Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Posted on September 30, 2013 by johntertullian

The Red Queen in Alice

Posted on Monday, September 23, 2013

So the House has now passed a bill that defunds Obamacare. The president is miffed, and certain Republican establishment honchos are apoplectic.

These realists of the right say that this quixotic business has got to stop because “you can’t govern from one half of one third of government.” If all you have is the House, then you can’t be expected to do anything until you win the Senate, and the White House. Once you have done that, then you will be in position to do all the swell things that the Republicans wouldn’t do the last time they had the White House and Senate.

Now it quite true that you can’t govern with one half of one third of our government. That is very true. But I don’t want them to govern. I want them to stop governing.
I want them to make the fussers quit governing. We have been governed quite enough, thanks. We are being governed into the poorhouse. We are being governed into the ground, with governed here being used as a synonym with pounded.

True. You can’t govern if all you have is the House. But you can paint yourself blue and throw tea in the harbor. That works sometimes.

But you see, if the government has to shut down, then the Republicans will get blamed! Do you hear me? Blamed! Tongues will cluck, and fingers will wag.

Blamed for what? Blamed for doing what they said they would do if they got elected? And if the argument is that they need to avoid being blamed so that they can capture the Senate, and the White House, so that they can come up with innovative reasons at that future time for not doing anything then either, then perhaps the real issue is how stupid you think we are.I do not mind at all when my guys lose. I do mind them losing when they still have bullets left. I don’t mind when my team loses a hard fought game. I do mind if they all walk off the field in the third quarter, and are taking showers while the Left kicks field goals.

The real reason that elite members of the Washington Republican establishment are furious with Ted Cruz and the others who are forcing this showdown is that they will have to vote. They will have to go on the record. Say that Cruz and his friends filibuster — that will mean in order to win the cloture vote, shutting these renegades down, Harry Reid will have to get some Republican votes. Those votes will be out in public and everything.

So this means that, if it is a losing battle, x number of valiant Republicans did everything they could to stop Obamacare — which is looking to be an F-5 disaster — and y number of quislings will have to vote to shut down the filibuster. So . . . the F-5 disaster . . . brought to you by y Republican senators.

Oh, and John Roberts. Don’t forget that gentleman. One of the reasons we have to have the Senate and the White House is so that we can appoint stalwart conservatives like John Roberts to the Court who, when given a chance to whack Obamacare dead, will decline to do so, handing down a convoluted decision worthy of the Red Queen in Alice. That is why taking the Senate and White House is so crucial — we need to make sure that men like John Roberts can stay on the DC cocktail party circuit — which really ought to be considered the 13th circuit, now that I come to think of it.

(Okay, I admit that I have a case of the cutes here, and that Thomas and Scalia have been major dudes, and they were put on the court by actual Republicans. Fully acknowledged, and I doff my cap in appreciation to everyone involved, but this will not prevent me from heading back into cute mode.)

Another argument that is being made is that Obamacare is coming apart all by itself, and so we should just let it. I happen to think this is true, but if you had a vote and really thought that was true, wouldn’t you want to be on the record beforehand, fighting the doomed beast?

Obamacare was designed to fail, but it was designed to fail slowly so that our next generation of solons would have the opportunity to “reform it” into a single payer system. The problem is that it is failing too quickly, coming apart before the launch date. That being the case, the anger about this move by those who profess to be opposed to Obamacare is inexplicable.

The mission is admittedly audacious. And so I understand the nervousness of real conservatives like Jonah Goldberg. It is quite possible, he might be thinking, that some yahoo will botch the mission and our latter case will be worse than the former. But I also think I understand the anger of instinctive statists like John McCain, who don’t want the people to have the authority to say to the overweening state, “we don’t want it. Take it back.”

The way you will be able to tell the difference will be that if the audacious effort is somehow successful (e.g. Ted Cruz pulls out some parliamentary move nobody has used for a hundred years, and lo, astonishment descends upon Harry), the reactions from earlier critics will be quite different. Observers like Goldberg will be grateful that they were wrong, and will say so. The others will still be angry because somebody put a hole in the side of their precious establishment.

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 30, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 30

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC website.

Bible Text:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. —John 3:16

Devotional:
“He gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him may not perish.” This, he says, is the proper look of faith, to be fixed on Christ, in whom it beholds the breast of God filled with love; this is a firm and enduring support, to rely on the death of Christ as the only pledge of that love.

The word “only-begotten” is emphatic, to magnify the fervor of the love of God towards us. For as men are not easily convinced that God loves them, in order to remove all doubt, he has expressly stated that we are so very dear to God that, on our account, he did not even spare his only-begotten Son.

Since, therefore, God has most abundantly testified his love towards us, whoever is not satisfied with this testimony, and still remains in doubt, offers a high insult to Christ, as if he had been an ordinary man given up at random to death.

But we ought rather to consider that, in proportion to the estimation in which God holds his only-begotten Son, so much the more precious did our salvation appear to him, for the ransom of which he chose that his only-begotten Son should die. —Commentaries

John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Global Warming Games

Posted on September 30, 2013 by johntertullian

More Time Please

There is a very fine line these days between science and propaganda. Old school science–that is, science in the good old days–was largely populated by a bunch of ruthless sceptics who believed very little, challenged everything, and wanted experimental proof.

