State-Broken

Madison said rights pre-exist government. Wilson said government exists to dispense whatever agenda of rights suits its fancy, and to annihilate, regulate, attenuate, or dilute others. Madison said the rights we are owed are those necessary for the individual pursuit of happiness. Wilson and the Progressives said the rights you deserve are those that will deliver material happiness to you, and spare you the strain and terror of striving.

Let’s get a sense of the size of our debt. In 1916, in Woodrow Wilson’s first term, the richest man in America, John D. Rockefeller, could have written a personal check and retired the national debt. Today, the richest man in America, Bill Gates, could write a personal check for all his worth and not pay two months interest on the national debt.

Ten years from now the three main entitlements – Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – plus interest will consume 93 percent of all federal revenues.

There’s an old story where two people are walking down the road, one an economist, the other a normal American, and they fall into a pit with very steep sides. The normal American says, “Good Lord, we can’t get out.” The economist says, “Not to worry; we’ll just assume a ladder.” This seems to me to be the only approach politicians have to the Ponzi nature of our own welfare state.

It is time for us to understand that the model we share – so far in attenuated form – with Europe simply cannot work. It states that we should tax the rich (a.k.a. the investing and job-creating class), while counting on spending the revenues of investment and job creation. No one has explained to the political class that it is very dangerous to try to leap a chasm in two bounds.

The cost of …not enforcing the doctrine, in some sense, of enumerated powers, is that big government inevitably breeds bigger government. James Q. Wilson, one of the great social scientists in American history, put it this way. “Once, politics was about only a few things. Today, it is about nearly everything.”

Since there is virtually nothing the government has not already tried to do, there is little it cannot be asked to do. And so we have today’s death spiral of the welfare state; an ever-larger government resting on an ever-smaller tax base – government impeding the creation of wealth in order to enforce the redistribution of it.

When James Madison and 54 other geniuses went to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they did not go there to design an efficient government. …. They wanted a safe government, to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms: three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajorities, and judicial review. …. The world understands … that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness.

We are told that one must not be a “Party of No.” …. The Bill of Rights is a litany of “No’s” – no unreasonable search and seizure, no cruel and unusual punishments, no taking of property without just compensation, and so it goes.

-George Will, “Not a State-Broken People
(coulda almost quoted the whole thing)

$13 Trillion

Here’s a quick look at what America’s current national debt could buy.

Panoramania

In Colorado, we tried a few panorama shots – taking multiple pics and then sewing them together with a program later. Here’s how they turned out:

The Law and Relativity

There are three facets of the Old Testament law: the moral, the civil, and the ceremonial.

The moral facet is what we could refer to as “the spirit” of the law. “Do not murder” is a moral command with moral implications. The moral law of God is absolute and perpetually binding – all men must have this standard met or perish. This is part and parcel of the covenant of creation with Adam, which pre-existed national Israel and the giving of the Decalogue. The works of the moral law are written on all men’s hearts in that they know right from wrong.

The civil facet is the application of the moral law. As such it is necessarily related; the civil stems from the moral. Although levitical civil laws were intended specifically for the good direction of the people of Israel – for their separation and preservation as a peculiar nation in a world of pagans, it is understood that the civil punishments are still righteous in their “general equity.” We’ll come back to this.

Finally, the ceremonial facet was a specific reminder to the people of Israel of their sin and salvation by a holy God. It is because of the standard set by the moral law that the ceremonial law was required. The elements of the ceremonial law were specific to Old Testament Israel and are now superfluous due to the work of Christ on the cross.

To those who would hold God to his own law, we must assume that they intend to discuss the moral law (for the civil is grounded in the moral, and the ceremonial would just be silly – requiring God to sprinkle lamb’s blood on an alter in homage to himself). Theology proper is key here, for to say this is to say that God is like us rather than a transcendent being. To quote a friend of mine:

FWIW, a helpful metaphor for me … is the idea of God as author. It’s not immoral for an author to create immoral characters and even to “kill” off good characters because of the eminence of the author in regard to the characters…The immoral characters are immoral because they commit acts against morality, but the author is not immoral (per se) for creating the tales of these fictitious scoundrels. He may outrage certain fans when he does this, but other than that, he’s not committing any crimes by killing that which only exists as an outcropping of his imagination.

Another helpful example might be that of a father and child. It may seem hypocritical at first to subject others to a law that one doesn’t keep, but there are certain roles of supremacy that I think we all fundamentally recognize as good and necessary. I can set a curfew for my children that I don’t keep because they are growing and need more rest than I do…; I can forbid my children from playing with the grill, iron, lawnmower, scissors, etc. even though I’m free to use such tools because I have certain knowledge and ability that they do not; I may forbid my children from talking to strangers, because they have a certain vulnerability and naïveté; etc. God can forbid us from doing certain things that He himself is free to do, not because He is a tyrannical hypocrite, but because He is in a position of authority to know how best to direct us.

This is not to say that God is not holy or just or righteous. On the contrary, the law of God reveals these very attributes of God. But to be clear, to say that the law shows the character of God is a very different thing than to say that God is beholden to obey the law he has given man.

In the new covenant, we have Christ.

Christ upholds the moral law. He even strengthens these commands from the legalistic code it had become to show the scope of the law to extend to the deepest recesses of man’s heart and mind.

Christ fulfills the ceremonial law. Hebrews 9:11-10:18 tells us that Christ is both the perfect high priest as well as the perfect sacrifice for sins. With this, animal sacrifices and offerings are no longer necessary.

