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Social Insecurity

Posted in Politics on December 29, 2010| 5 Comments »

This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you:  He will take your sons…He will take your daughters…He will take the best of your fields…and give them to his servants…he will take your male servants…He will take a tenth of your sheep.  And you will be his servants.  And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.  – I Samuel 8:10-18

There are two major theoretical errors in the field of politics: 1) the belief that the individual is sovereign, and 2) the belief that the state is sovereign.  The former tends to anarchy, the latter to tyranny.  Both are best avoided.  But how?  The short answer is understanding this truth:  God alone is sovereign.  And if God is sovereign, man – considered either as private citizen or as magistrate – is not. 

The nation of Israel forgot this when they demanded Samuel make them a king.  They didn’t want the limited government of the judges.  The wanted a Führer who could make the trains run on time.  Samuel argued and told them told them what a king would do:  he would take their sons, their daughters, their fields and their vineyards.  He would take their servants both male and female.  He would take their harvest and the livestock.  He would take, he would take, he would take.  And what he didn’t take to keep for himself, he would give away to his rich, well-connected buddies.  Think of it as the OT version of crony capitalism, which isn’t capitalism at all, or the obnoxious “too big to fail doctrine” so popular in 2008.  But the people were not dissuaded from their chosen course.  They demanded a king and they got one…good and hard.

Americans too have ignored Samuel’s warning.  For what the prophet said about the behavior of a king also applies to big government in general.  After making a good beginning as a constitutional republic, our nation has morphed into a corporatist welfare state with government taking our freedom, our dignity and our wealth.  And much of what it takes is transferred to programs favored by special interest groups.    

One of the most powerful of those special interests is the lobby that seeks to perpetuate the Social Security status quo.  The program was an enormous fraud from the beginning, is currently going bankrupt, and will leave millions such as myself with nothing to show for a lifetime of paying FICA taxes…excuse me…contributions other than the a shrug of Uncle Sam’s shoulders.  One of the few men in Washington honest enough to speak the truth about the Social Security mess is Ron Paul.  In his latest Texas Straight Talk column Paul comments,

Courage begins with a commitment to see things as they are, rather than how we wish they were.  When it comes to Social Security, we must understand that the system does not represent an old age pension, an “insurance” program, or even a forced savings program.  It simply represents an enormous transfer payment, with younger workers paying taxes to fund benefits.  There is no Social Security trust fund, and you don’t have an “account.”  Whether you win or lose the Social Security lottery is a function of when you happened to be born and how long you live to collect benefits.  Of course young people today have every reason to believe they will never collect those benefits.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans that the job of the government is to praise good and punish evil.  Absent from his abbreviated list of proper government functions is retirement savings provider.  Big government is both a sin and a punishment.  It is a sin in that it is a rejection of God’s provision in favor of faith in the wisdom of men; it is a punishment in that it robs the offending people of their wealth, their freedom and their dignity.  And until Americans realize that the government – federal, state and local -is not the sovereign provider of all good things, they will continue to be hoodwinked by socialists who promise the world but deliver only bankruptcy and tyranny.  Read the rest of Paul’s article.

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‘Tis the Season

Posted in Politics, Scripturalism, Theology on December 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The preaching and belief of the Gospel changes not only individuals, but whole societies.  As Christians we understand the former, but often have a poor grasp of the latter.  As a youngster, I was taught nothing by my public schools about the great debt modern civilization owes to Christianity.  Ancient Greece and Rome, I was told, were the basis of modern science, democracy and civlization as a whole.  It’s safe to say no one in my classes, including me, had ever heard of E. C. Wine’s The Hebrew Republic or Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  Our history books, however, did give us one or two paragraphs on a minor event that took place in the 16th century, something called the Protestant Reformation.  