This is not to say that every scientist believed he had to “go back to the beginning” and re-work every experiment to prove for himself the laws of motion or the veracity reflected in the periodic table of the elements. As Michael Polanyi has argued, all scientists operate within a tradition of knowledge passed on from practitioners to neophytes that represented what he called tacit knowledge. But, let a few experiments throw up results that are not expected, and old school scientists would get a rush of blood to the head. The labs would be booked out for months, arguments would rage, and debates would go long into the night.

These days much of this rigour has disappeared–particularly in those “disciplines” where proof or disproof cannot be offered via experimental tests.
Quickly these “disciplines” have degenerated into Soviet-style science where society dictated from the outset what results would be forthcoming from any scientific research. Then a bunch of scientists scurried around “proving” what society was expecting. However, we are not speaking of the Soviet Union here, but of science in the West.

Take a couple of examples. The first is evolutionism. There is not a shred of credible experimental evidence to support this inane theory. Experimental proof would demonstrate biological modification in the lab that would change one species into another–say, a fish into a baboon or baboon to a fish. Faced with this embarrassment the reflexive pseudo-justification usually runs along the lines–well, this process took billions upon billions upon billions of years to complete: it can’t be reproduced in the lab–which is just another way of saying that evolutionism is not in the least scientific.

Yet, it has been inordinately successful in capturing the halls of academia, the media, and governments. the unexpected consequence is that evolutionism’s popularity in the public mind has undermined the credibility of science everywhere. Why insist upon scientific rigour when propaganda comes up trumps? And if propaganda has been successful in winning ideological control so that the power structures of society are all bent to serve and endow the legend with money and favour, why not elsewhere and in other fields of “science”.

Enter the second example: climate science. Over the past thirty years, climate science has morphed into prophetic soothsaying. Don’t for a moment think that modern climate science is grounded in rigorous experimentation or the laboratory environment. It’s just speculative theory projected out a few centuries. It cannot be disproved. It just is.

For nigh on fifteen years global temperatures have not risen. Does this threaten the legend? Not at all. It was never grounded on experimental scrutiny and confirmation or rejection in the first place. It was grounded in an ideological world view which rejected industrialisation and economic development in principle. The legend of global warming became a useful “just so” story to oppose economic development and industrialisation around the globe. The scientific foundations of the legend were never important or necessary. That is why it so quickly became politicised and contentious.

Every time you see a modern wind turbine think of it as a monument to folly, ignorance and propaganda. To be sure, windmills, when first invented in the Middle Ages, were a tremendous technological boon. Not only were they useful to grind grains to feed people, but the clever Netherlanders used them to pump water off the lowlands and greatly expand their economy and wealth. But today’s power turbines are so costly and inefficient they can only operate if tax payers subsidise them at every turn. That’s what happens when propaganda replaces science.

The United Nations has just produced its global climate assessment. It is troubled by the hiatus in global warming. How to explain? Apart from a few half-baked hypothetical speculations, it has no answer. It’s real argument is, “It won’t happen overnight. But it will happen! More time please.” Sounds just like the spurious justification for evolutionism. Funny that.

Leviathan Stirs

Posted on September 28, 2013 by johntertullian

NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell’s imagination – Alan Rusbridger

Guardian editor says depth of NSA surveillance programs greatly exceed anything the 1984 author could have imagined

The potential of the surveillance state goes way beyond anything in George Orwell‘s 1984, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian‘s editor-in-chief, told an audience in New York on Monday.

Speaking in the wake of a series of revelations in the Guardian about the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations, Rusbridger said: “Orwell could never have imagined anything as complete as this, this concept of scooping up everything all the time.

“This is something potentially astonishing about how life could be lived and the limitations on human freedom,” he said.

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 28, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 27

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore. —Psalm 37:27

Devotional:
If the meek possess the earth, then everyone, as he regards his own happiness and peace, should also endeavor to walk uprightly, and to apply himself to works of beneficence.

It should also be observed, that he connects these two things: first, that the faithful should strictly do good; and, secondly, that they should restrain themselves from doing evil; and this he does not without good reason; for as is shown in the thirty-fourth Psalm, it often happens that the same person who not only acts kindly towards certain persons, but even with a bountiful hand deals out largely of his own, is yet all the while plundering others, and amassing by extortion the resources by means of which he displays his liberality.

Whoever, therefore, is desirous to have his good offices approved by God, let him endeavor to relieve his brethren who have need of his help, but let him not injure one in order to help another, or afflict and grieve one in order to make another glad.

Now David, under these two expressions, has briefly comprised the duties of the second table of the law; first, that the godly should keep their hands free from all mischief, and give no occasion of complaint to any man; and, secondly, that they should not live to themselves, and to the promotion merely of their own private interests, but should endeavor to promote the common good of all according to their opportunities, and as far as they are able. —Commentaries

"Peaceful" Activism–a Greenpeace Artform

Posted on September 28, 2013 by johntertullian

Not Playing By the Rules

We confess being guilty of the odd smile or two when news broke that Greenpeace has tilted its lance at Russia. This is not to say, of course, that the Russian record when it comes to preservation of the environment is stellar. Far from it. But Greenpeace has a higher calling than ordinary human beings. It is more than willing to disregard the law when it comes to its own particular, peculiar version of rabid environmentalism. When the “fragile” arctic environment was deemed to be at risk from Russian offshore drilling, Greenpeace engaged in its trademark “peaceful” protest which involved assailing and climbing up on the rig. The Russian coastguard steamed in and arrested the lot, seizing its boat.

