Another Military Misadventure Coming Up

How to Put Stars on the Banner of ISIS

There are few things more dangerous than when politicians get smitten with nationalistic hubris, replete with lumps in throats and tears on cheeks, whilst they are deciding or voting on military affairs.

In the US House of Representatives a recent vote was taken as to whether the Congress would approve the arming of “moderate” Syrian rebels.  Despite all the evidence and experience of disastrous outcomes of decisions to arm such groups in the past, the House duly voted to approve the action.  Can politicians really be this dumb?  Yes they can.

But not all.  Some of those who voted “no” explained their reasons.  Their justification for voting against the resolution to arm the “moderate” Syrian rebels shows up their yea-saying colleagues to be dumb, dumber and dumbest.  Here are the words of Justin Amash, a so-called Tea-partying congressman:

What have we learned from the last decade of war?

Those years should have taught us that when going to war, our government must:

(1) be careful when defining a military mission,
(2) speak forthrightly with the American people about the sacrifices they will be called to make,
(3) plan more than one satisfactory end to the conflict, and
(4) be humble about what we think we know.

These lessons should be at the front of our minds when Congress votes today on whether to arm groups in Syria.

Today’s amendment ostensibly is aimed at destroying ISIS—yet you’d hardly know it from reading the amendment’s text. The world has witnessed with horror the evil of ISIS: the public beheading of innocents, the killing of Christians, Muslims, and others.  The amendment’s focus—arming groups fighting the Assad government in Syria—has little to do with defeating ISIS. The mission that the amendment advances plainly isn’t the defeat of ISIS; it’s the defeat of Assad.

Americans stood overwhelmingly against entangling our Armed Forces in the Syrian civil war a year ago. If Congress chooses to arm groups in Syria, it must explain to the American people not only why that mission is necessary but also the sacrifices that that mission entails.

The Obama administration has tried to rally support for U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war by implying that our help would be at arm’s length. The amendment Congress will vote on broadly authorizes “assistance” to groups in Syria. It does not specify what types of weapons our government will give the groups. It does not prohibit boots on the ground. (The amendment is silent on the president’s power to order our troops to fight in the civil war; it states only that Congress doesn’t provide “specific statutory authorization” for such escalation.) It does not state the financial cost of the war.

As we should have learned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must plan for multiple satisfactory ends to military conflicts before we commence them.

If the Syrian groups that are “appropriately vetted” (the amendment’s language) succeed and oust Assad, what would result? Would the groups assemble a coalition government of anti-Assad fighters, and would that coalition include ISIS? What would happen to the Alawites and Christians who stood with Assad? To what extent would the U.S. government be obligated to occupy Syria to rebuild the government? If each of the groups went its own way, would Syria’s territory be broken apart, and if so, would ISIS control one of the resulting countries?

If the Syrian groups that we support begin to lose, would we let them be defeated? If not, is there any limit to American involvement in the war?

Perhaps some in the administration or Congress have answers to these questions. But the amendment we’ll vote on today contains none of them. [Emphasis, ours.]

Above all, when Congress considers serious actions—especially war—we must be humble about what we think we know. We don’t know very much about the groups we propose to support or even how we intend to vet those groups. Reports in the last week suggest that some of the “appropriately vetted” groups have struck deals with ISIS, although the groups dispute the claim. The amendment requires the administration to report on its efforts to prevent our arms and resources from ending up in the wrong hands, but we know little about those precautions or their effectiveness.

Today, I will vote against the amendment to arm groups in Syria. There is a wide misalignment between the rhetoric of defeating ISIS and the amendment’s actual mission of arming certain groups in the Syrian civil war. The amendment provides few limits on the type of assistance that our government may commit, and the exit out of the civil war is undefined. And given what’s happened in our country’s most recent wars, our leaders seem to have unjustified confidence in their own ability to execute a plan with so many unknowns.

Some of my colleagues no doubt will come to different judgments on these questions. But it’s essential that they consider the questions carefully. That the president wants the authority to intervene in the Syrian civil war is not a sufficient reason to give him that power. Under the Constitution, it is Congress’s independent responsibility to commence war.

We are the representatives of the American people. The government is proposing to take their resources and to put their children’s lives at risk. I encourage all my colleagues to give the decision the weight it is due.

The desperation to be doing something usually results in the worst unintended outcomes.  The bellicose United States goes to war at the drop of a hat.  It is “led” by a pacifist-orientated Commander-in-Chief whose liberal world-view sees all wars as unnecessary and preventable because all human beings are really creatures of enlightened good-will.  When this has not not worked out, he has lurched from one military misadventure to another with both his eyes firmly fixated on his own polling numbers.  He has no strategy, no doctrines, no guiding principles.  It’s all about him. 

Congress is no better.  It has not grown up and matured to the point where it understands that when it comes to sending the military to war, overwhelmingly, far more often than not, the best and right decision is to do nothing.  The phrase “clear and present danger” has been inflated to where it is a meaningless concept.  An ant walking upon a sidewalk in Outer Mongolia would constitute a “clear and present danger” to the United States in the minds of most of the current crop of Congressmen.

Evil exists.  People die at the hands of unimaginably evil predators.  But need does not constitute a duty–or a right–to intervene so that “good guys” get to kill “bad guys”.  The world is just not that simple.  It is not a narrative of cowboys and Indians. 

We make a prediction which doubtless many will consider so extreme and unlikely they will write us off as complete idiots: as a result of arming “moderate” groups in Syria, the civil war will intensify, more people will be killed than otherwise, and US armaments and military weapons will end up in the hands of the most brutal and ruthless of the fighting cliques.  Our critics will have conveniently forgotten  that it is the US which has indirectly armed ISIS, thereby enabling it to expand rapidly into Iraq and western Syria.  Will such things happen again?  Inevitably.  But the militaristic heart which beats throughout the land in the United States runs on the high octane fuel of patriotism, nationalism, and exceptionalist hubris.  This time . . . this time it will be different.  We swear.

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? 

The star spangled banner of ISIS, that is.  Enabled and facilitated by the unintended consequences of foolish US military misadventure. 

The world would be a very much safer and saner place, if the US Congress were populated throughout by more Congressmen like Justin Amash. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

An American Drubbing

Posted on Monday, September 16, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

I have been addressing, from time to time, the tomfool notion of American exceptionalism.

The central point I have made thus far is that the genuine exceptionalism displayed by the Founders consisted of the fact that they knew that Americans were not exceptional, which was exceptional. They built a form of government that sought to take the venality of all our current and future statesman into account, which was a marvel of prescience.

Having said as much, repeatedly, I want to come at this beast from another angle. Before doing so, allow me to state some of my bona fides. I love apple pie, I own a Winchester 30-30, and I have warm spot in my heart for red-checked tablecloths. I am a loyal son of the Republic, and wish to demonstrate my good will in this matter by giving American exceptionalism a good, old-fashioned American drubbing.

I wish to do this by using metaphors from the shock and awe war locker, but of course, humility requires me to leave to the reader any determination of whether I have actually succeeded in doing so. Some readers, I know, think of my writing as more of a schlock and awwww kind of thing. And one sees their point, of course.

So when Herod shows up en fête, in that glittery robe, and the people all cry out that it was the voice of a god and not a man, there was — even then — a course of action he could have taken that would have headed off the hungry worms. That course of action would have been to give glory to God (Acts 12:23). We, being not very quick on the uptake, have not responded that way, but are doing our very best Herod imitation, standing there on the stage like a freshly minted nominee at the Republican National Convention, luxuriating in the transcendental permanence of the glory that is descending upon in the form of ten tons of confetti.

When I write against American exceptionalism, some ordinary patriots are sometimes unsettled. “Aren’t you grateful to be an American?”, they ask. Of course I am. Very grateful. But this generates what should be an a question. Grateful to whom? I am a Christian first, which means I am grateful to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am a Christian first, and since Jesus told His followers to disciple all the nations, presumably including the one we live in, this means that we must be grateful to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And by we, I mean us. Americans. Our elected representatives. Our foundational documents. If we don’t want to perish in the way, we must kiss the Son.

“For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (1 Cor. 4:7, NKJV).

This exceptionalism you speak of — should we be grateful for it? Grateful to whom? You think it is sufficient for everybody to gin up a few grateful-lite vibes on Turkey Day?

We are one of the most blessed nations ever to exist, and because of the blight of American secularism, we have created a vast sinkhole of ingratitude, hubris, and conceit, from Virginia to Oregon. And it will not fix it if we urge everybody to thank their private gods, however they conceive him/her/it to be. The reason that won’t do is that those gods are not the living God. They are all dead, every mother’s son of them. They did not give these blessings to us, laboring, as they do, under the burden of non-existence. Why do we want to fix this problem of our ingratitude to the living God by urging everyone to say something nice to their little bobble-head idols? This is not just perpetuating the problem, it is gilding our insouciance problem and leaving baskets of fruit in front of it.

The living God is jealous for His name, which is Yahweh.

