[P]retenses that they have "Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union," are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated...an unwilling people. This they call "Saving the Country"; as if...any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter)...could be said to have any country. This, too, they call "Preserving our Glorious Union"; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having...[established] "a government of consent"... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats...when uttered as justifications... for now compelling...anybody to support a government that he does not want. ~ Lysander Spooner, "No Treason", No. 6, XIX. (Emphases mine.)

As anyone who listens knows, Rush Limbaugh is quite at ease with the U.S. being a super-power. Consequently he was unhappy with what he called Obama's "World Apology Tour", and with this op-ed piece published in several central and south american papers, because he's helping the rest of the world in take us down a notch, which they desire to do because they object to our being the world's lone super-power. I make no secret of being no great fan of the current occupant of the Oval Office. And I made no secret that I wouldn't be a fan of his opponent's administration. So, in general, I share Limbaugh's antipathy for the present adminstration. But there is an element of Limbaugh's thinking, on the subject of super-powers, that concerns me.

Conservatives' inability (especially -- no surprise -- neo-conservatives) to see the relation between our super-power status and the loss of freedoms they (rightly!) complain of has bothered me for some time; but it has really come to a point in the last several years. I was never a big fan of our "superpower" status, specifically, being one of only two super-powers. I liked NATO because I thought it could be an alliance of super-powers, an alliance of free nations against the communist barbarians; but that was short-lived. What can I say? When you are young and hopeful, you tend to act young and hopeful. I hadn't realized, until I was part of NATO, how comfortable Europeans are with socialism. And once you're comfortable with socialism, buying communism isn't much of a stretch.

But never mind European style, democratic, socialism.

The simple fact is this: a super-power, no matter how benevolent, no matter how "democratic", simply cannot be ruled with a republican form of government, though it will maintain the facade of republicanism -- for a while, anyway. And you cannot believe in the consent of the governed without having the view of states' rights which I have and, as a consequence, you cannot be a fan of your nation's super-power status. Indeed, a confederacy (which is what we confederates believe the Constitution created, consistent with the notion of the consent of the governed) could never have become a super-power. How can that possibly have happened with constituent members (whose taxes will fund the super-power) free to leave the so-called union with impunity?

Put simply, it could not have happened. A super-power, member-states of which can freely leave, is a super-power which is always on the brink of extinction. That is why Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father of "Crony Capitalism", and his ideological descendants (proponents of the American System), who sincerely desired a mercantilist empire of their own, don't like confederacies. They would be so proud of what this country has become, even including the recent bailouts.

Conservatives like to believe they favor states' rights, just shy of talking secession. And when I converse with them and they discover my heresy, they give the nod to states' rights and invoke "federalism" but quickly point out that the United States would never have become the power we are today had the war for southern independence been successful. Being a super-power is, apparently, an unqualified good, such a good, in fact, as to require a limitation on the right of a state to give its consent to the central government. Anything which would upset that status is an unqualified evil. (Or, they point out, that the United States would be two countries, instead of one, as if unification is, again, an unqualified good. Well, it is for a mercantilist, anyway. Not so hot for freedom lovers, though.) So, for the sake of being a super-power, the rights of states must be limited.

One of my first responses is, "What United States? There are no united states. The word united connotes freedom: the states are freely united. But they are not freely united, not anymore. They are dominated. A little freer, perhaps, but they are united in the same sense as the members of the former Union of Soviet Swallowed Republics were united. They aren't united; they are unified, sort of like a team of horses. A team of horses, hitched to the same wagon, are not united; they are unified. They do not pull together; they are harnessed and then driven together. They are driven by a master, a central, controlling master, who drives the team in pursuit of his own goals, his own vision. The master may graciously, from time to time, inquire of the team as to their own preferences, goals, visions, whatever; but, in the end, if theirs do not cohere with his own, then his own shall prevail. The vision of the master makes the liberties of the horses a relatively minor consideration. The horses must all go in the same direction; some curtailment of freedom is to expected -- for the great good of the whole team. (As if the horses, who didn't ask to be on any team in the first place, should care about the needs of the team, which are not really the needs of the team but the desire and vision of the wagon-master.)

If the rights of states must be limited for the sake of being a super-power, it stands to reason that individual rights must also be limited, again, for the good of the whole. Your neighbors may believe that your use of your property must be limited so as not to adversely affect your property values. It just goes on and on.

I know: it sounds like confederate sour grapes. But if you're still with me, consider this. The language employed to discuss our super-power status is instructive. Consider the phrases "a super-power" or "the lone super-power", and note the singulars. How does a fifty state union become a or the super-power? They don't, but a fifty member dominion can do so. These are not united states: they are unified states. And there is a difference.

And so long as Rush Limbaugh and his fellow travelers are enamored of the super-power, the simple fact of the matter is that the encroachments upon freedom will continue. They may be halted occasionally, or slowed down, but only temporarily. The reason is quite simple: secession, even if only a last resort, was the only true check upon unlimited federal power. As Woodrow Wilson once wrote, the outcome of the War for Southern Independence established the principle that the federal government is the judge of the limitations of its power. Thank you, Yanks.

Lord Acton understood the relation between state rights and totalitarianism, as he wrote to General Lee (4 November 1866):

Without presuming to decide the purely legal question...I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

General Lee definitely understood it, as he responded to Lord Acton (15 December 1866):

I yet believe that the maintenanceof the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.

There is no such thing as a super-power with a republican form of government, at least not for long. When the Romans acquired super-power status (albeit by means somewhat different from our own) they lost their republic. To be truly consistent with their profession, freedom lovers should stop being so devoted to the Unified States as a, or the, super-power, in preference of a union, a real union of free and united states.

The long and short of it is this. You can't have a free country and be a super-power, any more than you can have a free country and be a socialist power. My problem with His Beatitude is not that he's harming our super-power status. My problem is that he's not really big on freedom.

I was so glad to hear my Governor not shy away from the possibility of secession, when asked about it by a reporter at the "Tea Party" in Austin, Texas. That Perry -- not too shabby...for an Aggie.

(Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four)

At the end of this posting I raised the matter of educational philosophy. I don't want to take up the subject at length, but it occurs to me, as I continue to reflect upon evangelicalism's coming collapse, that before a Christian can do educational philosophy he needs to have done his philosophy. And I think that's a large part of evangelicalism's problem: too many of them haven't really done their evangelical philosophy. That is, many of the Christians who do philosophy take up questions being worked on by non-Christians, not entirely out of line, one could say, but perhaps not the best use of limited time and resources. Alvin Plantinga noted over two decades ago that philosophy is a social enterprise; and this fact has implications:

Christian philosophers...are the philosophers of the Christian community; and it is part of their task as Christian philosophers to serve the Christian community. But the Christian community has its own questions, its own concerns, its own topics for investigation, its own agenda and its own research program. Christian philosophers ought not merely take their inspiration from what's going on at Princeton or Berkeley or Harvard, attractive and scintillating as that may be; for perhaps those questions and topics are not the ones, or not the only ones, they should be thinking about as the philosophers of the Christian community. There are other philosophical topics the Christian community must work at, and other topics the Christian community must work at philosophically. And obviously, Christian philosophers are the ones who must do the philosophical work involved. If they devote their best efforts to the topics fashionable to the non-Christian philosophical world, they will neglect a crucial and central part of their task as Christian philosophers. What is needed here is more independence, more autonomy with respect to the projects and concerns of the non-theistic philosophical world.

Plantinga extended his remarks to all Christian scholars.

