Douglas Wilson’s Letter from Moscow

The Problem of Tiffany Sugartoes

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 25, 2014

Scripture refers to that kind of ruler who frames “mischief with a law” (Ps. 94:20). Those who do this kind of thing are men who sit on thrones of iniquity, and God refuses His fellowship with any such thrones.

There are many ways to frame mischief with a law. Everyone grants that one example would be when a despot pillages all the poor peasants in order to fund his Belshazzarian kegger tomorrow night. That would be one example. That would be the big E on the eye chart.

But are there other examples of thieving mischief? While some established thieves are debauched, others are a bit more clever. If Suleiman the Magnificent takes 20K from me in order to beef up the personnel department of his seraglio, then that is both tacky and theft. But if Obama the Magnificent takes 20K from me in order to provide loan guarantees to Goldman Sachs, and they use it to provide a holiday bonus for a rising junior executive, who uses it on a weekend blowout in the Hamptons with a girl named Tiffany Sugartoes, then this is just as tacky, and just as much theft, but we can say that they cover their tracks better these days
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So let’s spend a bit of time distinguishing sins from crimes. When dealing with individuals, sins that ought not be crimes are either contained entirely within the person’s motives, or they are actual behaviors for which no scriptural case for attaching civil penalties can be made. An example of the former would be bitterness or lust. An example of the latter would be speaking rudely to someone in a crowded elevator.

A sin becomes a crime when we can make a scriptural case for attaching civil penalties to a particular behavior. Murder is a crime; hatred is a sin. Adultery is a crime; lust is a sin. With individuals, the distinction is relatively easy to make.

A ruler is not subject to the same applications of civil penalties, at least not in the same way. In a well-ordered biblical republic, it should be possible in principle to hold anyone accountable for their behavior, regardless of the office they hold. But even in a healthy society, bringing justice to bear in such cases is more challenging because rulers have supporters, and they often appoint their supporters to positions of influence over investigations of injustice. But enough about Eric Holder.

The “civil penalties” for rulers are not limited to the one process shared by all the citizens — indictment, trial, verdict, and so on. To whom much is given much is required. God holds rulers accountable by other means as well. He can do it by other means, such as natural disasters (1 Kings 18:17-19), military invasion (Dt. 28:48), a civil war (2 Sam. 15:10), or a coup (2 Kings 11:14). An average citizen can be punished for his crimes, and so can a ruler be.

But when it happens to a ruler, there is a good deal more mayhem.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

On Pirate Ship Governance

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 1, 2014

I have been arguing that Christians need to learn how to stand for liberty, but in order for this to happen they must first learn what it is. And when this happens, they will find themselves saying some outrageous things, like I am about to do.

Human rights — which everyone is automatically in favor of — are nonsensical and absurd unless we have a robust understanding of property rights. Property rights are human rights. In our age, we understand that human rights are a grand and glorious thing, but we are bewildered when it comes to the crucial matter of property. We are entirely in favor a birthday cakes, but are dubious and confused about the concept of cake batter.

First, some history. In 1772, the first statement by the colonial Committees of Correspondence was released. Samuel Adams is credited with being the primary force behind that statement, and it begins by itemizing the rights of the colonists as men. The first right was the right to life, the second was liberty, and the third was property. The echo we hear in the Declaration four years later is obvious. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness is therefore grounded in our ability to own property.

But how may a free people, whose rights of property are duly respected, fund the costs of government? We all agree that taxes are a necessity, so how may taxes be levied on a free people? The fundamental principle is that because property is an unalienable right, this means that property can only be released by the consent of the owner, either directly or by his representative in the legislature. This is why taxation without representation is tyranny. The property that the government acquires from a people without their consent is therefore theft.

The whole point of government is the protection and preservation of property. If we call life and liberty our car, property is the fuel pump.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Note that governments do not grant us these rights. Our rights are given by our Creator. Governments are created by the people in order to secure the rights we already have. Governments do not bestow rights upon anyone. Their sole duty is to recognize and protect them.

Now in order to have these rights granted to us by a Creator — follow me closely here — there has to be a Creator. One of the first steps in robbing us of our heritage of political liberty was spreading the insidious and morbid joke of Darwinism. Little bits of protoplasmic froth on the ocean of evolutionary development don’t have any rights to speak of.

Now when government becomes destructive of the central point, the telos of protecting our property, certain things follow from their destructiveness.

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

That’s a tall order, and a big responsibility. In subsequent installments, I am going to be making some very practical suggestions. But the first thing — and it is a very necessary first step — is to get our minds around what has happened to us. How is our current government funded? As Hillary Clinton once famously put it, it takes a pillage.There are many examples of this, but our staggering deficit is saddling our great grandchildren with a gargantuan debt, and our great grandchildren don’t have any representatives in Congress. They are being burdened with obligations they have not consented to. That means that our irresponsibility and prodigality are our instruments for enslaving them. Not only so, but some progressives among us have the immortal gall to say that we are doing what we are doing “for the children.”

We are currently living under a form of government that our Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent. We are told ad nauseam that we are a free people, while at the same time our administrative managers, our ruling elites, reserve to themselves the right to dictate to us pretty much anything that comes into their heads. They walk the corridors of power with the demeanor you might expect from such little gods.

When the colonists successfully faced down Parliament over the Stamp Act, and it was reluctantly  withdrawn, Parliament at the same time passed the Declaratory Act, which in effect said that while Parliament was rescinding the law, they were not rescinding the principle. Just so you know, “we reserve the right to be tyrannical at any time.”

In this context, the first lesson we have to master is the lesson of understanding what is happening to us. We cannot put any solutions into effect unless and until we understand the problem. The problem is arbitrary administrative government, which is quite a different thing than representative free government.

Obviously it is a sin to steal, and it is not a sin to be stolen from. The first part is flat prohibited in Scripture (Ex. 20:15; Eph. 4:28), and the second part is intuitively obvious. Better to be wronged than to do wrong. But when making this point that it is not a sin to be stolen from, we are talking about someone sneaking into your garage at two in the morning and taking your bicycle. It is not wrong to be wronged in this way.

Our current sin is found in the way we are being stolen from. When God prohibits stealing, this assumes the institution of private property. When God prohibits adultery, what is in the background? Unless there is such a thing as marriage, you cannot have adultery. Adultery is defined as violation of marriage vows. In the same manner, stealing is violation of someone’s right to remain in possession of their own property.

So the requirement here is to learn a little blunt force honesty with yourself. It is not a sin to write a big check to the government. It is not a sin to be stolen from. It is a sin to write that check, so that a couple dozen bureaucrats can go down and pee it into the Potomac, and you tell yourself that you are just “doing your share.” That is the sin of being delusional when God has required us to be clear-headed. It is a sin to believe that our government is anything other than a pirate ship of the thieves, by the thieves, and for the thieves. It is a sin to go on believing the lies when we have no good reason to.

In short, the first step for the Christian taxpayer is the same as what you find in addiction recovery groups. First you have to admit you have a problem.

Bad Taste

Failure Can Be the Better Outcome

Some things leave a long-lingering sour taste in the mouth.  Taste is variable, and not not everyone’s senses react similarly.  As the  old saying has it, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.  So, we do not expect that our fastidious dislike of  New Zealand pouring out cash to support  America’s Cup challenges and defences will be shared by everyone.

To be clear, we do not find it noisome when some large, successful corporates throw in millions upon millions of dollars to support campaigns or defences of this Rich Man’s Sport.  A corporate will make commercial decisions about the cost-benefits of advertising and brand exposure.  Ultimately they will decide whether the benefits justify the costs.  Eventually corporates will face the scrutiny not only of their respective boards of directors, but also, ultimately, their shareholders.

Two items hit the news yesterday.  Firstly, the New Zealand America’s Cup syndicate leader returned home to announce that time was running short and that unless substantial multi-million dollops of the green stuff were contributed in short order, Team New Zealand would be skewered.
  Secondly, Grant Dalton stated darkly that if we (that is, New Zealand) failed to persist in its “investment” it would be over for good.  The barriers to entry some time in the future were just too high.  

To be clear, the money the New Zealand government has contributed on our behalf has long since been used up.  Millions upon millions can disappear so quickly down the gurgler in such a sport.  Now, apparently its up to the corporates to re-visit their advertising budgets to see if they can bestow (er, invest) a bit more.  However, the bitter after-taste of tax payers having had their money so egregiously  “invested” in the first place lingers on.

Once again we are forced to confront a sad truth seemingly never learned by our politicians, or, more sadly, the voting public.  It is an oxymoron that governments can pick winners.  It seems that politicians cannot help themselves.  They have all these squillions of dollars burning holes in their fetid, cavernous pockets.  They cannot help themselves getting some of it out to bestow upon those non-government causes which politicians think are going to be good for us.

Then the rationalisations follow.  Supporting the country’s America’s Cup campaign will be good for global brand-building.  It will provide promotional opportunities for tonnes of Kiwi businesses.  It will put not just put butter, but Vegemite on the bread of the poorest amongst us.  It will bring squillions of tourists to New Zealand.  Imagine the febrile activity down at the Viaduct Harbour if we won, and had to defend the thing down here.  Party time.  Wow.  Having a punt at the Cup has got to be worth some taxpayers’ millions. 

The brutal reality is this: you (politicians) misused our money.  You wasted it.  You squandered it.  Instead of fulfilling the duties of a careful fiduciary, you have acted like corrupt boxing promoters. 

One reason we like the hard times is that governments are forced to restrain spending our money.  It helps prevent such bitter pills being produced in the first place, let alone swallowed.

To Grant Dalton’s dire warning that if “we” fail to raise sufficient money for the next tilt at the windmill “we” will never get another chance, our response is, firstly, “So what?”, followed by relief that maybe that lingering bitter taste will fade away for good. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

A Tishbite at the National Prayer Breakfast

Posted on Friday, October 18, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

 

I would like to follow up on my two previous posts found here and here with a few additional comments.
Political engagement is messy, and so welcome to planet earth. When actual political controversies are going on, they are . . . well, controversies. It takes backbone to get in there and fight. When you do that, people don’t like it.