In the name of God we will set up our banners (Ps. 20:5). Some trust in chariots, and some in horses. Some trust in destroyers, and some in submarines. Some trust in drone strikes, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God (Ps. 20:7). If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to one of those bobble-head things, won’t God see this? Won’t He deal with it (Ps. 44:20-21)? Oh, Lord God, deliver our people! Save our nation, and do it by means of Your name (Ps. 54:1). Purge our sins, especially the root sin of secularism, for Your name’s sake (Ps. 79:9). Do this, our God, for Your name’s sake (Ps. 109:21). But somehow it has come to be the received wisdom — even among Christians — to look for salvation without a Savior, for some mighty act deliverance from the heavens, signed “Anonymous.”
And we can stand around afterwards, sure glad that we were delivered, and doubly glad that we don’t have to thank anybody for it.

Look. The exceptional things we have (in truth) been given can be counted as blessings from the hand of the only true God, who requires us to name Him as the only source of any such blessings. The quite ordinary conceit we have displayed, sharing it with Ozymandias, is our refusal to do so. The longer we have gone on in this vein the more the sham has become apparent. Is America exceptional? Well, why don’t you ask one of the millions of Americans who were chopped up in little pieces in the womb because the ghouls on our highest Court found the right to such wickedness hiding under a penumbra? Is America exceptional? Well, the reply comes back from the dead child. “I really am not in a position to know . . .”

Those who refuse to honor God as God, and those who refuse to give Him thanks are turned over to their lusts, their foolish hearts being darkened (Rom. 1:21). In this process, spiraling downward, we have proven ourselves to be up to the challenge of being as ordinary as the dirt from which we were all made. Gratitude, rightly placed, is extraordinary. Ingratitude . . . well, that’s another matter.

So the faster the extraordinary blessings fade, the more some people want to fix it by defending that damned phrase. But without repentance, evidenced by the confession that Jesus is Yahweh, and our only possible hope, every use of that phrase is just thumping a hollow jug harder and harder. But hitting it won’t fill it.

Take a lesson from Emerson’s comment — “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

President of Presidents

Posted on Saturday, September 14, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog 

I want to begin this exhortation with two qualifications. The first is that I know you have heard this point from me before. But as Paul says in Philippians, to repeat the same things over again is not a trouble to me, and it is helpful to you. Secondly, this is a word to Americans—and I know that not all of you here are Americans. You are nevertheless invited to listen in, and there are truths here that any believer may apply, making the necessary adjustments as you go.

As the recent op-ed by Vladimir Putin showed, the assumption of American exceptionalism is offensive to him. But because he is a former KGB thug, we shouldn’t really care that it is offensive to him. What we should care about is the way in which this manner of speaking might be offensive to God.


The Founding of our nation really was exceptional in many ways. God’s blessing was manifestly with us. But one of the most exceptional things about it was the fact that the men who approved our form of government were deeply suspicious of man in general, and Americans in particular. Do not trust an American with power as far as you can throw him (Art. XII). The genius of our founding framework is that it demonstrates no trust whatever in the innate goodness of all future politicians. At our founding, we knew that we were ordinary, mortal men, prone to sin and corruption. We knew that we were ordinary, and that realization was extraordinary.

But the notion of American exceptionalism that has taken root in recent days is really the photo negative of that founding vision. It seeks to separate this exceptionalism from the gospel of grace, the gospel that straightens out depraved Americans, which is quite a trick, and it wants to make this exceptionalism somehow innate with us. And this overweening conceit provokes anti-Americanism, a form of blowback which is itself just as much an enemy of grace as that which provoked it. The former says “God didn’t give us this; we did it ourselves” and the latter says “God didn’t give you that; the Great Satan did.” They both have this in common—they refuse to give glory to the living God. They refuse to show appropriate gratitude. They pretend that we must choose between proud and ungrateful and envious and ungrateful.

How about humble and grateful? That really would be extraordinary.

So you Americans who confess Christ, your ultimate allegiance, your highest allegiance is obviously to Jesus and His Bride, the City of God. To the extent that God calls you to be a partaker of this nation’s life—and He certainly does—you must learn to see every form of secularism as an idolatrous and arrogant ingratitude. So this is one litmus test with regard to whether your form of “exceptionalism” is acceptable. If it is secular, it is not.

As a people, we must hear the gospel summons, and we must return to Jesus Christ, the president of presidents.

Letter From America (About Foreign Relations Personality Disorder)

Stop using taxpayer money to aid Egypt’s Morsy

By Senator Rand Paul, Special to CNN

July 2, 2013 — Updated 1635 GMT 

Supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy hold sticks and wear protective gear during training outside a mosque in Cairo on Tuesday, July 2. Counterprotests erupted after anti-Morsy demonstrators demanded that Morsy resign and threatened to march on the presidential palace if he doesn’t step down Tuesday evening.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Rand Paul: Why is the U.S. supporting Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy?
• Paul: I argued that Morsy is not someone the U.S. should necessarily embrace
• He says despite Egyptians’ discontent with Morsy, we continue to give him aid
• Paul: What kind of example do we set when we side with the enemies of freedom?

Editor’s note: Rand Paul, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Kentucky.

(CNN) — On the one-year anniversary of President Mohammed Morsy’s inauguration, tens of thousands of Egyptians marched in the streets of Cairo in an effort to remove him from office.  The Associated Press described the protesters as “an array of secular and liberal Egyptians, moderate Muslims, Christians — and what the opposition says is a broad sector of the general public that has turned against the Islamists.”

You would think these protesters represent an Egypt more favorable or in line with American interests. Unfortunately, our government supports the current regime of Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Earlier this year, we sent Egypt’s government 20 F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks and other military aid.

Sen. Rand Paul

I introduced an amendment that would halt the transfer of advanced weapons to Egypt. I argued that the situation in that country was too volatile and that Morsy was not someone the United States should necessarily embrace.

My amendment was defeated in the Senate, 79 to 19.

Last week, President Obama deployed more than 400 Army soldiers to Egypt as part of a nine-month “peacekeeping mission,” which could include responding to protests—or even riots—led potentially by Egyptians seeking a more secular or moderate government.

Our government insists on calling Morsy an ally. Morsy, on the other hand, has called Jews “bloodsuckers” and has said they are the “descendants of apes and pigs.”  

The Obama administration announced in March that we no longer had enough money to continue giving White House tours because of the sequester. That same month, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Morsy and pledged $250 million in additional aid to Egypt.

Before America supported the Muslim Brotherhood, we supported Morsy’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.  For decades, we aided the Mubarak regime to the tune of about $60 billion in total.

When Egyptians protested Mubarak in January 2011, F-16 jets were used by Mubarak to intimidate protesters. Those jets were supplied to Egypt by the United States. When hundreds of thousands of Egyptians rallied in Tahir Square to protest three decades of martial law, Mubarak doused them with tear gas made in Pennsylvania and paid for with American taxpayer’s money.

Mubarak abused and tortured his people for decades, while we subsidized his government. As Egyptians marched in the streets to remove this dictator from power in early 2011, former Vice President Dick Cheney said we should stand by Mubarak and called him our “good friend.”

For many Egyptians, the United States was Mubarak. In their eyes, we were the same. To some, we are now undoubtedly Morsy. Indeed, the weapons that were once given to Mubarak or bought with U.S. dollars are now in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.  

Egypt is just one example of our misguided foreign policy. There are multiple examples of our government aiding and abetting despotic regimes in ways that ultimately work against American interests.

The same Washington leaders who were eager to aid Mubarak, and now Morsy, were also once the loudest voices for supporting Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. They are the same Democrat and Republican hawks who later insisted we back the Libyan rebels. They are the same people who now demand we fund the Syrian rebels, even though al-Nusra and others who belong to the resistance are also affiliated with al Qaeda.

The problem with constantly intervening in these troubled parts of the world is that there are often no clear good guys or bad guys. Today’s ally can quickly become tomorrow’s enemy. This should be a paramount and obvious concern, but in Washington it is almost always treated as an afterthought.

Also, what kind of message does funding despots send to the rest of the world? When Mubarak was our “good friend,” he was certainly no friend to the Egyptian people. Judging by the protests in Cairo on Sunday, the same can probably be said of Morsy’s regime.  

You cannot give people liberty. They must fight for it themselves.

People around the world seek to emulate and embrace our concept of freedom. America should continue to lead, something we often do best by example.

But what kind of example do we set when we side with the enemies of freedom? How can we have influence in troubled parts of the world when we cuddle up to regimes responsible for much of the trouble?

Using the Bible as Pretext

The Bible Belongs to Christ

A recent piece in the National Review Online by Dennis Prager has taken the National Church of Scotland to task for anti-semitism. That church has come out with a new report on Israel which Prager alleges represents “a combination of medieval anti-Judaism and leftist anti-Zionism”.  

We have not read the report (which has now been taken off the church’s website for re-editing) and we acknowledge that the Church of Scotland long ceased ceased to be a reliable guide on things taught in the Bible, having been racked with Enlightenment rationalism and humanist, epistemic autonomy.  Nevertheless, it is Prager’s rejection and rejoinder to the Church of Scotland’s report which is worth reflecting upon.  