One might say evangelicalism has been poorly served by its scholars, who seem by and large to have been concerned to stake out claims in topics of interest to Princeton or Berkeley or Harvard. That is, after all, how one earns respectability. Perhaps. But neither has evangelicalism been very willing to be served by her scholars. Reducing the Christian life in the world, for the most part, to evangelism, evangelicals have asked their scholars, in varying ways, "How can you be so frivolous and selfish as to think about anything but the salvation of human souls? How can you be so wasteful of your time as to think of anything but evangelism and missions?" So, as Spencer observes, evangelical educational institutions have done little but staff their own needs. I know this: I have been the recipient of this attitude. Invariably, in talking to some evangelicals about my university studies as an undergraduate, I was asked how I, as a Christian, could justly study philosophy. One person, but only one, flat out told me there was no way I could be a Christian if I was studying philosophy. Hadn't I read Colossians 2.8? (In fact I had, which is why I felt comfortable studying philosophy and telling this gentleman he, not I, was the one who did not understand St. Paul.) For a time I was involved in the Christian Education at an evangelical church. Time out of mind I was chastised by parents for attempting to turn their children into philosophers, rather than Christians. (On a proper conception of philosophy, there isn't a difference.)

Incidentally, in those times I found encouragement in a passage from C.S. Lewis's, 22 October 1939 sermon, "Learning in Wartime":

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground -- would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether. Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. ~ In The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

It is important to note, given that my topic has been Christian education, that Lewis preached that sermon to answer the question, "When the world is advancing to heaven or hell, when liberties hang in the balance, how can students and faculty spend time on what seem to be trivialities in comparison?"

In the previous posting, I asked, "What is the student when he finishes the course of instruction at a Christian school -- other than qualified to go on to college or get a good job, be a good citizen of the U.S.?" Presently, I think the question is being answered better by the Orthodox, than by evangelicals. I think we should say that the student will be a knower of God when he completes the curriculum at his Christian educational institution. Does this mean that I think Christian schools should teach only Bible, theology, and so forth? Not at all. That would be to focus only on that form of God's revelation theologians call Special Revelation. There is also God's General Revelation -- his creation. As a revelation of God, the creation is also a means of union and communion with God. This is why Gentiles do instinctively the things contained in the law, why St. Paul could affirm that all men know God (even though they refuse to acknowledge and glorify him as God [Romans 1.18ff]).

The relation between Christian education and the coming anti-Christian spirit Spencer writes of is not forced. In this posting I asked what makes an education Christian other than the fact that it goes on in Christian schools, is provided by Christian teachers to Christian students (or the children of Christian parents) and includes chapel services once a week and a handful of Bible, theology, or Christian worldview classes. Someone who was opposed to "Christian" education could be made quite happy if a school would simply do away with its chapel services and its Bible, theology and Christian worldview classes. So when one thinks of this anti-Christian spirit one has to wonder: What is it that will make the object of this opposition Christian? It's one thing for Spencer to write of "intolerance of Christianity", but it is important to know whether the "Christianity" for which there will be this intolerance is characterized by careful devotion to Christ or by careful devotion to other things (such as "reclaiming" America for Christ). I suppose there are some who might argue that careful devotion to Christ has to mean, on some level, claiming (or reclaiming) America for Christ. In a sense that is true, if by "claiming" we mean something synonymous with evangelizing, which, by the way, is what I would mean. But, what with the "Dominionist" scare and all, I think people can be forgiven if they understand "claiming America for Christ" to mean getting legitimate control of the apparatus of the state and using that apparatus for Christian purposes (whatever "Christian" means, in that context) -- in other words Christian statism. (And I don't care if the personification of this Christian statism is Jim Wallis or Jim Dobson.)

If the intolerance of Christianity is, in fact, an intolerance of Christian statism (and I don't mean only Dominionist or Reconstruction varieties) I find myself being all for it, frankly. For me, Christian statism seems to have the same vision of an unfederal central government, promoting a utopian vision of "unity" over "disunity", engaging in just as much centralized control over public education as the current crowd, imposing its morality (however much I happen to agree with it) with same verve and gusto as liberals have done for decades. We'll probably be just as over-taxed to pay for the Christian state as we are to pay for the secular state. In other words, the Christian statism seems to me to be different from the secular statism in that it is Christian statism rather than secular statism. (But remember my question: What makes Christian education Christian?) Let me put it this way: I've always been bothered by the fact that the Roman Empire continued to be an empire after the Christians took it over. An empire is still an empire; and I don't like empires, no matter how benevolent. So if intolerance of Christianity is really, as I presently suspect, intolerance of Christian statism, then all we have here is one group of statists not tolerating another, rival, group of statists. Help me, Jack Bauer!

Of course, Christianity as careful devotion to Christ can be just as intolerable to statists as the other variety of Christianity. In the end, a statist is one who, as I mentioned here, worships man through the state. The Christian whose Christianity is careful devotion to Christ is perhaps even more intolerable to a statist (especially, perhaps, the secular statist) than the Christian whose Christianity is marked by careful devotion to "reclaiming" America for Christ. Statists cannot permit much in the way of loyalty to something higher than the state, so there is that possibility.

But I just don't think that our devotion to Christ is what's causing the problem right now. Yes, Jesus did say that those who hate him will hate his followers. But it is logically fallacious to believe that everyone who hates us does so because of him. When you see sad stuff like this (and we know that's just a sampling), in addition to acknowledging that evangelicalism seems to have difficulty giving its adherents resources to fight indwelling sin, you have to think, "It could be us." St. Peter said: "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other people's matters. Yet, if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter" (1 Peter 4.13). It is possible for Christians to suffer persecution for reasons other than devotion to Christ. When evangelicals appear to care more about whether unbelieving Heather has two unbelieving mommies than about whether believing Juan Alberto Ovalle is trying to hook up with underage girls, one has to understand how devotion to Christ seems to be a bit lower on the order of business than it should be. It would be well for evangelicals to take that to heart.

I suspect, however, that when the difficult times Spencer discusses come, the vast majority of evangelicals will take comfort that the rapture is upon us. So persecution prone are they that they will take comfort in the fact that "so persecuted they the prophets" (Matthew 5.12), and so forth. (Some of the comments here bear this out, I think.) Their disdain for the spiritual disciplines as well as the charismatic thirst for spiritual gifts like tongues, prophecies, miracles, healings, pre-occupation with eschatology, etc, have left most of them (it appears to me) without the tools or the patience, for the introspection, the self-examination, the soul-searching necessary to revive themselves. Indeed, most seem likely to blow all that off as wasteful navel-gazing, or, worse, legalism.

I also suspect that those of us who would suggest that the coming suffering may not be, or may not entirely be, suffering for simply being a Christian, will be treated like those who suggested that perhaps some elements of U.S. foreign policy played a role in the 911 attacks. (I was not one of those, for whatever that's worth.)

Perfect security and full peace
cannot exist in this world.
~ Thomas a Kempis
If we have hope in this life only
If in this life only
We have hope
It is not even that of the conquered,
Deceived by a Greek horse or
Defrauded by a crafty snake and
Since neither tears nor cries can rescue the perishing
I no longer endeavor to persevere
Under the weight of futile existence
Having tested myself and
Sought for meaning
In wine
In women
And philosophies

What we saw and heard and touched

Why should anyone take bricks for stone
And tar for mortar? Why not rather be scattered, nameless?
One toils
And another plunders
One produces
And another loots
Ancient cities, vigor spent, foundations shaken,
Recline and raze themselves to powder
The end of it all is vapor.

“I thirst.”

