Some theological writers fear simplicity. They're scared to death of it, in fact. They fear being too easily understood--"I won't be perceived as smart, if people understand what I'm writing on the first pass!" Despite the consistent rebuke by qualified experts, eggheads continue to wear out their thesaurus in search of the rarely-used word.
Simplicity is strength, and the greatest pieces of literature known to man are relatively simple. No greater example exists than the Bible, with it's relentless use of subject-verb-object. What "smart" people miss is that the simpler statement is usually the more profound:
"Jesus wept." ~ John 11:35
For the soul willing to ponder them, these two words are loaded with meaning. Complexity should be developed in the mind, not the page. Try not to do the thinking for me; let me think for myself.
Jack Trout lists some humorous examples of how we can easily distort some of our most classic aphorisms (Aphorism means "pithy saying." Pithy means "expressing with force"):
Pulchritude possesses profundity of a merely cutaneous nature, or beauty is only skin deep.
It is not efficacious to indoctrinate a superannuated canine with innovative maneuvers, or you can't teach on old dog new tricks.
Visible vapors that issue from carbonaceous materials are a harbinger of imminent conflagration, or where there's smoke, there's fire.
A revolving mass of lithic conglomerates does not accumulate a congery of small green bryophitic plants, or a rolling stone gathers no moss.
If you think you have something important to say, try to state it in simple terms. Don't you want to be understood?
"The covenant with God is a legal relationship. Abraham's faith is within the context thus of law, but it is more personal because of that fact. The modern mind separates the legal and the personal, because humanism has made law statist and abstract and hence impersonal. This is not true in the reality of God's creation. My relation to my wife is personal because it is legal, because it meets God's law. An illegal sexual relationship is impersonal and exploitive. In Scripture, the more faithful we are to God's law, the more close and personal is our relationship to Him and to our fellow men. It is a serious error to import the impersonalism of humanistic thought and law into Biblical thought." ~ R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in Two Volumes, 674.
I don't know why "liberals" banter so much about FOXNews being "conservative." IT ISN'T! Where's the proof? Just watch the "conservative" pundit Neil Cavuto sit obnoxiously baffled by a traditional conservative.
Cathedral of Hope is a church in Texas that is putting the "in" in inclusive! I guess one would need a great deal of hope, if their lifestyle was one that God considers an abomination.
Watch how craftily this pastor makes any opposition to homosexuality a matter of hate and fear. If I condemn the alcoholism of a family member, am I fearful of alcohol, am I hateful, or do I simply believe it is wrong behavior? Well, there's apparently no such thing as "wrong" behavior. Sodomy is fine, but disagreeing with it's practice is evil.
I never cease to stagger at the efforts man will go through in order to justify immorality. What these people claim to be a church of love is simply religious tolerance of sinful behavior. The church is growing like crazy! Who can guess why?
In an effort to secure the present, secular critics of Biblical Christianity make much of the alleged "historical revisionism" made by such eminent thinkers as R. J. Rushdoony. By this they are referring to revisionism in American history, and they seek to remove any and all proofs that America was founded as a Christian nation. If they can achieve that, they believe they can make the case for casting aside all vestments of a "conservative" Christian society.
There is a problem with fighting for the present, however. To do so, you have to forsake the past and the future. You forsake it because you don't take seriously those who claim ownership of the 12th century, or for that matter, anyone foolish enough to claim ownership of the 45th century!
This is exactly what Rushdoony claimed. Whereas secularists speak much about America in 1787, Rushdoony spoke of the Garden of Eden. And while secularists are rubbing their hands over the 2008 election, Rushdoony's books spoke of the victory of God throughout all ages.
For the non-Christian, history is meaningless because all things spring forth from chaos. It is God that wars against such an atheistic world view. Following God is the revolutionary Christian who seeks to upset the world by challenging its intellectual strongholds:
God is the spearhead of revolution in time and history against the chaos and meaninglessness of time and history. ~ ibid.
This is the great war for the Christian. It is not a militant one. It does not consist of sword and shield. It does not manifest itself in bloodletting or political revolution. However, intellectually--and in terms of faith--it is merciless and indefatigable. There is no peace between Satan and Christ, and there is no peace between the Christian and the anti-Christian.
The Christian view of history is more than the declaration of a Christian version of American history. For the secularist, there is a much greater threat--the Christian version of the history of the world past, present, and future. Christian nation? Try a Christian world:
History is the battle of Christ versus anti-christ, and man's basic need is redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ and then life in Christ and under God's law, now no longer a bill of indictment against man, but a charter for life. ~ ibid.
Human history is littered with so-called "intellectuals" that have worked to destroy the faith only to become Christians themselves. The spirit of anti-christ cannot contend with a church armed with law and the redemptive Gospel. This progress of the Kingdom cannot be stopped. It's not political, so you cannot legislate it out of existence. Christianity has confronted some of the most vicious and God-hating regimes the world has ever known, and out of all of them Christianity has only increased.
The last 2,000 years are filled with a conservative Christianity of Bible-believers who stand upon the infallible Word of God. You cannot route something so formidable by a single nation's political election. The weak sniping of a handful of contemporary secularists are like a flea bite to an elephant, and any brief political victories they might achieve will only lull them into inaction while the advancing church multiplies its population and resources.
Cornerstone Christian School will be reaching out to homeschooling parents all over America this summer by offering a pair of online enrichment courses.
