Monthly Archives: October 2009

Civilization is by faith

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The thing about Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa is that it keeps dropping profundities that seem to exceed the needs of an “issues book.”  For example, from page 58:

Aid and social capital: a matter of trust

Social capital, by which is meant the invisible glue of relationships that holds business, economy and political life together, is at the core of any country’s development.  At its most elemental level, this boils down to a matter of trust.

As discussed earlier, among development practitioners there is increasing acknowledgement of “soft” factors–such as governance, the rule of law, institutional quality–play a critical role in achieving economic prosperity and putting countries on a strong development path.  But these things are meaningless in the absence of trust.  And while trust is difficult to define or measure, when it is not there the networks upon which development depends break down or never even form.

While the word “governance” is used here, it can’t possibly be reduced to a theory, structure, or model of the state.  She’s talking about he social custom of integrity and the blessing of being able to expect integrity.

What is sad is that Christians have adopted such a magical and superstitious understanding of the word faith, that they can’t even see that it is all Peter Leithart is talking about.  I have actually read a reviewer ask “where is faith” in his amazing book.  It is like accusing a man for writing about color of apostasy from belief in the existence of light.

As I wrote once,

God wants you to trust him the way politicians ask you to trust them. Jesus wants you to trust him the way you trust your doctor. Trusting God is not a qualitatively different act from accepting payment by means of a check. This should be the faith our children see in us. It should be the faith the world sees in us. No other faith declares that God exists.

For the world is built on faith. Cultures are formed around trust in something or someone. “The American Dream,” Democracy, Motor cycle culture, Sports. Our trust in Christ should be just as concrete and it should forge us into a unique community. It should create a different world.

And that is the tragedy.  No one trusts their doctor, they want the government to confiscate him.  Yet no one trusts politicians either in general, except for clinging superstitiously to one’s own tribe.  But even that will be gone, along with trust in bankers or anyone else.  And that means collapse.  A friend just pointed me to this: America’s Soul is Lost.

No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street’s “too-greedy-to-fail” banks. Faber is warning that the entire system of capitalism will collapse. Get it? The engine driving the great “American Economic Empire” for 233 years will collapse, a total disaster, a destiny we created.

OK, deny it. But I’ll bet you have a nagging feeling maybe he’s right, the end may be near. I have for a long time: I wrote a column back in 1997: “Battling for the Soul of Wall Street.” My interest in “The Soul” — what Jung called the “collective unconscious” — dates back to my Ph.D. dissertation: “Modern Man in Search of His Soul,” a title borrowed from Jung’s 1933 book, “Modern Man in Search of a Soul.” This battle has been on my mind since my days at Morgan Stanley 30 years ago, witnessing the decline.

Has capitalism lost its soul? Guys like Bogle and Faber sense it. Read more about the soul in physicist Gary Zukav’s “The Seat of the Soul,” Thomas Moore’s “Care of the Soul” and sacred texts.

But for Wall Street and American capitalism, use your gut. You know something’s very wrong: A year ago “too-greedy-to-fail” banks were insolvent, in a near-death experience. Now, magically they’re back to business as usual, arrogant, pocketing outrageous bonuses while Main Street sacrifices, and unemployment and foreclosures continue rising as tight credit, inflation and skyrocketing Federal debt are killing taxpayers.

Yes, Wall Street has lost its moral compass. They created the mess, now, like vultures, they’re capitalizing on the carcass. They have lost all sense of fiduciary duty, ethical responsibility and public obligation.

Here are the Top 20 reasons American capitalism has lost its soul:

Read the rest.

The perfect revenge

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By some strange coincidence I am reading Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa and Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, which are both worth reading.  Reading them together though, is a bizarre experience.

I may write an argument to show that Moyo is an undercover Austrian, but I’ll have to wait and see.  What is clear from reading her book on development in Africa is why we’re not going to see much more of it in North America in the foreseeable future.  And it is also clear that Barack Obama, Sr., along with many other fresh young optimistic victims, came to the US and got propagandized in how to be powerful bureaucrats.  Apart from aid itself, how much damage and death have we inflicted on the African continent by converting their leaders to Keynsians at best and outright socialists at worst?