When the controversies are over, one side won and memorials are built in honor of the victors. Sometimes the victors deserve the memorials and sometimes they don’t, but they always get them.

Now downstream, the Lord taught us that those most prone to appeal to the tombs of the prophets are the very same people who would have murdered those very prophets if given the opportunity.
Reformers are always troublemakers, making trouble in the present. And those most prone to say things like “never again” about the previous generation’s outrages are those most likely to institute the processes and procedures to land us in the same outrage again, or something very much like it. Think of the eugenics movement in the first part of the twentieth century, and all the horror that came from that. And then think of the most visible representative of that movement today — Planned Parenthood — and think also about which president speaks at their ghoulish events, calling down the blessing of God on them.

C.S. Lewis once commented that it was Owen Barfield who taught him to view the present as a “period.” At some point in the future, say, two hundred years from now, Christians will look back on our era, and they will say . . . what? They probably won’t be using the expression lamesauce then, but what they say will be some kind of synonym.

We live in an era when the third use of the law is almost entirely neglected, even by Reformed thinkers. So our descendents will consequently see an era characterized by superficiality, faux authenticity, economic ignorance, bloodguilt, narcissism, lust, and feelgood, affirmative action voting.

Now, having said this, please note that I am not urging everyone to vote Republican. I am simply observing what we may not do. We may not support a wicked throne, as evaluated by biblical law.

And as measured by biblical criteria, Obama is a wicked ruler. Abortion is my case in point, but there are numerous other issues that would make the same point. But even if this were the only issue, it would be sufficient. Manasseh supported causing infants to pass through the fire, and I don’t really care if he supported tight money or loose money at the Fed.

So if some Tishbite were invited out of the wilderness to speak at the next National Prayer Breakfast, it wouldn’t be pretty. And anyone who can’t see that doesn’t belong in the ministry.

The Blessings of Messy Government

Zealots and Revolutionaries

The separation of powers is central to limited government, and limited government is axiomatic for freedom.  The separation of powers divides the key functions of government, effectively balancing one off against the other.  A free press is often regarded as an informal, separate branch of  government (the “fourth estate”) in that it freely investigates and scrutinises all branches and powers of government, and informs the people of what those institutions of power, authority, and control are conspiring to do.

The separation of powers makes for messy government at times–well, actually, most of the time.  It means that things can’t get done–which is to say that the wills of the separated powers of government are often thwarted.  Either one branch of government is set against another, bringing stalemate, or the end outcome can be quite different from what some governmental powers intended.  Messiness is the price of freedom. 

But to the modern mind, government ineffectualness is an indicator of weakness.
  In Western societies where increasingly power is believed to be an essential attribute of government and where people look to their government more and more as their omnicompetent god,  frustration and impatience with messy, ineffectual government grows.

Messy, ineffectual government is a blessing.  It means that the potential damage of government power is limited.  The more effective a government is in having its way, the more powerful it is.  The less freedom its citizens consequently have.  The adage, “the government that governs least, governs best” holds true.  But increasingly, Western peoples regard messy government as a curse, a blasphemy against their established religion.  If government is one’s god, divine messiness and bumbling is unacceptable.

When can government get things done cleanly and effectively under such as system of separate powers?  When all the separate powers of government are aligned.  When does that occur?  Usually under one of two conditions.  The first is benign.  The separate powers of government become aligned and all push and pull in the same direction when there is a strong, even overwhelming, consensus amongst the citizens on a matter.  Rich and poor, black and white, male and female, intellectual and artisan all pretty much agree on the issue at hand and what needs to be done.  The judiciary, the executive, and the legislature eventually all become  aligned and in concert.

The second is not benign.  This occurs when the separate powers of government become aligned under an emergency, a clear and present danger to all.  Such times usually mean that executive branch is granted emergency powers.  These powers inevitably mean exploding governmental intrusion over citizens: the draft, internment of suspect ethnic groups, involuntary labour camps, censorship of the press, war without legal warrant, perpetual detainment without trial, spying on citizens, lying to the public–all of these we have seen in our recent history.

But apart from these two situations, government, under the Christian doctrine of the separation of powers (prudently required by mankind’s natural limitations and its nascent wickedness) government remains a messy, bumbling, business.  This leaves those who regard government as the power that puts all things right annoyed and frustrated.  And that’s when people everywhere start to take short cuts and game the system, trying to push the balances of power in their preferred direction. 

Take the recent Zimmerman trial.  Whilst it took place under the Floridian judicial system, individuals and powers throughout the country were at work trying to game the system to deliver a certain outcome–which they perceived to be in the “national interest”.  John Fund, writing in National Review, exposes just how far these ideologues, “civil rights” zealots, and revolutionaries went (and continue to go) to get what they believed was the right outcome, regardless of whether the accused was actually guilty or not.  Bigger fish needed frying.

The trial of George Zimmerman should be taught in law schools and elsewhere as a prime example of one of the most mishandled and politically motivated prosecutions in recent U.S. history. If we want to reserve the criminal-justice system for deciding guilt or innocence rather than for playing out social and racial grievances, it’s important to review the spectacle we just witnessed.

Recall that the investigation of Trayvon Martin’s shooting was taken out of the hands of local authorities and placed with an appointed special prosecutor named Angela Corey. She said her job was to rise above public pressure to indict Zimmerman, but within weeks she claimed her job was “to do justice for Trayvon Martin.”  She quickly decided to charge Zimmerman with second-degree murder, a charge that may have satisfied public opinion but which required her to prove that the former Neighborhood Watch volunteer harbored ill will and spite against Trayvon Martin, whom he had never met until minutes before the shooting.

The Florida Bar’s rules state that the government’s attorneys shall “refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause . . . [and] make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense.”  Angela Corey flagrantly violated those standards.  Her prosecutors waited months before giving the defense photos showing the extent of George Zimmerman’s injuries the night of the shooting.  Ben Kruidbos, the information-technology director for the state attorney’s office, was shocked when he learned that prosecutors hadn’t turned over to the defense evidence of photos and text messages that Kruidbos had recovered from Martin’s cell phone. The photos included images of a pile of jewelry on a bed, underage nude females, marijuana, and a hand menacingly holding a semiautomatic weapon.

Kruidbos feared he would put his job in jeopardy if he came forward with this information, but he also was concerned about a possible miscarriage of justice, so he directed his attorneys to alert Zimmerman’s defense team about the withheld evidence. He turned over the photos in late May, and the state placed Kruidbos on administrative leave until this past Friday, the day the Zimmerman case went to the jury.  That morning, according to the Florida Times-Union, he received a hand-delivered letter from Corey informing him that he was fired and that he “can never again be trusted to step foot in this office.” The treatment he received for telling the defense about government misconduct will discourage others from becoming whistleblowers.

In addition, Corey’s deputies interviewed key witnesses with Trayvon Martin’s family present. Jonathan Turley, a self-proclaimed liberal and a law professor at George Washington University, called such behavior “a highly unusual and improper practice.”

The government’s presentation of its case in court was so badly bungled that panicky prosecutors demanded at the very end of the trial that jurors be allowed to consider not just a second-degree murder charge but also manslaughter and third-degree murder due to child abuse (the 158-pound Martin was 17 at the time of his death). The judge allowed the jury to consider the manslaughter charge but not the charge of child abuse.  Noted Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told radio-talk-show host Steve Malzberg that such last-minute maneuvering is apparently allowed in rare circumstances by Florida law — but  “these prosecutors should be disbarred,” he added. “They have acted absolutely irresponsibly, in an utterly un-American fashion.”

That’s not going to happen. What may happen is a form of double jeopardy if Eric Holder’s Justice Department decides to follow the advice of the NAACP and the Reverend Al Sharpton and file criminal civil-rights charges against Zimmerman. (Justice has already announced that it will investigate such charges.) Even Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former New York attorney general and governor who seems never to have encountered a liberal cause he couldn’t embrace, says that such a move would be problematic. “The Justice Department will step in, but it’s in a very dicey position because there has been a criminal case,” he told the New York Daily News. “Double jeopardy is a fundamental principle in our American judicial system, as it should be. And so it’s going to be hard for them to come back at the defendant.”

Here’s hoping that the tensions and anger stirred up by the Trayvon Martin case subside instead of being inflamed by a rogue Justice Department. But let’s not forget the prosecutorial abuse the trial has revealed. If a criminal-justice system can be hijacked for political purposes, it can also be misused in other cases and at other times. Of course, it was important to thoroughly review Trayvon Martin’s death. But allowing politically correct prosecutors to cross bright lines limiting their behavior only politicizes our system and helps no one except demagogues and cable-TV talking heads in search of ratings.
— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO.

Established Religions

The Return of the Prodigal

Every human society has an established deity.  It’s inescapable.  In this context we define deity broadly: the god who rules is the object or person in which society places their trust.  Human beings inevitably have to trust someone or something to provide what only a god can: safety, security, provision, and care along with more abstract (but vitally important) realities such as truth, justice, righteousness, and wisdom without which no society can cohere.

Secular society’s god is the government.  Rules, regulations and laws coupled with property exacted from subjects and bestowed upon others in order to pay for the “justice”, blessings and benefits the god wishes to bestow is how this particular religion works.  And it works a doozy.  Every Western society without exception has kowtowed to this particular deity.  Why are the peoples’ of the West so resistant to the historical Christian faith?  Because they love their idol god, their respective governments.  You cannot serve God and Mammon, Jesus says.  The West now serves Mammon with a deep, abiding devotion.

Which would be great.  Apart from one minor problem.
  It is all a lie.  Whilst “In Government we trust” may be the universal creed of our time, its universality does not make it true.  Rather its universality is testament to how stupid, stubborn, arrogant and blind we have become.  Lemmings all.  It remains a false god; it will eventually lie broke as God’s patience and longsuffering come to an end–as they surely will.  When justice is not speedily administered the hearts of the wicked grow bold.  God’s justice is most often not speedy.  (There are a few salutary exceptions for our edification, such as Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19), and Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) but they are the exception to the rule.) But because making the government our hope and praise appears to work and satisfy for a considerable time, the hearts of people grow in their devotion to the lie. 