Perhaps the best treatment I have ever read of the contrast between Christian and non-Christian civilization is John Robbins’ book Christ and Civilization.  In it, Robbins paints a stark picture of just how unjust and brutal “glorious” ancient Greek and Roman societies really were.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read even a little history.  The enormities of communism and fascism in the 20th century occurred, not in a Christian contex, but in an atheistic one.  Our own nation is rapidly sinking under the weight of similar foolish ideas, and unless Christ grants widespread repentance, we will surely experience the same sort of oppression as did the people of those societies.  Brutality is both the result of and the punishment for the rejection of Christ.  

Without further delay, I give you the opening paragraphs of Robbins’ book.  

Each December 25 and January 7 nearly two billion people celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.  The celebration is doubly ironic, for the dates are not his birthday, and most celebrants have forgotten – or, more likely, have never learned – the meaning of his birth.  One of the most enthusiastic celebrants of Christmas I have known was an atheist.  She loved the colorful decorations, the intoxicating smells, the cheerful songs, the plentiful food and drink, the smiling faces of children, exchanging gifts, and the feeling of goodwill, however fleeting.  She, like hundreds of millions of others, was a devotee of Christmas, but not a disciple of Christ.

Hundreds of millions of churchgoers, unlike my atheist acquaintance, add religious feelings to their list of things to like about Christmas:  They seek and find feelings of awe and wonder from visiting cathedrals, listening to choirs and oratorios, observing rituals and processions performed by gaudily attired priests; and they think those feelings of transcendence are somehow Christian.  The churchgoers are more deluded than the atheist.

This profound ignorance of Christ – an ignorance that does not even realize it is ignorance – is a tragedy of eternal proportions, for the life of Christ – his birth, life, death, and resurrection – is not only the most important event in the history of mankind, but far more important, the only way to Heaven.  In fact, if Christ were not the only way to Heaven, his earthly life would have no importance at all.  Christ’s life is the point from which we date all of world history, and it is impossible to understand history and Western civilization,  especially the United States, without understanding Christianity.

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You Oughta be in Pictures

Posted in Politics on December 22, 2010| 2 Comments »

–The bottom line is this: red light cameras are not safety devices – they’re revenue-raising devices for corporations, states and municipalities.  – John Whitehead

The preaching of the Gospel that began during the 16th century Protestant Reformation resulted in the salvation of millions, but salvation wasn’t the only benefit conveyed by the widespread belief of God’s word.  A whole new order of society was brought about.  Governments which once ruled a cowed citizens with an iron fist were cut down to size, while at the same time individual liberty grew.  But just as civil liberties were the result, not the cause, of the preaching of Christianity, so the disappearance of Christianity in the West brought about the rise of police state.  Anyone who’s followed the news at all over the past several years knows, or should know, how fast our liberties are vanishing.  Americans have scarcely any privacy left.  Our cell phones are subject to warrantless wiretaps, our financial privacy is gone, at the airport we’re groped and x-rayed, soon our cars will have government-mandated black boxes.  Each year brings new an improved state sponsored snooping.  This being the case, the rise of the red light camera should come as no surprise.  

A while back the City of Cincinnati put red light cameras to a public vote, and the noxious little beasties went down to a glorious defeat.  For once, I was actually proud of the folks in Cincy.  But sadly the surveillance state seemingly has had at least as many successes as defeats in recent years.  Constitutional attorney John Whitehead has written an excellent piece on the rise of the red light camera and the actual motive why government snoop dog types love them so.  Read the article here.               

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Walter Williams, Iconoclast

Posted in Economics, Politics on December 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Walter Williams has long been an intellectual hero to me.  I first started reading his stuff back in the day when I was in college and in short order found myself completely hooked.  What grabbed me was how Dr. Williams – he’s an economics professor at George Mason University – would start with a few simple ideas and with rigorous logic apply them to the popular nostrums of the day.  The nostrums didn’t stand a chance.  Race and gender quotas, environmentalism, deficit spending, social welfare programs,  bureaucratic regulation, and political correctness all fell before his pen.  I was stunned.  In many ways reading his columns began the process of reclaiming my mind after many years spent detesting anything intellectual.   