It is completely appropriate we have the President we do.  God is not going to let us wreak economic degradation on others and not experience it ourselves.  The son avenges the father even though he has no idea how justice is really unfolding from his administration.

Eye for an eye.

John Frame on Horton’s “Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church”

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The title of this book is alarming, certainly by design. But the subtitle is even more so. Does it mean that the whole American church (all traditions, denominations, locations) is committed to an “alternative Gospel?” Or is it that, though part of the American church upholds the true, biblical gospel, there is within that church a movement (evidently a significant movement) to the contrary?

We should keep in mind that such language makes the most serious indictments. To be Christless is to be doomed to Hell (John 3:36). And if someone preaches an “alternative gospel,” contrary to the gospel preached by the apostle Paul, he is to be accursed (Gal. 1:8-9). People who preach “another gospel” are not Christian friends who happen to disagree with us on this or that matter. Rather, they have betrayed Christ himself. The whole church ought to rise up against such persons and declare that they are not part of the body of Christ and that they have no part in the blessings of salvation. Indeed, if they do not repent, they have no future except eternal punishment.

In my view, many Christians (especially those in the conservative Reformed tradition that Horton and I both inhabit) use this sort of language far too loosely, even flippantly. It is time we learned that when we criticize someone for preaching “another gospel” we are doing nothing less than cursing him, damning him to Hell.

But Horton actually indicates to his readers that these charges are not to be taken seriously.

Read the rest at: Review of Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church.

Looking for living faith

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Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
look and take note!
Search her squares to see
if you can find a man,
one who does justice
and seeks truth,
that I may pardon her.

via Passage: Jeremiah 5 (ESV Bible Online).

One would think, listening to some people that this mush be hypothetical “moralism” a “typological overlay of the covenant of works.”  What God really wants hearers to do is to give up on justice and truth and cry for God’s mercy to obtain pardon.

But the hypothetical moralism won’t work because there is no “covenant of works,” hypothetical or real, that can offer pardon.  The “covenant of works”–that is, the covenant God made with Adam in the beginning before sin–demanded perfect and perpetual obedience.  There was no provision for forgiveness because it was impossible to do so.

The point of Jeremiah is not that no one can “do justice” or “seek truth.”  The point is just the opposite.  Someone had better start or the wrath of God will fall.

As Jesus dictated to the Apostle John in Revelation 2: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”

Your life matters to your agenda

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Remember Clinton? Remember “bimbo eruptions”?

Now look at Obama. Do you see what a great family he has? Wouldn’t it be easier to oppose and obstruct Obama’s agenda if he were a philanderer?  A one-woman man makes a great leader for good or ill.

A personal life of integrity is a powerful political weapon. I wish more “conservative” politicians would put it in their arsenal.

Love of a denomination (within the Chrisitan Church)

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On the one hand, it is a delusion. Loving a denomination larger than a few people makes as much sense as loving mathematics. It is an abstraction.

But it can also mean loyalty to lawful Church authority, which is a good thing.

The conceptual problem in the denominational context is that one submits to a denomination willingly on the basis of some claim that the denomination is run in a certain way and that one can expect a certain amount of integrity and godliness in the process. When such expectations are completely disappointed, one can feel one was defrauded and want to retract the decision that was made under false pretenses.

But it is not that simple. Marriages should not end simply because one spouse feels disappointed in the other. The contractual nature of modern church relationships is similar (probably not identical!). So it gets messy.

One can love one’s mother more than all other women without insisting that she is the best women in the world. One can be loyal to a denomination for the same reason.

Yet, there are always those within denominations who will insist that the only reason to belong to one is because one is assured of its superiority. That is not true loyalty to a denomination but rather an ethic of perpetual war within the body of Christ. It is a war with other denominations and it is also a war against other members of the denomination for not believing in the alleged superiority. And it becomes a perfect instance in which “love” of the denomination requires exactly the opposite of love toward the people who make up the denomination.

Denominations typically spell out a few conditions of teaching, belief, or practice that define the boundaries for the denomination. Since most denominations are not so shameless as to include “We are the best of all” in those requirements, it is not uncommon for the members and ministers of the denomination to include people who are not infected with that level of arrogance. These people are the natural targets of those who are so infected.