Whilst we cannot be certain, it is probable that judgement upon the West’s deity will take the form of displaying its creeping and relentless incompetence, leading eventually to spectacular failure.  Divine providence will parade our deity as a sham, an impotent huckster–which a moment’s sober reflection would have surely concluded decades ago.  We can see hints of this: the bigger and more intrusive government becomes in the lives of citizens and in society, the more incompetent and impotent it shows itself to be.  The more exposed to ridicule and mockery.

A couple of illustrations from the United States are to hand.  Firstly, President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.  It is so big and vast a piece of folly that most legislators voted for the monstrosity without ever reading its thousands of legislatives clauses.  But they felt good about it because it was an act of worship of their god.  It even caused the Vice President to intone reverently and exultingly, “this is a big ***** deal.”  Now, the implementation of the law has just been suspended in significant part–which itself is an illegality–thus displaying the impotence of the national god.  Stupid is as stupid does.  This is not just the failings of one ineffectual, weak President: it is the failure of the national deity of the United States.  It is the failure of statism.

Secondly, the US Senate recently passed a gargantuan bill designed to “fix” the problem of illegal immigration. It is the role of the deity to fix things, right?  Once again the eructation from the god was voluminous.  Senators happily voted for the complex legislation without carefully reading it.  Even sponsors of a celebrated amendment could not explain the apparent contradictions in their offering.  “In Government we trust”: what is there to worry about.  More is good, after all.  The upshot: a graphic display of incompetence and impotence.  The idol god is being held up to ridicule.  No wonder the people are angry and brimming with frustrated sarcasm.  Can’t this god do anything right?

But this failure is not just in the big things.  Devotees of the established religion cannot help themselves.  They are reflexively loyal to their government-is-god credo even in the little things.  But equally stupid.  Equally impotent.  Here in New Zealand the Labour Party has got itself all wound up about sexual equality (one of the idol’s doctrinal axioms).  It is proposing to achieve gender equality in its candidates for Parliamentary seats.  Some electorates will ban any males applying for candidates selection.  It’s what the god demands.

Hoots of derisive laughter at this “man ban” have echoed through the canyons, coupled with distraught and injured feelings on the part of many as the national god is blasphemed and ridiculed. 

So will pass the secular West.  Its decline will be marked by anger and frustration at the increasing impotence of government and its failure to deliver the promised nirvana under its command and control religion.  It will also be marked by the derision of disappointed hopes.  It will not be an easy time.  In the foment we Christians hope and trust that God–the only true God–will again stretch forth His hand in mercy and compassion to a foolish, stubborn and rebellious generation.

And why should we have such a hope?  Because that is Who God is.  Did the father not rush down the road to greet the returning prodigal? 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Gedunk Government 

Culture and Politics – Obama Nation Building
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 15 May 2013

So then, it appears as though the president is making a hash of it. The Unaffordable Care Act supplies the corned beef, the hard leftism of his administration would be the little diced potatos that we see everywhere, and this latest scandal triad is the hot grease that makes the whole thing sizzle and pop like that.

Now in this circumstance, every chance he gets, the president will blame Bush for his woes, and will do so in a way that is more risible every day. So let’s not do it that way. Let’s blame the so-called conservative establishment in the way they need to be blamed for all these federal fiascos. They are to be faulted because they think like short-sighted partisans, and not like the Founders, who thought with an expansive vision — a vision that included both the greatness of the cultural mandate and a deep suspicion of man’s sinfulness. Our modern conservative leaders are like the man driving a local delivery route with his Fritos truck. The Founders were coast-to-coast long haul truckers.

The legal theorist John Rawls once said that the ideal society ought to be crafted with the designer of it not knowing where he was going to be born into it. This is, of course, simply an interesting variation of the Golden Rule.
It would be edifying to meditate on that for a while, but we don’t have time. I want to modify it still further. A judicious designer of a political system will design it — as the Founders most emphatically did — without knowing the character of those who were going to be operating the machinery of government. You build your Justice Department not knowing if Edmond Randolph or Eric Holder is going to be the Attorney-General. You contruct the office of president, limiting its powers sharply, because you do not know who is going to be sitting in that chair — Madison or Nixon, Harrison or Cleveland, Reagan or Obama. Assume the worst, and design the limitations accordingly.

True politics is about maintaining the machinery. Trash politics is all about getting your guy to operate it.
Take one of these scandals — the wide gathering of phone records from AP reporters. The justification for that came from the Patriot Act, a Bush contribution. That was a mechanism that was ostensibly built to protect us from terrorists, and which mechanism was promptly handed over to a Hard Left administration — gliding smoothly over to the next scandal — that was going to use its taxing powers to profile any group that dared to have patriot in their name. Who is in charge of running the Patriot Act these days? An administration that despises patriots, that’s who. And who did this to us?

Our tendency is to evaluate based on what the government does or doesn’t do, instead of evaluating on the basis of what the government — with the powers assigned to it — is capable of doing. We want our choices to reduce to a left wing party that can throw billions away on green energy and does, and a right wing party that can throw billions away on green energy and virtuously decides not to. How about a government is not allowed to even think about it?

In the Navy, we used to call vending machines gedunk machines. You put your money in, pulled on the knob, and gedunk, there was your candy bar. We are living in the age of gedunk government. Everybody stands in front of the vending machine, with the attention span of a hummingbird with ADHD, and waits impatiently for their product. There are right wing products and left wing products, but everybody wants their product now. Nobody thinks anymore about who is building the machines. Nobody thinks about what might happen if the supplier of the machine sells to another distributor. What might happen then?

Bush thought that his “job one” was to protect us from terrorists, when his real job one was to protect us from Obama. My chances of getting blown up by a terrorist are very small, virtually nil. My chances of having to deal with swarms of officers who eat out my substance are very high. In fact, they are doing it right this minute. Incidentally, I should note that certain phrases in that earlier sentence came from an inflammatory document called the Declaration that might get me flagged as a problematic citizen in any future dealings I might have with the IRS. The terrorists don’t care if I quote the Declaration.

So whose job is it to protect us from people like that?

None of this is said with the naivete that characterizes some doctrinaire libertarians. Terrorism is a threat out there in the world, and it was certainly a high threat in Benghazi. There are limited places where I do not begrudge security — but it has to be in the right place, governed by the rule of law, and it has to be security, not TSA security theater. And when I say governed by the rule of law, I mean that it must not be allergic to warrants and probable cause.

Having said that, I move on to the central point, which is that true conservative statesmen know how to identify the real threats, and they know how to rank them. If you are a businessman traveling to Dubai, you have to take the threat of terrorism seriously. But if you are settled in the homeland, spang in the middle of Nebraska say, Homeland Security is a much greater threat to you right there in the homeland than some screaming beard in Cairo is.

I am still waiting (patiently) for some conservative leadership that appears to know anything at all about this.

Oliver Twist’s Worst Nightmare

   

Budgets and Beggars

In New Zealand, national budgets in the parliamentary Westminster tradition are presented annually to the parliament and the people.  We feel compelled to make this rather basic point because many of the US readers may be confused, since in the United States the Federal Government can stagger on for decades it would seem without a budget stipulating spending and revenue.

Budget times in New Zealand have historically been occasionally dramatic.  When the government ran the economy more tightly than an Eastern European sphincter most folk in the country furtively huddled around the radio on Budget night waiting to see if some dramatic announcement would be forthcoming.  Sometimes instantly, whilst we were all supposed to be sleeping, the currency would be devalued twenty percent by legislative fiat.  Or petrol tax went up forty percent.  Fortunes were made or lost overnight. 

Thankfully Eastern European economics and tyranny were tossed out (at least for a time) early in the nineteen eighties, when the IMF was on the verge of declaring New Zealand bankrupt.
  (There are a few political parties determined to return to a command and control economy, such as the Greens and the Mana Party.  For the moment, most New Zealanders regard them as being on the lunatic fringe–thankfully.)  But we digress.  We are much more sane now.  New Zealand has a free floating currency, an independent Reserve Bank, and a much more transparent mode of government.  Take the budget, for example.  It is now a big yawn–deliberately so.  Recent administrations make a point of drip feeding all the juicy bits weeks before to the media and public so that there will be few, if any, surprises.  All in all, this is a much much better system than we once laboured under. 

But one thing never changes.  All the special interest groups approach national budgets with a deep commitment to MMFM, which is a Maori acronym, but down the pub loosely translates to “More Money For Me”.  We have always found this an unseemly sight: hundreds of special interest groups holding begging bowls out to the gummint, pleading for more of other peoples’ money.  Always.  We have never, ever seen a special interest group be allocated taxpayers’ money in a budget, only to refuse it on the grounds that it was too much, or it was way beyond what they actually require, or they are incompetent to administer such a vast sum.  No matter how much money is beneficently bestowed, it is never enough.  The best you can hear is, “It’s a start.  But much, much more is needed.” 

We find this entire spectacle unseemly, but it is an inevitable consequence of the welfare state.  This is not to say, incidentally, that the causes advances by such groups are not worthy, nor that they are addressing real social needs.  It is to say that there is something indictable about a society and system that has such interests beg from the government, which in turn extracts cash compulsorily from citizens to meet the demand.  The ethic of thankfulness and gratitude has disappeared like the moa. 

The New Zealand Government and Its Prime Minister

When the state becomes beneficent, private (non-government) charity begins to die on the vine.  The state becomes so bloated, it resembles Jabba the Hutt.  The sub-text is that the gummint begins to intrude itself into so many social and community affairs that we inexorably inch back towards an Eastern European dystopia.  Another sub-text is that communities come to believe themselves both dependant and helpless.  Another sub-text is the fertile stimulation of envy and grievance.

Public media usually present “winners and loser” lists after the presentation of a national budget.    The Civilian presented his own list of beneficiaries.  Sometimes real life eerily resembles the parody.