Adoration is recompensed with indifference
And love with infidelity
Blessed unions
Broken by premature death or
Thieving infirmity
Leave love cherished alone
In its given child

“This day you shall be with me…”

Mouths open and lies flee their hive
The passionate, desperate, clutching heat
Of flesh on flesh
(Consuming, ceaseless, desire)
Bears no fruit
No glazed donut monsters begging kisses
See the nursery, unused, converted
Into a spare bedroom
And useless seeds discarded

Arms nailed down…

I try to remember something
I’m supposed to remember
If only I could remember
Something
About a light in a window extinguished
By a silver chord
To a grinding halt
For poverty in numbers
An act of fidelity
For one of betrayal
At about the sixth hour
If only I could remember
If only I could have seen a little something

Just a little spattering
Of an omnipresent brain
A little something now
A little something here
In this life
In this world

“Into your hands…”

A little something more
Than this sisyphean life
In a crust of bread from cursed dust
After the sweaty, pyrrhic victory over thistle and thorn
What goes in is eliminated
All that is filled eventually empties
That’s where he was, I think,
When his heart broke: under the thorns

Then blood and water flowed




~ James Frank Solís
Good Friday, 2009

It never ceases to amaze me how accustomed some people are spewing platitudes, so accustomed as to be able to utter a self-contradictory assertion all the conviction of a claim such as that "All men are created equal."

Here's text of an exchange between Larry King and Penn Jillett, from 3 April 2009:

KING: Penn, do you want Obama to succeed?

JILLETTE: Well, the nice thing about hoping is that it doesn't work, so that you don't have to worry very much about what you're hoping. If what succeeding means is taking away -- giving too much of a safety net so that we can't live like Vegas, there's no reason to gamble if you can't lose, and I think it's really important that people have a chance to win and to fail, and I think too much of a safety net, it's just less fun to live.

[...]

KING: If his programs brought about health insurance that pleased all, taxes that pleased most, a better way of life for a lot of people, then that's the kind of success you would think you'd like.

JILLETTE: If you please everybody on anything you're doing something wrong. But luckily there's no chance of that. I just think that individuals are more important than a whole kind of groupthink and that individuals can do more than a top down kind of thinking. I don't think the government can solve all our problems or should try.

KING: We do have 300 million people. You can be individuals as much as you like, but somebody's gotta think for the masses.

We, the masses, can be individuals as much as we like, but somebody's going to think for us, the masses. No wonder these people look at us like we're Martians when we talk about the loss of individual freedom: they sincerely believe you can be as free as you want while someone else does your thinking for you. (They also sincerely believe they are smarter than those who disagree with them.)

We need a word, a Newspeak word for this self-contradictory concept, the individual who is free to be as individual as he wants to be while having someone do his thinking for him as a member of the masses.

Hmmm. How about individumass? Oh, better yet: freeslave. And the type of thinking we're talking about can be called topthink.

Maybe King is right: someone must think for the masses. I just wish he wouldn't lie to himself about being free to be as individual as he wants while someone else is doing the thinking for us.

Besides, if anyone should do the thinking for the masses it should be me, not Barak Obama Epiphanes.

I remember the good old days when only religionists and cultists could be accused of letting others do their thinking for them.

Actually, maybe His Beatitude's followers are cultists of a sort.

No. It couldn't be that.

The story of the re-taking of the Maersk Alabama from Somali pirates could be it.

(Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

Among many other things, I'm sure, I think evangelicalism's failure to withstand the rising tide of secularism is, paradoxically, rooted in the fact that it eventually set itself the task of defeating secularism in the first place. Ironically, it set itself to execute this mission by first accepting (as I mentioned here) secular presuppositions about Man and his epistemological norms. It's a fight-fire-with-fire sort of a thing, I suppose. The difference between Liberal Protestant scholarship and Conservative Protestant scholarship is, therefore, not one of presuppositions; both seek to engage in "scientific" Bible scholarship, and have the same conception of how the scientific task is to be completed. The difference is simply how consistently those presuppositions are applied. Frankly, the Liberals more consistently apply those presuppositions. It should surprise no one, then, that subsequent generations of Conservative evangelical scholars are increasingly more liberal than the preceding generations. Those of us who have studied the matter all know that it is only a matter of time. Shared presuppositions about the nature, task and methods of scholarship will have that effect. How can evangelicalism have withstood the siren call of secularism?

But the ultimate concern -- the matter of life and death -- of the Christian is not the crafting and promulgation of an ideology, not even a system of theology, with which to defeat secularism, or any other religious outlook. The ultimate concern is the worship of the Triune God. It is true that Abraham Kuyper, a hero to many evangelicals, said that, in the confrontation with secularism, principle ha to be carried against principle. But Abraham Kuyper, for any and all flaws and inconsistencies, desired first to worship the Triune God. The principles of the Christian worldview have, as I've said, no transformational power in themselves. Evangelicalism suffers, I think, because it has failed accurately to define the conflict. Its program (if its ad hoc approach to public theology can even be called a program) for the last several decades has seemed to assume, in the end, something we ought to reject. It has assumed that the conflict is between a schools of thought (rival worldviews) called "Christian" and "secular", where the end game is the latter's defeat, or, at least, the former's ability to withstand the latter.

On this issue I think the past holds a clue to both the present and the future. Many people, perhaps rightly, like to look to the experience of our Christian ancestors in the Roman world as a secondary guide to our own contemporary experience of life in Christ. That's a great idea when thinking about the "confrontation" with secularism. So, let's recall that Christians didn't turn the Roman world upside by trying to turn the Roman world upside. The Christians turned the Roman world upside down by doing one simple thing, and -- apparently -- by doing it well: they worshiped the Triune God.

That last point is important. For only the Second Person of the Triune God -- the Word become flesh, the true God-Man -- could nourish the Christian soul in a world which worshiped the Roman Emperor (i.e., a false god-man) as the expression of the divine on earth. What defeated the Roman world was the turning of a significant number of people in that world from the worship of a false god-man to the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true God-Man.

The same is true today: either The State is god or God is God. Now, as then, the issue is worship. Unlike Liberal Protestants, I am not minimizing the importance, or the truth of the Christian worldview. But as I said previously, the Christian worldview gives no power to the Christian to resist or overcome sin, which is what secularism is. The only worthwhile reason for holding to that worldview is not because by it, and with it, we can defeat or withstand secularism, but rather because first of all we hold to Christ, without whom the Christian worldview is no more than the words used to define, explain and defend it. There is no Christian worldview without Jesus, first and last. There is no power in the Christian worldview, against any other worldview, apart from union with Christ.

Perhaps evangelicals have over-looked something in the haste to win the world. Perhaps they have overlooked the possibility that the way to win the world, like the way to keep one's life, is to give up on the world, and everything associated with it. (See John 12.25, among others.) That may mean, getting back to the subject of education, which started this stream of consciousness blogging, re-examining how we do education. Aping the secular counter-part may not be the best way. And I mean aping the secular counter-part in just about every way, especially since one of the obvious goals of the Christian school is to compete with the secular school. Clearly, the best way to do that is to offer the same product, with a big difference, of course. It is, as I've already said, an essentially secular product.

For example, and I know I'll sound prudish, or worse, in saying this. But, really, even if we grant the necessity (which, by the way, I do) of school athletics, do we really need cheerleaders? Maybe we do. I don't know. What I do know is that I have yet to hear an explanation. It is, apparently, an unquestionable given. Whether the school is secular or Christian, if you have athletics then you have cheerleaders. And that's the end of it, I guess. There could be a good reason; after all, as I've said, the Spartan's included dance as part of warrior training. I just don't know, yet, what that reason is, except that if the secular counter-part has it then so must Christian schools, in order to offer a comparable product. A comparable product is the reason, I think, why as Spencer asserts, evangelical education cannot withstand secularism.

I just wonder if Christian educators have really devoted hundreds of hours of attention to the question not what do students need to be taught (largely determined by the state anyway) but rather, what is the student going to be when we're finished with him. I mentioned Spartans learning dance, here. When the Spartan lad was finished with the agoge he was a soldier, a Spartan; that is, he had earned the right to be called a Spartan. When the student finishes law school he is, hopefully, a lawyer; or he will be if he passes his bar exams. When one finishes medical school, and passes the board examinations, he is a physician. But what is he when he finishes the course of instruction at a Christian school? Other than qualified to go on to college or get a good job, be a good citizen of the U.S. Needful things, I agree, but available -- free -- at secular schools. (Well, at the better secular schools, anyway.)