John Robbins also respected Dr. Williams’ work.  Writing in a book review in The Freeman, Robbins stated about Dr. Williams that,

In an age of philosophical and moral relativism and BOMFOG (the ubiquitous and false platitudes about unity in the brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God), Dr. Williams’s honesty and analysis may be painful for some delicate souls. “Regardless of whose sensibilities are offended,” he writes, “I do not hesitate to call things as I see them. Why? Because I care about our country and fear for its future as a free and prosperous nation.” More importantly, Dr. Williams cares about truth.

 Dr Williams cares about the truth.  That’s high praise indeed.  If you haven’t read Dr. Williams work, you’re in for a treat.  Here’s a good example to get you started.

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Another Bad Day for the Establishment

Posted in Politics on December 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s official now.  Ron Paul has been appointed chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee, the one that oversees the Fed.  Banksters everywhere better get ready for a good old fashioned grillin’, Texas style. 

 This should be fun watch.

The folks over at LewRockwell.com are pretty happy about this turn of events too, which seems rather odd to me considering the website has spent a great deal of time and energy over the past several years encouraging people not to vote.  By the Rockwellites’ own standards it would seem more logical to condemn Ron Paul as a statist tyrant rather than laud him as a hero of liberty.

At any rate, we can be glad that the good people of Texas’ 14th Congressional District have better sense than to take their understanding of civics from anarchist libertarian types.

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Noah’s Park

Posted in Politics, Theology on December 9, 2010| 4 Comments »

Quick, somebody call Clarence Darrow!  The fundy hicks are at it again!  Ok, maybe the headlines and stories in the leading Kentucky papers weren’t quite that blatant, but they were pretty close.  The cause of this consternation?  A proposed theme park named Ark Encounter.  It seems that a group in Commonwealth, which is owned in part by Answers in Genesis, wants to construct a theme park based on the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark, a park that will include, among other things, a full-scale replica of the famous craft. 

This is all just too much for leading Bluegrass State intellectuals who are still reeling from the “embarrassment” of the recently opened Creation Museum and the election of Rand Paul to the US Senate.  Here’s a sample of what’s been written,

But these incentives could have been awarded without Gov. Steve Beshear’s public embrace of an expansion of the Creation Museum – a project rooted in outright opposition to science.    Hostility to science, knowledge and education does little to attract the kind of employers that will provide good-paying jobs with a future. – Lexington Herald Leader 12/3/2010

Creationism is a nonsensical notion that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old.  No serious scientist upholds this view.  –  Louisville Courier Journal 12/2/2010 

[T]he proposed creationism park reinforces unfortunate stereotypes of Kentucky and Kentuckians.  – Louisville Courier Journal 12/5/2010

Now it’s not surprising that the newspaper types would be embarrassed by Noah’s Ark.  We’ve come to expect this sort of thing.    But what I find interesting about battles of this sort is how liberal types, who in general have utter disdain for constitutional, limited government, suddenly get their Thomas Jefferson on when they feel Evangelicals are horning in on their turf.  Why the nerve of those fundies! Don’t they know that tax breaks are the exclusive domain of atheists?

For my part, I hope Ark Encounter is a smashing success.  Maybe they can even invite Bruce Waltke to the ribbon cutting.

For further reading click here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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Wiki World

Posted in Politics on December 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Though I haven’t followed it all that closely, the past few months have made it hard to ignore the WikiLeaks tiff.  I mean, stories about how Muammar Gaddafi travels everywhere with a voluptuous blonde Ukrainian nurse and loves flamenco dancing do have a way of grabbing your attention.  Inquiring minds want to know these things. 