But as a true society, any story about how one came to join a certain denomination will be mostly about providential relationships. Some stories will contain very little account of a change of heart and mind (“I was born to Episcopalian parents”) and others will contain a great deal.

But denominations are a network of relationships and one is led into them through relationships.

[Note: I believe I have ripped off both Fisher Ames (love of math) and G. K. Chesterton (love of mother) through primary or secondary sources, but my memory is too dim to say more.]

The voice of death panel

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YouTube – Robert Reich: What An Honest President Would Say About Health Reform.

Pretty interesting.  Here we have the whole collection:

  • President as national Savior
  • Burdening the young and independent in the name of the collective good.
  • Killing people in the name of the collective good (withholding medicine they could pay for themselves in a free society)
  • Using unconstitutional government influence in the economy to further weaken an industry.
  • Openly announcing the end of scientific progress.
  • Openly announcing the end of progress in longevity.
  • An ego that admires itself for its willingness to wish for death and destruction and makes such “courage” the sign of intellect and integrity.

Does anyone remember when “health reform” was supposed to actually help people.  What is better about this?

Do people die now from lack of health care?  “Well, we need more of them to die, just preferably the older non-taxpaying.  We plan to harvest the economic output of the young and health until they are used up.” That is compassion?  That is a solution to problems?  I thought the problem was that people were not getting care.  Now it is that we want to choose who lives and who dies when?

Is too much money going into expensive and “unnecessary” drugs?  Well, duh, give us back our freedom and get rid of the lawyers paradise monopolies of patents and intellectual property.  Monopolies produce all sorts of problems and these are all completely the result of insane grants by governments to corporations.

The bottom line is laissez-faire. Leave us alone.  Get away from medicine and welfare.  Let charities and savings deal with the elderly instead of your bureaucrats and your taxes and your increasingly burdensome regulations.  Your subsidies make prices skyrocket so you can pretend to save us with price controls.

The United States Government is nothing but a Death Panel.  Reich just wants to get there quicker, but this nations is, in principle, already an extermination camp.  The only question is when they role out the barbed wire and where they build the furnaces.  The political realities have already been set.

On the Graham v. Paul thing

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Ron Paul vs. Lindsey Graham on the Future of the GOP – Washington Wire – WSJ.

Quick Comment:

The reason why the GOP is going to be institutionally resistant to Paul and tend to promote Graham is because everyday people are usually too busy to be political.  This means a few things.

I won’t number these because I’m not worrying about order:

It means that the people who directly benefit from politics are the ones who tend to devote resources to be political.  I’m about to submerge myself in a project but am taking five minutes to post this.  That is the imbalance.  Somewhere someone is actually paid to do things that are political because they are profitable.

Freedom and limited government are profitable for everyone in general but not to anyone in particular.  So those who are looking for opportunities to find profits have a general interest in limiting freedom in order to make money.

Those who invest in the political process have two avenues of investment in a representative democracy: the voters and the officials.  The officials can be bribed legally and illegally in any number of ways.  But there are also a great deal of tax-free ways to manipulate the electorate and “educate them about the issues.”

Add to this the fact that the regime in power can use that power in many ways to fix the game.  They can censor speech (campaign finance reform) and control the process (the difficulty in starting third parties) so that they are never threatened.

This is why democracies in large units are always oligarchies with the only struggles consisting in which establishment will dominate.

(The problems may not be as bad in smaller units, but I don’t have time to explain why I suspect that is the case.)

This is why people pushing the oxymoronic “big government conservatism” truly believe they are doing the GOP a favor.  They see that the only path to power is to be able to do favors and buy loyalty from powerful people.  Justice doesn’t sell; tyranny has something to offer.  How are we going to compete with Obama at the auction if no one has a reason to bid on us?

Everything that is happening now was foreseen by anyone who cared back in the nineties (remember the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” populism).  It made a ripple and vanished because most people don’t have the leisure time to revolt; they were trying to make a living (made worse by some poor choices in the need for consumer goods, but still…).

If there is going to be a populist revolt in the near future, it will only be because our establishments have truly made life unlivable.  Economic collapse is the only moment when democracy “works”–if it doesn’t die completely.