But this is to turn from evangelicalism's demise to educational philosophy.

Part Five

Many have contributed to the discussion of Paul's meaning in 1 Thessalonians 5.17. Here's an offering from St. Maximus the Confessor.

Unceasing prayer means to have the mind always turned to God with great love, holding alive our hope in Him, having confidence in Him whatever we are doing and whatever happens to us.

Someday I'll have to post Calvin's contribution to the discussion.

It's clean out the pantry day at the Deviant Household. Seems Lady Deviant bought a bit too much and the pantry won't hold it all. Apparently, I have too many bottles of this and that (this=Captain Morgan's; that=Presidente Mexican Brandy). Apparently, the Bushmill's and the Svedka are not in the way.

Well, that's it for the rum. The rum is gone. Except for that flask back in the -- never mind: it's not in the pantry, so it doesn't count.

Did I say the rum is gone? Yes. I believe I did. But why? Why is the rum gone?

I have loved clean out the pantry day since I was a kid. Of course, in the Solís household there usually was only tequila.

Mmmm, tequila.

That reminds me: I wonder how that bottle of Sauza is doing.

Gotta go. The wife wants me to help with something. As if I'm not doing enough already. I mean, here I am, working my liver to the bone. Some people -- it's just never enough.

(Part One, Part Two)

In thinking about the collapse of evangelicalism, I've wondered about the role of evangelicalism's summation of the doctrine of justification sola fide, which pits idea against idea, as I mentioned in Part Two. There is, in my estimation, another problem with that summation. Sola fide -- faith alone -- has come to mean my faith alone. But the popularized conception of sola fide pays scant attention to the doctrine of union with Christ, without which there is no justification. (Indeed John Murray, in his Redemption: Accomplished and Applied [Eerdmans, 1955], 161, says that failing to take union with Christ into account makes our presentation of redemption defective and "gravely" distorts "our view of the Christian life". "Nothing," he says, "is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ.") This "defective" conception of faith (without union with Christ) easily becomes my faith alone in my Christ alone.

How is this so? Because the only thing in operation here is the professed believer's faith in Christ. And faith, despite protestations to the contrary, really does mean, by and large, mental assent to a statement of faith, together with any qualifications one wishes to stipulate based on one's judgment regarding the facts in the case. This is, after all, my faith. There is (for practical purposes) no attendant conception of the believer's union with Christ, and, therefore, with all other believers by virtue of their union with Christ. We are all "spiritual Lone Rangers", as my parents' old pastor used to say. (See Mom? I was listening. I just didn't believe.) And when that is the case, one can hardly perceive his communion with his brothers and, hence, does not need the church, which Calvin exhorts us to hold dear as our Mother. We really do not need the sacraments. Worship services are shared "Jesus and me" sessions, or theology lectures sandwiched between hymns and prayers, and, every now and then, some bread and grape juice handed round for a sanctified memorial snack (I speak as a fool, if you take my meaning). The Church, therefore, has no authority to prescribe for me who Christ is, and certainly no authority to lay any burden on me, such as set times for corporate prayer and fasting (especially since any burden laid upon me is legalism; and I'm saved by faith, don't you know).

(Naturally, of course, we will continue to speak of the Church as The Body (ha!) of Christ. It is easy to see why it is the parachurch organization, not the Church, which is the center of evangelical life. This is the notion of the Invisible Church on crack cocaine! Since Christ really doesn't have a plan for the parachurch, I'm not surprised that Spencer predicts difficult times for these organizations. In Spencer's article the coming plight of the parachurch organization is a lamentable result of the collapse. Also, he mentions the conversions of evangelicals to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Noteworthy is the fact that for these two bodies the Church is central to the life of Christians. Growth of their parachurch organizations; the amount of money given to these organizations; the number of parishioners who depend upon these organizations for the bulk of their spiritual lives -- these are not symptoms of a healthy Church for the Catholic and Orthodox. Demise of their parachurch organizations would not be considered symptoms of bad health.)

This (christianized) individualism, which is probably worse than either christianized Platonism or christianized Aristotelianism, can never have withstood secularism. Indeed, this individualism is perfectly consonant with secular individualism, and, for that reason, powerless against it. The church, which St. Paul likens, among other things, to an army, is, in popular evangelicalism, an army of individuals (and not even an army of individual Davids ), all generals, no privates -- no platoons, no companies, no battalions, no divisions, but each a Special-Forces-A-Team-of-one, claiming to answer directly to the King. And together with its bastardized version of sola scriptura, asserting no place for the Church as Mother to exegete, interpret and apply Scripture, leaving it all in the hands of the individual, evangelicalism makes the individual Christian his own personal ecumenical council. And should the Church assert the authority to act as our spiritual Mother, we'll probably just go elsewhere. And when we get elsewhere, we'll still be wondering why evangelicalism is collapsing. Few, I think, will consider the possibility that there is never any victory without discipline.

Obedience brings victory. And victory is life. (I couldn't resist. I didn't try very hard, either.)

Here, in my estimation, is how this conception of faith -- my faith -- alone weakens evangelicalism. It accepts a secular presupposition, namely, that the individual human is not only capable of, but warranted in, judging of Divine matters. This includes judging of even the existence of God, which, though it seems "rational" enough, is very problematic. Whereas the commandment says, "Have no other Gods before me", the secular conception of the requirements of rationality, has it that the God who commands this be held not to exist until His existence has been established by Reason, and a non-theistic conception of Reason at that. (But see Psalm 14.1.) So the commandment may be violated until the individual human, who has irrationally determined himself a competent judge of the matter, establishes the existence of the God who commands it.

The faith, therefore, that the individual Christian has, really is his and his alone; and it consists only of those elements which he, himself, has established as true to his own satisfaction. One's own satisfaction, is one of the many things secularism seeks. The Self, in evangelicalism, is raised to the same height as the Self in secularism. (And we wonder why the lives of Evangelicals don't look much different than those of non-Christians! What shall we do for an encore, hit ourselves in the heads with hammers and express shock and dismay that our heads ache? But I digress.) And this faith, on this view of the matter, really cannot be shared with other Christians, not just Christians of other denominations but with fellow evangelicals. What they really share is the fact that they have come to the same answers to a set of questions. It is like two people who prepare their own meals, but sit together at the same table and call it a shared meal.

Also, this placement of the Self means that the disposition of the Self, regarding the truth value of the proposition, God exists, (or the contents of creeds, confessions, statements of faith) , by virtue of being the Self's internal disposition, can accomplish things for God. So, by accepting the same (anthropocentric) view of rationality, and the position of the Self, as secularists, evangelicalism set itself up for failure against secularism.

Don't shoot the messenger, folks.

Note: I realize that this part of the discussion raises the question, "What is faith?" I don't have time or space for that question, however.

Part Four

(Part One)
One assertion Spencer makes (here), and with which I agree, I found particularly worthy of comment:

Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism.

I think this is unarguably true. But I also think it must be pointed out, in all fairness, that 25 years is not as long a period of time as he seems to think, especially when the secular counterpart has been around at least twice as long, and is better financed. And, like a sick joke, evangelical taxes have comprised some of that financing.

Even with that in mind, it doesn't strike me that evangelicalism is poised for success against secularism. The reason, I think -- and I'm just spit-balling here -- is that this so-called Christian education is still really very secular. It has not been Christian paideia, the nourishing and training to full development of the Christian soul, the entire person. It's focus has been equally as secular, equally as materialistic, as any secular education. It has been Christian only by virtue of being taught by Christians to the children of Christians, and because it has included chapel services and instruction in Bible and Christian worldview. It has been secular by virtue of being relevant, that is, relevant to this world, practical in the sense of churning out worker drones, or Christian leaders. And, like all relevant education, it has largely ignored, as irrelevant, introduction to The Great Ideas, training in participation in The Great Conversation. (And where it has turned to that sort of education, it has done so after secular educationalists have done.) If it isn't going to help the student get to college so he can get a good job someday, then, being irrelevant, it will not be taught. Consequently, education has been reduced to two goals: missions and evangelism, or job training. I mentioned paideia above. If I had a nickle for every evangelical who, when discussing anyone's university major, asked, "What are you going to do [vocationally] with that?" I'd be independently wealthy.