Politics

What’s in the Budget?

The Civilian takes a look at what you’ll find in this year’s Budget.

• $1.7 billion to buy back Mighty River Power after Minister for State Owned Enterprises, Tony Ryall began missing it.

• $1 billion to build roads that go around Hamilton instead of through it.

• $200 million for construction of single unaffordable house.

• $125,000 to (Attorney General) Christopher Finlayson’s ongoing investigation into who framed Roger Rabbit.

• $64 for Treasurer Bill English to get his printer fixed.

• $540 million for Tauranga rebuild.

• $57 to buy all MPs name tags so that everyone will know who they are.

• $65,000 to bolster the Government’s strategic reserve of anti-Australian jokes.

• $800 million to Gore, just to see what happens.

• $6 million for an awareness and policing campaign to ensure mixtures only have proper lollies, and not the ones nobody likes, such as black jellybeans and those chalky things.

• $2 million to buy copies of 2013 Budget for impoverished families.

• $5 million to explore what more the Government could be doing with jigsaw puzzles.

• $240,000 to see if we can get Sam Neill in some more Hollywood movies.

• $20,000 to figure out why a McDonald’s deluxe cheeseburger costs less than a regular one.

• $236,000 for more cows in schools.

• $250 million to make the transformers in the national grid look more like the ones in the movie Transformers.

• $900 million to rename the country “A Yellow Submarine” for one day so that we can all sing “We all live in a yellow submarine.”

• $3 billion to get rid of rivers, so they stop flooding and getting all polluted.

Indigenous Socialism

Lost Mana

New Zealand is in the invidious position of being caught in a pincer.  Government intrusion into commercial activities has historically been strong, underpinned by a persistent socialist instinct.  A significant segment of the population believes naively that if government is involved in commerce it is somehow freed from the animal instincts of rapacious capitalists.  These credulously choose to overlook the animal instincts of politicians and those who lust after power and riches on the public dime.
 

Successive governments in New Zealand have laid claim to a host of assets and commercial activities: telecommunications, electricity, education, health, welfare, energy, postal services, rail, shipping, road transport, and so on.  All of these were deemed “too big” and strategically important to leave to non-government sector commerce.  But eventually reality bit, hard.  The government ran out of money, having squandered vast amount on failed commercial enterprises.  The 1970’s saw rapid privatisation coupled with a welcome to market forces as the most efficient distributor of capital and labour. 

Since that time, government has backed away from privatisation.  Until recently.  The government in New Zealand has retained (or secured) commercial ownership in an airline, in electricity companies, in a postal company, in an insignificant bank, in hospitals, in schools, in a vehicle inspection company, in a national lottery, and in welfare institutions.  But, as is the fate of all socialist dreams, New Zealand once again ran out of money–in 2009 to be precise. To restore some vestiges of fiscal prudence, the government decided to sell off some of its commercial investments: namely, power companies. Only 49 percent, mind you. 

This intention has been vehemently opposed by the Left ( government ownership is always qualitatively better, don’t you know) and by some of the indigenous people (Maori) who have lustfully embraced the view that they are “owed” ownership in these “strategic”, Crown owned assets.  Cynics have repeatedly observed that Maori appear to want to own the asset, but not the associated liabilities. Moreover they want to pay less than a commercial price. When they adopt this attitude they lose mana, big time. Some tribes want to own their traditional rivers and waterways, but don’t want to know when the thing inundates contiguous land.

For our part, we have never opposed Maori or Samoan or any particular ethnic group owning any assets whatsoever–provided they pay the full and fair commercial, market price, and accept the risks and liabilities associated with ownership.  People who want all the upside but  perversely want someone else to pay for the downside are charlatans and should be publicly shamed as such. 

So today, we celebrate a small victory for equity and sanity.  The Supreme Court of New Zealand struck down an appeal by some Maori groups which asserted that the Crown had no legal right to sell off part of a state owned power company to reduce its deficit, without giving preferential treatment to Maori. 

Not only have these Maori lost in court, they have lost their mana–which would have been true, regardless of what decision the court made. 

The Devil You Know . . .

How’s That “Arab Spring” Working Out

We have published several pieces over the months on the “Arab Spring”.  This new season was hailed in the West as the first signs of a burgeoning, grass roots move towards liberal, Western-style democracies.  “Look, they are becoming like us,” gushed Secretary of  State, Hillary Clinton and her naive boss, President Obama.  The media chorused their agreement with the sentiment and basked in new found hopes. 

The brouhaha only served to demonstrate how profoundly ignorant the Commentariat is of history and of what actually constitutes nationhood.  Nations cannot rise higher or be anything other than what lies in the hearts and minds of its people.  If the people are dependant and of a slavish mentality, they will accept and even welcome authoritarian government.  If the people are predominantly self-indulgent libertines they will insist upon governments feeding and paying for their lusts and sensual indulgence. 

Forms and structures of government do not make a people. On the contrary, unless the government reflects the dominant world-views of the people, it will fall.  So, the big question that Hillary Clinton and her colleagues, along with the chattering classes, never asked was what was the state of the hearts and minds of the people engaging in the “Arab Spring”.  They simply naively and grandly assumed that those folk over there are just like us–self-indulgent libertines.
  Toss out the army’s control of government, overthrow the domination of the mullahs, and execute the dictators and hey presto we would see governments emerge which would hold free and fair elections every so often and which would rapidly move to a Western, demand-rights welfare state.  The Arab Spring would blossom into a wonderful summer.

How is the strategy working out?  Iraq lies riven with sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia.  Libya is devolving into tribalism.  Syria is engaged in a civil war with neither side looking anything like Western democrats.  Egypt has come the closest to realising the West’s naive hope of an Arab Spring.  It held and election.  See, democracy transforms and saves people.  It makes them new. 

Except that the winner of the election, the Muslim Brotherhood–long cuddled and lionised by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama–has proven to be as absolutist as any Caliph in its aspirations and policies.  Enforced Islamisation beckons. 

Now, riven with division and facing collapse, it appears Egypt is coming to long for “the good old days” when the military ruled and elections were a distant memory of an aberrant past.  This, from the NZ Herald:

Egypt’s powerful military is showing signs of growing impatience with the country’s Islamist leaders, indirectly criticising their policies and issuing thinly veiled threats that it might seize power again.  The tension is raising the specter of another military intervention much like the one in 2011, when generals replaced longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak after they sided with anti-regime protesters in their 18-day popular uprising.

The strains come at a time when many Egyptians are despairing of an imminent end to the crippling political impasse between President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood group on one side, and the mostly secular and liberal opposition on the other.  The tug of war between the two camps is being waged against a grim backdrop of spreading unrest, rising crime and a worsening economy.  . . .

With chaos in the country deepening, chants calling for military intervention during street protests, last heard en masse during the uprising, are making a timid comeback.  “Millions of Egyptians want the army to come back and deliver us from chaos,” Ibrahim Issa, host of a political talk show on television, said this week.  “This is the sentiment on the Egyptian street, and ignoring it is stupid,” said the popular Issa, a harsh critic of Morsi, the Brotherhood and the military when it was in power.

Since taking office in June 2012, Morsi has made little progress in tackling Egypt’s pressing problems – steep price increases, surging crime, deteriorating services and fuel shortages.  The Brotherhood, which dominates parliament and the government after winning every election since Mubarak’s ouster, is accused of monopolising power. And Morsi has been criticized for failing to deliver on a promise of an inclusive government representing the Christian minority, liberal and secular political factions, and women.

The highly charged political climate and the collapsing economy could make a military takeover seem like a welcome development in some corners of Egypt – or at least a necessary evil that could salvage the nation.

The more Islamic ideology controls the hearts and minds of a people, the more authoritarian the government will be.  Islam has no concept of the separation of church and state.  Allah’s will is univocal and all must submit to it.  Submission is the Islamic concept of peace.  Islam has no concept of the liberty of conscience.  Islam, once in control, demands submission or the sword.   Women must submit to men (who are higher on the chain-of-being) and men must submit to kings.  All must be conformed to the authoritarian domination of Allah. 

Pew Research reports that around eighty percent of people in Egypt believe that if an Egyptian leaves Islam and converts to another religion he should be executed. 

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found relatively widespread popular support for death penalty as a punishment for apostasy in Egypt (84% of respondents in favor of death penalty), Jordan (86% in favor), Indonesia (30% in favor), Pakistan (76% favor) and Nigeria (51% in favor).

Where there is no recognition or belief in the liberty of conscience amongst a people, authoritarian and totalitarian government is the only option.  The Arab Spring is a decidedly false dawn.  

Enslaved to Power

Tobacco in Plain Packages

New Zealand is the second country in the world to opt for restricting cigarettes to be sold only in plain packaging.  The objective is to make the weed less attractive to smokers, thereby cutting the power of advertising to pull people into smoking.  There are inevitable legal challenges–which in our case will be dependant upon legal challenges in Australia (the first country to implement such a ban.)

This move has long been an objective of the Maori Party because Maori have a disproportionately high number of Maori smokers when compared to the rest of the population.  Maori co-leader, Tariana Turia probably believes that tobacco is just one more conspiracy by white capitalists against Maori. 

We suspect that the move will be welcomed in many quarters.  Few people will be prepared to endorse the damage that smoking can do to lungs and its connection with lung cancer.

But, as always, there are broader issues which thoughtful folk will have considered resisted and will see this as a wowsering move by a nanny state.

In the first place there are the rampant political inconsistencies of the Greens
who have long campaigned for the legalisation of marijuana, one the one hand, and government restrictions upon tobacco use, on the other.  Go figure.  One cannot help suspecting that their opposition to tobacco stems from the fact that it is manufactured and marketed by global corporates, rather than being surreptitiously grown in the back yard, as marijuana is.  Populism and Marxism make for an idiosyncratic mix in the Green mind.  One presumes that the Greens would have no objection to tobacco if it were a backyard product. 