Now Greenpeace has been getting away with this sort of thing for years in the West.
It blatantly disregards the law and the property rights of others, always arguing that the end of environmental purity justifies its illegal activities of trespass, theft, destruction of private property, and impeding others in their lawful activities. In the West, when authorities (usually after days of delay) finally gin up sufficient courage to “escort them off the premises”, Greenpeace turns around yet again and plays the victim card. “We were only engaged in peaceful, non-violent protest. We are the good guys. Big business has suborned the authorities which are persecuting the innocent.” Blah, blah, blah. The media dutifully write it all up, sharing in the moral outrage of the protesters.

Now it seems things have taken a rough turn. Greenpeace foolishly decided that it could try the same tactics on the Russians. This, from 3News

Greenpeace says a group of activists, including two New Zealanders, has been arrested by the Russian Coast Guard during a protest in the Arctic. The 25 people on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise were protesting against oil producer Gazprom’s drilling operations at the Prirazlomnaya platform. The Russian Government controls 50 percent of Gazprom through various shareholders.

According to Greenpeace, Coast Guard officials boarded their vessel using a helicopter and ropes, locking the activists inside a room on the ship. They allege some had guns pointed at them. Greenpeace says the ship is now being back to the nearest port, which could take up to a day. The Arctic Sunrise was circling a Gazprom drilling platform in the Pechora Sea at the time. Greenpeace says this was in international waters, making the Russian authorities’ boarding illegal. “We are a peaceful organisation and our protest has done nothing to warrant this level of aggression,” says Greenpeace International’s executive director Kumi Naidoo.

The lobby group says it was protesting against Gazprom’s disregard of the environmental dangers of deep sea drilling.

Greenpeace is a master of deception and the half-truth. To this point in the account it would appear that the Arctic Sunrise was cheerfully sailing along in international waters minding its own business, when suddenly and unexpectedly they were beset by the Russian Coast Guard, boarded, and seized. The aggression of the Russians was, therefore, illegal, a violation of international laws of the sea.

Only that is not the whole truth. The day before two little Greenpeace foot-soldiers had scaled the drilling platform. They were the aggressive lawbreakers. Since they had been aided and abetted by the Arctic Sunrise, the latter was complicit. Claiming that Greenpeace was a pure as the driven snow, while Russia was acting illegally is typical of Greenpeace lies, deception, and dissembling. We have seen and heard it all before.

Except this time Greenpeace is not dealing with self-loathing Western authorities. The Russians read from a very different script. The “activists” (a word that covers a multitude of sins) are going to be charged with piracy–the maximum penalty for which is 15 years imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 roubles.

Two activists tried to climb onto the Prirazlomnaya platform on Thursday and others assisted from small inflatable boats. The Greenpeace protest was aimed at calling attention to the environmental risks of drilling for oil in Arctic waters. “When a foreign vessel full of electronic technical equipment of unknown purpose and a group of people calling themselves members of an environmental rights organisation try nothing less than to take a drilling platform by storm, logical doubts arise about their intentions,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement. (NZ Herald)

In Greenpeace newspeak, “peaceful activists” means their cadres do not carry guns, nor do they assault human beings. Because they are thus “peaceful”, they are in the right.

“Peaceful activism is crucial when governments around the world have failed to respond to dire scientific warnings about the consequences of climate change in the Arctic and elsewhere,” Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo said in a statement. “We will not be intimidated or silenced by these absurd accusations and demand the immediate release of our activists,” he added.

But they do assault the property of others, and thus are about as peaceful as a burglar, a thief, a brigand, and–yes–a pirate. The kabuki theatre is starting to play out as normal: Greenpeace is the persecuted innocent; it needs money (usually these stunts are choreographed as major fund raising opportunities); it pressures Western government to protest the “illegal” actions of the arresting government (which usually backs down and withdraws charges or slaps the “activists” with a wet bus ticket), and Greenpeace goes on its merry way with fatter wallets. Only this time, we suspect it is going to be different.

Turning pirates into martyrs is not likely to play with Russian authorities. Prison sentences in Russia will be worked out in hard labour camps in Siberia. Not a pleasant prospect. Our prediction: Greenpeace will scrupulously avoid “environmental activism” in the Arctic for a long long time to come. The Russian government does not know how to play the game.

Doing evil that good may come is casuistry from the Lake of Fire.
.

Global warming

Posted on September 28, 2013 by johntertullian

More Time Please

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 27, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 26

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do. —I Timothy 1:4

Devotional:
These are the two causes for which many forsake the pure doctrine of salvation; namely, because they are moved with their pride to seek out new matters, and God will have his students to be humble.

Do we wish to profit in his school? Let us have this humility, not to presume to know too much, but only to be taught by him as he pleases. And again, there are others so shallow that they have no desire to master what is contained in the gospel, and wish often to change their pasture, and think that their ears are being abused if anyone repeat often to them a thing which is to their profit; as when we preach of the virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his grace, it seems to them that they already know this too well and that they are too much accustomed to it.

Inasmuch as this curiosity tickles many brains, God allows them to feed themselves with wind; for indeed they are not worthy to be nourished with good pasturage.

Therefore if we wish God to hold us in the purity of his Word, let us first of all be humble and modest, and then let us be sober and not desire by vain curiosity to know more than is lawful for us. —Sermons

Socialist Rationing Required For the Rear End

Posted on September 27, 2013 by johntertullian

Not Sublime, But Ridiculous In the Extreme

A new human right has been discovered in the bowels of Venezuela–toilet paper. This will be dubbed as one of the great advances of civilisation in the 21st century, to be sure.