Riddle me this: Why did the Spartans learn music and dance? What have they to do with being warriors?

Also, evangelicalism's unintentionally trite (and popularized) summation of the doctrine of justification sola fide, pits idea against idea, Christian principles against secular principles. But secularism is not first of all a set of principles. The heart of secularism is violation of the First Commandment. This is not a mere philosophical ideology. It is a matter of the heart, not the mind. We are talking about sin. This is worldliness in the Pauline sense, standing in opposition to God himself.

In reality, therefore, the popularized conception of sola fide pits a statement of faith against the sinful disposition itself. The sinful disposition isn't something one defeats with an idea. If someone commits a sin, we don't recite the Apostles' Creed! It's like flashing a crucifix at a vampire: it looks good in movies, but seriously, are you kidding me? Secularism isn't mere ideology, to be defeated, or simply replaced, with a contrary ideology. Evangelicalism's focus on teaching a Biblical/Christian worldview may thus have back-fired a bit. The Christian worldview, alone, is an ideology rather than a theology. (And by theology I mean way of life, not academic discipline.) Precisely as ideology it is, paradoxically, powerless against secularism. It could not be otherwise.

Permit me to illustrate. Let us take the proposition, God exists. Strictly speaking, a proof of God's existence is no more than a demonstration that the proposition God exists is logically derived from more basic propositions. This, in and of itself, doesn't mean that God exists. It means the proposition can be derived from other propositions. God exists, by such derivation, is not for that reason, a statement about reality. That's contentious, of course; classical apologists would disagree. The important thing, however, is this. Even under conditions which would render the proposition, God exists, a statement about reality, the proposition itself has no power. The true proposition, God exists has no power to save. The same is true of statements of faith. The assertions of a statement of faith may all be true, but there is no power in them. I can very well believe in the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead. But the power to forgive sins; the power to raise the dead -- these are not in the creed.

This is not to say that statements of faith are unimportant. They are very important. They are important because they mark out doctrinal boundaries within which the Christian life is lived. But statements of faith are not the Christian life. It is the gospel (the subject of statements of faith), and not the statement of faith, which is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1.16). To learn the Christian worldview; to learn to articulate and defend a statement of faith -- these are not the same as to experience the power of God for salvation. They are not the same as possessing and living life in Christ. When young people are taught the contents of the Christian worldview, they are given nothing which can withstand secularism, anymore than they are given something which can withstand sinful temptations. There is no power in the Christian worldview. The power to withstand secularism; the power to resist temptation -- these powers are in Christ himself. A Christian education which teaches Bible, theology, and Christian worldview as academic subjects in which mastery is demonstrated by performance on a written test is doomed to failure.

Apart from life in Christ, the Christian worldview is an ideology. Secularism, however, is not an ideology; it is the current manifestation of the spirit of the age. Against that spirit, ideology, even a Christian ideology, is powerless. (See 1 John 4.4.) Presently, evangelicalism strikes one as an invitation to ideologically sick people to improve their ideological health by adopting a healthier ideology. In actuality the invitation is extended to dead men. (Am I suggesting, sub silentio that evangelicalism's real problem is Arminianism? Oops, my Calvinism is showing.)

Part Three

This article by Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has been the subject of some conversation. (Here, for example.)

Some participants in the conversation have pointed out that it doesn't represent any original thinking: various evangelicals have been saying the same thing, or similar things, for years. This characterization is probably correct. I recall as a youth, attending church with my parents and listening to all the talk about how bad things were getting and how the day of the persecution of Christians was coming, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But Spencer's article is valuable at least as a summation of a case made by others, mixed with some personal observations of his own as to why the evangelical collapse is coming.

I do have to disagree with the first reason he gives for evangelicalism's impending collapse:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

It's easy enough for public leaders to identify evangelicals as a threat to progress. Alignment with the culture war and with political conservatism will be convenient excuses; but I doubt things would be much different if evangelicals had aligned themselves with Libertarians of the Friedman stripe, or if there were no alignment at all. The sort of leaders Spencer must surely have in mind are out-and-out Statists. And let me be clear: by Statist I mean people who, really, worship Humanity (i.e., themselves) by devotion to, and adoration of, the omnicompetent state.

In the end, evangelicals will not worship humanity by adoring the State. (Well, they shouldn't, anyway.) Rome's persecutions of Christians were motivated by concerns that were political. It was not as if Christians had launched a crusade to claim the empire for Christ. Indeed, by and large, they were dropping out and, well, "tuning in"...to Christ. In contrast, one gets the idea, listening to the spokes-persons for evangelicalism, that dropping out of the culture is the eighth deadly sin.

Getting back to Rome, though, one of the many things we fail to take note of is the fact that the word "gospel" (euangelion) was a word with political implications in the Greco-Roman world. It was frequently used with reference to the Emperor. Imagine how the use of that term, in reference to anyone else, especially a Jewish carpenter, must have struck the Roman world. Even in the best of times, it would not have required alignment with a culture war, or any extreme in the empire's political spectrum, to earn Christians more than a modicum. They simply would not worship the divine State, personified by the Emperor. They lacked pietas.And their use of such a seemingly insignificant word as "euangelion" with reference to their Christ was sufficient evidence of that.

The euangelion of Jesus Christ? That, alone, could have been seen as treason.

So evangelicals need not have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism in order to be seen as a threat to cultural progress, or for public leaders to consider us "bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society." If Spencer's location of the cause of evangelicalism's demise is correct and identification with the culture war and with political conservatism is the reason for it, then the vitriol will be leveled against us for the wrong reasons.

However, within his first point, is a claim with which I do heartily agree:

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

But I think it's worse: evangelicals haven't traded the faith for a cause; we have, a sufficient number of us, identified a cause with the faith. (In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis calls this the problem of "Christianity And".) It is almost as if evangelicals have come to believe that if the world will not repent of their sins and turn to Christ, that's all right: we'll just make them behave as if they have done. This, of course, is why they cannot articulate the Gospel with any coherence. There is no need to articulate the Gospel when the power of the State can be brought to bear in correcting our social ills. (Those of my friends who have known me the longest will attest that I've never been a fan of this maneuver.)

Articulating the Gospel is for the minster. The mission of the "layman" is to write his Congressmen and vote for right-wing (i.e., socially conservative) causes (or left-wing [i.e., fiscally liberal] causes, for evangelicals of the Sojourners ilk). I'm being facetious only for rhetorical effect. The simple fact is, I think Spencer is right. Evangelicals do seem increasingly unable to communicate the Gospel. The answer must surely be that they are spending their time learning to do, or, in fact, doing something else. Not only that, but I think the inability is rooted in an unwillingness to communicate the gospel. And I have a sick feeling, in the pit of my stomach, that the reason for the unwillingness to communicate the gospel is an unwillingness to live it. I could be wrong about that; but I'm not.

Part Two

Thomas a Kempis tells us:

Whoso knoweth himself well, groweth mean in his own conceit, and delighteth not in the praises of men. ~ The Imitation of Christ, Bk. 1, Ch. 2.

Now that I've read this, I still feel like goofing off.

So, as promised yesterday, your VJ presents two more. Today the theme is double: The City and Songs by Eagles members.



Wow. Don Johnson smoked his cigarettes the same way I did. Didn't know he was a fan.



One of the best songs on The Warriors soundtrack.

Oh, one more just for fun:

Now, for something completely different.

