right” people are doing it. This is what makes them appear such charlatans. This is what undermines the credibility of someone like Keith Locke.

Actually, the Left should come out and tell us why they have remained so silent for so long over Hamas’s unprovoked rocket attacks on Israeli citizens and their property–and why they stay silent to this day. We suspect that according to the warped Left world-view, the poor and the underprivileged are thought of as being violently exploited. Violence and violent reactions by these people are therefore given great latitude and sympathy and tolerant understanding. If a man is being brutally beaten, and he lashes out, it is self-defence is it not? The Left, if prodded hard enough, would likely agree that Hamas’s unprovoked rockets are a self-defence mechanism for the robbery and exploitation they have had to endure at the hands of the western and Israeli imperialists.

A corollary of the Left’s world-view is that if you show people like Hamas some kindness, support, latitude and tolerance they will give up their violent behaviour. Love them to death, and they will stop wanting to kill you. Kill them with kindness and they will love you back. For the Left, evil is environmental and extrinsic to the human soul. Remove the external evils and the innate goodness of Hamas would burst forth like a flood of living water. This would explain why the Left all over the world has marched in support of Hamas.

But maybe we are misrepresenting the Left. Well, let them make their own explanations and apologies for their strange persistent inconsistency.

The Dominion Post Has Not Bought into the Left World-View

A recent editorial in the Dominion Post has stated the matter in a far more even handed way than many media. Good for it. Consider the following excerpts:

Hamas, an organisation that is committed to the destruction of Israel, provoked the Israeli attacks and it has it within its power to stop them. All it has to do is stop firing rockets into Israeli territory.

But one simple fact remains. If Hamas’ leaders really want to end the suffering caused by the Israeli attacks they can do so.

All they have to do is stop firing rockets into Israeli territory, acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist and start negotiating.

Yup. The Left should be holding rallies calling upon Hamas to end the fighting. They have it in their hands to stop the invasion within an hour.

The Propaganda War is the Real War

Why would Hamas engage in this kind of no-win war? Because its real war is not with guns or bombs, but it is a propaganda war. Von Clausewitz used to say that war was diplomacy by other means. Hamas believes that war is propaganda by other means. By goading Israel into attacking Gaza, Hamas believes it has essentially won the war that it wants to fight–the war for hearts and minds.

Hamas has gravely told the world via a supine western media that on its terms it had this war won before it even started. It has stated that if it fires just one rocket into Israel after Israel withdraws it will have won. Along the way, though, it can bloody Israel’s nose (which leads to gnawing self-doubt in that country), it can radicalise the Palestinian population, and it can mobilise sympathy for the Palestinian “cause” around the world.

So, while Israel is fighting with guns, tanks and rockets, Hamas is fighting with propaganda–and it appears to be doing it deliberately, persistently, cleverly and consistently. The actual fighting is just a blind front which gives pretext to the main message. Whaleoil has some interesting documentary evidence of staged propaganda photos of civilians suffering in Gaza. Once again the western media has forgotten that the first casualty in war is the truth–particularly when one of the combatants has made the propaganda war the real war. We were struck by Whale’s post since we had seen these images already broadcast on the six o’clock news here complete with commentary on how many children are suffering.

Whale also has reports on the Israeli Defence Forces routinely telephoning installations and organisations in Gaza informing them in advance that they are about to be targeted, so that civilians can get out. We have not seen reference to that in our national media reports. Whale also carried a post on Hamas refusing to let medical supplies in from Egypt since it did not fit with the propaganda script it wanted to run.

These are the sorts of stories which deserve high prominence simply because the pervasive bias makes them very striking and newsworthy. Yet nothing! Hamas is winning the propaganda war–but only because the international media are complicit and are neglecting to do their jobs.

Get a Visa

Finally, we could not help smiling at the fake outrage of the CNN journalist who was complaining that the Israeli Defence Force is not allowing journalists into Gaza to cover the war.

Look, lady, your deeply imbibed philosophy of entitlement and rights does not extend to war. You have no rights in war! But if you still believe that it is important to get in on the ground and cover the way–which seems to us to be a perfectly reasonable belief–may we politely suggest that you seek to enter via the Egyptian border crossing. You will probably need to apply to Hamas for a visa. But that’s how you get in on the ground.