"This is all new to us," said Rebecca Johnson, in charge of developing the project. "We're looking for a test market for the summer, so there'll be some perks and challenges for those participating in this first program."
The two courses are entitled "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Christian Worldview: Ideas Have Consequences." They will be taught by Greg Uttinger, the school's lead high school teacher, who has 25 years' teaching experience, 11 at Cornerstone. Chalcedon readers may remember some of the many articles he wrote for us in past years.
The courses will be up for preview on Cornerstone's website as soon as possible, Miss Johnson said, so that they can be offered on schedule: July 9-20 (Philosophy) and July 3-Aug. 3 (Worldview).
Each course will be 30 hours, three hours a day for two weeks, and will cost $19.99 each, payable by credit card over the internet.
"A lot of moms say they can't teach everything--especially the high-level theology courses that Greg can teach," Ms. Johnson said.
Will they be effective educational tools?
"It'll be up to homeschooling mothers to use the tools effectively," Miss Johnson said, "but we're going to make it pretty easy for them. There'll be self-correcting quizzes, and users will be able to submit questions for Greg to answer (time permitting).
"We've tried to make the course content interesting, and I think we've succeeded. In addition to the standard historical background--medieval philosophy, Renaissance art, Elizabethan drama, the Greeks and Romans--we cover the movies and the media of today, all different aspects of the Christian influence on life. So far, the kids love it."
Cornerstone plans to promote the new project throughout the homeschooling community, especially around the internet via blogs and family websites.
Cornerstone was founded in 1992 by Craig Garbe, who is still its headmaster. Located in Roseville, CA, the school has 146 students and 21 adults on staff. If the online instruction project goes well, it might someday have thousands of students. (For detailed information about the school, its faith statement, the courses, and the staff, see the website.)
"There's a great need for this kind of Christian education," Miss Johnson said. "While we do still have many Christians in this country, in many ways we've gotten away from providing for our children an education that is grounded in God's truth. Our goal at Cornerstone is to provide Christian leaders in every area of thought and life, so our students can go out and recapture this nation for Christ."
Christian schooling, at home, online, and at Christian schools and churches, will always be a cornerstone of Christian reconstruction.
It is sad that Christians have forgotten the meaning of the word church in the New Testament. It translates ecclessia, an unusual word which meant then the town or ruling council or government for an area.
This means that the church was called into being to become in time the true ruling body for its given area. It was not to attain this position by means of revolution, nor by political activity, but by obedience to the law of God.
As a result, very early Paul called upon the church to create its own courts of law to adjudicate all problems by means of God's law word (1 Cor. 6). In terms of this law, Paul summons Christians to give generously to assist those in need. A variety of activities marked the early church law, charity, education, health, and more. The church was an empire within the empire, providing government for a growing number of people. Worship was the energizing point: it sent out a people with marching orders for discipling all nations (Mt. 28:18-20).
Once again, the church is beginning to see itself in these terms. Christian Schools and home schooling are areas where the church has again resumed governing. More and more churches are assuming other duties: feeding the homeless, clothing the poor, going into other countries to care for the sick, the blind, and the needy, building shelters, and more.
The church is a kingdom whose monarch is the King, Jesus Christ. It has a plan for the peaceful conquest of all things, and for the regeneration of fallen men. Instead of hostility towards men and nations, we in Christ's name offer peace.
Those who counsel aggression, or who want to pass judgment on the nation to justify hostile actions, are wrong. Ours is the Prince of Peace, and we are called to serve Him, not to supplement or alter His strategy. When men set aside God's law or any part of His word, they then assume the right to use more "appropriate" means, and they thereby pervert the Faith. Neither the church, nor the Faith, nor the Bible are man's property, and man has no right to alter, subtract, or to add to what is God's, not his. As an instrument of God's government, the church must be faithful to its King. It has a mandate to obey, not to supplement, His word.
Why Does Ron Paul Want to Shut Down the Federal Reserve?
All by his lonesome, GOP presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul is the sole sponsor of Bill H.R.2755 calling for the abolishment of the U.S. Board of Governers of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve banks, and a repeal of the Federal Reserve Act.
Why would a presidential hopeful even bother with such an obscure, and almost impossible, endeavor? If Americans only knew what Ron Paul knew, they would leave debates over the ACLU, the Christian Right, gun control, and prayer in school in order to join him in overturning the FED.
Gary North's latest issue of Reality Check provides a helpful discussion on the basics of the Federal Reserve. Please pass it along.
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"Buy now, pay later." There are few slogans that better summarize the dominant philosophy of the modern consumer-driven economy.
The popularity of this appeal is inherent in man. He discounts the future. He values whatever he owns now more than the same item owned in the future but postponed for now. What he wants is a way to buy now and pay later . . . or not pay at all.
The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth (Psalm 37:21).
The more present-oriented he is, the more ready he is to buy now and pay later. He starts looking for a way to buy now without having to forfeit ownership of something worth as much or more as the item offered for sale.
Before the money economy, a man might take possession of a sheep today in exchange for his promise of delivering a sheep to the lender next year, and a second sheep the year after. What he hopes for is the birth of two black sheep, which don't have a good resale market because of what later became known as the Henry Ford promise: "You can get it in any color you want, so long as it's black." White wool can be dyed a different color. Black wool can't. Its market is smaller. Fewer people bid for black sheep. He will repay his debt with black sheep.
Smart lenders of course wrote into their contracts that the sheep to be delivered had to be the same type as the sheep originally loaned. This made it tough on borrowers.