There are at least three assertions made in the report which Prager reacts to:
  

The Church of Scotland report asserts that the Bible does not support the existence of a Jewish state: “There has been a widespread assumption by many Christians as well as many Jewish people that the Bible supports an essentially Jewish state of Israel. This raises an increasing number of difficulties.” 
It asserts that justice and the existence of a Jewish state are mutually exclusive: “There is a direct conflict of interest between wanting human rights and justice for all and retaining the right to the land.” 
It asserts that the Jews’ return to Israel has no Biblical basis.

Now, we suspect that Prager is engaged in a bit of hyperventilation at this point.

Let’s look at the first: that the Bible does not support the existence of a Jewish state.  That on the face of it seems perfectly reasonable, if the statement were a parallel to the following: “the Bible does not support the existence of the United States, or New Zealand, or France, or Zimbabwe.”  It is clear that the Bible does not in any sense support their existence by declaring that the above countries explicitly have a right to exist in and throughout history.  Yet indirectly the Scriptures supports all nations, acknowledging the existence of all nations and commanding them all to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.  (Acts 14: 16, 17; Acts 17: 26,27; & Acts 17: 30,31).  The modern nation state of Israel would be no exception.

However, it is this latter point that Prager would object to.  He does assert that the Bible names Israel–the modern nation state of Israel–as being explicitly commanded and warranted in the Bible.  (In fact, he would have to concede that in his view it is the only nation so named by God in the Scriptures as having an eternal right to exist, such that any who do not submit to Israel’s existence would be in rebellion against the commands and precepts of the Living God.)

The problem with Prager’s view (held, incidentally, by many professing Christians) is that it overlooks and obscures the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It ignores redemptive history.  Redemptive history progresses; Prager appears not to believe that it does.  For example, the sacrificial cult of Old Testament Israel has been abolished by God Himself.  Why?  Because it became obsolete and nugatory when Christ came and offered Himself as the perfect sinless atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.  Dietary laws have expired, at the command of God.  Christ declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19); the point and significance of such laws was to make nations Israel distinct from all other nations.  With the entrance of Christ into human history, such distinction passed.  Israel no longer was to exist as a distinct nation, since the Gospel was to go to all peoples.  That is the key significance of the vision given to the Apostle Peter in Acts 10.

Moreover, the Bible makes clear that Israel’s services of worship at the tabernacle and the temple were always but pale reflections of the real tabernacle and the real services of worship–in heaven.  Thence Christ, the high priest of the whole world, has gone.  Our temple, our Jerusalem is now the real Jerusalem, in heaven.   The Jerusalem of modern days bears no redemptive relationship whatsoever to the Jerusalem of the Old Covenant, even as other ancient holy sites do not (for example, the oaks of Mamre, Shiloh, or Eden.)

Prager also chooses to overlook the existence of the people of Israel in the land of Canaan was always conditional upon their obedience and faithfulness to the covenant.  The Scriptures are very explicit on this point: continuation in the land of promise was conditional upon obedience and faithfulness to God (Deuteronomy 28:15-68).  He also overlooks the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by Rome in AD 66-70 was explicitly pronounced by our Lord prior to His death as a divine judgement for Israel’s rejection of Messiah.

Redemptive history has moved on.  It is now in the hands of Messiah–the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the King of all kings upon earth.  All strands of human existence, present and future are His domain.  All nations are commanded to bow to Him as their Lord (Psalm 2).  The ancient land of Israel has fulfilled its purposes in the plans of the Saviour of the world.

Where does this leave the Jewish people, as distinct from the modern nation state of Israel?  They are beloved of God for the sake of the fathers.  Yet–and here the Bible is explicit–a blindness towards Messiah has come over them, so that the Gospel may go to the Gentiles.  But that blindness will eventually be removed, and the descendants of Israel will come to embrace their (and our) Messiah (Romans 11).  Thus, along with all peoples, the Christian church is commanded to love and work and long for the conversion of all Jewish people everywhere.

Let’s turn to the second assertion made by the Church of Scotland’s article:  that justice and the existence of a Jewish state are mutually exclusive: “There is a direct conflict of interest between wanting human rights and justice for all and retaining the right to the land.”  

This is nonsense.  Prager is quite right to react against assertions such as these.  Historical grievances cannot be the animus for settlement of contemporary disputes.  Every nation upon earth is made up of people who have been displaced and unjustly exploited at some time in their past.  The fact is that the modern state of Israel exists.  How it came into existence is of little importance when it comes to making determinations about justice and human rights in the contemporary world.  We are to lay aside bitterness, grievances, hatred and seek reconciliation.  We are to forgive one another.  We are to struggle to let bygones be bygones.  That is the Christian ethic.  Where feasible, reasonable, and possible we are to encourage restitution.  We are to act lawfully now, not prosecute wrongs–real and imagined–that took place generations ago.  Thus, both Israel and Arab nations are to be called to submit to the Prince of Peace: His yoke is easy and His burden is light. 

The third assertion is as follows:  the Jews’ return to Israel has no Biblical basis.  This assertion by the Church of Scotland we believe to be absolutely correct.  It has no basis under the New Covenant.  But, so what?  The Pilgrims journeying to Massachusetts had no Biblical basis either, in the sense of being prophetically promised.  However, both the Pilgrims, and the Palestinians and Israel did then and have now obligations to obey the commands and meet the standards laid down in Holy Writ.  Therefore, whilst the Jews’ return to Israel had no Biblical basis (in the sense of a divine prophetic warrant),  modern Israel has an abiding duty to submit to its lawful, Biblical king–Jesus Christ–and to His commands and precepts. 

Now, we are well aware that the case we have made is not going to satisfy modern Israeli’s, nor Palestinians or Islamists, nor American Exceptionalists, nor for that matter (we fear) the Church of Scotland.  But given the persistent stubbornness of all the above to recognise Christ as their Messiah and Lord, that seems about right.

The Bible belongs to Christ, and Christ alone.  It is His Word.  It must not be misused in a vain attempt to provide warrant for our ambitions, quarrels, lusts and divisions. 

. . . But Not As We Know It, Jim

 A Strange Kind of Nation Building

It was going to take over twenty-five years, we were told.  But Afghanistan would be a different kind of war.  Sure, there would be the usual conflict with insurgents, campaigns against the Taliban and those seeking to overthrow the corrupt government in Kabul.  But, more importantly, it would be a war with a human face, a face moulded around an idealist, even utopian belief in human rights. 

This war would be unlike dirty wars, fought over filthy lucre and oil.  This was to be a pure war.  A war worth fighting.  This war would lead to better things.  Out of it all, over the long term, over a quarter of a century’s ministrations by the idealistic humanitarianism of the West, a new nation would emerge.

Consequently, President Obama grandiloquently intoned, it was the war we had to have.
  It was the important war.  It was a moral war.  It was not over oil (there was none to be had); it was not a war to line the pockets of monied interests and rapacious Western capitalists.  It was, instead, an idealistic war.  It was a humanitarian conflict.  It would be a war that would provide, firstly protection for Afghanis from insurgent attacks.  Then it would provide lots of aid and assistance to civilize Afghanis and begin to provide the “good things” of life.  Then, being freed, a new democratic, rights honouring, peace loving nation would emerge to the ultimate betterment of us all.  Or so the naive patter ran. 

So, how’s it going then?  We are reliably informed that some betting agencies are now offering odds on how long it will the current corrupt Afghani government will last once NATO has withdrawn its strike capability and the insurgency gains strength and territory.  How many warlords will quickly change sides?  How long before Kabul falls?  A year? Two years? 

If you were to want a leading indicator you could do no better than look to Afghani agriculture.  This year will see record agricultural production–which is a good thing, right.  Poverty is waning because crops are being planted and harvested.  This will doubtless reduce the attraction of the insurgency and will persuade your average Afghani peasant that things are looking up.  As indeed they are, according to this report from The Guardian.

Twelve years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is heading for a near-record opium crop as instability pushes up the amount of land planted with illegal but lucrative poppies, according to a bleak UN report. . . .  “Poppy cultivation is not only expected to expand in areas where it already existed in 2012 … but also in new areas or areas where poppy cultivation was stopped,” the Afghanistan Opium Winter Risk Assessment found.  The growth in opium cultivation reflects both spreading instability and concerns about the future. Farmers are more likely to plant the deadly crop in areas of high violence or where they have not received any agricultural aid, the report said. 

“Opium cultivation is up for the third successive year, and production is heading towards record levels,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Afghanistan head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. “People are hedging against an insecure future both politically and economically.” . . . If this year’s poppy fields are harvested without disruption, the country would likely regain its status as producer of 90% of the world’s opium. Afghanistan’s share of the deadly market slipped to around 75% after bad weather and a blight slashed production over the past two years.  But the decline in opium production also drove up prices, to a record $300 a kilogramme. Prices have now slipped by over $100 but are still far above historic levels, helping tempt more farmers to turn land over to poppy.