>It’s Consensus Jim, But Not as We Know It

>The US Senate Minority Report

One of the most notorious examples of denial currently on offer today in the world is the assertion that all scientists now accept the canard of anthropogenic (CO2 caused) global warming. The “few” that do not are dismissed as obscurantists and probably mentally deranged. Here is a classic of the genre.

Despite a near-universal scientific consensus to the contrary, climate change sceptics continued this year to insist that global warming is a farce. Although the Republican party officially acknowledges the role of humans in climate change, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin remained unconvinced during her campaign as Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running-mate, asserting “I’m not one though who would attribute [global warming] to being manmade”. The NBC late night show Saturday Night Live famously satirized Palin: when asked about her views on global warming, Palin’s double Tina Fey responded, “I believe it’s just God hugging us closer.” More recently, climate bloggers have been up in arms over two articles published by the website Politico. One calls into question the science behind global warming and the other suggests that extreme cold-weather events coincide with appearances by former US Vice president Al Gore. Little wonder that American public opinion still fluctuates over whether climate change is a serious problem. (Full text here.)

What does a “near universal scientific consensus” look like? Clearly, according to this particular author, it must dismiss the increasingly famous US Senate Minority Report, the brainchild of Senator Inhofe who is a tireless campaigner against the global warming hoax. It has recently been re-published (December 11th, 2008), updating the 2007 edition. The 233 page report presents links to the views of 650 dissenting scientists from around the world. Last year’s edition contained 400; this means that 250 dissenters added their names and views this past year. Many of these have formerly been part of the UN IPCC charade. Most have outstanding qualifications and experience. You can get a copy of the full report here.

So the “near universal scientific consensus” appears to be unravelling rapidly–if it ever existed. It is now the global warmers who increasingly deserve an indictment of obscurantism. We are going to see more of this in New Zealand as the Emissions Trading Scheme is subject to parliamentary review. One of the contributors to The Standard, the Labour Party funded blog, recently stated that the parliamentary review will end up questioning the basic science of climate change. The commentator wrote: We’re about to become the nation state equivalent of the flat earth society.

Actually he has misdirected his barb. We are already a nation state equivalent of the flat earth society. The previous Labour Government wanted New Zealand to lead the world into the equivalent of flat-earthism. We are trying to escape the ignorant obscurantism of the global warming hoax and return to a world of real science. Hopefully the inquiry into the Emissions Trading Scheme will take us some back to sanity and reality.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Spirit and Flesh: Life and Death

It is the Spirit Who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life.
John 6: 63

Unbelief is a comprehensive world-view in which the Living God is presupposed not to exist. Unbelief is likely to talk incessantly of god or of gods. It is often found to prate endlessly about powers, higher forces, subliminal influences, world-spirits, universal being-in-itself, pure reason, the god of nature, and so forth—but common to all these falsehoods is the universal belief that the God spoken of in the Scriptures does not exist.

At this point, Unbelief descends into the Lie. But regardless of all the permutations and combinations the Lie may adopt, it cannot escape the world as God has structured it to be, nor can it escape God Himself. Therefore, Unbelief is forced to adopt certain patterns of thought which recur over and over again. Sadly many of these have been insinuated into the Jerusalem and need rooting out. Belief and Unbelief do not mix.

One prevailing sub-lie of the great Lie is to believe that all reality is divided into an upper and a lower sphere.
The upper sphere is the realm beyond matter; it is the realm of the gods and angels. It is the realm of pure reason, pure spirit, pure mind. The lower sphere is the realm of the body, of the flesh, of matter—which dies and rots.

This higher and lower world view was most powerfully put forward by Plato and his disciples, and the neo-platonists around the time of our Lord. Regrettably, it later influenced many church fathers,and it has bedeviled and weakened the Church to this day. If you are not aware of this particular lie of Unbelief, you are almost certainly captured and influenced by it—even as a Christian believer.

Now, of course, Jesus and the apostles were well aware of platonism, of the lie of setting the material world over against spirit, for Greek thought had penetrated deeply into Israel at the time of our Lord and was openly advocated by many. These “moderns” at the time of our Lord were arguing that Judaism and Hellenism had many common elements and could be fused together. A merging of the Truth and the Lie, of Belief and Unbelief, of Jerusalem and Athens always ends in the triumph of Unbelief not truth.