Venezuela Orders National Guard to Oversee Toilet Paper Factory
By Nathan Crooks – Sep 20, 2013 11:30 PM GMT+0200

Venezuela’s government issued an order to occupy toilet paper producer Manufacturas de Papel C.A. as the South American country struggles to abate shortages of consumer goods.

National price regulator Sundecop will temporally take over plants owned by Manpa, as the Caracas-based company is known, to verify production processes and distribution before placing them under the watch of the National Guard, the agency said today in an e-mailed statement.

“The action taken at the producer of toilet paper, sanitary napkins and disposable diapers corresponds to the obligation of the state to guarantee the normal supply of primary necessities,” Sundecop said in the statement.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has cut dollar supplies for importers since winning election in April, creating shortages of goods including toilet paper and butter and stoking one of the world’s highest inflation rates. His predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, nationalized more than 1,000 companies or their assets before dying in March this year.

Annual inflation accelerated to 45.4 percent last month from 42.6 percent in July, while the scarcity index measuring the amount of goods out of stock on store shelves reached 20 percent, the central bank said Sept. 10.

The country devalued the official exchange rate to 6.3 bolivars per dollar from 4.3 bolivars in February. On the black market, one dollar currently buys around 43.97 bolivars, according to dolartoday.com, which tracks the exchange rate on the border with Colombia.

A new complementary foreign exchange system being designed in Venezuela will be “transparent but highly regulated and supervised,” central bank director Armando Leon said on Sept. 18.

Hat Tip: Turtle Bay and Beyond

We expect that the Venezuelan government will soon introduce controls over rear end functions to ensure that demand for the new human right will be kept to moderate and reasonable levels. One rationed bowel movement every three days should do it. That represents one toilet roll per month. Line up here.

Books

Posted on September 26, 2013 by johntertullian

Esteemed Theologian, J. I. Packer on Dostoyevsky

Dostoyevsky is to me both the greatest novelist, as such, and the greatest Christian storyteller, in particular, of all time. His plots and characters pinpoint the sublimity, perversity, meanness, and misery of fallen human adulthood in an archetypal way matched only by Aeschylus and Shakespeare, while his dramatic vision of God’s amazing grace and of the agonies, Christ’s and ours, that accompany salvation, has a range and depth that only Dante and Bunyan come anywhere near. . . . [H]is constant theme is the nightmare quality of unredeemed existence and the heartbreaking glory of the incarnation, whereby all human hurts came to find their place in the living and dying of Christ the risen Redeemer.

—The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works (Orbis, 2004) vii.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 26, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 26

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website.

Bible Text:
But he shall say, 1 am no prophet, 1 am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. —Zechariah 13:5

Devotional:
Zechariah mentions these two particulars—the false prophets will give up their office and that they will then spend their labor in doing what is right and just, supporting themselves in a lawful and innocent manner, and affording aid to their brethren. It is the first thing in repentance when they who had been previously the servants of Satan in the work of deception cease to deal in falsehoods, and thus put an end to their errors.

Now follows the progress—that they who lived before in idleness and in pleasures under the pretext of sanctity, willingly devote themselves to labor. A half reformation might probably succeed with many at this day. But the second part of reformation is very hard, which requires toil and labor; in this case the stomach has no ears, according to the old proverb.

And yet we see what the prophet says, that those are they who truly and from the heart repent who not only abstain from impostures, but who are also ready to get their own living, acknowledging that they had before defrauded the poor, and procured their support by rapine and fraud. —Commentaries

Frogs in a Boiling Pot of Criminality, Part III

Posted on September 26, 2013 by johntertullian

Our Most Dynamic Growth Industry

There is one proposition the criminal justice system in New Zealand is pretty much agreed upon: prisons are bad. For some they represent cruel and unusual punishment. For others they are bad because they socialise inmates into becoming career criminals. Still others reject prisons because they put the full responsibility for criminal acts upon the criminal and ignore the social causes of crime. They are society’s way of deflecting blame upon itself on to others. Yet others regard prisons as dehumanizing institutions, akin to the evil of slavery. Others–more pragmatically inclined–point to the high recidivism rates which provide compelling evidence that prisons fail to deter criminals, on the one hand, and fail to rehabilitate, on the other. Yet others complain about the costs of building and running prisons.

Consequently, the criminal justice system in New Zealand represent not so much a “war on crime” but a “war on prisons”. This is the argument David Fraser makes in his book, Badlands. NZ: A Land Fit For Criminals (Kaukapakapa, Auckland: Howling At The Moon Publishing, Ltd, 2011.) What is the evidence?
Here are some indicators. In 1999 a nationwide referendum was held that attracted over 85 percent support. It called for minimum sentencing and hard labour for criminals. The incoming Labour Government not only ignored the petition–it moved drastically in the other direction.

The freshly elected Labour-led Government subsequently made violent criminals eligible for parole after serving just a third of their sentence and ordered judges to impose “the least-restrictive sentence that is appropriate in the circumstances”.

These were radical moves against incarceration. Eligibility for parole after serving only one third of a sentence has had far reaching consequences, including those released going on to commit more crimes. And directions to the courts to impose the least restrictive sentence has institutionalised the anti-prison bias into the court system itself.