The world is an extremely messy place.  Human cultures are exceedingly thick and complex.  The US and Nato and Western powers are on their way to failing miserably–as we always knew they would.   Much, much better for the naive, foolish Western nations to lay aside their vaunting pride, dismember their idols of secular human rights and unprincipled representative governments, reject their false religion of secular humanism and commence clothing themselves with humility.  There is only one Redeemer and He does not share His glory with another.

But, here’s the thing.  If the West continues to reject and dismiss the King of kings, it will never have the requisite humility to accept limitations upon its power, efficacy, and influence with true humility.  Western peoples demand far too much of their governments, verging on an expectation of omni-competence.  They all too often both expect and applaud their governments’ driven recklessness to prove the superiority and rectitude of  Western Baalism before the watching world.  Afghani nation building is just one application of this prevailing idolatry.  

And the fruit of this idolatrous arrogance?  Opium.  Lots of it.  And more beside.  Doubtless there will be lots more beside.    

Reactions From the Hive

Swarms Over Stockman

We published several days ago an extended argument by David Stockman about the economic catastrophe looming in the United States.  Until recently Stockman was a Washington insider, but now not so much.  The establishment has turned upon him.  No surprises there. 

What is interesting to note is the style of argumentation and rebuttal Stockman has faced.  The upshot is that he stands unscathed and the establishment reveals itself to be as intellectually bankrupt as it has made the country fiscally bankrupt.

The Financial Times reviews the reaction:

It takes a lot for an official who served at the heart of the White House to go beyond the pale in Washington, but a diatribe against all economic policy since 1933 – attacking everyone from Franklin Roosevelt to Milton Friedman – is one way to manage it.  David Stockman, budget director for Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1985, is the man who will be short of dinner party invitations after becoming the most mainstream figure to argue that all America’s economic problems stem from the welfare state and the end of the gold standard.

Here is a (more gentle) reaction from the establishment Left:

The reaction, left and the right, was scathing. Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to vice-president Joe Biden, gave one of the gentler liberal critiques. Mr Stockman, he said, was “about 11.8 per cent absolutely and totally on target” with his criticisms of crony capitalism. But the other 88.2 per cent was “a horrific screed, an ahistorical, dystopic, Hunger Games vision of America based on debt obsession and wilful ignorance of macroeconomics and the impact of market failure”.

Stockman had written an “horrific screed”, was a victim of a “debt obsession” and guilty of “wilful ignorance”.  The poor chap is near mentally unstable and deliberately ignorant.  Ad hominem near its worst.  So far, Stockman’s argument stands unscathed.

And here is a a reaction from the establishment Right:

The right was not much more impressed. David Frum, a speech writer for former president George W. Bush, called it “primitive” as economics, “silly” as advice, and diagnosed Mr Stockman with a mild case of elderly depression.  “As an insight into the gloomy mindset that overtakes us in older age, it’s a valuable warning to those still middle-aged that once we lose our faith in the future, it’s time to stop talking about politics in public,” he wrote.

Frum’s “argumentation” represents ad hominem close to its worst: condescending drivel.  But on those who are alert, the irony will not be lost.  These utterances come forth at a time when Europe and the UK is reeling. punch drunk from exorbitant debt.  But the mindset of the Washington establishment is that such calamities would never happen in America. This is American Exceptionalism at its highest and most stupid.  The realities of ordinary mortals and nations do not apply to us.  We are too big, too wonderful, too exceptional to be thus snookered.

The die is cast.   

A New Kind of American Exceptionalism

Money, Debt, and Borrowing Can Be Infinite

History has presented us with numerous gadflies, but few so spooky as Nero who played his fiddle while Rome burned in a great conflagration.  Presumably he was amused and entertained by the spectacle of such destruction.

But when it comes to spooky “gadflyness” the recent, sage pronouncements of New York Mayor Bloomberg rival Nero’s inanity.  Whatever other inadequacies Mayor Bloomberg might labour under, profound ignorance of the history of human civilisation must rank right up there.  Assuming the media report is accurate, it is hard to credit such folly to the man.

In the first place Mayor Bloomberg was attempting to assuage the fear of an impending collapse due to the US government cutting back on some government spending.  Apocalyptic fears had to be calmed.  Enter Mayor Bloomberg:

At midnight tonight, a bevy of steep spending cuts will hit the federal government unless Congress and the White House agree to an alternative deficit-cutting proposal. Although the national media has been relentlessly focused on this deadline, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it will only affect New York City if the so-called “sequestration” continues for a significant length of time.

“It depends on how long,” Mr. Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show with John Gambling. “If it lasts a few weeks, no. If it does, yeah. We get 10 or 12 percent of our budget from the federal government, not all of that is going to be cut back, but there would be effects–not good effects. But in the context of, ‘Is anything going to change tomorrow? Are we going to run out of money tomorrow?’ I’m sure I’ll get that question at the [next] press conference. No.”

OK, no need to panic.  At least not immediately.  Thanks, Mayor.  Great to know that you are standing proudly at the helm of the great ship of state, not out on the veranda fiddling with glee.

Or maybe he is.  Bloomberg went on to cast more of his oleaginous balm on troubled waters.  The huge US fiscal deficit was no problem.  Not really.  Why?  Because the supply of other people’s money was infinite and the US government could owe an infinite amount of money.  

. . . .  Mr. Bloomberg argued the United States could owe “an infinite amount of money” and there is no specific amount that would cause the country to default.

Really.  So a hundred trillion dollar debt would not bring the country to ruin.  No.  Not at all.  Other nations would continue to lend us money forever, with no limitation, infinitely. Try that argument with your local bank.

Oh, but that’s not a fair comparison.  National accounts are different from household accounts, the Sage of New York gravely informs us.

“We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of money.”

Why, according to this gadfly, would people, corporations, and other nations continue to lend money to the United States, forever without limitation?

… Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more money.”

Mmmm.  Did that argument work for Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland?  Oh, but we are different, Mayor Bloomberg intones.  We are the wonderful, big, most-wonderful-nation-on-earth United States.  We are as big and important as Rome, back in the day.  Our debts can mount up without limit because the lenders have no option but to continue to lend.  It’s all a merry party.  Let’s all  go play our violins.

We suspect Mayor Bloomberg knows that he has just mouthed a barrow full of old cobblers.  Anything to keep the people calm.  But if he really believes such tosh he must be one of the gaddiest gadflies on the planet.  Either way he makes spooky Nero look like an amateur. 

Let us never forget: in a democracy the people deserve such foolish leaders.  They were stupid enough to put them there in the first place. 

Perpetual War

The Desolations of Smaug

The United States has a fascination with war–of two kinds.  The first is the traditional kind–namely, armed conflict.  There has been scarcely a single year in the last half-century when the US has not been involved in armed conflict somewhere on the globe.  This global warfare is underpinned by the crass and wicked idolatries of notions such as “American exceptionalism”, America as the city of light on a hill bring truth, justice and the American way to all peoples on earth, and America as the defender of the oppressed, the weak, and the downtrodden, and so forth. 

The end of the Cold War was supposed to result in a Peace Dividend–which was a coy way of saying that military spending could wane, and tax monies could be put towards social services.  Actually, military spending continued to ratchet up.  Being the world’s policeman has perpetual and escalating costs, which currently are being funded by borrowing.  Good luck with that.  Idols of all kinds eventually become a crushing weight upon a people: morally, spiritually, and fiscally.  (During the period of decline of the Roman Empire, for example, about the only sector of commerce that was vibrantly growing was that associated with the various cults of the pantheon of idols.)  If the US military were ever to retrench back to being an ordinary, national defensive enterprise, the negative impact upon US economic growth would be considerable. Idols are expensive to erect, maintain, and worship.  National idols even more so. 

But the second kind of war is also costly and equally vain.
  The United States has successively declared wars on poverty, on global warming, on drugs, on terror, and on illiteracy.  Many assume that these are merely rhetorical flourishes representing nothing more than hyperbole in search of a headline.  Actually, there is a far deeper and more sinister root. 

William James–probably the most influential American philosopher–developed the ideas of pragmatism to express the “can-do” ideals of the New Model Man that was being nurtured in the West.  When men gave up ideologies and religions and started to focus upon the practical, upon problem solving, upon what actaully works, there are no limits to what can be achieved.  Or so James proposed. 

It was with this in mind that James saw the value of war.  The state of war resulted in a mobilized society, focused upon victory over whatever opposed it.  He introduced the idea of the “moral equivalent of war”.  The thesis was that no social problem, no societal inadequacy could remain unsolved or unattended to if society were able to organise itself to focus upon solving the problem, as happens in a state of war.  Hence the “moral equivalent of war”. 

What James wanted was a way to figure out how to have war without war, to mobilize and galvanize people to drop their petty concerns and interests as if they were threatened by an outside foe.  In other words, pragmatists care about what works, and war works.  It works at getting people to shut up and listen, to follow orders, to make sacrifices and work together.  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.48.]

The chain of mental association runs thus: all problems can be solved if we apply ourselves, without blinkers, to finding the solutions; a martial climate makes society draw together to focus upon problems with a view to overcoming them; the United States should be a perpetually mobilized quasi-military society, where personal and individual interests attenuate in favour of the big, shared problems the nation faces.  Start to sound familiar?