Our Lord completely crushed the Lie in His utterance above which is our text of the week. He returns us to the Truth. There is, indeed, a higher and a lower realm. There is God, the Living God and there is everything else, which He has created out of nothing. The Spirit—that is, God—alone gives life. Life is not to be found in some higher realm, some non-material zone, or in some abstract principle. Life comes from the Spirit of God—and none other. The realm of flesh is the realm of death. Satan himself, although a spirit, is of the flesh, the realm of sin, death, corruption, and decay. “Flesh” therefore is a metaphor for rebellion, unbelief, and sin and the death and decay which accompanies them.

The flesh is worthless. It contributes nothing. By “flesh” Jesus deliberately takes up the platonic perversion of the truth and reconstructs the word. Our Lord uses “flesh” to refer to all, and any part of, the creation or creaturehood, separated from God. Thus Unbelief and all its works and faces is flesh. Any part of the creation not subject to the Spirit of God is dead, and without life. The flesh is worthless, even as all sin is worthless, and all Unbelief is vanity.

The words that Jesus has spoken, however, are Spirit and life. They are of God; they are true; they are of Belief; they are holy. Thus the contrast is not between matter and non-matter, but between Belief and Unbelief, God and Satan, righteousness and sin. That is why the Apostle Paul was later to say that the works of the flesh are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousings and so forth. But, by contrast, the works of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, etc. (Galatians 5: 19—23)

Thus, almost universally when the Holy Scriptures speak of the realm of the spirit, they are referring to the realm under the control of the Spirit of God. Thus “spiritual” is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, not being in some non-material realm. The opposite to “spiritual” is the life and practice of sin and unrighteousness.

Thus, in the world of Belief, all of life is to be spiritual. A spiritual body is having one’s physical body under the control of the Spirit of God. Spiritual money is having one’s income and material possessions under the direction and control of the Word of God. Family life in the spirit is having a household subject to the Word of God—for the Word of God is of the Spirit and, therefore, is life. To help reinforce this and to wean ourselves off the platonic lie we should almost always capitalise “spirit” when we read it in Scripture—for almost always “spirit” means “of, or from, the Holy Spirit of God.

The redemption of Christ has not come forth to enable us to escape from the creation or from the material realm. The redemption of Christ has burst forth to empower us to cleanse the creation of sin, enabling us to live clean and holy lives, so that sin (or flesh) is destroyed, but creation is restored to the glory and goodness it had before the Fall. Before Adam’s sin, the entire world was spiritual. After Christ’s atonement and resurrection, the entire world will be made spiritual again.

This will occur as the nations are discipled and come under His Word—for His Words are of the Spirit and bring life. Unbelief is flesh, of the flesh, and is the realm of decay and death.

>Hamas Rockets

>A Modest Proposal

The government of Gaza has repeatedly broken both international law and the Law of God. It has repeatedly attacked Israel, neighbouring state, with home made rockets. Moreover, these rockets are not targeted at military installations, but civilian populations.

Israel has a right in law to retaliate. A defensive war is always a just war. Israel also has a right under the Law of God to defend itself. It is the duty of civil government to protect its people from aggression and to punish the evildoers who murder and take life.

This is all pretty simple stuff–ethically speaking. But it never ceases to amaze us how a host of irrelevancies are allowed so quickly to cloud such crimes.

From the convenience of our armchairs we would like to pan a few of the irrelevancies and make some suggestions.

The appeal to pity currently being made worldwide is a fallacious irrelevance. The picture that is painted of David-like Hamas bravely constructing some home made low-tech rockets, going up against the high-tech Goliath, and therefore deserving of sympathy is an ethical blight. Counting up relative civilian casualties is also not that helpful.

Painting the Palestinian people as historical victims of Jewish or Zionist or western policy of lebensraum is not relevant either as a justification for their aggression. We have no doubt that the historical acts were wicked; they represented theft by the worst kind of force; the taking of property of Palestinians was just plan wrong. But–and here is the big but–developing a culture of victimhood and revenge out of historical injustice is equally wicked and wrong.

We believe that most western governments find themselves utterly unable to call Palestinians to account at this very point because they themselves trade daily in the politics of victimhood.

In the providence of God, virtually every people on earth can claim historical injustices which have been perpetrated upon their ancestors. Virtually every people on earth has been forcibly dispossessed at one time or another. There is no mandate to attempt to right historical wrongs by seeking vengeance in the present. The Scriptures teach us to accept the past, do away with vengeance, do good to one’s neighbour, and get on with living as God’s servants. This is the command of Christ–those who would disregard it will reap the consequences. Thus, Jerusalem would say to both Israel and Gaza that all historical grievances and claims and injustices must be laid at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, left there in His hands, and forgotten.