A second evidence is the introduction of a wide range of sentences as alternatives to prison.

If the court cannot avoid a conviction then legislation enables the courts to sentence the offender to a variety of community sentences. The argument which Correction officials and others have put forward that they are an effective way of reforming criminals, is based on pseudo-science. Similarly, their case that supervision programmes are necessary to meet offenders so-called ‘needs’, is entirely bogus . . . . I am of the firm opinion that their true single purpose was, and is, to prevent offenders going to jail. (Fraser, Badlands, op cit., p. 49.)

A third evidence of an anti-prison prejudice amongst academics and Corrections bureaucrats and politicians is the misuse of fines. The concept of sentencing by the imposition of monetary fines is sound, provided the payment of the fine is used to restitute the victim (not fund the State). Non payment of fines should arguably result in an automatic prison sentence (with the fine probably being paid to the victim by the State–after all, why should the victim suffer further because the perpetrator fails to pay a fine?) But these days the State bends over backwards not to incarcerate those who fail to pay fines. The Courts can now reduce the penalty if the perpetrator is in financial hardship. If the criminal still refuses or fails to pay, other fallback alternative penalties can be resorted to, such as community detention and home detention.

Community based sentences are a joke. The sanctions for failing to show up are pretty much non-existent.
The 2002 legislation had made certain that up to twenty per cent of the so called work hours could be spent in training in basic work and living skills. In many cases, this means no more than group work discussions organised by the probation service, which the offenders will frequently fail to attend. There is also a clause in the Sentencing Act 2002 which allows for a work order to be cancelled if the offender “is unable to comply with the terms of the sentence.” (Fraser, ibid., p. 50).

But it got worse.

. . . within only a few short years, community based sentences were being imposed on over 50 per cent of property offenders and as many as 45 per cent of violent offenders. Furthermore, by 2008, a Ministry of Justice report revealed that thousands of cases of violence resulted in work-related community sentences. (Ibid.)

The Commentariat and the elites of our society are well out of step with the general public. There has been a slight backlash, resulting in a new Parole Act requiring a minimum of two thirds of a sentence be served before parole became a possibility. The hue and cry from the anti-prison cabal was deafening. According to their reckoning, Armageddon threatened. Then there has been the Three Strikes sentencing bill, which has passed into law. This will have more and more of an impact over time (provided it survives another left-wing government).

The increasing criminality of New Zealand society is not a product of the complexities of modern society. Nor is it due to the “poor getting poorer”. The responsibility can be largely laid at the feet of the criminal justice system itself which has shown itself reflexively prejudiced against prisons.

We do not argue that prisons are the “be all and end all” of criminal justice. Far from it. But neglect them at our peril. We have. And crime has flourished. It is one of the most dynamic growth industries in the country.

New Zealand’s Crime Victim Survey in 2006 revealed that there are almost 3 million crimes committed every year and of these only approximately 1% ever results in a jail sentence. In 2007 only 9% of all sentences passed in New Zealand were custodial. The rest consisted of community sentences of various kinds, monetary penalties, and discharges, leaving the criminals concerned free to carry on their life of crime. (Ibid., p. 36).

"Tolers, You Absolutely Astonish Me"

Posted on September 25, 2013 by johntertullian

Lewis and Tolkien Debate Myths and Lies

On Twitter, @TonyReinke points out that “On the evening of September 19, 1931, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis went for a walk, one of the most important walks in church history.”

At this stage, Lewis was not a Christian; Tolkien was. Shortly after this conversation, Lewis became a Christian, being “surprised by joy”, as he put it. There are sketchy accounts of the conversation–some from Lewis himself. Tolkien wrote Lewis a poem to make his points more clear, entitled Mythopoeia.

After that late-night conversation with Lewis, Tolkien wrote a poem called Mythopoeia, in which he set out his views of myth, legend, and fairy story. he wrote this poem for Lewis, and he put at the head of his poem the words that Lewis had used: “For one who said that myths ‘are lies breathed through silver”.

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost or wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned . . . .

[Jerram Barrs, Echoes of Eden: Reflections on Christianity, Literature, and the Arts. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2013.) p.94f.]

Here’s a dramatic reenactment of their conversation, which attempts to capture the issues if not the exact conversation itself:

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor.

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 25, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 25

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. —Psalm 143:10

Devotional:
“Teach me that I may do thy will.” He now rises to something higher, praying not merely for deliverance from outward troubles, but, what is of still greater importance, for the guidance of God’s Spirit, that he might not decline to the right hand or to the left, but be kept in the path of rectitude.

This is a request which should never be forgotten when temptations assail us with great severity, as it is peculiarly difficult to submit to God without resorting to unwarrantable methods of relief.
As anxiety, fear, disease, languor, or pain, often tempt persons to particular steps, David’s example should lead us to pray for divine restraint, and that we may not be hurried, through impulses of feeling, into unjustifiable courses.

We are to mark carefully his way of expressing himself, for what he asks is not simply to be taught what the will of God is, but to be taught and brought to the observance and doing of it. The former kind of teaching is of less avail, as upon God’s showing us our duty we by no means necessarily follow it, and it is necessary that he should draw out our affections to himself.