The modern fractional reserve banking system lets borrowers get back into the black sheep scam. Anyway, they think they can. They think they can get something for nothing.
So, they take loans at 5% per annum so they can buy whatever they want at today's low prices. They are not concerned about a 4% depreciation of the dollar over the following year. They can use depreciated dollars to pay off lenders.
So, when the men with the buckets come around, they find takers. People sign the contracts.
Why would anyone lend money at 5% when the money returned will be worth 4% less? Answer: Because they have a government license to print the money they loan. Paper and ink are cheap. Better a 5% return with 4% inflation than having your license revoked.
Digits are cheaper than paper and ink.
Economists are mostly Keynesians, monetarists, or supply-siders. All three positions assert that a nation needs a central bank to increase the money supply. All three deny that a gold-coin standard without fractional reserve banking is a legitimate ideal. They assure us that the economy needs fiat money to sustain economic growth. Of course, it does not need too much money. Too much money is bad for the economy. It needs a just-right quantity of fiat money.
These people are promoters of gray sheep economics.
Borrowers get to dream of paying off loans with depreciating money. Lenders (bankers) get to lend more money than they otherwise would have: more fiat money to lend. Private creditors get to believe that the central bank will get inflation under control. Economists get jobs promoting the system.
Who are the big winners? Auctioneers. Sotheby's began in 1804. Christie's was founded in 1744.
There is one other big winner in the United States: Crane & Company. Privately held, it reports to no one outside its offices. It alone provides the paper for the U.S. currency. It has ever since 1879. Arizona's Congressman Jim Kolbe has introduced legislation every year for a decade to open up this market to competing bids. So far, no law. The Treasury has refused to tell Congress if any other companies have been allowed to bid. After all, what does Congress think it is? The voice of the People? Well then, who do the People think they are?
What Motivates the FED?
The fellows with the buckets full of money have a sweet deal. But there is a risk: they may not get repaid in an economic downturn. Also, there is the problem of competition: new counterfeiters. So, bankers need just enough money to hand out, but no more. But some bankers cheat. They print too much money. This can lead to too much inflation. Congress might get involved. That would be very bad. Congress might revoke some banks' license to print money. This is terrifying to bankers.
Bankers therefore need a cartel to keep the members in line.
This is the primary function of every central bank: the cartelization of fractional reserve banking. Everything else is subordinate.
There is a continuing complaint among the FED's critics that the FED gets rich by creating the money it lends to the government. It then gets paid interest by the government.
This is true. It does get paid. What the critics apparently do not know is that the FED returns two-thirds of this money to the Treasury every year. In 2005, it took in a little over $30 billion and returned $21.5 billion.
The FED is the lender of first choice for the government. The FED alone returns two-thirds of the interest paid. Basically, the FED pays Congress $20 billion a year to sit there and be quiet, rather like schoolchildren in a tax-funded school. When a Congressman cross-examines a FED chairman, he does so with the same authority that a fourth grader raises his hand and asks Miss Snook a question about long division, and with about the same knowledge of the subject. The only time a FED chairman gets asked serious questions is during a recession, and the questions are some variation of the schoolchild's "Can I go to the bathroom?" The FED Chairman answers: "Yes, you MAY go to the bathroom." The Congressman looks relieved.
There is a lot of fuss about who owns the FED. This implies that the key to understanding the FED is to follow the money. It does, indeed, but the critics do not understand that the flow of funds begins with the FED. It does not end with the FED.
Member banks own the FED's shares. Yes, Congress should be told which banks own the shares of the FED and in what percentage. But that would not prove anything except this: the owners are private banks.
The key to understanding the FED is understanding that its goal is not merely to expand the money supply. It is to control the rate of expansion by controlling the banking system as a whole -- not too fast, not too slow, but just right.
The FED is owned by private banks to provide a service to the owners of private banks: cartelization. This keeps bankers from "cheating" other bankers by producing too much money, thereby endangering the entire fractional reserve banking system by exposing it to bankrupting bank runs by depositors.
Think of the FED as OPEC. OPEC wants people to buy and use oil. The FED wants people to borrow and spend money. OPEC wants to control the rate of production of oil by legally independent producers. The FED wants to control the rate of production of fiat money by legally independent producers. OPEC protects the market for its product from secret discounts by its members. So does the FED.
Conclusion
Price inflation persists because (1) the FED creates money to buy assets, spending it into circulation; (2) the public wants a little inflation. There is no politically organized constituency for stable money.
The public gets what it wants: depreciating money for repaying debts. The bankers get what they want: constant income from ever-expanding debt. The Congress gets what it wants: placated voters. The FED gets what it wants: a cartel.
There is a price for all this: the absence of 100% market-created, market-allocated money. Instead, the world gets a money system based on the decisions of competing bureaucrats, who do not own the money their central banks create. Power without ownership; authority without full responsibility: here is a formula for disaster.
"It is significant that godly man in Genesis 1:26-28 is called to exercise dominion (not domination) over the earth, not other men, to develop all things in terms of God's law-word and to make this earth into God's realm and domain. Fallen man does not seek dominion, which begins with his salvation and his ability to rule himself, but, rather, the goal of fallen man is domination, to control other people.
"In Ephesians 5:21-33, a husband's godly dominion over his wife is compared to Christ's ministry and the sacrifice of His life to redeem the Church. It is declared to be love: 'He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.' This is not domination, yet all too many husbands who call themselves Christian still insist on replacing dominion with domination.