Secondly, self-government and self-control cannot be engineered nor commanded by any state.  Tobacco consumption is a matter of self-control.  When, in the name of some vast perceived social good, the government decrees it will help people struggling with self-control in the area of tobacco consumption, its efforts will end up with nugatory effect.  In fact, it may even make the product more attractive.  Whereas now it is argued that smokers stay brand loyal due for subjective reasons engendered by marketing, plain packaging may entice people to experiment with a wider variety of  brands because the only way of choosing will be to experiment–to taste and see. 

Such legislation is an easy, but ineffective measure that will have little effect, except to make the politicians feel good, beneficent, and wise.  They will be congratulating themselves that they are “doing something positive”, they are “making a difference”, that are “taking a stand” but all along they are fooling themselves about the pseudo-competence of government, and blinding themselves to the obvious: the incompetence of government to change hearts and minds and build the strength of will to break addiction.

Thirdly, the nanny-state philosophy has a thousand applications which the government will likely move more and more toward to solve social problems.  Take just one example: addictive gambling.  It is abundantly clear that addictive gambling is a serious problem in New Zealand, tearing families apart, impoverishing dependant children and spouses, and provoking theft to feed the habit.  Ban gambling?  Make pokie machines have only black and white colours?  Regulate to make them smaller?  But the real problem is human weakness, wilfulness and the lack of self-control.  And there governments are ineffective.  An enslaved people will discover addictions in every place: governments would therefore end up controlling virtually every aspect of human behaviour whilst they have the view that rules, regulations, controls and bans will solve the fundamental problem.

Obesity, alcohol, sex, driving for thrills and adrenaline rushes–all are matters of self-control and personal responsibility.  There can be no end to rules, restrictions, regulations, and penalties once governments get involved in trying to combat or correct such human deficiencies and foolishness.  

If the government has a legitimate part to play in such social destructions it may be in advertising campaigns that focus upon personal responsibility and accountability, such as the anti-drink-driving campaign, with the slogan “If you drink and drive you are an idiot!”  It may also offer encouragement to voluntary welfare groups that actually get down into the nitty gritty of people’s lives to help them. 

The Christian gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is clear: the Kingdom of God is a realm of universal totalitarian government–but the most important form of government is self-government.  (Romans 6:6).  We are all called to be enslaved to Christ alone.  We are His bondservants.  Civil government and the state cannot substitute for the rule and reign of Christ.  It is a huge step forward when the state (and the people) recognise its limitations in such things. 

But, without a prior acknowledgement of Christ as Lord of all, such a step is unlikely to be taken.  For there is an enslavement and an addiction which underlies all such measures by government: an addiction to power.  That is the biggest, the most debilitating, and the most destructive addiction of all. 

Draining Swamps

Reformation in the Body Politic

Corruption in the body politic eventually results in a nation tearing itself apart from within.  Government is sustained upon the respect of citizens for the rule of law.  Government’s foundations are always moral.  When governments and governing authorities become corrupt the dissolution of the body politic beckons.

Rome is the classic illustration of the point.  The Roman Republic fell apart because of the vaunting ambition of the political classes, coupled with bribery, corruption, and the misuse of public funds for personal gain.  It was replaced by the Empire–which was even more authoritarian and even more corrupt–only finally to rot away from the inside.  Rome ended by being run over by a bunches of successive marauding barbarians–that is, primitives.  It ended not with a bang but a whimper, with its insides all rotted out. 

When government expands its role to engage in commercial, civil, and voluntary activities (such as ruling, regulating and delivering heath education and welfare) the vast sums of money involved, together with the natural corruption of human beings, presents temptation too much to resist.
  Both rulers and politicians together with those vying for government payments for services turn into venal, amoral pocket-liners.  They steal from the people and feather their own nests.  The ruling cliques and the government commercial suppliers turn into Thenardiers, ripping off and exploiting everyone that comes within their grasp.

In a small country or polity, such as New Zealand the very smallness of the administration restrains the corruption.  Years ago Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that creeping soft-despotism and its attendant corruption is less likely  when a polity is small.  Secrets are harder to hide.  Public outrage and subsequent retribution are more easily marshalled and therefore more potent.  But when a polity is large, corruption is much harder to detect, expose, and punish.  It becomes systemic.  It becomes the norm.  Too many allies in corruption run too much interference in the path of would-be reformers.

The United States is in just such a phase on the downward spiral.  Sarah Palin and others have talked about the need to drain the swamp of Washington.  The immorality, the theft, the venality, and the corruption is not just confined to one party, although it would seem that it rests more on the Democratic side.  Nevertheless, there have been plenty of Republican pocket-liners.  As this becomes more and more known, cynicism grows.  Disrespect for government and the state burgeons.  The moral foundation for law erodes.  Internal dissolution is inevitable, barring a national reformation in truthfulness and morals–and that can only come from outside.  The wicked do not reform themselves.

It is our view that it can only come from a broad, grassroots revival of the Christian Gospel in the hearts and minds of millions.  In other words, the “outside” is God Himself. 

Michelle Malkin documents just a few examples of Democratic corruption in the area of state funded health services.  They serve to confirm just how deeply corruption has entered the vitals of the Republic.

Democrats Heart Medicare Fraudsters 

By Michelle Malkin
February 15, 2013

Hey, remember when President Obama crusaded against Medicare fraud and vowed to crack down aggressively on scammers who’ve bilked the program out of an estimated $90 billion? Like Archie and Edith Bunker used to sing: Those were the daaaays.

While Democrats pretend to protect the elderly and disabled, leaders of the People’s Party have pocketed gobs of campaign contributions from fat-cat donors tied to massive Medicare rip-off schemes.

Let’s talk some more about Dr. Salomon Melgen, shall we? We now know that the jet-setting Florida eye doctor who flew beleaguered Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., to several alleged sex romps in the Dominican Republic also overbilled the government by $8.9 million for care at his clinic. That’s according to Menendez’s own aides. They acknowledged last week that their boss met with federal health bureaucrats at least twice to lobby on Melgen’s behalf.

“Federal investigators and health-care auditors have had concerns about Melgen’s billing practices at various times over the past decade,” according to two former federal officials who spoke to The Washington Post. “In part, they have examined the volume of eye injections, surgeries and laser treatments performed at his West Palm Beach clinic.”

Now, brace yourselves. A Menendez aide says that while Sen. Sleaze-Bob intervened, he didn’t know nuttin’ about Melgen being under investigation. Just like he didn’t know nuttin’ about his longtime aide working for Melgen’s port security firm in the Dominican Republic, on whose behalf Sen. Sleaze-Bob also intervened.

And just like he didn’t know nuttin’ about yet another ride on Melgen’s plane in 2008 (exposed this week by the conservative Daily Caller), which he forgot to disclose to the Senate.  Senate Democratic leaders have done nuttin’ to prevent Menendez, who also sits on the Senate Finance Committee overseeing Medicare, from playing a prominent role in Medicare reform negotiations while Melgen’s Medicare fraud investigation unfolds.

It’s all par for the Democrats’ conflict-of-interest course, of course. Recently departed Obama health care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle raked in millions from her positions on a handful of corporate boards under fire for various regulatory violations, whistleblower complaints and Medicare fraud.

One of the companies for which DeParle served as a director, kidney dialysis empire DaVita, has been plagued by whistleblower fraud allegations for nearly 20 years. These include long-standing claims (many still under investigation or the subject of ongoing litigation) that the company overused the anemia drug Epogen and then billed Medicare for it; submitted fraudulent Medicare claims for dialysis drugs; and forged alleged kickback schemes between doctors and joint ventures.

Another Medicare fraud suspect, the Stryker Corporation, paid nearly $17 million to settle allegations about false claims submissions in 2007. Pat Stryker, liberal heiress to the Stryker fortune, is an Obama bundler and one of the Democratic Party’s wealthiest progressives. She was also behind the now-bankrupt Obama green energy boondoggle in Colorado, Abound Solar.

While the Obama campaign (aided and abetted by the lapdog media) viciously smeared Mitt Romney by tying him to Medicare fraud he had absolutely nothing to do with while at Bain Capital, this White House has escaped any scrutiny of its own ties to accused Medicare scammers. Instead, the administration was happy to powwow with Menendez and other Democratic leaders on policy strategy this week.

What did they have to say about Menendez’s lobbying on behalf of Medicare exploiter Melgen and the conflict-of-interest cloud stretching from Capitol Hill to 1600 Pennsylvania? Nuttin’.

At one level its easy to become worked up at plutocratic politicians and their corporate enablers.  But that’s too easy.  Corruption is present in every heart.  You change society by changing human beings–family by family, household by household.  The most important government of all is self-government.  You cannot reform the moral foundations of a nation until you reform households and communities.  It begins here, now, today–and tomorrow, and tomorrow.  It begins and continues when individuals and households surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Republic.  There is no other effective alternative.  There are no short-cuts.

A Good and Holy Decision

Respecting God’s Call and Public Office

The resignation of Pope Benedict XIII has caught many by surprise.  Given that it has not happened since the late 14th century, we can claim to have witnessed something quite unusual, to say the least.  Our firm view is that it should be the norm. 

We respect Benedict’s decision.  To our mind, it was a principled act: he acknowledges that his office was more important than his person.  When his body and mind made it impossible for him to perform his responsibilities and duties appropriately, he resigned. 

This is the way it should always be when it comes to public office, whether in church or state or judiciary or civic life.
  The office, being a public duty, is more important than any one individual holding it at the time.  For the Christian, all offices, callings and duties come from God.  All are mediated through man and church and society but an official position is first of all a calling from God Himself.  Duties of the office must be performed unto God.  Christians believe they will be held account by the King and Lord of the earth, Jesus Christ Himself, for the faithfulness or otherwise of their service. 

Man are called to be fathers by God.  Women are called to be mothers by God.  When God grants a couple children they are called to be parents. The children are called to be children (a calling, incidentally, which lasts as long as our parents live).  All these are official callings from the King.  They are not mediated by man.  They are direct, holy callings from God Himself. 

Public offices, however, have a call from God that is mediated through society.  The reason for this is that public offices involve rule and administration over others and the Scriptures make very clear that those being ruled over must give their consent (by vote, or acclamation, or some other expression of public support) which confirms the call and appointment of God. 