God therefore must be master and teacher to us not only in the dead letter, but by the inward motions of his Spirit; indeed, there are three ways in which he acts the part of our teacher, instructing us by his word, enlightening our minds by the Spirit, and engraving instruction upon our hearts, so as to bring us to observe it with a true and cordial consent.
The mere hearing of the word would serve no purpose, nor is it enough that we understand it; there must be besides the willing obedience of the heart. —Commentaries

North Korea and Potemkin Villages

Posted on September 25, 2013 by johntertullian

Useful Idiots

One of the most cringe-inducing episodes in recent Western history was the infatuation of the majority of intellectuals in the first half of the last century with the Soviet Union. Whilst Stalin was ravening his subjects with famine, Western intellectuals were praising the wonder of a socialist economy. They did this, of course, because long ago they had become converted to socialist ideology. The Soviet Union was the leading exemplar of the secular New Jerusalem. The standard eschatology of the time was that capitalism and private property was going to fall apart under their own contradictions whilst the Soviet New Model Man would emerge superior and the way of the future. The intellectual avante guard became willing dupes.

The constant procession of Western admirers was treated to all sorts of displays of the wonder of the New Model Economy. They dutifully gooed and gahhed. Stalin even ordered New Model Towns to be made–subsequently labelled Potemkin Villages after a consort of the Russian Tsarina Catherine II–which were essentially like Hollywood movie sets. Through these Western visitors were duty conducted, dutifully to return back home raving at the wonderful increase in housing quality and living standards being enjoyed in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, eastward, beyond the Urals, the Gulag camps were hard at work.

In recent weeks we have had our own Potemkin moment.
One of our own, superannuated economist, Gareth Morgan recently was escorted through North Korea. He marvelled at the splendour of the place. His findings included:

it was fantastic
The country is beautiful
The country is just fantastic, the farms are perfect. They have no pollution.
huge pride in their personal space
those they witnessed were not malnourished or lacking in necessities in clothing or shelter
poor, yes, but wonderfully engaged, well-dressed, fully employed and well informed
what North Korea has achieved economically despite its lack of access to international money has been magnificent.
Hat Tip: Kiwiblog

Presumably, Mr Morgan’s tour was conducted at night. We know that in the darkness of that land during the night, it is rather hard to see things properly. Below is a satellite image of North Korea (outlined) at night.

Gareth has been visiting a giant Potemkin Village. He has clearly forgotten the old saw about mushrooms being kept in the dark and fed horseshit.

But jokes pale when the reality of life is exposed in that terrible place. This, from The Guardian.

Camp 14: Total Control Zone is different. The German film-maker Marc Wiese’s film tells of horrors that could be happening as you read this, in North Korea, in prison camps so vast that they show up on Google Earth.

Some are “re-education” facilities, where the inmates can hope to be released after a period of hard labour and immersion in revolutionary doctrine. The “total control zone”, however, is a life sentence, with death the only exit. Other, that is, than escape. Shin Dong-hyuk was born in the camp and fled, aged 23, in 2005. Wiese’s film gives a harrowing account of life in a world where people like him are regarded as lower than worms or flies.

Wiese’s work has taken him from the Bosnian war to Palestine, Belfast and South Africa; he has talked to war criminals and people who have ordered suicide bombings. Even he was shocked, though, by Shin’s reply when, hoping to start the film with an upbeat story, he asked him for a memory from when he was four. “So he told me, ‘I have a memory; it was a public execution.’ I said, ‘Did your mother talk to you about that? Did she try to help you?’ He looked at me and was shaking his head, and he said, ‘No. For what? It was happening every week.’ And just for me, personally, I said, ‘Shin, what did your mother teach you?’ and he said, ‘Only one thing: how to survive.'”

Survival meant living by the rules, which included informing on anyone in breach of camp regulations. When Shin overhead his mother apparently plotting to help his brother escape, he told his teacher. Later, he had to watch as his mother was publicly hanged and his brother killed by firing squad. He felt nothing. If he hadn’t informed, he and his father would probably have been executed, he says. This revelation takes Camp 14: Total Control Zone into the area of Primo Levi’s “grey zone”, where the distinction between victim and perpetrator becomes disturbingly blurred. “For me, this was never a victim story,” says Wiese. “That would be, honestly, boring. Camp 14 is, for me, a film which is showing how a system is able to condition three people. In the beginning, Shin and the two guards are very opposite. But in the middle, as he is talking about his mother’s execution and they are talking about torture, they are very parallel. Shin is saying, ‘Well, she did something wrong.’ And the perpetrators are saying, ‘Well, of course we tortured. Of course we executed. They told us we have to, so we did.'”

Able to act with impunity, the guards beat, killed and raped prisoners on a whim. While Oh Yang-nam, a former secret service policeman also interviewed for the film, questions what he did, Hyuk Kwon, a former commander in camp 22, shows no remorse. “I’m convinced he has a sadistic side, because he’s smiling,” says Wiese. “He’s talking about rape. It’s impossible to smile. Around 50% of the material with him was simply not usable. It was too tough. It made a freak show out of Camp 14.” Still, it may yet serve a purpose: “If ever a human rights court is established for North Korea, they can have my raw material, and it’s enough to sentence them both.”

Ah, Gareth, you have been played like a fool. What did Lenin allegedly call such? Useful idiots. That will do.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter from Moscow

Posted on September 24, 2013 by johntertullian

No Need for Right Wing Devils

Posted on Saturday, July 13, 2013

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

Jesus teaches us to expect slander, to expect misrepresentation. Further, He teaches us to believe that when this happens, it is a sign that we are gaining on it. In Luke 6:22-23, Jesus tells us to rejoice and leap for joy when we reviled, excluded, shunned, and held in contempt. In Lattimore’s translation of that passage, Jesus tells us that we are “to frolic” when this has happened.