"It should not surprise us, therefore, that Christians cannot cope with an evil world given to terror and to domination. Neither should it surprise us that too often the most successful clergymen are those who exercise, not dominion but domination, because this is what the world respects." ~ R. J. Rushdoony
"The ancient dream of one world characterized Babel, Assyria, and Chaldea, and nations were broken, populations were shuffled to break down national ties, and young men of conquered countries were trained to high office to help hold the loyalties of their people and give a cosmopolitan and international character to the empire. The diversity of leadership and the shifting of populations would lead to a 'melting pot' society whereby the unified concept would take root."
Note: I've dedicated so much space to Ron Paul lately, because this is a unique moment in political history, as Dr. North alludes to in this article.
I was watching "Gandhi" recently, as I do every year or two. It is inspirational to me. It tells the story of a man who could not possibly win the battles he chose to fight, but did anyway. There is no doubt that it is a propaganda film, funded in part by the Indian government. It scrambles his chronology. But, on the whole, it got the story right. Mohandas K. Gandhi, a lawyer, was able to transform Indian politics. He did this through force of moral character and shrewd tactics that made every official response either "Damned if we do; damned if we don't." I read "The Gandhi Nobody Knows" when it was published in 1983, a year before the movie was released. I know the strange side of the man. But he mobilized a huge nation without recourse to violence. That was his great legacy.
I also like the movie because it is the story of a failed empire. By 1945, the British Empire had spent itself into near bankruptcy because of two wars. It was a pale shadow of itself. It would soon grow much paler.
There are many scenes in the movie that have long grabbed my imagination, but none so much as the one in which Gandhi is seated at a table with a British military official. The official asks rhetorically, "You don't really expect us just to march out of India, do you?" Gandhi replies, "Yes, that is exactly what I expect you to do." In 1947, they did.
What has this to do with Ron Paul, who is running for President? At least this much: he also opposes violence, he also opposes empire, and he also believes in the long run that justice will prevail. So, he does what Gandhi did. He keeps telling the story of how a better society can be built, must be built, and will eventually be built when men reduce their commitment to violence as a way of shaping the world. This includes violence committed by the civil government.
They called Gandhi the mahatma: the great self. Ron Paul is the mahatma of self-government.
He gains applause from the anti-war Left, small as it is. He gains applause from free market advocates, who are weary of government interference in their lives. And he drives the muddled middle crazy.
Note: he doesn't wear a loincloth.
THE WEB PHENOMENON
After the first debate among the ten Republican candidates, the mainstream media's polls ranked Giuliani, McCain, and Romney as the front-runners. But the on-line polls were blowouts for Ron Paul.
What was going on?
After the second debate, on May 15, broadcast by Fox News, the Fox News website allowed viewers to vote for the nominee. These presumably were hard-core Fox News viewers. Over 40,000 voted. Romney got 29%. Paul got 25%. Giuliani got 19%.
Fox News has been supportive of the Iraq war from the beginning. Paul in 2003 voted against the funding of the Iraq war, one of the handful of Republicans in Congress who did. So, how could it be that Paul, an outspoken critic of the war, could receive that high a percentage on Fox News' own website?
He had done even better on MSNBC's website poll after the first debate, broadcast by MSNBC on May 3. The results were amazing.
The two networks that hosted the respective debates drew audiences above a million -- close to two million. In both cases, Ron Paul did extremely well on the networks' web polling pages. Yet he is invisible in the general polls, which are based on random sampling.
I believe the general polls are correct. The public does not know who Ron Paul is. But TV viewers who were politically active enough to go to the websites of the broadcasting networks are big supporters of Paul.
There is a disconnect here. The Establishment's pundits offer various explanations, but none has any scientific support. One of the least plausible explanations after the May 3 poll was that Paul's supporters are so sophisticated digitally that they found ways to overcome the designs of the two web polling sites: MSNBC's and CNN's. A few libertarian geeks somehow made it look as though there is a large army of Paul supporters out there.
This argument is bizarre. There is a huge problem with it. Where did all the other voters go? Paul got half or more of the MSNBC voters in some categories. There were around 75,000 votes recorded. Somehow, the voters who were for the Big Three had their votes sent into cyberspace by Paul's nefarious genius computer programmers, who then substituted votes for Paul. The Establishment candidates' supporters did not have their votes recorded. I call this the "hanging electrons" explanation.
In the case of the CNN poll, the number of votes cast was closer to 70,000 per question, which were not the same questions as the MSNBC poll offered. Yet the results were much the same. The libertarian programmers somehow beat the protective designs of two separate polling pages.
I think there is better explanation. About half of the viewers who were enthusiastic enough to go to the networks' web pages to vote were Ron Paul's supporters. The logic of my explanation rests on the percentage of viewers who voted, compared with the 1.76 million people who watched MSNBC's broadcast. The audience size figures are here.
This means about 4.3% voted on CNN's site. That is slightly over 4%. It was just under 4% for MSNBC's site. We've seen this percentage before: Pareto's 20/80 law. Twenty percent of 20% (4%) voted on-line. This is exactly what I would have predicted. In other words, the poll was a faithful reflection of predictable responses. More than 6% voting would have been a remarkable statistic, one indicative of deep and wide interest in national politics. There was no such enthusiasm. That is why so few people tuned in.
This means that there were no missing votes for the Big Three candidates. It also means that Ron Paul's supporters are hard core fanatics. They were the driving force of the web polls.