But there is an inevitable corollary:

More importantly, war legitimizes vast expansions of the state. Now if only we good and decent people can figure out a way to scare, enrage, or otherwise work up the people the way war does, we could really make something out of this country!  (Ibid.)

It did not take long before liberals (aka progressives) in the United States began to join together the benefits of literal war (as in the shooting and killing kind) and the metaphorical moral equivalent.  Literal war actually mobilized society and got them organised around government efforts in a unique way.  War resulted in a Great Leap Forward, regardless of the actual outcome of battle, because the people were mobilized, and a mobilized people could be persuaded to lay aside their personal pre-occupations in favour of the greater good.  And if they resisted persuasion, re-education in the form of hectoring politicians awaited them.  This is what Dewey called the “social possibilities of war”. 

He complained that opponents of entering World War I failed to recognize the “immense impetus to reorganization afforded by this war” and implored them not to let the crisis go to waste.  (Ibid., p.50.)

Progressives in general believe that the US did not really come out of the Great Depression until World War II.  This war was a boon to the economy, with the war effort and the vast expansion of government spending it entailed causing the economy to grow for the first time in over a decade.  Some progressives in the United States have openly called for some kind of military war to wage war upon poverty within the United States.  Paul Krugman is an apostle of such a gospel:

Paul Krugman, America’s foremost exponent of Keynesian economics, is constantly invoking  war or the threat of war as an economic boon.  “If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat, and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in eighteen months,” he said on CNN.  “And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistaken, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better—“
At this point Harvard economist Ken Rogoff interrupted.  “We need Orson Welles, is what you’re saying.”  To which Krugman responded, “There was a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace.  Well, this time we don’t need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus.”  (Ibid., p.51f)

Consider, now, President Obama’s inauguration panegyric this week.  Notice how bellicose the tone, how martial the metaphors.  Americans need to lay aside their own petty differences and come together to fight the common foe: the threats against homosexual marriage,  of global warming, of unequal pay for equal work, of whatever.  His speech was a classic call to metaphorical arms:

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

This is hackneyed progressive fodder.  Crises are aplenty; coming together to find solutions is the way forward; we must join together to fight these great battles of our time.  The sub-text is the never ceasing need for an ever expanding government to plan, to organize, marshall, tax and spend–to enable victory.

For the past sixty years progressives (both Democrats and Republicans) have predominantly controlled the US government.  Their control has led to an incessant militarization of America–a bellicosity involving actual and metaphorical warfare.  We can foresee no end until the United States collapses under the weight of its own public and private debt. 

How great the desolation of Smaug, that Dragon of old, who inflames the hearts and minds of men with fools gold–with the narcissistic adoration of Man.  On that pile of pseudo-gold, Smaug rests in peace.  He has done his work.  He has achieved his goal.  Our collapse, our calamities, our judgement he finds diverting and entertaining. 

He Who sits in the heavens watches, weighs, and goes forth to wage war upon the Dragon and his followers.  Our only hope is to repent–all of us–of our arrogance, our pride, our vainglory, our Unbelief and return to Him, our only God and Saviour, before it is too late. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

But America Isn’t Jesus 

Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 23 October 2012

The most apropos tweet concerning the debate last night came from John Piper: “Obama: America, the only indispensable nation. Romney: America, the hope of the earth. This does focus our prayers for them.” I want to get to that in a moment, but first let me just affirm the consensus that appears to be developing.

Romney is clearly husbanding a lead, and Obama was trying to catch up. Romney was acting like an incumbent, and Obama was acting like a challenger. Romney was happy to wait out the round in a clinch, and Obama wanted (and needed) a knock out blow that he didn’t get.
Both campaigns clearly know the way things have settled out, and are playing in the same game. At the end of September, the RNC had an 18 to 1 cash advantage over the DNC. I believe that things are in a desperate way for Obama, and he now knows it. He avoided knowing it for so long because he lives inside the bubble that is the leftist media. The whole thing is an example of what Glenn Reynolds calls a “preference cascade,” and which I encourage you to follow up on here.

But, that said, back to Piper’s observation. Both Obama and Romney are clearly civic idolaters — with the one significant difference between them appearing to be that Romney really believes it. Obama is willing to mouth the civic pieties during a campaign, but his actual idols are elsewhere. And so how did we get to the place where Christians prefer the idolater who actually believes in Baal?

Of course, I don’t want to be hyper. If a candidate says that he believes that America is basically a good and decent nation, who would want him to be corrected by some over-scrupulous Christian? “My friend, no one is good but God alone.”

But what we are seeing in these avowals really is religious in nature. One sees how it all works of course, but there is only one problem. America isn’t Jesus.

Disappointment

The One Indispensable Nation

The Commentariat is reported to be deeply disappointed by the Arab Spring.  Those poor Arab people have misunderstood our good intentions and our help in throwing out the bad guys.  But since this is just a misunderstanding, we will work harder at clarifying our intentions and good motives.  We will win them over in the end. 

But the Arab Spring has come and gone.  We are now in a fierce hot summer storm of riots protesting against the West in general and the US in particular all across the Muslim world. 

Firstly, let’s just note the naive foolishness of the “useful idiots” in the West who actually believed that the Arab Spring would produce Muslims who would think like Western secular post-Christian human rights idealists.  This from the Reuters wire:

Still, the “Arab Spring” appears not to have made as many friends for America as Americans might have hoped. The very countries in which Washington helped facilitate popular-backed regime change last year – Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen – are seeing some of the greatest anti-West backlash.

The young pro-democracy activists who leapt to the fore in 2011, Washington now believes, have relatively little clout. That leaves U.S and European officials having to deal with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.  There is concern that regional governments such as Egypt might now be playing a “double game”, saying one thing to the U.S. while indulging in more anti-Western rhetoric at home.

You don’t say.  What is it about democracy that blinds the minds of Western elites so darkly?  After all when nearly 80 percent of Egyptians think that people who convert from Islam to Christianity ought to be executed, why would the institutionalisation of that world-view in the new Egyptian government seem unexpected and strange?  Surely moving to democracy would have made it inevitable.

(The Pew Research organisation has found the following in Egypt:

ON TRADITIONAL MUSLIM PRACTICES
— Should men and women be segregated in the workplace? 54 percent said “yes” and 44 percent “no.”
— Should adulterers be stoned? 82 percent said “yes.”
— Should apostates from Islam face the death penalty? 84 percent said “yes.”
— Should thieves be flogged or have their hands cut off? 77 percent said “yes.”)

Apparently it is coming as a bit of a surprise that the US is finding that democratically elected Islamic governments have less flexibility and “reasonableness”  than when autocrats ruled. 

Rachel Kleinfeld, CEO and co-founder of the Truman National Security Project, a body often cited by the Obama campaign on foreign policy, said the new political leadership often had less flexibility than the dictators before them.

You don’t say.  We didn’t see that coming.

For the record, we are firmly opposed to one nation telling another nation what to do, let alone trying to force them to do it. In that regard New Zealand is forced into a far more sensible non-aligned position.  As a tiny nation we cannot afford to offend other countries.  For a while NZ internationalists looked to the UN as a way for us to push other nations around.  But that has long since gone the way of the dodo.  Reality has set in–at least for the moment–although we do not doubt that in time another government will arise attempting to resurrect the socialist international ideal and the UN will again be seen as our secret weapon to achieve the transformation. 

But the US can afford to interfere in the affairs of other nations–although this ability is rapidly ebbing as the debt mountain rises.  It also has the military power to execute its interference.  That means the rest of the non-aligned world starts from a position of wariness at best, fear and loathing at worst towards it.  The best thing–the most constructive thing–the US could do is itself become non-aligned.  Treat all nations with courtesy and respect, yet carry a big stick to thump anyone or anything who attacks US territory or citizens. 

There are two reasons why the US will not adopt this more just and reasonable position.  The first is the capture of the US government by vested commercial interests that look to the US government to blur  national and commercial interests making them one.  Campaign contributions flow accordingly.  Vested commercial interests make the government captive.  The second is the brazen idolatrous belief that the US is the world’s redeemer; its role or manifest destiny is to lead other nations and peoples to a better place.  Both of these combine to goad the US bull into the ring where it thrashes round madly at global injustice and violations of human rights.

This is the role Obama sees for the US.  It is what the Republicans see for the US.  The only debate is over tactics–and that’s a small matter.

While many Americans would like nothing more than to turn their backs on the region (of the Middle East), Obama made clear this week he does not see that as an option: “The one thing we can’t do is withdraw from the region,” he said. “The United States continues to be the one indispensable nation.”

The One who leads the One Indispensable Nation.  

 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Obama’s Red Rubber Nose 

Political Dualism – Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 17 September 2012

I want to begin by acknowledging what all right-minded observers ought to know by now, which is that Obama’s foreign policy approach is a clownfest. And if that is the case, and it is, his Middle East bureau would be the red rubber nose.