We are able to do this, Jesus teaches, because we know the outcome of the story. We have the big picture. We know that great is our reward in Heaven. But being heavenly-minded is not an opiate — being heavenly-minded brings real earthly perspective.

Conservative activists who are surprised or indignant at the gross lopsidedness of the whole system are being foolish because they are expecting the devil to be a gentleman. They are expecting him to fight clean, and to avoid every form of fighting dirty. What makes us think he might do that?

It would be tedious to go through all the available examples of this kind of thing. Just one should suffice. Occupy demonstrations are closely associated with vandalism, drugs, sexual assaults, riots and such, while Tea Party demonstrations are closely associated with middle-aged people in funny hats who pick up after themselves. Which one is the screaming threat to our commonweal? Right.

The only thing that is missing in this farce is our ability to see how funny it is — and how much God doesn’t care that they are cheating. In a battle of accusations and counter-accusations, they will always have the advantage. Let them have it. Devils make better accusers, always, and we are not in this to create right-wing devils. No, we have a better game to play than that.

I said a moment ago that those who are heavenly-minded have a clear earthly perspective. They keep their heads. They are not thrown off by trash talk, or the mainstream media’s inability to report on the trash talk. When they cheat, and we get angry, this is nothing less than us enabling their cheating to work, to have its intended effect. The appropriate response is for them to cheat, and for us to grin.

So if we keep our heads, we are still engaged in the conflict, and we are engaged in it because it matters (deeply) to us. But it does not matter deeply to our ego, which means that we are in a position to think while we fight. This means that while we look at the terrain, and think about what is at stake, we can settle on what is the decisive point. A decisive point is a place that is significant enough to matter to the enemy if you successfully take it, and insignificant enough to actually take. This means that the selected target is both strategic and feasible. Thinking nationally, in our culture wars, New York City is strategic, but not feasible. Moose Breath, Idaho is feasible, but not strategic. We could take Moose Breath for Jesus in about three weeks, but when we had, it wouldn’t matter all that much. The reason our ministries are located here in the Palouse is that there are two major universities located in these two small towns, eight miles apart. Pullman, Washington is the home of Washington State, and Moscow is the home of the University of Idaho. The small towns make it feasible, and the universities make them strategic. To identify and go after a decisive point is the way to have a disproportionate impact.

The example given above concerning New York City was not meant to discourage Christians from ministering there. Of course, many of us should be there. But when we are, we should know that within a place like New York, there are numerous decisive points within the city. With a nation before us, one of the decisive points we have selected is the small town with the big university. With a city before us, there will be the same kind of decisive points available. But we won’t see them if we are not aware of the concept, and if we are not thinking about it.

We don’t have infinite resources at our disposal — we do serve an infinite God, but He loves to supply our needs on a day-to-day basis. That keeps us trusting Him. That means we must be the stewards of the resources He has already given, and this means we have to be selective. We have a limited number of troops, and so we have to decide where to put them. Joab was not a very good man, but he was a good general — and he divided his troops wisely for the battle (2 Sam. 10:10-12).

To return to the earlier point, understanding the decisive point helps us understand what our objective actually is. If our goal is to advance the kingdom, then we will be able to think clearly as we meditate on what will actually help to accomplish that. If our goal is personal fame and glory, then we will fail in one of two ways. First, we will be easily distracted when the enemy slanders us and lies about us — because our goal is personal glory, we will react violently and unproductively when that is threatened or besmirched. The other thing that might happen is that we pick a little nothing objective, and capture it with a lot of fanfare, followed by a big awards ceremony. We don’t want culture warriors who can be lured by the trappings of victory without any actual victories — the equivalent of big hats, missile parades, and mirrored sunglasses.
In short, finding the decisive point is not something that an ego can easily do.

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 24, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 24

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep hefore her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. —Isaiah 53:7

Devotional:
Moreover, we are also exhorted to conform to his example; not that we shall be able to humiliate ourselves perfectly before God, but yet we must force ourselves towards it. I say, that when God is pleased to chastise us and we feel great roughness at his hand, so that it seems as if we are overwhelmed, we must nevertheless keep silence, confessing that God is righteous and fair, and not letting one murmur be heard from our mouths.

Let us glorify God by our silence; even as if we were poor sinners convicted of their crimes and without an excuse.
St. Peter applies the passage like this: when we are afflicted by the hand of God, even persecuted by the hand of men, we must not cease to bear patiently all the injuries done to us: knowing that God wishes to test us, or even to punish us for our faults.

And let us take care not to make frivolous excuses, like many do, who bring forward their infirmity and say that they are too weak and cannot stay quiet while God presses them so straitly. We must therefore be conformed to the Son of God, for he is our mirror and pattern—not, as I have said, that we can have goodness equal to his; but although we cannot come near it, we must strive towards it. —Sermons

Howlers

Posted on September 24, 2013 by johntertullian

The Beginning of the End

The New Zealand government’s long foreshadowed trial of charter schools is going to commence early in 2014. Five schools have been approved. Obviously this is earth shattering stuff to those who are wedded to the proposition that governments always do things better than anyone or anything else. They see the opening of charter schools as the early death throes of civilisation as we know it. The histrionic hysterics have been, well, hysterical, or, as Jane Austen would say, quite diverting.