One of the clearest examples of this in Scripture is the appointment of Israel’s kings.  David was clearly called by God, via direct divine revelation when Samuel anointed him at God’s command.  But David only entered his office and began to rule when all Israel gathered together to enter into a covenant with him, whereby he became their king.  (II Chronicles 11: 1-3)  The same holds true in the Church.  The first post-Ascension congregation in Jerusalem selected a replacement for the apostate Judas to be an apostle through a process which involved the choice of the congregation (Acts 1: 15-26). 

When the first elders (possibly deacons) were appointed in the Church at Jerusalem, the congregation selected the candidates before the apostles laid hands upon them and inducted them into their public duties and office.  (Acts 6: 3-6)  On Paul’s first missionary journey, the text says that he and Barnabas appointed elders in every church with prayer and fasting, but the Greek word means at root “to choose by raising hands” (Acts 14: 23).

Because the call is from God but mediated via men, when the duties and responsibilities to men represented in that call are unable to be performed through sickness, debilitation, or some other reason, resignation respects both God and man, and the holiness of the office. 

We believe what Benedict has done is right–but not unusual, nor untypical.  It is the ordinary way God’s Kingdom upon earth is to function. 

Letter From the UK

Chilling News

The things that happen gradually are the things least noticed.  The “frog in the pot” syndrome is all too real.  We remain unaware of the dangers and calamities facing Western civilization.  Some people, at least, are starting to feel the chill winds of fear.

This from The Telegraph:

Chilling economic report strikes fear into CEOs

Over an early-morning coffee with the chief executive of a FTSE 100 business last week, talk turned to the outlook for 2013. Where I had expected some guarded optimism, instead I heard a chilling analysis.

By Kamal Ahmed,
Sunday Telegraph Business Editor
22 Dec 2012

The CEO said he had been reading a new paper from Boston Consulting Group headed “Ending the era of Ponzi finance”. The lessons he had taken from it were miserable.The West was not going to find its way to the right economic path with a little tweaking at the edges, the CEO said. What is needed is a wholesale overhaul of the economic system to tackle record levels of public and private debt. Was anyone brave enough to do it, he wondered aloud.

I asked him to send me the report. He did.

The BCG study by Daniel Stelter which is doing the rounds of corporate C-suites does not pull its punches. In fact, its punches are really just a softening-up exercise for a barrage of kicks and painful blows aimed at anyone who thinks that kicking the can down the road is a suitable substitute for radical action.

At the heart of the analysis is the issue of debt. A report by the Bank of International Settlements, the study notes, found that the combined debts of the public and private sector in the 18 core members of the OECD rose from 160pc of GDP in 1980 to 321pc in 2010.  That debt was not used to fund growth – perfectly reasonable – but was used for consumption, speculation and, increasingly, to pay interest on the previous debt as liabilities were rolled over.

As soon as asset price rises – fuelled by high levels of leverage – levelled off, the model imploded. The issue is brought into sharp focus by one salient fact. In the 1960s, for every additional dollar of debt taken on in America there was 59c of new GDP produced. By 2000-10, this figure had fallen to 18c. Even in America, that’s about a fifth of what you’ll need to buy a McDonald’s burger.

Coupled with the huge debt burden are oversized public sectors and shrinking workforces. The larger the part the Government plays in the economy, the lower the levels of growth.

A report by Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson in 2011 – cited by BCG – found that for every increase of 10pc in the size of the state, there is a reduction in GDP growth of 0.5pc to 1pc. Across Europe, the average level of government spending is 40pc of GDP or higher, and is as much as 60pc in Denmark and France. In emerging markets, it is between 20pc and 40pc. This gives non-Western economies an automatic growth advantage.

This material should be gripping politicians in Westminster, not just CEOs in central London. The size of the workforce is falling across the developed world, with the United Nations estimating that between 2012 and 2050 the working-age population in Western Europe will fall by 13pc. This comes at a time when we have a pension system not much changed since the era of the man who invented it – Otto von Bismarck.

What does the West need to do to right such fundamental imbalances?

Mr Stelter and his colleagues do offer some solutions. First, there has to be an acknowledgement that some debts will never be repaid and should be restructured. Holders of the debt, be they countries or companies, should be allowed to default, whatever the short-term pain of such a process.

In social policy, retirement ages will have to increase. People will have to work harder, for longer and should be encouraged to do so by changes in benefit levels that do little – at their present level – to reward work at the margin.

The size of the state should be radically reduced and immigration encouraged. Competition in labour markets through supply-side reforms should be pursued.

Where governments can proactively act – by backing modern infrastructure – they should. High-growth economies are built on modern railways, airports, roads and energy supplies. Allowing potholes to develop in your local roads is a symptom of a wider malaise and cash-rich corporates should be pushed, through tax incentives, to invest their money in developed as well as emerging economies. Energy efficiency – to save money, not the planet – should be promoted.

As Mr Stelter says, many chief executives might understand the problem but not see it as immediately relevant to them. Profit margins across Europe have returned to the levels of 2005. Money is cheap due to the printing presses of the central banks and ultra-low interest rates. Short-term, things look OK – there has been little real pain despite the efforts of some to portray every necessary efficiency move as a “cut” of calamitous proportions.

But in the end, business needs growth in the wider economy to flourish. There needs to be a radical rethink of the way the West organises itself. Many of the ideas of Mr Stelter and his team are the right ones, although the tax burden being what it is in the UK, many would find it hard to stomach the thought of more tax rises that the BCG report recommends. At some point the relationship between taxed income and willingness to innovate turns negative.

I would suggest the UK is very near that point.

BCG’s arguments are, of course, not new. In a recent programme on the Bank of England for BBC Radio 4, I interviewed the Oxford economist, Dieter Helm. “I think it’s important to understand there are very different views about what happened in the crisis,” he told me. “Some people think that this was some kind of Keynesian event, that our problem after the crash was deficient demand and therefore what we had to do was stimulate the economy.  In other words, where we were in 2006 in terms of our consumption and spending was perfectly sustainable.

“[But] what’s going on is a massive postponement exercise and I think that means that the sustainable level of consumption we will end up with will be lower than it would have been if we’d faced up to the reality of our economic mess that was created by the great boom of the 20th century and the enormous splurge of spending and asset bubble of the early years of the 21st century.”

As we know, George Osborne’s austerity plan is not actually much of a plan, with government debt levels increasing for the rest of this Parliament. But in politics, the choice is not simply between what is being proposed and Shangri-La. It is about what is being proposed and the alternative – and the Labour alternative is more spending. Most people know which one we should be choosing so that worried FTSE 100 CEOs can sleep a little easier.

What such reports and analyses overlook is the political elephant in the room.  By far the majority of voters now depend to one extent or another upon government spending upon them.  The political will cannot exist, therefore, to go through the pain to reduce debt and the size of government.  Politically, the modern secular world will never bite the hand that feed it.  It is enslaved to its own destruction.

Definitive future historical analyses of our time, with titles such as “The Decline and Fall of the West”, will clearly identify what went wrong.  The causes will be in sharp relief; the antidotes apparent and clear.  Historians will marvel at the idiocy and dumbness of a generation that fell off the lemmings’ cliff.  But we know what few future historians realise: the West faces a moral problem, not an intellectual one.  

The Real Deal

This Day Is Born to You . . . 

Today is Christmas Eve when all around the world Christians will recall, re-celebrate, and rejoice in the birth of the Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, our Lord.  We celebrate this event not just as a mere memorial.  We celebrate it because it begins what continues to this day, and ever shall be.  We celebrate the arrival into this world of the One who is now its Lord and King. 

When Christians celebrate in this way  they are making a political statement of course, or more precisely, they are celebrating an event which has profound and everlasting implications for all powers and authorities upon this earth in 2012 and beyond.  For to the Christ has been given all power and authority in the heavens and upon the earth.  All who do not worship Him and serve Him and and obey Him are rebels and will be so judged at the end of days. 

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that during His days upon earth there were plenty of such rebels and abusers of the power they had been given.
  Herod the “Great” was one such.  He was a megalomaniac who sought to make an eternal name for himself by means of constructing grand edifices.  In reality he concerned himself far more with those of his family and court, most of whom he successively murdered.  He also sought to murder the Son of God, making his name eternally infamous because of his slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem.

But  Herod was a puppet, an underlord to the great Caesar of Rome.  Augustus claimed divinity and the worship of his subjects.  Caesar Augustus means “Caesar is Lord”.  And so we have the antithesis: is Caesar our god and lord–in whatever form he takes in our day, be it president, prime minister, excellency, or despot–or is Christ the Lord?  Every man, woman and child upon earth must take a stand right at this point.  It confronts us all.  None is exempt. 

Christians of course declare that they believe and acknowledge Christ as the Lord of the heavens and all the earth and that, therefore, He is our Lord.  Consequently Christians celebrate His birth, His coming.  Their submission to the Lord of glory is joyful and glad.  They convey this joy by their singing, by music.  For the Lord is both terrible and yet gentle, humble of heart.  His human perfection, His sinlessness, His righteousness stands in sharp contrast to the Herods and the Augustuses of this world–usurpers and pretenders all.  Christ alone is worthy to sit upon the throne of the earth.  He laid down His life to redeem and save the world.  He rose again from the dead, proving infallibly that His sacrifice was accepted by God  and that atonement for mankind had indeed been made. 

This day, in China, Botswana, and Bosnia songs of joy will be heard.  Celebrations will take place as Christians gather to honour His birth, His coming to us. And so it will continue to world’s end.  No songs are now sung for Caesar Augustus or Herod the “Great”.  They were pretenders.  Christ is the reality.  He alone can save men from their sins.  He alone is fit to rule the whole earth.

The Lord of Heaven and Earth

The Days of our Service

The Bible makes clear that when Christ ascended, all power and authority was given to Him in the heavens and the earth.  When Christ sat down at the right hand of God, He sat down upon the Throne of heaven not to rest, but to rule over all things. 