It is as if somebody decided to take a mash-up of a Tom Wolfe novel and a Walker Percy novel, get a gifted cartoonist from Marvel or DC, get him on drugs, and then ask him to draw a riveting story of a celebrity president who goes to Vegas in the middle of a Mediterranean meltdown.

In other words, if someone wanted to convince me that the Obama administration is right at the apex of a clueless wickedness, it wouldn’t take much convincing. I am pretty much there.

On top of that, it has occurred to me that I have a vested interest in these proceedings. As the author of a book that was burned in Jakarta, as the result of this same kind of blind bigotry, it occurs to me to me that if the Obama administration were ever in need of perp walk photos of me, in order to appease the unappeasable, he would go right ahead and do it anyway. The issue would not be right and wrong. The issue would be what he needed at the moment.

But . . .

Last Friday, Paul Ryan slammed Obama’s foreign policy. That’s fine. Slam away. We need to be delivered from this serene apotheosis of idiocy. I get that part.

But . . .

A friend put me on to this snippet from Ryan’s speech.

“In the days ahead, and in the years ahead, American foreign policy needs moral clarity and firmness of purpose. Only by the confident exercise of American influence are evil and violence overcome. That is how we keep problems from becoming crises. That is what keeps the peace. And that is what we will have in a Romney-Ryan administration.”

The money quote is italicized by me, and I should begin my discussion of how appalling it is by acknowledging (in the abstract) that there could be an innocent construction of these words, one with the needed caveats built in. It is possible (on paper) that this is not a reference to the doctrine of American exceptionalism, and it simply an acknowledgement of what must be done tactically with the current pieces that are still on the chessboard. Only by the confident exercise of the black knight will the white pieces be overcome, so that we can start the next game.

But I don’t think so. The language of those who want to project American power abroad (and not by “leading from behind” or by other means of “soft power”) is language that has consistently been messianic. The things that might go without saying in a more righteous generation do not go without saying in ours. America is not the Savior; America is one of the nations of men that must be saved. This kind of language is how political idolatries take root.

Don’t get me wrong. I think we should protect our embassies, and I think that our Marines should have actual ammo, and I think that mobs can smell weakness, and I think that what has happened over the course of the last few weeks has been the total collapse of Obama’s Cairo speech of a few years back. Moreover, I agree with Ryan that evil and violence should be overcome, and that moral clarity is necessary in order to project that kind of strength.

But moral clarity begins with the recognition that you are not Jesus. Anything else brings in moral obtuseness and the very opposite of “firmness of purpose.” When mortal men set themselves up as the lords of earth, things can go swell for a time. When the European powers, at the height of their colonial mojo, walked into the Middle East and drew a bunch of lines on the map that seemed like a good idea at the time, politicians could point at what they had done with pride a few years later, and say that their wisdom was vindicated. The lines were still there. But here we are, a century later, with what might be called an Intractable Problem. Since the men who did it are all dead and gone, we can’t vote them out of office.

This is how the gods always fail. They have to fail, and they will do nothing but fail. This is by no stretch of the imagination a sympathetic nod to Obama. Obama is Dagon with the head off. Obama is the crumbling idol. Teddy Roosevelt was the guy with the can and brush when the idol was fresh as new paint.
So the need of the hour is to repent of the hubris that got us here, and not to point with pride to the days when the idol was not quite so teetery.

Blessing or Curse?

Patriotism and Ungodliness

Samuel Johnson once famously proclaimed, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”.  He had a point.  For the Christian patriotism ought always be written in lower case.  There is a form of patriotism which honours God.  There is also a patriotism which is a cursed idolatry and angers the Almighty.  How can we distinguish?

Love of one’s country always must be a subset of one’s love for God, for His creation, and for His providential care and provision of His image bearers and other creatures.  We love our parents because it is commanded by God Himself: they have provided for us, protected us, and taken care of us.  Consequently we return love and affection and care for them, even in difficult times, out of love for God.

Love of nation is similar.

Letter From America

Fleeting Glimpses of Harsh Truth

When governments arrogate to themselves powers and responsibilities not bestowed upon them by Almighty God, disaster is around the corner.  Since in our generation states in the West have arrogated to themselves powers upon powers, and dominions upon dominions calamity draws near.  Those who sow to the wind reap the whirlwind.

Every so often in frustration over the perpetual failures and contingent evils produces discouraged individuals who run up the white flag and call for capitulation.  In such brief moments, truth in its awful clarity shines through.  But then the clouds quickly shut it out.  Here is Victor Davis Hanson’s Letter From America which represents for a brief moment just such an awful clarity.

We Give Up

Victor Davis Hanson
March 8, 2012.
National Review Online

Americans — left, right, Democrats, and Republicans — are all sick of thankless nation-building in the Middle East. Yet democratization was not our first choice, but rather a last resort after other methods failed. 

The United States long ago supplied Afghan insurgents, who expelled the Soviets after a decade of fighting. Then we left. The country descended into even worse medievalism under the Taliban. So after removing the Taliban, who had hosted the perpetrators of 9/11, we promised in 2001 to stay on.

We won the first Gulf War in 1991. Then most of our forces left the region. The result was the mass murder of the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites, twelve years of no-fly zones, and a failed oil-for-food embargo of Saddam’s Iraq. So after removing Saddam in 2003, we tried to leave behind something better.

In the last ten years, the United States has spent more than $1 trillion, and thousands of American lives have been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both places seem far better off than they were before American intervention — at least for a while longer.

Yet the Iraqis now bear Americans little good will. They seem friendlier to Iran and Syria than to their liberators. In Afghanistan, riots continue over the mistaken burning of some defaced Korans, despite serial American apologies.

How about the option of bombing the bad guys and then just staying clear? We just did that to the terrorist-friendly Gaddafi dictatorship in Libya. But now that Gaddafi is gone, there is chaos. Islamic gangs torture and execute black Africans who supported the deposed regime, according to press reports. British World War II cemeteries that were honored during 70 years of Libyan kings and dictators could not survive six months of a “free” Libya. In Benghazi, gangs just ransacked and defaced the monuments of the British war dead.

Not having boots on the ground may ensure that endless chaos will consume the hope of a calm post-Gaddafi Libya. That was also true of Somalia and Lebanon after American troops were attacked and abruptly left.

How about another option: aid and words of encouragement only? We have urged Egyptian reform, under both George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. When protesters forced the removal of dictator Hosni Mubarak, the United States approved. It even appears likely that we will keep sending Egypt annual subsidies of more than $1.5 billion — as we have for more than 30 years. Yet anti-American Islamists are now the dominant force in Egyptian politics. American aid workers were recently arrested and threatened with trial by new Egyptian reformers.

Still another American choice would be not to nation-build, bomb, or even to get near a Middle Eastern country — as we seem to be doing with Iran and Syria. The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since the shah left in 1979. Until the Obama administration desperately tried to reestablish contacts with the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria by appointing a new ambassador, there had been nearly six years of estrangement.

Yet Iran is nearing its goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon both to threaten Israel and to bully other oil-exporting regimes of the Persian Gulf. The Syrian government is now butchering thousands of its own citizens with impunity.

A final option would be to return to the old policy of reestablishing friendly relationships with Middle East dictatorships regardless of their internal politics — and then keeping mum about their excesses. We did that with Pakistan, which has both received billions in U.S. aid and produced a nuclear bomb. Yet it is hard to imagine a more anti-American country than nuclear Pakistan, without which the Taliban could not kill Americans so easily in Afghanistan.

The United States once saved the Kuwaiti regime after it was swallowed up by Saddam Hussein. We have enjoyed strong ties with the Saudi monarchy as well. Neither country seems especially friendly to the U.S. It is still a crime to publicly practice Christianity in Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the 19 mass-murdering hijackers of 9/11 were Saudis. Oil in the Middle East costs less than $5 a barrel to produce; it now sells for over $100, largely because of the policies of our allies and OPEC members.

Let us review the various American policy options for the Middle East over the last few decades. Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better. Propping up dictators with military aid is both odious and counterproductive. Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan.
What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East — both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the just-released The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Clouds of Nuance and Ineptitude

Culture and Politics – Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 29 February 2012

I have been asked about my passing comment the other day that I thought military action in Afghanistan was justified, and probably in Iraq. This was coupled with my observations on the constitutional procedures for going to war — Congress should declare war. Those who believe all the DC-lawyer-talk need to be asked what circumstances would have to pertain in order for Congress to declare war. Surely that provision of the Constitution means something. What does it mean nowadays? What does it mean in the 21st century? What countries would we have to declare war on before commencing hostilities? And why them, and not Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya?

Thus it is that I said we have had military actions that could have been justly pursued, but they weren’t because the rule of constitutional law was by-passed.

But then  was asked about the justification for the fighting itself, not the constitutional procedures. My questioner said that he was assuming that I agreed that military action on our part was only justified in cases of self-defense. Close, and almost.
I would say that we should only use our military when our lawful national interest is at stake. Excluded by this would be a spirit of do-goodism, messianism, or multicultural globalism.
In previous posts I have distinguished jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The former has to do with the criteria for entering a just war, and the latter has to do with the criteria for conducting a just war. The latter is the direct concern of military men, the ones fulfilling the mission. The former is the concern of those making the decision to go to war.

