If I line up (at times) with Lew Rockwell, who thinks the Constitution was statist from the beginning, I have to explain myself. If I throw my support behind (say) a Romney the way Hugh Hewitt has in the past, the associational argument evaporates.

But wait a minute. Patrick Henry thought the Constitution as first presented was a statist document. Is he the only one who gets to smell a rat? The first generation of our founders thought the objection potent enough to attach the Bill of Rights to the document, and what is the Bill of Rights? The Bill of Rights is the testimony of our founders that the Constitution as it was first presented created an opening for the erosion of all our rights. I think the Bill of Rights was an adequate firewall in principle (albeit not in practice), but what exactly about subsequent events has demonstrated that such concerns were misplaced? Without the Bill of Rights, we would have turned into the soft despotism we have now a generation or two earlier than we did.

I grant that in America we still have more freedoms than most places in the world, and I really am grateful for that. But our dwindling freedoms will not be maintained if we persist on kidding ourselves about how many of them we have already lost. What is the current price for a modern American to fly across the country? Right. Hundreds of dollars for the ticket, and one crotch check administered by a surly bureaucrat in uniform.

via Bright Lights and Big Bugs.

I’ve known scores of seminary students. Many have the natural leadership gifts to be pastors, but many do not. I’ve seen the ones who do not jumping through the bureaucratic hoops with a wife and children in tether, sacrifices made, poverty borne with grace, and then heartbreak. No pulpit, no job, except maybe a church planting opportunity with no start-up grant. The wives seem to suffer the most in these cases.

via The Seminary Bubble – Jerry Bowyer – The Great Relearning – Forbes.

And one other thing:

“God therefore does not call us back to complete the task that the first Adam fumbled.”

via Creed Code Cult: Sola Fide and “Kingdom Work”.

This is such a bad way to state what happened with original sin. If Genesis revealed that God struck the human race with depravity and death because Adam forgot which animal was the Llama, then “fumbled” would be a great term and it would also be an attack on God’s character.

Adam left his wife to give testimony to words she never heard, let her eat death fruit and then ate only after she survived the ingestion, and then blamed her and God to God’s face.

This was not a “fumble.” It was a high handed act of unbelief and involved a character assassination of God that was immense in its ingratitude.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Another interviewee in the article, a marine in his 20s, stated, “It was hell. Every village we went into we got a group of men wearing makeup coming up, stroking our hair and cheeks and making kissing noises.”

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

here it is

The trees once went out to appoint an inquisitor over them to find heretics and protect their congregations, and they said to the olive tree, “Reign over us.” But the olive tree said to them, “Shall I leave my abundance, by which gods and men are honored, and go hold sway over the trees? Should I make their leaves shake in the winds of fear and find reason to accuse and malign?” And the trees said to the fig tree, “You come and reign over us.” But the fig tree said to them, “Shall I leave my sweetness and my good fruit and go hold sway over the trees? Should I make their leaves shake in the winds of fear and find reason to accuse and malign?” And the trees said to the vine, “You come and reign over us.” But the vine said to them, “Shall I leave my wine that cheers God and men and go hold sway over the trees? Should I make their leaves shake in the winds of fear and find reason to accuse and malign?” Then all the trees said to the bramble, “You come and reign over us.” And the bramble said to the trees, “If in good faith you are appointing me inquisitor over you, then come and take refuge in my shade, but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.” And the bramble also said, “Come and see my instruments by which I will ensure the trees conform to the measure of sound doctrine.”

And he showed them the hammer, ax, and saw.

Mark Horne » Blog Archive » Desirable to make one wise..

Wisdom is first mentioned in the context of grabbing forbidden fruit. Evidence of possessing wisdom is the reason why Joseph is clothed with authority.

If wisdom is about ruling, then perhaps we can see that Cain needed to seek wisdom.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.

Read the rest: China’s Future As a Christian Nation.

The verse has a lot of applications, but one might be the way we sometimes get horrified and weepy over some sinful habits or, worse, habitual sins that we indulge in from time to time and then regret by agonizing.

Are we agonizing so we can convince ourselves that we’ve “paid” and then resume normal life without any new protections, accountability, or changes in place so that, when we get bored or restless, we can enjoy the indulgence all over again?