There were three howlers in particular. The first was an horrendous accusation levelled against charter schools. It was suggested that they were going to be engaged in a very sinister practice. They were going to extract profits out of running schools. We kid you not. Terrible. How anyone could mix filthy lucre with the ethereal, other-worldly task of educating children was beyond comprehension. It could only mean that operators of charter school had to be depraved miscreants.

Actually, this broadside opens up an interesting idea, well worth exploring.
Since profit is definitely dirty oil not to be mixed with the pure waters of education, we wonder why teachers (particularly teachers who are card carrying members of the teachers unions) are not putting themselves forward to teach for love, not money. Since, to our knowledge, all prudent teachers try to make a profit out of teaching, by spending less than they receive from their salaries, it is high time we had some consistency. If making a profit from education is inherently evil, this must include salaried teachers. Bloodsuckers indeed.

Our view is that any charter school which does not make a profit ought to be put against a wall and shot. Where else will such a school get the resources for expansion, capital investment, and growth? The last thing we want is charter schools running cap-in-hand to the public teat to slurp for more money. Put simply, if charter schools do not run at a profit they will be unsustainable in the long run.

A second howler was the call for all unionised registered teachers to boycott the new charter schools. Have nothing to do with them. If a charter school happened to be transporting pupils on a train and a unionised teacher was also travelling, he or she would need to get off immediately. Unionised teachers would not be allowed by the union to get jobs at charter schools. Local schools would not be allowed to play charter school sports teams, and so forth.

We believe such a boycott would turn out to be a great boon for charter schools. The less they have to do with union members who are also teachers the better. In fact, smart charter schools will insist on employing only non-unionised teachers. Any unionised member applying for a job at a charter school ought to be required to resign from the union as a condition of employment. If not, an offer of employment ought not be forthcoming. Bring on the boycott, we say. It will be a great benefit to charter schools.

Finally, there have been protests against charter schools teaching “creationism” and “intelligent design”. Since these cosmological beliefs are supposed to be excluded from charter schools, we look forward to the alternatives, which can be donated as “evolutionism” proceeding by means of an “unintelligent chaotic mess”. Hope you can get good science out of that.

Creationism (presumably) rests on the proposition that the universe in the beginning came into existence via a Big Bang, created by God. The alternative view is that the universe in the beginning came into existence via a Big Bang and no-one has any idea what caused it. But, we are certain, infallibly certain, that it was not God. Ah, the cant. But there you have it. No doubt excellent science will be taught and learned in schools which ground all they do on a foundation of professed ignorance and chaos. No wonder many government schools are in deep trouble. No surprises there.

Orwellian Double-Speak in Europe

Posted on September 23, 2013 by johntertullian

New Thought Police Warmly Welcomed at “Civil Liberties” Committee

Posted on | September 20, 2013

By J.C. von Krempach, J.D.

Turtle Bay and Beyond

European Dignity Watch has an interesting report on a recent meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE), in which a lobby group called the “European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR)” was given a 45-minitues slot to present a policy proposal that is called the Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance.

The group’s approach towards “tolerance” appears to be rather simple: it claims to be promoting “tolerance”, which is vaguely defined as “respect for and acceptance of the expression, preservation and development of the distinct identity of a group”. With regard to potential critics it says: “There is no need to be tolerant to the intolerant (….) especially (…) as far as freedom of expression is concerned”.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the paper contains a lot of proposals how to limit, or even to completely eliminate, the freedom of speech of all potential critics of any of the groups whose acceptance the ECTR wants to promote.
The purpose is to pre-emptively immunize contemporary ideologies, such as feminism, homosexualism, gender ideology, immigration policies, etc. against criticism. The statement that “tolerance must be practiced not only by Governmental bodies but equally by individuals” suggests that the paper envisages that censure and thought control should be extended to the private sphere of citizens.

The proposal is yet another example for the Orwellian technique of turning the meaning of words in to their opposite. In Orwell’s novel, “peace” means war and “freedom” means slavery. In the European Parliament, “tolerance” means intolerance.

I am just wondering: are the Members of the Parliamentary Committee acting in full conscience of what was proposed to them? Or have they just been misled by a nice text of which they did not grasp the full meaning?

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Posted on September 23, 2013 by johntertullian

Daily Devotional

September 23

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. —I Corinthians 6:20

Devotional:
This is a very important consideration, that we are consecrated and dedicated to God; that we may not hereafter think, speak, meditate, or do anything but with a view to his glory. For that which is sacred cannot, without great injustice towards him, be applied to unholy uses.

If we are not our own, but the Lord’s, it is manifest both what error we must avoid, and to what end all the actions of our lives are to be directed. We are not our own; therefore neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions.

We are not our own; therefore let us not propose it as our end, to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own; therefore let us, as far as possible forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; to him, therefore, let us live and die.

We are God’s; therefore let his wisdom and will preside in all our actions. We are God’s; towards him, therefore, as our only legitimate end, let every part of our lives be directed.

Oh, how great a proficiency has that man made, who, having been taught that he is not his own, has taken the sovereignty and government of himself from his own reason, to surrender it to God! For as compliance with their own inclinations leads men most effectually to ruin, so to place no dependence on our own knowledge or will, but merely to follow the guidance of the Lord, is the only way of safety.

Let this, then, be the first step, to depart from ourselves, that we may apply all the vigor of our faculties to the service of the Lord. —Institutes, III, vii, i