On earth there are two kinds of human beings: those who know that Christ rules everything, and those who refuse to know it.  Those who don’t acknowledge nor believe that Christ is their Lord nevertheless remain subject to His command and do His bidding–as Unbelievers–even whilst they remain ignorant of His dominion over them. 

Oscar Cullmann puts it this way:

On the one hand, the Church is the body of Christ himself, the highest possible reality on earth; on the other hand, the Church is subjected to Christ its Head just as are all other parts of creation included under his lordship.  [Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1963), p.229.]

Describing the Church as the “highest possible reality on earth” is quite startling, yet true to Scripture.  After all, the Apostle Paul makes marriage and family relations patterned after the higher reality of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  (Ephesians 5: 32)  When Unbelief mocks the Church, as if frequently does, it is mocking the only hope for the world, the very body of Christ in the world, notwithstanding the Church’s many sins, imperfections, and weaknesses.  The mocker is just as much a subject of the Lord Christ as the Church, but for the latter it is a subjection of joy, life, blessedness, and ultimately, glory; for the mocker, it is a subjection that will culminate in the wrath of the Lord being poured out upon his or her head. 

In order really to understand the relationship between the two realms of lordship, we must speak of the distinction between the members of the Church and the members of the total lordship of Christ.  The members of the Church know about that lordship; the other members belong to it unconsciously. . . .

The members of this Church must participate in his lordship in a special way.  To be a member of a “lordship” always means both to be ruled and to share in that rule, despite subjection to the head.  Here we encounter the major distinction between the lordship of Christ and of the Church.  We have seen that all creatures in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth belong to that lordship.  Thus all invisible powers and authorities together with their empirical organs (the earthly state, for example) are also members of his lordship.  They are placed completely within it, and, for this reason, the very people who understand the nature of the lordship, the members of the Church, owe obedience to the powers and authorities (Romans 13:1ff) [Ibid., p. 229f.]

For this reason, Christians and the Church are not revolutionaries.  Christians are compliant, obedient servants of the powers that be, because we self-consciously recognize that they too are servants of our Lord. 

Nevertheless, all the powers outside the Church are members of the lordship of Christ only in a very indirect way, for they do not necessarily know the role assigned to them within his lordship.  Everything that is said by Paul, and before him by Jesus, about subjection to Caesar and the state refers to a non-Christian state which knows neither Christ and his kingdom nor God the Father of Christ.  Even a pagan state like the Roman empire, therefore, can thoroughly fulfil the task assigned it by God in the lordship of Christ when it limits itself to its own quite definite role and allows the Church, the place where Christ’s rule has such great significance, to “lead a quiet and peaceable life” (I Timothy 2:2).  A pagan state can play a role in Christ’s lordship even though it does not know itself that it belongs to that lordship.  (Ibid. p.230)

Christians and the Church, however, are to be most jealous and concerned when the pagan state starts arrogating to itself authorities and powers not granted to it by our Lord. 

Because only the Christian knows of this subjection of the state to Christ’s lordship, precisely in this sense the state has paradoxically a greater significance for him than for any other citizen.  On the other hand, when a state transgresses its limits, the Christian feels this much more strongly than anyone else, although also non-Christians can also notice the fact itself.  The Christian sees especially that the state has denied the lordship of Christ, that a demonic power has freed itself, that the “beast” has appeared. (Ibid. p. 230f)

We in the West live in a time of an ever growing arrogation of state power, with the state asserting and claiming authority and competency far beyond that appointed by Christ.  The despotism may be soft, initially, but it is becoming increasingly hard and bloody.  A demonic power has temporarily freed itself; the “beast” has re-appeared.  Such things are at the direction of the Lord and occur as a judgment upon our civilization.  Blood that is shed always returns to the land and people that shed it.  What we sow, we reap.  The people who refuse the Christ and choose Barrabas instead will eventually fall to the siege. 

The Christian knows this and feels it more keenly than any other.  But we do not despair for these days, too, are at His command and direction and they are the days in which He has called us to serve and in which we were meant to be.  And that, as Gandalf said, is an encouraging thought. 

Fundamental Dishonesty

Having One’s Cake and Eating It Like a Famished Mongol

We appreciate the work of Mark Steyn in constantly putting before us the sheer size of the US fiscal deficit.  If ever there was a case of people turning a wilful blind eye, this is it.  Steyn refuses to allow us to ignore the quantum of the deficit and the doom it represents–or the fundamental dishonesty that surrounds the political debate.

Kindly Note the Impending Bankruptcy

The Perils of Pauline
Mark Steyn
National Review Online

Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape?

Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress’s decision to set up . . . a Super Committee!

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, form a committee. Those who really can’t, form a Super Committee — and then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by “automatic sequestration.
 Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: It would chop off everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the course of a decade the sequestration cuts would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about what the United States government currently borrows every month. No sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month’s worth of debt over the course of a decade.

So now we have the latest cliffhanger: the Fiscal Cliff, below which lies a bottomless abyss of sequestration, tax-cut-extension expiries, Alternative Minimum Tax adjustments, new Obamacare taxes, the expiry of the deferment of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, as well as the expiry of the deferment of the implementation of the adjustment of the correction of the extension of the reduction to the proposed increase of the Alternative Minimum Growth Sustainability Reduction Rate. They don’t call it a yawning chasm for nothing.

As America hangs by its fingernails wiggling its toesies over the vertiginous plummet to oblivion, what can save her now? An Even More Super Committee? A bipartisan agreement in which Republicans agree to cave and Democrats agree not to laugh at them too much? That could be just the kind of farsighted reach-across-the-aisle compromise that rescues the nation until next week’s thrill-packed episode when America’s strapped into the driver’s seat of a runaway Chevy Volt careering round the hairpin bends on full charge, or trapped in an abandoned subdivision overrun by foreclosure zombies.

I suppose it’s possible to take this recurring melodrama seriously, but there’s no reason to. The problem facing the United States government is that it spends over a trillion dollars a year that it doesn’t have. If you want to make that number go away, you need either to reduce spending or to increase revenue. With the best will in the world, you can’t interpret the election result as a spectacular victory for less spending. Indeed, if nothing else, the unfortunate events of November 6 should have performed the useful task of disabusing us poor conservatives that America is any kind of “center-right nation.” A few months ago, I dined with a (pardon my English) French intellectual who, apropos Mitt Romney’s stump-speech warnings that we were on a one-way ticket to Continental-sized dependency, chortled to me, “Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it.”

My Gallic charmer is on to something. According to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics: government expenditures per person in France, $18,866.00; in the United States, $19,266.00. That’s adjusted for purchasing-power parity, and yes, no comparison is perfect, but did you ever think the difference between America and the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would come down to quibbling over the fine print? In that sense, the federal debt might be better understood as an American Self-Delusion Index, measuring the ever widening gap between the national mythology (a republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens) and the reality (a 21st-century cradle-to-grave nanny state in which, as the Democrats’ convention boasted, “government is the only thing we do together”).

Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune: Government spending in Australia is 33.1 percent of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1 percent. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4 percent and revenues are 41 percent — a shortfall but in the ballpark. Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but revenues are 24 percent — the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major economy.

So all the agonizing over our annual trillion-plus deficits overlooks the obvious solution: Given that we’re spending like Norwegians, why don’t we just pay Norwegian tax rates?

No danger of that. If (in Milton Himmelfarb’s famous formulation) Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans, Americans are taxed like Puerto Ricans but vote like Scandinavians. We already have a more severely redistributive taxation system than Europe in which the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans pay 70 percent of income tax while the poorest 20 percent shoulder just three-fifths of one percent. By comparison, the Norwegian tax burden is relatively equitably distributed. Yet Obama now wishes “the rich” to pay their “fair share” — presumably 80 or 90 percent. After all, as Warren Buffett pointed out in the New York Times this week, the Forbes 400 richest Americans have a combined wealth of $1.7 trillion. That sounds a lot, and once upon a time it was. But today, if you confiscated every penny the Forbes 400 have, it would be enough to cover just over one year’s federal deficit. And after that you’re back to square one. It’s not that “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share,” it’s that America isn’t. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it’s not willing to pay for.

A couple of years back, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute calculated that, if Washington were to increase every single tax by 30 percent, it would be enough to balance the books — in 25 years. If you were to raise taxes by 50 percent, it would be enough to fund our entitlement liabilities — just our current ones, not our future liabilities, which would require further increases. This is the scale of course correction needed.

If you don’t want that, you need to cut spending — like Harry Reid’s been doing. “Now remember, we’ve already done more than a billion dollars’ worth of cuts,” he bragged the other day. “So we need to get some credit for that.”

Wow! A billion dollars’ worth of cuts! Washington borrows $188 million every hour. So, if Reid took over five hours to negotiate those “cuts,” it was a complete waste of time. So are most of the “plans.” Any “debt-reduction plan” that doesn’t address at least $1.3 trillion a year is, in fact, a debt-increase plan.

So given that the ruling party will not permit spending cuts, what should Republicans do? If I were John Boehner, I’d say: “Clearly there’s no mandate for small government in the election results. So, if you milquetoast pantywaist sad-sack excuses for the sorriest bunch of so-called Americans who ever lived want to vote for Swede-sized statism, it’s time to pony up.”

Okay, he might want to focus-group it first. But that fundamental dishonesty is the heart of the crisis. You cannot simultaneously enjoy American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has to go.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn

Long Live the Revolution

 Egyptian Progress

The hot air expended by President Obama’s to express thanks and congratulations to President Morsi of Egypt for his stirling work at achieving a cease fire in Gaza had barely dissipated when the same said Egyptian president awarded himself dictatorial powers.  Nice one, Mohammed.

There are two ways the West will respond to this inevitable lurch toward totalitarianism in Egypt.  The first will be to “Mubarakise” Morsi.  The West has had common cause with tyrants and authoritarian dictators in the Middle East for well nigh a hundred years.  It has “overlooked” one or two lapses of niceties in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt so long as these dictators helped advance the global aspirations of Western ideological zealots in their vain attempt to lead the world to salvation.  Consequently, we expect Western nations to agree that President Morsi is a helpful and constructive leader who can be an ally in bringing peace and stability to the Middle East.