This story has it that the changing economy has many people changing jobs. Frankly, I'm shocked. I thought the thing to do when disaster strikes was to stand around in your filth waiting for the omnicompetent government to rescue you. What this? Saving yourself? (Well, not quite: a lot of unfederal dollars are at work there.)

What's next? A return to capitalism?

Oh, well. Maybe it's time for me to pursue my childhood dream. No, not the dream of being a mercenary; my wife would never stand for that. No, I mean the other dream, of being a DJ. Oh. No. A VJ.

Here's two, back-to-back, just for you. It's a two-for-Tuesday sort of thing.



You may have missed the reference in the song to Tijuana. Interesting side-note: We lived there for a few years when I was a child. I have only the vaguest of memories.

Now, from the If-I-could-be-the-central-attraction-of-any-scene-in-any-of-my-favorite-movies Category:



Wow. That was kind of fun. Thanks for tuning in.

Tomorrow's Hump Day. Maybe we'll have to do this again.

Oh, what the heck. One more. From the If-I-had-a-band-I-would-so-cover-this-song Category (and, yes, that would be me on the drums):

One of the excuses used for the recent bailouts was that the failing companies were too big to fail. The failure of these companies would have ripple effects so catastrophic as to collapse the nation's economy, perhaps even the world's economies.

The same rationale undergirds the push to give to the executive branch expanded power to seize "non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy", instead of just banks. (The comparisons with FDR get uncannier and uncannier. If Hoover was FDR-Lite -- and he was -- then Bush will go down, if the economic history is correctly written, as Obama-Lite.)

It sounds good, to some. But the fact of the matter is this. If a company really is too big to fail, then it is too big to fail even if it is entirely solvent. For then it must be kept solvent, always. If "too big to fail" is a good enough excuse for a government take-over of companies on the verge of collapse, then it is an even better excuse -- when you think about it -- for a government take-over of too-big-to-fail-but-still-solvent companies, as well.

As soon as a company gets to be a certain size, the unfederal government will being take-over proceedings. And since the purpose of any business is simply to employ people, the unfederal department in charge of initiating these proceedings should be the Department of Labor. Poetic, when you think about it.

But I have digressed.

Soon, insolvent companies will be required to file permission with an unfederal department of something-or-other to secure permission before filing for bankruptcy. A three-member commission will determine whether the firm belongs to the 2B2F (i.e., Too Big To Fail) category. If so, take-over proceedings will begin. Bankruptcy will be averted. O, happy day!

But, really, if one of government's responsibilities is to ensure full employment then any business which employs people should be considered too big to fail. When you, personally, are unemployed, the unemployment rate is 100%. (Yes, it's a silly notion. I borrowed it from the Dickens novel Hard Times. One of the Gradgrind children says something like it.)

Obama's appearance on Jay Leno's show last, demonstrates him to be a man of the masses, in a sense. Yes. And that's the problem. We have plenty of men of the masses. What we need are men of the "remnant".

Alfred J. Nock, using the prophet Isaiah as an example, explains, here. It will take you about half an hour to read, depending upon your speed, but well worth it, I think. (You could also listen to it, here.)

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

[...]

Everyone with a message nowadays is...eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass acceptance and mass approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favor, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.

The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator...with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

But Obama, His Beatitude, is only a man of the masses, as I said, in a sense -- only in appearance. In actuality, as an intellectual, his main concern is not the masses; it is control. And as Étienne de La Boétie informed us long ago, control of any large group of people, by a smaller group, is always by shaping popular opinion -- the opinion of the masses. Hence all the phoney outrage over the AIG bonuses.

It would be comical if it weren't so dangerous.

Commenting on the role of self-denial, Calvin writes:

How difficult it is to perform the duty of seeking the good of our neighbor! Unless you leave off all thought of yourself and in a manner cease to be yourself, you will never accomplish it. How can you exhibit those works of charity which Paul describes unless you renounce yourself, and become wholly devoted to others? “Charity (says he, 1 Corinthians 13:4) suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked etc. Were it the only thing required of us to seek not our own, nature would not have the least power to comply: she so inclines us to love ourselves only, that she will not easily allow us carelessly to pass by ourselves and our own interests that we may watch over the interests of others, nay, spontaneously to yield our own rights and resign it to another. But Scripture, to conduct us to this, reminds us, that whatever we obtain from the Lord is granted on the condition of our employing it for the common good of the Church, and that, therefore, the legitimate use of all our gifts is a kind and liberal communication of them with others. ~ Institutes of The Christian Religion, Bk. 3, Ch. 7, para. 5.

The volume of bonus bluster coming from Congressional and Executive blowhards has covered over the fact that executive compensation under TARP (including bonuses) is provided for in the stimulus organ which many of these bloviating boneheads voted for and which His Beatitude signed. For the discussion which follows I am relying upon the final version of the stimulus organ (which you can read in all its glorious entirety, here).

As I've mentioned (here and here), at no time have we been told who these bonus recipients are. Now, unlike lynch mob-inciting politicians like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and, of course, His Beatitude, I don't want to know the names of these people. Their names aren't really important, unless you want to make sure that violent leftists know who stand up against walls and shoot. What is important -- and what I've been getting at -- is that we don't know what types of executives these are. We don't what what, if any responsible role, they have played in the mess at AIG. We know only that "executives" in the division of AIG which caused the mess have received, altogether, a whopping .095% of the TARP money given to AIG, less than one one-hundredth of a percent.

Type of executive is important because the stimulus organ, for which these screaming banshees voted (unread, as I suggested here) and which Epihanes signed, also unread, I'm sure, provides for compensation of executives, including bonuses. But the stimulus organ categorizes executives, and then specifies the limits to their compensation, including bonuses. Division B, Title VII ("LIMITS ON EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION") defines, for example, a Senior Executive Officer, as "an individual who is 1 of the top 5 most highly paid executives of a public company, whose compensation is required to be disclosed pursuant to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and any regulations issued thereunder, and nonpublic company counterparts." Furthermore, the stimulus organ provides for the prohibition of certain forms of compensations, including retention bonuses for executive officers.

However, Title VII, Section 7001 ("EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE"), which amends Section 111 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (12 U.S.C. 5221), (b), (3), (D)(ii),(IV), (iii) [you have to love the way legislation is written] states "The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary."

The aforementioned clause (i) provides for a prohibition of certain forms of compensation during the period for which TARP recipients have an outstanding obligation (i.e., owe the government the money for the loan). Furthermore, and this goes to my point about the types of executives affected by the stimulus organ, clause (i) specifies prohibitions as applying to the top 5 most highly compensated executives (or the top 10, depending upon more specific provisions of clause (i)).

But the limitations on bonuses received by executives, including senior executives, do not apply, once again, according to clause (iii) because these compensation contracts were executed on or before February 11, 2009.

So, yes, Congress and the Constitutional Dictator, first permitted, by law, the payment of these bonuses and now pretend they had no idea. They now pretend outrage and disgust. They now seek to take away what they first gave.

And by the way, we now know that Chris Dodd made sure that the aforementioned clause (iii) was in the stimulus organ. (See also this NBC News story.) He claims that he did so at Administration request, the present Administration, not the previous (i.e., Bush) Administration. He might be telling the truth. For once.

The Teleprompter used by Barak Obama Epiphanes now has his own blog. Now, this is really convenient.

Then, people wouldn't be in such an uproar.

Wait a minute. What's this? Retention bonuses at Freddie Mac, scheduled for next year? (H/T: Ed Morrissey)

Important note: While we do know that the recipients of these offensive bonuses worked in the AIG division which caused AIG's downfall, we still do not know who these people are, or what their specific duties were, or how the performance of these duties makes them responsible for the calamity. But we're going to treat them like it anyway. (And when we find out who these people are...let the lynchings begin.)