There are statistically inescapable facts governing the Republican election campaign so far. First, most people don't care and are not watching the debates. Second, among those who watched, a normal Pareto percentage of them went to the trouble to vote on-line. These are the elite of the Republican Party's ideological activists: 20% of the elite 20%. About half of these people support Ron Paul.
When I say "activists," don't mean people who write checks, knock on doors, stuff envelopes, stuff ballot boxes, and generally do the grunt work of political campaigns. I mean people who care enough about political ideas to sit through hours of political piffle and then take the time to go to a website and vote.
These people are presumably the wave of the digital future. Like Gandhi's supporters in 1915, they are not numerous. They will not determine the outcome of the Republican primaries. They will not attend the Republican Party's convention. But they are out there, and they are unlikely to go away.
I was part of such a group in 1960: the "Goldwater for Vice President" movement. I was on the geographical fringes. I was not in Chicago in 1960, nor did I get in the floor demonstration. But I was for it. That group eventually grew. It got Goldwater nominated in 1964 and got Reagan elected in 1980.
What happened immediately after the debates in May is bad news for the Republican Establishment. They have dismissed this as irrelevant. They will forget about it when Ron Paul fails to win the nomination. But there is no question in my mind that the Republican Party will move toward the right -- the non-interventionist, limited-government Old Right -- over the next three or four decades. This will take place at the bottom, i.e., at the local level, not at the top: New York City's financial district and Washington, D.C. The move toward the Old Right will accelerate when the checks from Washington don't buy much because of inflation. That day is coming.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul is building a digital mailing list. This is the sleeper fact of the Great Debates.
MAILING LISTS
The inventor of the political mailing list is forgotten today. His name was Charles Bryan. His brother, William Jennings Bryan, is well remembered. So valuable was that mailing list and the support it represented that the Democrats nominated Charles Bryan for Vice President in 1924. Charles Bryan had used that mailing list in three Presidential campaigns: 1896, 1900, and 1980.
In early 1965, in the wake of Goldwater's electoral defeat, Richard Viguerie sat down in the office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and began writing down the names of people who had donated $50 or more to Goldwater's campaign -- the equivalent of about $300 today.
By law in those days, federal political campaigns had to turn over to the Clerk the names and addresses of donors of $50 or more. Goldwater's campaign had filed 15,000 names and addresses. Viguerie planned to write them all down and create a mailing list with them.
After a few days, he realized that he could not get the job done by himself. He hired some women to do this grunt work. Then, after they had copied 12,500 names, the Clerk decided that he did not like all this and forbade them to do it. Viguerie says he should have told the Clerk to contact his lawyer. But he was young and inexperienced back then, so he complied.
Those 12,500 names became the basis of a mailing list empire that changed American conservatism and, through Ronald Reagan, the world. This book tells the story, not just of Viguerie's strategy and success, but of the transformation in Americans' reading habits and political donating habits.
A similar result took place in 1972. It was George McGovern who first spotted the potential of direct mail in a Presidential campaign. More accurately, his direct-mail operative, Morris Dees, spotted it. The pre-convention McGovern campaign was made possible by Dees' direct-mail skills.
As far as Presidential politics goes, three technologies have undermined the Establishment's monopoly: the mass-produced paperback book (1964), direct mail (1972), and the Internet (2004). The Presidential candidate who first made the Internet work for him was Howard Dean, whose pre-convention campaign in 2004 was entirely based on the Internet. He raised over $40 million, but then squandered both the money and his lead by a lack of local organization in the primaries.
On all media fronts except direct mail, liberals are falling behind. Network news shows have steadily declined in popularity. Cable TV is replacing the networks, which includes network news. Newspaper readership has fallen like a stone since 1993. In 1993, 58% of Americans said that they had read a newspaper "yesterday." In 2002, this percentage was 41%. Three-quarters of Americans under age 30 do not read a newspaper daily. In the 30-49 age group, it is 37%. Liberals have bet the political farm on capital-intensive technologies and government regulation of the communications industry. They are losing the bet. The best book on all this is by Richard Viguerie and David Franke: "America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power."
Now Ron Paul is assembling a digital mailing list, or multiple lists, that will be used to educate and motivate hard-core supporters. It is under the radar of the Establishment.
COMMITMENT
It is clear to all sides that Ron Paul is the most ideologically committed politician in the country. There has been nothing like him since Howard Buffett retired in the early 1950's. Nobody remembers Howard Buffett today except hard core libertarians and his son, Warren.
It is Ron Paul's uniquely consistent voting record that gets him on liberal-left television talk shows like the Daily Show and Bill Maher's show. The hosts are willing to give him time on camera because he opposed the Iraq war when nobody else did. He has also voted to shrink the state ever since he was elected in 1976. While they don't share his view of domestic policy, they are respectful to find any politician who just will not toe the Party line.
For years, he had a narrow but highly committed audience. Now, after three decades, he is beginning to expand that audience. He speaks his mind, and his mind is informed by a consistent philosophy of limited government, meaning Constitutional government as understood in 1788. The kinds of voters who sit through an evening of bloviating politicos and then go to a web page to vote are the kinds of people he is attracting.
These mailing lists, if used to educate people to the principles of limited civil government and expanded self-government, will begin to affect the next generation of voters.
It does not take postage to mail e-letters. It does not take printers, ink, and paper.
He has been committed to a worldview. No other politician is to the same degree. By being committed at the cost of risking electoral defeat, Ron Paul can now attract people who are looking for their own areas of commitment.