Now if a foot soldier knows for a fact that the jus ad bellum criteria being appealed was a lie (as when a soldier is ordered to participate in a false flag attack), then he must resist, refuse to fight. But when he does not know, which is most of the time, he is not responsible to be satisfied on the point before he goes into action. When we think that he needs to have it all laid out to him beforehand, that is our individualism talking, and not our zeal for just war. The need for a criteria for just decision making lies with those who will be making the decisions. If they are being evil, and we have no way of knowing, they will answer to God.
That said, the Taliban in Afghanistan was giving a haven to those responsible for the 911 attacks, and so I believe that it was in the lawful self-interest of the United States to respond militarily. All the nation-building since then is another matter. That is a separate issue, and is not necessarily justified by the lawful national interests of the United States. But the initial action certainly was.

Before getting to Iraq, I need to say something about the rhetorical ineptitude of our leaders. They want us to simultaneously believe that the terrorists can’t really lay a glove on us and that we need to be constantly alert, maintaining a war footing. They want to fight a sectarian faith, and they want to maintain a staunch commitment to multi-culturalism as they do. They wanted us to believe the intelligence about all the WMD in Iraq, and then refused to tell us about the WMD they in fact found there. Consequently, when distrust of “the official line” grows, they have no one to blame but themselves. When the bugle blows indistinctly, nobody prepares for battle.

The reason I would be willing to give qualified support to the rationale for fighting in Iraq is because of bits and pieces I have picked up here and there, from various writers and a friend with personal experience there. I don’t believe a coherent case was made to the American people for this action, but I believe that it is probable that such a case could have been made. I hold this one loosely, in the palm of my hand. I am one of those individuals who has not had the ultimate security briefing, and so it is certainly possible that I might be all wet.

I said a moment ago that the rank and file do not need to get that ultimate security briefing before they agree to go into a fight. At the same time, men being the kind of creatures they are, enough of the criteria that the decision makers used should be made public in order to inspire confidence. You don’t want your armed forces functioning as blind mercenaries. They need to believe in the justice of their cause, at least if they are the kind of men you want protecting you.

One of the reasons Ron Paul has so much traction on this issue is that, whether you agree or disagree with him, his position is clear. If you want to fight a just war in the Middle East, you can’t answer him with clouds of nuance and ineptitude. And that, so far, is exactly what we have been trying to do.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

The United Methodist Camp Counselor Approach to Foreign Policy

Culture and Politics – Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Here are just a few collected observations about U.S. foreign policy and war, particularly war in the Middle East.

We have no business toppling any foreign regime and replacing it with another without a formal declaration of war from Congress. It may be replied (for it usually is) that a regiment of constitutional lawyers in D.C. has determined that this is not necessary anymore in these modern times, and all that is necessary is for Congress to “authorize” the action. This dodge, for that is what it is, is simply a means of perpetuating congressional irresponsibility, an evil we really ought not to be perpetuating. Under cover of this evasive little move, our feckless representatives can vote for military action while reserving for themselves the right to wheel on the president the moment anything goes wrong with the war.

This means that the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were procedurally out of order, whatever else they may have been.

I happen to believe that military action (had the constitutional procedures been followed) were justified in Afghanistan, and probably Iraq. I do not believe this  was true about Libya (the Libya of last year). I do believe Reagan’s attack on Libya was justified, with regard to substance. I also believe that the “one strike, we’re warning you” approach that Reagan took did not require a declaration of war.

I also believe that we could have intelligence operatives working on the ground in places like today’s Syria, or the Iran of a couple years ago, and could do this apart from a declaration of war. We could sell or give arms and provisions apart from such a declaration. Depending on the level of our involvement, there needs to be a commensurate level of congressional accountability.

We have somehow come to believe that if we defeat a nation in war, then we have a responsibility to rebuild that nation afterwards, and then give it back to them, bigger and shinier than it was. This is where the messianic aspect of American foreign policy comes into full view. It is bumbling hubris. It is conceited uplift. It is America wanting to fix everybody and everything with the chirrupy enthusiasm of a 23-year-old United Methodist camp counselor.

The central problem with our modern attempts at nation-building is that we don’t know what it takes to build a nation. As is, haven’t a clue. This self-evident datum can be seen on display in the current melt-down of our Afghan situation. Bombs and aid don’t do anything to the worldview of the people, and it is the worldview of the people that build a culture and a nation. Our pathetic faith in “elections” is seen on display again and again. It turns out that a free election in Gaza, or in Egypt, will get decidedly different results than that same election process would in Houston or Cleveland. Surprise! Whatever shall we do? Hold another election! Keep trying! Too many exclamation points!

While we are discussing the region, the nation of Israel has every right to protect itself, and ought to do so. The United States should not undertake to do Israel’s work on her behalf. But what we should do, if there is to be a community of nations at all, is staunchly defend Israel’s right to defend herself as necessary. That means that we tell Israel beforehand that we will denounce and veto every attempt at the United Nations to condemn Israel’s actions. And we should let Israel do what Israel needs to do. If someone says that unless we participate this will only set back Iran’s nuclear program for two years, that’s all right. Israel can defend herself again two years from now — if we protect her back.

What I am saying here is that we should not participate militarily in an attack on Iran. If it became necessary for us to attack, then the president should present the facts of the case to Congress and ask them for a declaration of war.

When the targets of our military action do not rise to the level of sovereign nations — e.g. Somali pirates, renegade terrorists, Taliban warlords — the president should request letters of marque and reprisal, and then do what has to be done.

So, to cash this out. I am largely with Ron Paul on what is constitutionally required to go to war. I believe he is right. I believe he is wrong about what is causing conflict in the Middle East, and I believe he radically misjudges the threat posed by Islamic radicals. I believe the neo-con nation-builders are right about the nature of the threat posed in that current destabilized situation, but are wrong about everything else.

This brings me to the regrettable but needed conclusion that I am right about these things. I tried coming to a different conclusion, but it kept not working out.

Another Western Utopia Unfolds

The Demons Are Coming Back

Libya is no longer in the headlines.  It’s all over, bar the torture, the killing, the destruction of human life.  C’est la vie.  Where is the clamour for helping Libyans that once stridently and passionately circled the globe?  Where are Hillary Clinton or John McCain or President Obama when you need them?  Actually we don’t need them–and we never have.

What lies before us is another testimony to the folly and stupidity and hubris and idolatry of the West.  Libya is yet another piece of damning evidence indicting the craven humanism of the West and its perverted notion of secular human rights.

When the West takes upon itself the arrogation of rights to intervene and go to war to oust dictators, what arises from the rubble and detritus of war is often ten times worse. 

We are seeing reports start to trickle through on what is presently “going down” in Libya.
  According to Western utopianism, when dictator Ghadaffi was overthrown the “free people” of Libya were going to transform that country into a Western-style democracy, wherein all their women would suddenly deck out in mini-skirts and abortifacient drugs would be feely available, funded by the state’s oil revenues.  Arabia was in the season of spring.  Wasn’t it exciting!  It was unbelievable what was happening in the Arab world.  First Morocco, then Egypt, now Libya, soon to come would be Syria. Democracies sprouting up everywhere. The chattering classes chattered.  The Commentariat commented. 

Welcome to the new, democratic republic of Libya.

Libyan militias ‘out of control,’ Amnesty International says

By the CNN Wire Staff

February 16, 2012 — Updated 0228 GMT (1028 HKT)

Libyan militia members man a checkpoint in the capital, Tripoli, in December.

(CNN) — Armed militias in Libya are committing human rights abuses with impunity, threatening to destabilize the country and hindering its efforts to rebuild, Amnesty International said Thursday.  Militias have tortured detainees, targeted migrants and displaced entire communities in revenge attacks, according to a report the organization released a year after the start of popular uprisings that eventually ended Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year rule.

“Hundreds of armed militias, widely hailed in Libya as heroes for their role in toppling the former regime, are largely out of control,” the report says.  Detainees at 10 facilities used by militia in central and western Libya told representatives from Amnesty International this year that they had been tortured or abused. Several detainees said they confessed to crimes they had not committed in order to stop the torture, Amnesty International said.

At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September, the human rights organization said, adding that authorities have not effectively investigated the torture allegations.

Western elites have no concept of limited, restrained civil government.  They have no idea of civil government  under the dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The notion that the state must first of all be subject to Christ, before the people is abhorrent to them.  Secular civil governments answer only to themselves and their own secular notions of justice, liberty, and human rights.  But their beliefs are utterly foreign to most other human beings on the planet.

Governments throughout the West believe in the universal intrinsic moral goodness of all humanity.  Evil is extrinsic and circumstantial.  Change the circumstances, breaking the power of  (the current) evil and voila, human goodness will break out like–well, Spring.  In this deeply anti-Christian theology, the West’s military forces become false messianic deliverers and saviours.  Their military forces everywhere around the globe, blowing up the extrinsic evil-du-jour, then, lo and behold, sweet purity will burst forth from the pores of downtrodden people.