Another important note: We are still talking about money equaling a mere .095% of the bailout money. There is still a deafening relative silence about the 69.36% paid to, among others, certain overseas banks.

And, in top-of-the-hour radio news I hear His Beatitude inform us that the AIG bonuses are a symptom of our entire culture, excessive greed, excessive compensation, excessive competition. And he also informs Wall Street that we shall not be returning to "business as usual". Well, that ought to keep it from ever hitting 14,000 again. There will be no more competition, no more compensation, no more anything which our betters believe is excessive.

And he also compared Timothy Geitner to Alexander Hamilton. The reference to Hamilton, is positively ironic. Thomas Jefferson, no fan, said that Hamilton's goal was to ally the rich to the government at the peoples' expense. The reason he said so is that what Hamilton was after was an economy such as we have. (Hint: Despite repeated usage of the term, it is not a "free" one.)

Hamilton, who Thomas DiLorenzo -- rightly -- calls the founding father of crony capitalism, was a traitor to the Revolution. It would be fair to say that the only thing he and his ilk objected to, when it came to British mercantilism and imperialism, was being on the paying side of it. They didn't mind mercantilism and imperialism as such, especially if it were to be American mercantilism and imperialism. If Hamilton had had his way, at the convention to "improve" the Articles of Confederation, we would have a permanent president who would appoint the state governors and have veto power over all state legislation. Under his plan, state sovereignty would have been destroyed, and there would have been no escape from the central government's high taxes, protectionist tariffs, heavy debt, and foreign-policy imperialism. Oh, yes, and a central bank -- very important; can't have a country without it. It took a while, and a "civil war"; and he didn't live to see it. But Hamilton eventually got most of his way. No, the President can't veto state legislation; but either Congress or the Federal courts can. States' rights? Just use the term and you'll be treated like a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Like I said: The reference to Hamilton is ironic.

Well, what remains of capitalism, anyway. But I digress.

The bonuses that our benevolent fathers on the hill are so exercised about (and over which Charles Grassely, who took $26,250 from AIG in 2008, thinks these bonus receiving executives should commit suicide ) are retention bonuses.

There is more to this, of course. In typical journalistic fashion, news media report (and Congressmen spew) that these bonuses are being paid to people in the very division that destroyed the company by issuing billions of dollars in derivatives insuring risky assets. These people work in the division that destroyed the company. And, apparently, simply for working in that division -- quite apart from any consideration for the nature of the work they did -- they are actually responsible, as if they themselves made the decision to issue the derivatives. Perhaps they did, but we don't know. We don't know what these people did. We don't know what, if any, responsibility they have for the mess. They may have none at all. But they work in the division which caused the mess; and that is all we need to know.

And again: We're supposed to think these people are smarter than us. It staggers the imagination.

Nevertheless, what's completely odd is the fuss made over the $165 million spent to honor these contracts while there is relative silence about the billions in payments AIG has made to Goldman Sachs Group Inc and others. Specifically, AIG has paid $120 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts to banks, municipal governments and other derivative counterparties around the world, including at least $20 billion to European banks. Goldman Sachs received at least $13 billion. That's not only more than $165 million, it's more than half of the $173 billion in U.S. taxpayer money spent to rescue AIG. For any journalists and liberal politicians who might be reading (as if!), I'll do the math for you. While the pay-out to Goldman Sach's and the Eurobancs is 69.36% of the bailout money, the bonuses amount to a whopping .095%. Note, that .095% is not the same as 9.5%. And further note, just to make sure we're clear, that 69.36% is bigger than .095%.

I understand the payout to Goldman Sachs: Save the U.S. economy. But if the bailout was to save the U.S. economy, then why the payout to the Eurobancs? Why should taxpayer money, needed to prop up the taxpayer economy, be sent overseas? Could it be that the money was paid out because these payouts, like those executive bonuses, were contractual obligations?

Whatever the answers to those questions, it seems a bit disproportional, like one of those crazy mirrors at the carnival, to focus so much on the .095% rather than the 69.36% -- the $165 million rather than the $120 billion. I doubt we'll hear the likes of Charles Shumer or Barney Frank threatening to get the $120 billion from those foreign countries, or the $13 billion back from Goldman Sachs.

A side-bar comment addressed to the aforementioned Charles Grassely. I agree with the Confederate Yankee: If dishonor in the use of taxpayer money is grounds for committing seppuku, then you first. No one beats Congress when it comes to dishonor in use of taxpayer money. And unlike government, AIG didn't get our money from us at gun-point. And the shareholders of AIG didn't approve the bailout plan. (Does anyone remember what a shareholder is?)

Yes, you read that correctly. I did not intend to title it "A Feast for the Eyes".

In honor of this being the Lenten Season, a little something on fasting:

The value of fasting consists not in abstinence only from food, but in a relinquishment of sinful practices, since one who limits his fasting only to an abstinence from meat is one who especially disparages it. Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him! If you see a friend enjoying honor, do not envy him. For let not the mouth only fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all members of our bodies. Let the hands fast by being pure from avarice. Let the feet fast by ceasing from running to forbidden spectacles. Let the eyes fast by being taught never to fix themselves rudely upon handsome countenances. For looking is the food of the eyes, but if it be unlawful or forbidden it mars the fast and overturns the safety of the soul; but if it be lawful and safe, it adorns fasting. For it would be an instance of the highest absurdity to abstain from meats and unlawful food because of the fast, but with the eyes to feed on what is forbidden. Do you eat flesh? Do not feed on licentiousness by means of the eyes. Let the ear fast also. The fasting of the ear is not to receive evil speaking and calumnies. "You shall not receive an idle report," it says. Let also the mouth fast from foul words. For what does it profit if we abstain from birds and fish, and yet bite and devour our brethren? ~ John Chrysostom.

I heard a clip of His Beatitude on the radio this morning, saying that the economy is not as bad as we think it is. Indeed, he said, the economy is never as good as we think it is, and is never as bad as we think it is. This, from one who won an election based, among other things, upon the claim that the economy is the worst it's been since the Great Depression.

Now, it's not really that bad. But we still need another stimulus organ.

As talk goes on about this new stimulus organ, we ought to consider the fact that this market is the result of a collapsed housing market, a housing market which was the result of a previous stimulus organ. The CRA, along with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's implicit-turned-explicit mortgage guarantee, created an artificial demand for housing, a demand which should not have existed. In true, government-driven-demand fashion, the push for "affordable" housing and "non-discriminate" lending encouraged lenders to lend money to people who otherwise wouldn't get loans. This was all government stimulus to the max. When the goal -- a government-mandated goal -- is simply to increase home-ownership, the question is no longer, "Who can afford a home, and at what price?" but, "Who can be put into a home, and how?" And trouble is just a matter of time, the only question being, "Who's going to be without a chair when the music stops?"

Hint: It's never the one playing the music. And in this case, the unfederal government was playing the music.

On one hand, the unfederal government has made clear it will go after you if you aren't doing enough affirmative action lending, and acknowledged you'll take a loss on these loans due to an increase in defaults:



(H/T: Hot Air)

Then, on the other hand, government sponsored entities, which, between the two of them, had already purchased or guaranteed about half of the U.S.'s $12 trillion mortgage market, have effectively told you not to worry about the bad loans you've made because they will be guaranteed by the unfederal government, there's not much reason for not granting the loans -- quite the contrary, in fact. (Important point: some of the loans you don't grant to people who can't pay them will get you hauled into court, accused of discrimination based on race.)

Of course, now we know that when the music finally stops, you and your fellow bankers will be left standing without a chair, blamed for the financial ruin which was always only a matter of time. And, of course, the unfederal government, which just about single-handedly creating this mess by commanding bad loans to be made, will be wagging its finger at you, crying, "For shame, for shame."