If he gets this message to his subscribers, he can help them become active in a movement to shrink the strangling hand of tax-funded bureaucracy.
CONCLUSION
Ron Paul is convinced that self-government is the wave of the future. Empire isn't. That was Gandhi's message in 1915. It did not seem plausible back then. By 1947, it did.
It has taken until quite recently for India to move economically more toward self-government and away from Nehru's Fabian socialism. Sadly, the U.S. economy seems to be moving back toward Nehru. The state keeps getting bigger in the visible affairs of this world. But a great decentralization is taking place: in education, on the Internet, and with technology generally. The wave of the future is not toward Fabianism and its legacy. Ron Paul's campaign is proof of this.
The admonishment to love one's neighbor presupposes an innate aversion in man to "serve" or "minister" outside of his own household or blood. I say "blood" because the Scriptures consistently exhort men to love and avoid mistreatment of their wives (who are not blood-related)--in much the same manner as the admonishment to love one's neighbor and enemies. There is not this type of insistence regarding children. Fathers are called to provide instruction, but little is said in terms of sacrificial love and self-denial as with wives, neighbors, and enemies. The simple reason is blood. Women are adopted into the family unit while children proceed from out of our bodies. The flip side is true also for women. Husbands are also not blood-related.
For this reason, the Scriptures introduce the concept of "flesh" in order to reform the tendencies within men and women to easily forsake one another:
For this cause shall a man leave and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore are they no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Mt. 19:5-6)
So ought men to love their lives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth, even as the Lord the church. (Eph. 5:28-29)
Men don't hate their own flesh. They typically don't seek to cut asunder their own bodies; but because our tendency is think exclusively in terms of flesh and blood in relationships, the law-word of God reorients our thinking to see our spouses as blood. Marriages fail too easily if the partners do not view themselves as blood and one flesh. That's why couples will divorce and then fight over custody of the children. They'll part with the one that is not blood-related, but they'll fight to their last dollar in lawyer fees to retain custody of the little ones that are blood-related.
We can see that "love" is far more than romanticism. Love is all about blood. At it's deepest level, i.e. self-sacrifice, is the connection between people based upon flesh and blood. However, by reason of sin, our love -- even it's most pristine expression -- is still distorted.
The Scriptures describe our love as "evil" (Luke 11:11-13 below). Therefore, God has to give us commandment to love our neighbors. Our neighbors are not blood-related, and our tendency is to forsake their basic needs when those needs intrude on us:
Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. (Lk. 11:5-7)
This parable is a lesson on importunity in prayer, for the awakened neighbor will give his friend the bread if the friend keeps knocking (v. 8). Our Lord is about to demonstrate to His disciples how much greater is His Father's love for those who ask Him. It's interesting that in making an understandable comparison to God's love, our Lord appeals to the parental love for a child:
If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? (Lk. 11:11-13)
If we'll play close attention, we'll notice that the Scriptures consistently instruct us concerning the Kingdom of God by making appeals to our most basic drives. No, not just lust, eating, sleep, or money -- we certainly do read plenty of that. Lusts do not represent structure, and structure is the context in which lust operates. Lust becomes adultery only because of the structure or context of the marriage and family. The essential structure is flesh and blood. First our own bodies, and then those who look like our bodies! You've heard it, right? Your daughter has your eyes? Your son has your mother's walk, etc?
If my child asks me for bread, I will not give them a serpent. I cannot say the same for those outside my household--at least that's not my tendency. The Word of God must provide a new context or structure in order for me to reposition my neighbor's standing in my eyes. This goes equally for my enemies. I must be lawful to them all; but I don't have to "feel" positively about them. I might give aid to one that despitefully mistreats me in the form of a glass of water, but this in no way implies any emotional attachment, or feelings of affection for them. I must rain on the just and the unjust. I must demonstrate common grace.
The family is the basic and essential unit, or institution (I hate the word "institution." As the old saying goes: "marriage is an institution; but who wants to live in an institution?"). It is so historically. As stated above, little admonishment is needed to encourage parents to fulfill their blood-based duties to their children. Most of the Scriptural admonishments are reserved to guide us in relating to those "outside" the context of flesh and blood. This would include the organized church.
The epistles are replete with instances of Christian Jews forsaking Christian Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-16) and wealthier church members neglecting the impoverished believers (1 Cor. 11:20-22; James 2:1-6). Masters had to be encouraged to treat their servants well (Eph. 6:9; Col. 4:1), and servants could not despise their masters (Eph. 6:6-8; Col. 3:22-23; 1 Tim. 6:1) regardless of whether the master was a believer or not. All to say, the organized church required extensive Scriptural regulation in order to maintain order:
And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest I will set in order when I come. (1 Cor. 11:34)
Granted, fathers are not to "provoke their children to wrath" (Eph. 6:4; Col. 3:21), and children are to obey and honor their parents (Eph. 6:1-2; Col. 3:20). But God's order in creation consistently shows that blood and family bonds are the strongest of all. We all mistreat one another whether it be enemies, spouses, neighbors, children, or parents. However, we are typically more severe in our treatment of those outside the family. Churches will split, and spouses will divorce, but severing blood-related ties is not so easily done. This is why "step" families are usually difficult. Only the most noble, good, and self-sacrificial can make them work.