Of course, the masters of the universe are none too happy about the whole situation.  Their problem isn’t so much the comical stuff about Gaddafi, but the release of information they claim undermines the security of the US and her allies has them in a tizzy.  In fact, about the only thing as ubiquitous as WikiLeaks revelations has been the establishment’s freak-out denunciation of them.   Consider the following,

Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.  – Mike Huckabee

Let’s be clear.  This disclosure is not just an attack on America – it’s an attack on the international community.  – Hillary Clinton

To the extent that anyone is breaking US law…they will be held accountable.  – Eric Holder

WikiLeaks committed a “treasonous act” and Congress should prod Obama to use “all necessary means to respond and defeat WikiLeaks.”  – Sarah Palin

Hell hath no fury like a Baptist minster scorned.  

For my part, I find this all a bit much.  You see, the big government types screaming for Julian Assange’s head on a silver platter for his perfidious exposure of the Federal Government’s dirty little spy secrets often are the same folks who believe that every facet of Americans’ lives should be naked and open to the eyes of Uncle Sam, whether in the name of the war on terror, the war on drugs or the war on whatever it is they happen to be offended by today.  The authoritarians on the left and right can dish out warrantless wiretaps all day long, and that’s well and good.  But let the unwashed ignoramuses in flyover country learn the truth about their masters’ skullduggery and it’s the end of the world as we know it. 

(more…)

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Who’s Afraid of Ron Paul?

Posted in Economics, Politics, tagged on December 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

There was a time in my more naive days when I believed the nonsense about how all the problems in the country were the fault of liberal Democrats. I know better now. After the miserable showing of the Republican Congress from 1994 – 2008, I could be forgiven for not being overwhelmed at the prospect of a Republican House majority in the next Congress. But one thing that definitely does excite me is the prospect of Ron Paul becoming Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. This is the congressional committee to which the Ben Bernanke reports as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The notion of Bernanke reporting to a committee chaired by Ron Paul has the establishment folks excited too, although freaked out may be a better way of putting it.

Let the show begin.

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The $20 Billion Shakedown

Posted in Politics on June 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

“I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or corporation does anything legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again in my words, amount to a shakedown. – Rep. Joe Barton

When Joe Barton rather inarticulately apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the lawless treatment the company had received at the hands of the Obama White House, he set off a firestorm.  His comments were widely seen as a gaffe (which is best defined as a public figure accidently telling the truth), and his own party threatened to remove him from the energy committee unless he issued an apology.  Of course Barton played the politician and quickly retracted his statement.   

Thomas Sowell, on the other hand, has never been one to apologize for his controversial but true statements, and his recent piece on the $20 Billion shakedown of BP is right on target.  Due process, it seems, is not an option for the politically unpopular.  

Disclosure:  the author is a BP stockholder.

            

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Authoritarianism is Bad for Your Health

Posted in Politics, tagged on June 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Leon Trotsky…might be paraphrased, “In a country where the sole physician is the State, opposition means death by health care rationing.  The old principle, who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one:  Who does not cooperate shall not recover.” – John Robbins

In his must-read 1994 lecture on Hillary Care, John Robbins noted the logical and historical connection between national healthcare and dictatorship, an opinion shared by his former boss, Congressman Ron Paul from Texas.  As a physician, Ron Paul understands the importance of quality, affordable healthcare.  As a congressman and advocate of personal liberty, he understands it can be delivered only through the agency of the free market, not government bureaucracies and onerous mandates.  For this reason, he has introduced legislation that would repeal the worst feature of the recent healthcare reform bill:  the requirement that every American purchase health insurance or face IRS penalties.        

Paul writes,

The administration’s terrible healthcare reform bill is now law, but the debate over how– and whether– the federal government should be involved in providing healthcare services is not over.  It is not too late for America to correct its course and stop the march toward a government-run, “single payer” healthcare system.

Polls show that a large majority of Americans don’t want Obamacare.  Congress should seize the opportunity to repeal the very worst aspect of this new legislation, namely the mandate that forces every American either to purchase health insurance or face an IRS penalty.  This mandate represents nothing more than an unconstitutional, historically unprecedented gift to the insurance industry.  I introduced the “End the Mandate Act” (HR 4995) expressly to prevent the administration from ever putting this provision into effect.

Read the rest of the article

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