To add to the spectacle, while the government is wagging its guilty finger at you, some of your compatriots in the lending business will have their hands thrown up in the air, claiming not to know how you could have been so unscrupulous as to lend money to people who couldn't pay it back. (Transcript, here.)

And then, as if the spectacle isn't sick enough, those for whom hatred of capitalism is a religious conviction, call it all proof positive that, despite a mixed economy, capitalism -- not government involvement -- doesn't work, that, with 73 thousand pages of federal regulations, there is not enough regulation. (They do the same thing with healthcare. It's never the government involvement; it's always the capitalism.)

It's a simple thing, really, and easy to grasp. Government cannot create demand; but it can exaggerate demand.

In November 2007 this story raised few few eyebrows on the left. Briefly, the story claimed that a recent experiment could put an end to the embryonic stem cell debate. In this posting, I expressed my doubts.

The thing to remember about the U.S. left is that their greatest commitment is denying any victory to the right. It may be that adult stem cells can do all that is hoped for from embryonic, but if the right is opposed to use of embryonic stem cells, for whatever reason, then the left is going to insist on embryonic stem cell research.

What I said in that post was:

[T]here is a certain prejudice here. You know how you know people whom you so dislike that if they are for something you are just positive you need to be against it? There are some people who, in addition to scientific curiosity, just cannot stand the idea that the pro-life movement might "win" something.

Much of this goes back to Galileo's conflict with the Church over heliocentrism, from which the Church still has a black eye. (Of course, the problem is that the Church had made Aristotelianism synonymous with Christian orthodoxy. But any Church which makes that sort of move deserves the black eye it gets as a result.) If anyone associated with any religious perspective objects to a research program, then it is another "Galileo" moment, with affected scientists in the role of persecuted scholar, in the second-oldest conflict in human history: academic freedom versus religious orthodoxy. (The oldest conflict is good versus evil.) Then, of course, there is the conflict between evolutionism and its opponents. "Which scientific breakthrough have these people not opposed?", one might well ask.

So, if "these people" are against it, then we must be on the right track.

It's very easy for me to understand this. It isn't "religion" versus "science". It's religion versus religion. Only the object of worship is different; the nature of the commitments involved is the same.

[T]his -- not religion versus science -- is where the disagreement lies: To us, species membership is morally relevant, while person-hood (manifested by consciousness) is not. To our opponents species membership is morally irrelevant, and person-hood is morally relevant. (This was the same issue in the Terri Schiavo case.) The two positions are primitive (or axiomatic, if you prefer): I can't think of a way to derive either of them from more primitive assertions. So the two positions are discreet and probably don't share much in the way of significant common ground, and therefore the switch from one position to another really does amount to something like a religious conversion. Both positions are ultimately fairly religious in nature.

The religious nature of the two positions makes debate difficult: each side accuses the other of not being rational in approach. Resolution is impossible. Each side thinks it is being rational. But the more obvious religious connection among the pro-life makes it easier for pro-life opponents to charge us with being irrational, easier for them to characterize the debate as one between "religion" and "science".

It is awfully convenient, however, for those who are conscious to decide that this is the attribute separating those with legal protections from those without. Awfully convenient.

No. I don't think the debate has been quelled. Why should scientists not seek after another method of utilizing stem cells just because this one has been discovered. If there are more roads than one to a panacea, why should we be limited to...one? Just because religious nutters object?

Obama's lifting on the ban on fetal stem cell research is proof positive that denying any victory to the right is the end game.

[W]e are probably only at the threshold of an age in which the technological possibilities of mind control are likely to grow rapidly and what may appear at first as innocuous or beneficial powers over the personality of the individual will be at the disposal of government. The greatest threats to human freedom probably still lie in the future. ~ Friedrich Hayek.

In this article (read by the author, here), Gennady Stalyarov II, explains how we no longer need fear that Hayek, who did not live to see what the internet has become since the days of ARPANET, X.25, BBS and FidoNet, may have been right.

As a decentralized communication system facilitating the sending and receiving of messages by billions of people, the Internet has greatly shifted the balance of power away from governments and toward sovereign individuals. Even in its early days, the Internet played a vital role in bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Union's government. Since then, it has catalyzed tremendous economic, social, and political liberation in countries ranging from Cuba to the United States.

While governments have tried to use modern communication technologies to monitor and regulate private individuals, their efforts are doomed to failure stemming from a much more powerful and competent market response.

It's a good, though rather lengthy, article. If you don't have time to read it,then I heartily recommend listening to it while you work.

Okay, not really. But sort of.

According to George Bittlingmayer & Thomas W. Hazlett, "the best forecast... is the one made by investors risking their own money. They are shorting the 'stimulus.' "

[F]rom Nov. 4, 2008 through Feb. 12, 2009, the DJI overall fell 18% -- a larger drop than during the Sept-Oct plunge. In January, when the Obama plan, promising far greater deficits than the two...plans signed by Pres. George W. Bush in 2008, was unveiled, the market tanked – the worst January performance in 113 years. (Emphasis mine.)

Yesterday, the market closed at 6,763.29. And while today it is up a little (6,772.69) as I write this, it has trended in a, shall we say, down-ward direction. (And to think, just the day after his economic "Gettysburg" address, Mary Cate Cary was writing that she thought it worked.) If investors' willingness to risk their own money is indicative of anything, then the market's continuing dive suggests the investors have precious little confidence in His Beatitude's ability to fix the economy.

Investors Business Daily puts the matter this way: Capital is on strike.

[M]any upper-income taxpayers already are planning to cut back on work and investments to stay under $250,000 in income — the point where Obama's punitive taxes kick in. No one wins from this, yet Obama seems oblivious.

This isn't the only warning sign. A new study asserts that some 100,000 highly educated, well-trained Indians now living in the U.S. will return home in the next few years. Ditto China.

Immigrant entrepreneurs are highly sensitive bellwethers of economic and social conditions. They know where the opportunities are — and where they aren't. They're voting with their feet.

Obama, as IBD points out, does seem oblivious; but he isn't oblivious. He doesn't care. I just heard on the news (WBAP-AM, Dallas, 12.00, CST) that he wants us to ignore the market, which he likened to a tracking poll in politics, as a gauge of the economy.

"But, golly gee, Wally," said the Beaver, "that's what they told us to look at when they told us that Bush was responsible for the market tanking in the first place. It's why they told us to vote for Obama."

A popularity tracking poll in politics? My portfolio has never increased or decreased in value in relation to any president's popularity.

In the interest of full disclosure, let us remind ourselves that, in all fairness to His Beatitude, the market has been falling steadily since Lehman Brothers went under, back in September 2008. And to be even fairer, the market didn't respond positively to any maneuvering of the Bush Administration.

What does this tell us? Perhaps it tells us that market performance and federal policy is purely co-incidental, no causal relation whatsoever. Perhaps it tells us that the market's continued fall is a response to both Bush and Obama, specifically, their Keynesianesque policies. That is, the market simply has no confidence in the federal government's ability to "fix" the economy. The housing bubble (the bursting of which brought about this mess) was, some of us think, created by the Fed. Maybe, for now, the market has learned its lesson: ignore the false signals sent out by the Fed, and place no faith in the unfederal government's attempts to "jump-start" the economy.

I've asked several times (e.g., here), in the context of socialized healthcare, if, in the event of a dearth of medical professionals, the un-federal government might have to institute a draft and force people into those professions.

Apparently, there is a dearth of healthcare professionals willing to perform, or be associated with the performance of abortions. Epiphanes and his court intend to remedy that.

H/T: Pro-life blogs

This has happened to me a lot:

I have often prayed, requesting that something I thought was good for me be done for me, insisting on my request, and irrationally attempting to force God’s will. And thus I did not leave it to him who knows what is profitable to arrange. And when I eventually received what I asked for, I was very sorry I had asked for my own choice; for the matter did not turn out as I had imagined. ~ Evagrios of Pontus, On Prayer.