Within history, the family is the central garden that must be protected. Within eternity, we lose all classifications except God, man, and angels. In heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage; but there are also no elders, deacons, evangelists, missionaries, or sessions. Therefore, the organized church and the family unit of husband, wife, and children are historical spheres. Neither has existence or primacy within eternity. In history, you can have the family without the organized-institutional church. In history, you cannot have the organized-institutional church without the family. Since it's not a question of "either-or," I hope the debate does not result in an unbiblical division between church and family. Yet, our tendency will always be "family first" because family is flesh and blood. Christ is one flesh with His church, and we are one flesh with our wives. The Scriptures have to teach us this in order for it to sink in. Children, on the other hand, are visibly flesh and blood, and you'd have to kill me before I ever return a serpent, or scorpion for my child's request for food.
And the world will be as one?
There is a sad tendency within theologically conservative circles to inflate the spiritual meaning propounded in the New Testament regarding distinctions. This has given rise to a deplorable egalitarianism that has made the world "grey" in all its aspects:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal. 3:28
Three categories are listed here: race, gender, and the economic. The problem is that people tend to read this passage as saying "ye are all EQUAL in Christ Jesus." The word heis being used here literally means "one" as in the numeral one (i.e., set over against the "many"). The concept of equality is not relevant--at least not relevant in the way Gal. 3:28 is typically understood. We cannot confuse the political with the eternal. Despite the "oneness" in Christ eternally, there is still bond and free, Jew and Greek, and male and female. The difference is the implications for redeemed humanity in the expanded use of the law after Christ. Distinctions will remain so long as there is history. Therefore, the law of God will produce "peace," not oneness. The millennial reign is about peace, not egalitarianism.
The implication of our oneness in Christ does alter the way in which we live. They do not, however, alter the distinctions of race, gender, and economics. One thousand years from now there will still be men and women, Jews and Greeks, and diverse economic standings. The question is, will we be lawful towards one another? Law is love, and all men will know of Christ when we love, i.e. deal lawfully, one another.
In general, we favor our own flesh and blood. This is right and good. We must learn to favor those who are not flesh and blood, and this means loving them through law-keeping. The only exception is the love for our spouses. Though they are not blood-related, the Bible commands us to see them as "one flesh" with us. Flesh, blood, and covenant are often intertwined. Let us cast off the doctrines of the rulers of darkness that would teach us otherwise.
The failure of the conservative movement in the United States has been a failure of the churches. This has been true in other countries as well. With rare exception, conservatives have lacked Biblical and theological roots. This is not surprising, given the fact that the clergy are themselves abysmally ignorant.
I have repeatedly been amazed at the ignorance on the part of pastors and clergy of the doctrine of sin and total depravity. These are now termed by some as simply Calvinistic dogmas, but at one time they were common to all churches.
Without the doctrine of sin and total depravity, men will trust in the abilities of men and civil governments to do good, and they will concentrate powers in the hands of church and state, an action which will surely lead to evils. We have today a millennialist expectation of politics which is destructive to men and nations. In my lifetime, beginning with President Woodrow Wilson, more than a few times an apocalyptic hope has surrounded politics. The League of Nations and the United Nations are evidences of this. Many other like efforts are now forgotten. Who now remembers the Kellogg-Briand pact to outlaw war? In my early school days, it was hailed internationally as the dawn of a new era, and school teachers solemnly told us of its epoch-making nature.
Men and nations who disregard the fact that man is a sinner will never cope wisely with evil.
Again, the doctrine of soteriology, of salvation, has a great implication for society. It means that salvation comes, not by politics nor good workers, but by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Man cannot be saved by acts of state, but he can be corrupted thereby. Congress, parliaments, and other like bodies are in the salvation business, and their failures do not convince them of the error of their ways. The salvation state, instead of securing society’s redemption, tends to work its damnation by shifting the hope of salvation from God to acts of state.
Furthermore, the state seeks to bring about communion though enforced community. Granted that hatred of other races and groups is evil, can it be solved by legislation or enforced communion? Community is a religious fact and it requires a unified faith. Racism is a modern fact, a product of evolutionary thinking. For Charles Darwin, evolution "explained" why some races were superior. Darwin never doubted Anglo-Saxon superiority. Like other evils of our time, racism had scientific origins, and, when science, faced with Hitler, chose to discard it, it blamed religion for racism!
Christian eschatology tells us what our hope is, and it depicts, in classic postmillennialism, the triumph of Christ from pole to pole, "From Greenland’s icy mountains, to India’s coral strands," as the old hymn had it. Now, on all sides, we see the decay of humanistic eschatologies, Marxist, democratic, scientific, and otherwise.
Those forms of humanistic eschatologies still surviving are weakening. At the same time, Christian eschatologies have become defeatist or escapist. They surrender the world to the devil. This is not surprising, given the fact that "conservative" churches have abandoned most of the Bible by abandoning God’s law. Most modernists, by giving the prophets a social gospel meaning, have a bigger Bible than evangelical Christians.
The law of God was given as a means of dominion, of godly rule. But too many Christians limit their interest to being saved from Hell, not to the Kingdom of God. Not many pay attention to our Lord’s command, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness" or justice (Mt. 6:33).
The Christian element in the conservative movement lacks theology; the non-Christian elements are usually inconsistent humanists, closer to the Left than to anyone else.
At present, by the grace of God, here and abroad some conservatives are beginning to rethink their position and to abandon antinomianism. As a result, a sound theology may again undergird politics. Until, then, the conservative movement will continue to retreat because it has nowhere else to go. It better represents the Left’s yesterdays than conservatism’s future.