Christ redeems the civil law. Government is a natural part of humanity. People establish rules by which their societies will live (even if the rule is to have no rules). A society of redeemed people will choose to form their society after the rules of God. (Indeed, even societies not composed of Christians may find Christian civil laws to be of benefit, and may submit to them.) With this, we establish an ideal – the most Godly rule of civil law for any given society.

Those who would assert that Christians wink at portions of their own scriptures misunderstand several things. The moral facet of the law is in no way diminished, which is why Christians continually war with their surrounding culture over the morays and laws of the land. The ceremonial facet has been fulfilled through Christ. It is the civil aspect of the law were the difficulty lies.

OT Israel was a church-state, with levitical ministers holding magistrates accountable to the law of God. The same is true today, with modern Christians preaching to the surrounding culture. It is clear that New Testament writers instructed Christians to submit to the authority of the state inasmuch as they were able to do so without being required to sin. However, the state is also called to an ideal in that they are to honor the law of God by enforcing it in the civic sphere. There is debate over whether specific civil punishments are necessarily married to specific moral laws, but it is clear that the moral is to inform the civil, and that the state is to enforce civil in a manner reflecting the moral with equity (the punishments fitting the crime).

In any case, with our modern sensibilities, we may look back at the civil code of theocratic Israel and find particular laws heinous and appalling. However, in any such assessment, we diminish the holiness of God and the seriousness of sin that is tied to this societal governance. To critique such a system in this fashion is to critique the underpinnings and axioms of Christianity itself – a lawgiving God reaching down to a sinful world. If one chooses this route, one must then give an adequate basis for any alternate legal system one would propose. Most instances of such propositions simply boil down to moral relativism, which is another argument altogether. If one follows the Christian’s logic from the ground up (from “God exists” onward), one must acknowledge that there is a godly way for societies as well as individuals.

Memes, and keeping up with Interweb Joe

I’ve never invented any cool internet fad. In fact, most days, I can barely keep up with them. All of my facebook friends were Level 17 Warlord Plantation Owners by the time I even heard about Farmville.

Some people take pride in being anti-fad…or ‘indie,’ if you will. I’m certainly not a bleeding-edge hipster, but I consider myself anti-fad. I will, on occasion, simply avoid a thing, place, food, site, or song simply to make the point that I’m not on the bandwagon. However, the secret envy of every indie hipster is to be the first one on the bandwagon. You can just hear that person now, can’t you? “Yeah, I was into Coldplay back before they went mainstream. They’re total sellouts now.” The blessed irony of this type of person is that there are enough of them that they (perhaps inadvertently) form their own little subculture to which any true indie must adhere, lest they lack the appropriate bonafides, and spoil the group. (Heaven forbid a hipster who digs Nickelback.) Those of us who would say and do such things should probably try to take ourselves less seriously.

The trouble with me is that I’m also notoriously late to things – movies, music, etc. I’m the dude who would go blogaciously nuts when I found that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. My favorite album of the month is perennially one from two years back I’m just getting around to giving a spin. I’m not sure I could be a blogger for hire because I simply take too long to process things.

So, all of this was a muse to bring you this article talking about the pacing, anatomy, and business of memes, and this note from Peter Leithart warning of the idolatries of thriving on the bleeding edge of modern culture.

So, here’s to hoping my regurgitation doesn’t every annoy. In the meantime, I’m just going to post where I’m at.

On Prosperity

I had intended to write a lengthy and exhaustive post against prosperity preaching here. Instead, I will point you to the work of others. Desiring God has recently outlined twelve admonitions against prosperity preachers.

These blurbs speak mostly to money, but the dangers of prosperity preaching today lie just as much in the exaltation of health and well-being. These Jabez-ian, name-it-claim-it mantras are particularly deadly for a nation already gorged with entitlement.

I am too ignorant a historian to fully catalog the travesties of the christian church throughout history in light of such thinking. From British Imperialism to American Manifest Destiny, we can see the errors to which we have been led. This recent survey of modern day Nigeria relays haunting echoes of “God wills it.”

Don’t hurt yourself…

Here’s a link, if you can’t see the video.

Liberal Amnesia

MoveOn.org deletes “General Betray-Us” – Ed Morrissey (as per usual) picks up on the glaring contradictions of Democrats in Washington praising the new general in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus. Petraeus was key to the success of Iraq amid being the icon of shame by the anti-war left. Now, he is receiving “bipartisan support,” and is expected to fly through the confirmation process. The press is focusing on the Kagan hearings, which is a nice distraction.

Report issued on Boston race issues – The Boston Globe quietly contradicted the president last week, confirming that the department does not take race into account in their arrests. In particular, in studying call-outs for disorderly conduct, the primary reason for arrests is belligerent vulgarities shouted at police officers. Imagine that.

Byrd’s past sins vs. others – With the recent brouhaha over Rand Paul’s theoretical discussion about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it is funny that most media outlets are addending Robert Byrd’s klan membership and segregationist attitudes as mere footnotes. Far be it from me to wave a man’s greatest sin out at his graveside, but how does one reconcile the big deal it was for a man (Rand) to whom the question was not actually put with the posthumous praise of a man who failed the very same test?

…been a Father

More stuff I’ve never done.

This is our little girl at 8 weeks:

P1010475

…and these are from this past week, at our 20 week appointment:
Face and arm:

A long leg:

Foot:

Curling up in a ball:

Yes, I said girl. It was fairly obvious, but in the spirit of modesty, we have refrained from posting the money shot.

Our Moving Nation

Here’s a bit of a mental health break. I’m not going to try to embed it, but Forbes has a fantastic interactive map showing movement to and from every county in the US.

This one in particular gives me great hope for Houston. We’ll take that east coast talent, tyvm.

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