Thus, both Israel and Gaza must be called to live in a holy and just way in the present. When we do that, the matter becomes very straightforward, ethically. Shooting rockets at neighbouring countries, damaging property and killing its citizens is both theft and murder, It must be punished. The lawful authority appointed by God to punish is the government. It can no more not be punished than ignoring murderers.

Hamas is the lawful government of Gaza, elected by the people. If the lawful government of Gaza will not punish those who have manufactured and launched missiles into Israel, then the government of Israel must. It would be derelict in its God given duty not to act to punish the evildoers.

The next question that is begged is, how to act? Here is where practical wisdom ought to apply. Israel’s apparent current objective of destroying Hamas seems to us to be both impractical, unachievable, and inappropriate. For one thing, it takes the focus off the lawless crimes perpetrated by the government of Gaza and introduces far wider issues of national sovereignty, rights to exist or not as a nation, regime change, and so forth.

From the very first time a rocket was launched into Israel in an unprovoked attack, Israel should have made clear its policy and intentions. Its declared policy should be one of punishing murderers and thieves: the method of punishment will be according to fundamental principles of justice and equity. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.

Then, in open court, before the world–particularly before the Arab world–the government of Israel should count up the number of rockets fired into Israel every day, announce the number (offering observers from Arab nations to confirm the number, if necessary), and pronounce to Gaza that it will launch the exact same number of rocket attacks upon Gaza within the next twenty-four hours as a judicial sentence for the criminal acts. It should also make clear that it will take no further action because justice would have been served once sentence is carried out. However, it should make clear that any future criminal acts will be punished in a condign manner. Then, when the sentence is carried out, it should also announce this fact also to the people of Gaza.

It should pursue this policy with relentless faithfulness until the government of Gaza stops its lawless and murderous actions. This would also avoid the need for endless hand wringing by the international “community”, calls for cease fires, vain attempts to broker peace–all of which deflects and distracts from the heart of the matter. Israel would simply say to the world–punishment for crime will stop when the criminals stop. Using the exact number of retaliatory rockets as launched against it would serve to underscore this fact repeatedly. Constant announcements of sentence and their being carried out would also reinforce the judicial nature of the action–and this is a critical point. It is a matter of justice, not politics, or international relations.

The same action should be taken with respect to suicide bombing. If a suicide bomber is established as having come from Gaza, the formal announcement of sentence should be made, and of the punishment that will fall. Once again, this should be done formally and in open court as it were. If the government of Gaza failed to bring the perpetrators and conspirators to justice by executing them within a given time frame, punishment would fall upon the nation by rocket strike or bombing. Some people will complain that this will result in and endless cycle of violence–but should the fact that crime is committed every day be a reason for the state to stop prosecuting and punishing criminals?

It is a fundamental duty of the government of Israel to punish governments or people responsible for attacking its citizens. To the extent that it has supinely accepted unprovoked rocket attacks for years, it has failed its people and its duty under God. To the extent that Israel has now escalated this into wider political objectives, such as destroying Hamas, it shows it has failed to focus upon its fundamental duties. It has muddied the waters. It has obscured the fundamental legal and ethical issues. It has given ammunition to the islamists and their fellow-travellers in the West. It has allowed politics to occlude the work of justice.

Thus, indeed, we will once again fall back into the endless cycle of violence in the Middle East. This will continue until governments decide that they will obey God, and not men.

>A Most Anticipated President

>Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick

There has been much speculation about the prospects for the Obama presidency. So, we thought we might as well join the throng, and add our two cents worth. Just what kind of president will Obama turn out to be?

One reason his every move has been watched since election night is due in no small measure to this question. We believe we have started to see what will be some of the major characteristics of his presidency–at least for the next year or so.

Laying aside the stump rhetoric of the genre of the black revivalist preacher, there are some key things to consider. Firstly, there is the vexed issue of the thin Obama resume. Obama has not really practised law. He went to an academic law school (Harvard) and had very little actual legal experience. And most of his actual professional labours after graduation had to do with politically orientated legal representation (such a “community organising”).

One of the besetting professional limitations of lawyers is endless argumentation and debate. The more academic the legal experience, the more “on the one hand, on the other” applies. Such lawyers tend to be very cautious and always sensitive to counter arguments and divergent opinions. Getting all the opinions and permutations of view on the table and inviting everyone to weigh and consider them is stock-in-trade.