But more is needed, for "faith without works is dead" (Jas. 2:17-26). Christians must manifest their faith in works of grace and charity. Socialism is the humanistic solution to society’s problems with the sick, unemployed, needy, homeless, and broken peoples. Today statist "social services" insist on their "right" to do what was once a part of the Christian ministry.
In recent years, more and more Christians have begun ministries to human needs, with excellent results. Certainly Christian and home schools represent a major advance in the Christian ministries, as do services to care for unwed girls who are pregnant. All across the U. S., such ministries are abounding, and new areas of relevance are steadily developed.
"The maliciousness and willful blindness of sinners continues to amaze me. Again and again, I have written that theonomy, or Christian Reconstruction, does not believe in a top-down society because we believe in conversion, not coercion, in regeneration, not revolution; but it makes no difference to these critics, no matter how we repeat it." ~ R. J. Rushdoony
"As the 20th century nears its finish, it is interesting to remember (or to reread in century-old magazines) that people a century ago rightly expected all kinds of remarkable inventions to mark the era, but wrongly expected that man's inner problems and failings would be solved thereby. The expected century of progress became the bloodiest century of history with the rise of new and worse tyrannies, great wars, famines, slave labor camps, mass murders, and the like. Without religious and moral progress, advancing technologies only give evil men more scope in their powers." ~ R. J. Rushdoony
Establishment Republicans jockey amongst themselves while Ron Paul stands alone in a single-man fight for American Constitutionalism. Republican voters are almost brainwashed into the new "red scare" of Islamic fundamentalism, and Pavlovian in their trained reactionism to 9/11. They've thrown principle out the window in the name of "national security."
Ron Paul is right. They hate us because we're over there. We've been meddling in the Middle East for over half a century, and now we're invading sovereign nations that have not threatened nor attacked the United States. We continue to build permanent military bases all over Arab lands, and we appear almost servile to Zionist interests. The idea that America was attacked because of our personal freedom is beyond ridiculous. I'm astonished that so many grown Americans believe that. Here's a compilation of clips of Ron Paul from last night's debate:
The following text is taken from North's Introduction to By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today by Greg L. Bahnsen, (Tyler, TX: ICE, 1985), xxi-xxiv.
Why have so many Christians, especially theologians and professors at Christian colleges, proclaimed such a monstrous social philosophy, a philosophy of "anything is politically acceptable except the Old Testament"? I believe that one reason above all is at the root of the problem: Christians have been afraid to exercise dominion. They have been bullied into submission by professional humanist guilt-manipulators who have persuaded Christians that Christianity, when applied to politics, has led to tyranny and war. As an example, they cite the 800-year-old story of the medieval crusades, where a few thousand professional soldiers went off to fight the Muslims. And who is complaining loudly today about the evil Crusades? Defenders of humanism whose various representatives have launched twentieth century wars and revolutions in which as many as 150 million people died from 1901 until 1970.
These same critics have complained repeatedly about the Roman Catholic Church's burning of the occult magician Bruno or Calvin's approval of the burning of unitarian Servetus (with the enthusiastic approval of the Catholics, who were also after him, and who tipped Calvin off when Servetus came into Geneva), four centuries ago. Compare these two events with the atrocities of Stalin, who killed 20 to 30 million Russians in his purges in the 1930's, including a million Communist Party members, plus an additional ten million who died unnatural deaths during the famines produced by his forced collectivization of agriculture. Then there is the continuing atrocity of the Soviet Union's concentration camp population, which has probably included about one third of the Soviet population over the years, with at least one percent of the entire population in the camps at any given time.
This slaughter took place in the 1930's without any significant criticism in the prestige liberal humanist press for the next twenty years. Malcolm Muggeridge, a reporter for the Manchester Guardian in this era, says in the first volume of his autobiography that Western reporters and liberals knew what Stalin was doing; they approved of his ruthlessness. Even in our day, some apologists still exist. ("Stalin, despite certain excesses, was a progressive force in his day, and we must understand that it is not easy to bring a backward society into technological maturity, blah, blah, blah.") Yet these same ideologues taunt Christians about the Salem witch trials in the 1690's, in which all of 20 people were executed, and which never happened again. In one year, Mao's policies killed 30 million Chinese. Spare Christians the guilt trips, please.
Christians have until recently been humbled into submission by state-licensed, profit-seeking medical psychopaths who tell us that abortion is a morally valid way to control population growth and to solve marital and financial difficulties. A renewed interest in biblical law will "unhumbIe" Christians soon enough. It already has.
People may ask: Wouldn’t biblical law lead to tyranny? I answer: Why should it? God designed it. God mandated it. Was Israel a tyranny? Or was Egypt the real tyranny, and Babylon? Tyranny was what God visited upon His people when they turned their backs on biblical law.
But to be practical about it, I cannot imagine a successful modern tyranny that is financed by less than ten percent of national income. I can easily imagine many tyrannies that are coercively financed by five to seven times the tithe. So can you. In this bloody humanist century, this takes very little imagination. A history book is all it takes. Or a subscription to the New York Times.
From the Daily Mail: "Am I my brother’s reviewer? A word of explanation is needed here. Some of you may know that I have a brother, Christopher, who disagrees with me about almost everything.
Some of those who read his books and articles also know that I exist, though they often dislike me if so. But in general we inhabit separate worlds – in more ways than one.
He is of the Left, lives in the United States and recently became an American citizen. I am of the Right and, after some years in Russia and America, live in the heart of England. Occasionally we clash in public." Read more...