The reality is far different.  Because evil is intrinsic to the heart of every human being (“I am evil, born in sin”, lamented King David–speaking not just for himself, but for every human being) breaking down oppressive governments allows lawlessness to spew forth.  It is exactly as our Lord warned: cast out the demon, leaving the house vacant and multitudes of demons will return to take up residence. 

When will they ever learn–those secular, effete, Unbelieving elites of the post-Christian West?  Never–until we–the people–turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and bow our knees to Him.  Then, having submitted ourselves to Him, we can rise up and cast out the secular humanist demons, replacing them with wise and godly rulers who believe with deep conviction that the government which governs least–out of fear of Christ the Lord– governs best

Afghanistan Stocktake

So, How’s It Working Out, Then?

Readers of this blog will know that we oppose the war in Afghanistan as an ill-considered utopian debacle, without ethical foundation.

To say this is not to deny the courage or skill or tenacity or application of the combatants on both sides.  But it is to say that whilst the US fight in Afghanistan began as a defensive invasion to defend the US against Al Qaeda–a perfectly legitimate moral and just action–it soon morphed into “nation building”, which is unethical and imperialistic.  It is a classic example of the adage that little wars grow into big wars and big wars suck out all your blood. 

But, we really could not expect anything else, given the US’s maniacal utopian vision of bestowing the West’s peculiar, secular “human rights” doctrine on the rest of humanity.
  And if bestowal won’t work, then there is always the barrel of a gun.  But sooner or later, no matter how big one’s military might, resources dry up, expenses mount, and people become war weary.  Consequently, there is just no way that Obama and Clinton are going to go to war in Syria–the current hotspot–to impose western human rights utopianism on that nation, because as the headline in Drudge brazenly put it: “You can’t overthrow them all.”   The US has gone a bridge too far. 

The spurious messianic ideology is as fervently held as ever of course.  It’s just that the US is exhausted, having been fighting continually somewhere in the world ever since the Vietnam War.  Making “the world safe for democracy” is a big task.  Acting as the world’s Messiah is a huge burden that would bring any nation to its knees eventually. 

In Afghanistan it is becoming more clear by the day that the US has lost, not only the will to fight, but the war itself.  It will depart that country only to see it return to precisely the same country it was before the US began its arrogant “nation building”.  This from The Guardian:

The civilian death toll for the war in Afghanistan reached a record high last year with 3,021 deaths, according to the United Nations.  The number killed rose by 8% last year – the fifth consecutive rise – with a further 4,507 civilians wounded, the UN report said. Many were killed by roadside bombs or in suicide attacks, with Taliban-affiliated militants responsible for three-quarters of the deaths.

The number of deaths caused by suicide bombings jumped to 450, an 80% increase over the previous year, even though the number of suicide attacks remained about the same.  “A decade after the war began, the human cost of it is still rising,” said Georgette Gagnon, director for human rights for the UN mission in Afghanistan.  The single deadliest suicide attack since 2008 occurred on 6 December, when a bomber detonated his explosives-filled vest at the entrance of a mosque in Kabul, killing 56 worshippers during the Shia Muslim rituals of Ashoura.  Roadside bombs remain the biggest killer of civilians. The homemade explosives – which can be triggered by a footstep or a vehicle and are often rigged with enough explosives to destroy a tank – killed 967 people in 2011, nearly a third of the total.

The Pashtun tribesmen and the Taliban are fighting for their home valley and the way of life they have known for centuries.  To them it represents who they are; their raison d’etre.   When the US leaves Afghanistan it will immediately revert to what it was before their arrival–yet likely worse.  No amount of scathing criticism of the world-view of Pashtun tribespeople, their culture, their degradation, their cruelty, their oppression of women–all of it justified–will change the outcome.  The fact is inescapable–but rarely acknowledged: you cannot change human hearts and human culture with the barrel of a gun.  What you can do with the gun, however, is to enrage a people to the point of magnificent resentment so that the hold of their culture over their hearts and minds becomes stronger than ever. 

The foolish and unjust actions of the West in Afghanistan have just served to make the primitive culture of Afghanistan tribesmen many times more powerful a stronghold over hearts and minds than it was in the first place.  Western human rights utopianism has a lot to answer for.  But we, in the West, deserve it.  Anyone with half an education in the rudiments of history and human nature could see it coming ten miles off. 

A Speck of Dust

Will 2012 Represent a Sea Change?

Further to our piece entitled “Foolish Predictions” in which we had the temerity to suggest that President Obama and the Democrats will be toast in 2012 we came across this article which purports that the Democratic Party has now lost the centre. 

What many folks outside the US don’t realise is that unlike most other Western democracies there are three dominant “parties” in the US electorate: Republicans, Democrats and Independents.  So, Republicans we know, Democrats we know, but who are the Independents?
  They are the elephant in the proverbial room.  The Independents are people who do not align themselves with either Republican or Democrat–and they represent a larger group of voters than registered/self-identified Republicans or Democrats respectively.  Often the Independents are said to represent the political centre. 

As the Independents go, so does the country come election time.   And here is where the Independents are now: 

In mid-2005, as disaffection with the Bush administration and the Republican Party was gathering momentum, the Pew Research Center asked American to place themselves and the political parties on a standard left-right ideological continuum. At that time, average voters saw themselves as just right of center and equidistant from the two political parties. Independents considered themselves twice as far away from the Republican Party as from the Democrats, presaging their sharp shift toward the Democrats in the 2006 mid-term election.

In August of this year, Pew posed a very similar question (note to survey wonks: Pew used a five-point scale, versus six in 2005), but the results were very different. Although average voters continue to see themselves as just right of center, they now place themselves twice as far away from the Democratic Party as from the Republicans. In addition, Independents now see themselves as significantly closer to the Republican Party, reversing their perceptions of six years ago.

There’s another difference as well. In 2005, Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of their own parties dovetailed with the perceptions of the electorate as a whole. Today, while voters as a whole agree with Republicans’ evaluation of their party as conservative, they disagree with Democrats, who on average see their party as moderate rather than liberal. So when Independents, who see themselves as modestly right of center, say that Democrats are too liberal, average Democrats can’t imagine what they’re talking about.

Democrats see themselves as moderate, sensible, reasonable middle-of-the-road types.  The Independents now see Democrats as extreme and even fringe left.  No doubt President Obama, who has carried the Democratic brand, bears a great deal of responsibility for this shift in perception. 

William Galston, who writes the above quoted article, draws this conclusion:

Granted, ideology isn’t everything. Political scientists have long observed that Americans are more liberal on particulars than they are in general—ideologically conservative but operationally liberal. (Surveys have shown majority support for most individual elements of the president’s jobs and budget packages.) And the Republicans could undermine their chances by nominating a presidential candidate who is simply too hard-edged conservative for moderates and Independents to stomach.

In the face of widespread skepticism and disillusion, it will be an uphill battle for Democrats to persuade key voting blocks that government can really make their lives better. But if they fail, the public will continue to equate public spending with waste, the anti-government message will continue to resonate, and Democrats will be in dire straits when heading into what is shaping up as a pivotal election.

Of course, this is typical Democratic stuff.  If we are going to have a Republican win, then for goodness sake let’s hope that the President will be a big-government Republican.  In that case we could argue about particulars and policies, but we would all be on the same chess board.  That would be a Republican that we could live with.

So, the real questions and issues emerge.  It seems certain that President Obama will lose the presidency to a Republican.  It seems certain that the Republicans will strengthen their hold on the House and win a majority in the Senate. The real question is how they will win.  Will small-government conservatism win the day?  Will Independents agree that small-government conservatism is common sense?  Will they come to the view that devolution to the states on a whole raft of issues, and dis-assembling the Federal Government as much as possible, whilst getting Federal spending under control is sound, prudent common sense. 

If small-government Republicans and the Independents join hands, and if the new government actually carries out the fundamental restructuring of the Republic which is implied in small-government ideology,  then Democrats will be forced to adopt a me-too ideological shift to the right.  Obama and the big-government centralists will seem like a bad dream. 

There are a lot of  big “ifs” in there.  But if correct the US may be on the cusp of a generational change in politics and political ideology.  We will see. 

Now, if only we could see the US repent of its “Exceptionalist” idolatry.  Recently our stomach disemobogued once again hearing candidate Romney portentously declare in a recent debate that the “US is the hope of the entire world”.  The terribly sad and angering thing is that no-one in the audience (predominantly Republican) objected–neither did any of the other presidential candidates, including those who are self-confessed Christians. 

Such statements as Romney’s can only provoke God to wrath.  Such statements ignorantly and blasphemously presume to replace the installed King of all kings with a stupid pathetic speck of dust or drop of water (Isaiah 40:15).  

Showing God a Thing or Two

We Can Get Out of This–No Drama, Mr Obama

The S&P credit rating downgrade of the United States of America demands our attention.  It is the first time in the history of credit ratings that the US has lost the Triple A standard.  Some are calling it momentous.  Others are arguing that it has been a long time coming and that it was inevitable.

Let’s try to get some perspective on the downgrade.