Secondly, lawyers are prone to risk management where the key focus is to reduce legal liability or financial risk. Therefore, they tend to be professionally cautious and tentative.

Thirdly, we need to remember Obama’s numerous “present” votes in the Illinois legislature. A “present” vote is an effective abstention: it reflects that one was present in the chamber for the vote, but did not want to vote either way. During the campaign, this was raised and glossed in both a negative and positive light. The negative view was that Obama was ignorant and did not know what he thought on important issues. The positive gloss was that he was thoughtful and cautious, not ideological or partisan. We suspect that the “present” vote was more a case of the “court of Obama” reserving its judgment–a classic judicial move, giving time for more reflection.

Fourthly, a consistent theme emerging out of the more seasoned political commentators is that Obama is indeed careful and cautious. His circumspect position-couching over the recent Gaza bombardment is a classic example of his purported care and caution. The soaring stump rhetoric, evoking American manifest destiny and globalist messianism has gone.

Finally, we would pick up on a piece glossed by Adam in The Inquiring Mind. Adam was commenting on an article in the Financial Times by Clive Crook, where the wisdom of appointing people with widely divergent views to his administration was questioned. We reproduce the post, complete with Adam’s thought provoking questions, below:

Shortly before the festive break Clive Crook blogged at the FT on Barack Obama’s Trade & Labour appointees. He made the point, not for the first time, as to:-

the wisdom of combining people with fundamental disagreements in executive (as opposed to advisory) roles. Widely divergent opinions are good in a seminar but not so good in a management setting, where the challenge is not to develop and polish an opinion but to get something done. Much as I admire the man and respect his appetite for countervailing opinion, I’m beginning to wonder if Obama understands this distinction. Dysfunctional quarrelling is the obvious risk. A subtler problem is that if you appoint people who disagree with each other to run adjoining or overlapping spheres of policy, you, the boss, cannot delegate.

Precisely.

This led into a final point from Crook in that post.

Obama will always have to be there to adjudicate–and his time and energy are going to be very scarce resources.

This led Adam to ponder does Obama realise this fact?

Is his administration going to be bedevilled by internecine conflict?

Will Obama be able to avoid being dragged into every turf war between the various competing cabinet and agency barons?

Does Obama actually comprehend what he is doing?

Now, if you take all the above into consideration, it appears perfectly understandable that Obama would appoint people with widely divergent views to his Administration. That is precisely what you would expect from someone wedded to an academic, theoretical experience of the law.

The canvassing of all views to let them ferment and barrel age for a long period is regarded as a key way to distil out the timeless essential spirit from the temporary and occasional. Not resolving issues is perfectly acceptable in academic legal circles. The arguments are rarely resolved: they are just revisited. The endless revisiting hones the mind–but–and here is the point–it does not lead to clear and decisive actions. Even when a court makes a clear decision, there is always endless appeals and filing of additional argumentation and briefs.

All of this is to say that lawyers generally make very poor executives. And Obama is now the Chief Executive.

Therefore, we believe that the Obama presidency, at least in its early phase, is likely to become quickly mired in endless debate, argumentation, consideration, and deliberation. It will be characterised by paralysis through analysis. Obama risks being driven to act decisively only when facing an emergency–and then the follow through is likely to be desultory. But the endless debates will be diverting indeed to the media. The administration will be loved by the intellectual elite. They will feel they have a government of which they can be proud.

Given the balance of powers within the US constitutional structure, it is incumbent upon the Executive that is has a mantle of clear and decisive positioning, so that Congress–the far more splintered and divided branch of government–can have a reasonable chance of being prodded into bicameral consensus on budgets and legislation–even if the nature of the consensus is to be united against the Executive.

If we are correct, expect to see within a short space of time the Democrats begin to grumble that Obama is not showing enough leadership. Expect that America will talk up a big game, but will drift directionless, both on the world and domestic stage. It will seem to an outsider as a headless chicken–at least through the first two or three years of the Obama presidency. The Obama presidency will risk being characterised as an unsure, doubting, tentative, bumbling, Carteresque presidency.

Turkey, or the Ottoman Empire, was once characterised by Tsar Nicholas I as the sick man of Europe. Will the US come to be seen as the sick man of the globe? But as the Proverb says, the heart becomes sick when hope is deferred, and Obama was elected on an outpoured tide of fervent hope.