The second response will be to see betrayal in Morsi’s abrupt termination of Egypt’s move towards democracy.
  Morsi will be seen as letting the side down, of turning his back on democracy, limited government, and human rights.  So we expect a few muted protests from the folk at Amnesty International and similar entities.

Both responses are misguided and foolish.  In the first place, let’s be clear about what Morsi has done, as summarised by a piece in Al Jazeera:

Egypt’s Morsi assumes wide powers

President issues declaration sacking prosecutor general and giving himself judicial powers on top of legislative ones. 

Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi has issued a declaration giving himself sweeping powers that cannot be challenged by any authority.  The decree, which also dismissed Egypt’s prosecutor general, prompted  opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei to accuse Morsi of usurping authority and becoming a “new pharoah”.

“The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution,” according to a decree read out on television by Yasser Ali, presidential spokesman. . . .

“. . .  there are those who are very concerned that this means that the president is overreaching his authority,” Al Jazeera‘s Greste said.”Remember that the parliament has been dissolved and that Morsi effectively made these decisions unilaterally. There can be no debate about this. This is now the law.” 

Al Jazeera‘s Sherine Tadros, also reporting from Cairo, said that rights groups in Egypt are concerned to see that Morsi “has given himself extraordinary powers”.  “Remember, he already had presidential powers, but also legislative powers … and now he’s given himself judicial powers. Also, another provision says that until there’s a new parliament elected, his decisions will  be final and can’t be challenged by any authority,” she said. . . .

Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, told Al Jazeera that Morsi “is erecting himself as an absolute monarch”.  “He didn’t consult with anybody from the opposition, so he has taken all these decisions alone, without any consultation. The problem is not about the content of the decisions itself, but about the way it was taken,” he said. 

The second issue is to underscore that Morsi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood–he and his party represent a policy of making Egypt an Islamic theocratic nation, a partial restoration of the Caliphate–a global Islamic empire.  Morsi represents not extremist Islam, but ordinary, mainstream political Islam.

The essence of Islamic belief and practice in all areas of life is Submission to Allah–a state into which society must enter willingly and voluntarily or via compulsion or force.  Islam has no church; it only has state power which is why it can co-exist quite well in lands ruled by Islamic military dictators.  There is no separation of church and state in Islam.  There is no doctrine of limited government, separation of powers, or a government of law and subject to law.  There is no concept of popular suffrage.  The essence of Islamic society is submission to Allah, which means submission to the authorities.  If you are an Islamic female you are a sub-human being that must submit to one’s husband, who in turn must submit to his clan chief or local ruler who in turn must submit to the sultan, or the House of Saud, or the Ayatollah or whatever.

Morsi’s actions, then, far from surprising are thoroughly consistent with Islam.  He is removing by fiat, by dictat, every locus of power and government that opposes him and his rule.  Allah wills it so.  Gone is the parliament and popular suffrage.  Gone is a judiciary independent of the president. He alone is left.

Plenty of non-Muslim Brotherhood folk have reacted to Morsi’s dictats.  They have taken to the streets.  But either they will be crushed, or Egypt will disintegrate, or the army will once again seize control.  Allah’s minions, like Sauron, cannot share power.  There can only be the Sultan (in whatever form) and cliques or factions vying for influence and control over him.

Egypt is being thoroughly Islamic and entirely consistent. 

Christians and Politics

Acting As If Christ’s Atonement Were Unnecessary

We should be sceptical when Christians aspire to enter politics.  We should be very cautious supporting Christians who aspire to exercise warrants of governmental power.  More often than not Christians make disastrous political and civil rulers.  

One reason modern Christians do more harm than good when it comes to government and law is because they confuse the roles and duties of the state with the church and the family and civil society. 
  The state is an institution of power.  It is entitled (and commanded by God) to employ force (the sword) for the punishment of evildoers. When an individual or group do not submit to the authority of the state they can end up stripped of property, freedom, and even life itself.

The power to confiscate, impoverish, enslave, incarcerate, and even execute is so threatening to ordinary citizens that historically Christendom insisted that the powers of the state be carefully defined, limited, prescribed and proscribed by law.  In the Christian republic, law is king, and all law–to be genuinely holy, just and good–had to be grounded upon God’s higher laws.

Historically, Christendom insisted that government powers be carefully limited and very narrowly focused. The doctrine of the divine right of kings (where the king was regarded as answerable solely to God and thus the power of the king was implicitly absolute) was rejected emphatically in time.  The doctrine of the separation of powers of government into various loci of competence and authority (executive, judicial, and legislative) was another development to restrain and restrict absolute tyrannical power. 

The twentieth century oversaw a vast expansion of state power.  Modern Western governments have claimed authority and powers which even “divine right” monarchs could never have imagined.  The expansion of administrative controls continues unabated–ceaselessly added to by faceless committees and a multitude of  regulatory bodies. 

When modern Christians get involved in politics and government they invariably seek to wield government powers for good.  In most cases this is nothing short of tragic.  It supplants the grace and mercy of the Saviour for the dead law of man.  God commands that we love our neighbour as ourselves.  Christians–with all the best intent and motives–inevitably try to take hold of state power when they have the opportunity to so regulate, legislate, and command that we are made to love our neighbour, we are compelled to love by regulatory fiat.  Such a mistake is oxymoronic.  Its fruit is terrible.

The state has been appointed by God for the administration of vengeance upon evildoing (Romans 13: 4).  It is not appointed to be an institution to make people holy, righteous and good by means of wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command.  It has no appointed efficacy or power to transform people from sinners into saints.  Were that the case there would have been no need for Christ’s atonement and blood sacrifice upon the cross, and no need for His resurrection.  Salvation could have been achieved by passing a law and ruthlessly enforcing it.

The authority and competence of the state is exceedingly narrow.  Christians make a grave mistake when they think they can enter politics to “make a difference”.  In most cases they will end up inflicting far, far more harm than good.  When it comes to making people righteous the law is worthless.  If Christians have not got this clearly fixed in their minds they should stay away from politics, government, and civil administration as if it were the plague. 

Here to Help

Jabba the Hut Gives us Nightmares

Ronald Reagan famously quipped that the most dangerous sentence in the English language was, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.”  Authoritarian rulers who believe they know what is in your best interests (better than you do) and who have pompously convinced themselves that they are kindly, considerate, and thoughtful–that is, they have noble motives–are the most dangerous of all.  After all Judas believed he was doing his people a great service, having their best interests at heart, when he betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver.  In reality, he had fallen under the control of the Devil (Luke 22:3). 

Consequently, since the price of liberty is perpetual vigilance, we have to scrutinise very closely “well-meaning” governments.  The more well-meaning they are, the more dangerous they become.  At the very least it evidences a mode of thinking which considers citizens to be infantile children.  Such arrogance is both demeaning and minatory.

New Zealand’s privacy laws are an example.  Conceived by civil righters and faceless bureaucrats and NGO-bureaucrats, privacy has become a classic example of the genre of authorities knowing what is best for you even if you don’t.
  (Children, after all, cannot be expected to understand what is in their long term best interests.)  So, after a due amount of huffing and puffing about dire threats to human existence and evil Rodents of Unusual Size which inhabited the badlands, threatening outlying villages we passed Privacy Laws and even appointed a Privacy Commissioner.  The citizen-children at last could sleep in peace with untroubled dreams of privacy gobbling monsters.

But the world is a dynamic place and the privacy threatening rodents merely changed their tactics.  They developed new technologies.  They thought up new ways to invade the children’s cots.  Vigilance was required.  And new laws and regulations.  Always new restrictions, more controls, more Dictats.  Until, one day, the children began having new nightmares.  Not about intrusive rodents from the badlands, but huge hulking slugs, like Jabba the Hut slobbering over the cots, licking the citizen-babes to sleep.  Welcome to the loving embrace of the Privacy Commissioner: the biggest slug of them all.  It stinks with a malefactory odour. 

An editorial in the NZ Herald, reacting to the slug’s latest moves to protect us from advertisers,  puts the matter in proper perspective:

The Privacy Commissioner wants to go much further, attacking direct mail at its source in the information that can be gathered about individuals’ spending habits and preferences. The commissioner wants the powers of the office widened so that it no longer acts only on complaints from the public but can take action against organisations that might be gathering and using information without the subject of the information being aware of it.

Is this so bad? It sounds sneaky, even creepy, but it is simply trying to sell people things they might like. All advertising attempts to reach the most likely buyers of the product it is selling. Advertising is not regarded as a public service because it is done for a profit, but public service and profits are not mutually exclusive. All trade is an exchange of benefit.

Is privacy so important that we do not want direct advertising to know what we might like? Privacy is a relatively new concern of legislators and regulators. It is a concern that originated in rarefied circles of policy-making, not from popular demand.

Principles of privacy are now written into public service rules, sometimes to the detriment of sensible advice that health professionals, for example, might give to family members of a distressed person.

It is hard to write a privacy code for everybody. Information that some people would keep to themselves, others put on Facebook. Individuals differ widely on what they want to share and what they regard as private. The best way to regulate such a variable and subjective human right is to adjudicate on complaints.  Complaints involve real people with real concerns. We might be much less concerned than the commissioner thinks we should be, or would be if we knew what consumer information was being exchanged about us. But do we really care?

If it means we get alerted to travel deals or gift possibilities or it is just another addition to the waste paper collection, it is harmless. Strict privacy is for hermits, the rest of us interact with the world and can judge when marketers exceed our tolerance.

Strict privacy is for hermits and babes in hermetically sealed nurseries.  It is not for adults and free people.  We will judge for ourselves, thank you.  When we make mistakes we will learn from them.  We will follow our own preferences, including this: intrusive Rodents of Unusual Size are much less a threat than Jabba the Privacy Commissioner Hut.  Spare us from nannying, do-gooding government.  It is positively dangerous, and eventually, nightmarish.