In pondering John 7 recently, our pastor mentioned God’s work in the life of Nicodemus. The Pharisees were blind guides who could not see the living Word right in front of their eyes. They could not “see” their own Creator right in front of them despite being the keepers of His law. But even among these hardened men, there was a remnant: Nicodemus. The light bulb slowly seems to go on in this learned man’s eyes. Our pastor noted that we should draw encouragement from this.

God is at work. He is at work in our lives. He is at work in the lives of people who do foolish and wicked things. He’s working in in the lives of scoffers. We never know how this will come to fruition. Some may be further hardened, others may be reborn as great saints in faith. However, we should never give up in praying for others. We should never see anyone as irredeemable; we don’t know all of God’s sheep.

So, what to do? “>Do what we’re supposed to do, remembering what Luther said:

Work and let him give the fruits thereof! Rule, and let him prosper it! Battle, and let him give victory! Preach, and let him make hearts devout! Marry, and let him give you children! Eat and drink, and let him give you health and strength. Then it will follow that, whatever we do, he will effect everything through us; and to him alone shall be the glory.

Are people going nuts? I have seen and heard of a number of marriages breaking up recently in strange ways. And now comes the odd story of South Carlina Governor Mark Sanford.

Trend researcher Gerald Celente says that when people lose everything, they tend to lose it. True, perhaps, but in all of the cases I’ve heard of, the economy was at best indirectly involved in these marital situations. (I’ve said it many times before, but I believe that the real disaster is yet to come with the economy).

Every time a moral downfalls occurs, we get the usual flood of mockers who are only too happy to pounce. “Ha, another Christian hypocrite!” To the mocker, it’s better to set the bar an inch off the ground and step over it than to set the bar six feet off the ground and fail in jumping over it.

This isn’t to excuse Mark Sanford. He may be an unrepentant fraud for all I know. Church history is replete with them. The Bible warns of those among us who were never of us.

While I don’t want to downplay it, hypocrisy is a fact of life with all believers to some extent, even if it does not lead to scandalous sin. I’ve experienced enough of myself to know that I’m at the head of the “pathetic loser” line. However, to mockers, you’re either perfect or a fake. That’s quite convenient for them. If no man can jump their bar, then they posit that no man has the right to speak God’s judgment against them.

However, man does have the right to do exactly that. God commands it. God commands pastors and elders (sinners all!) to proclaim His righteous judgment. You see, mockers, when R.C. Sproul and Tim Bayly and John MacArthur say that the unrepentant will be thrown into Hell, they’re just proclaiming what Jesus said. If it were only their opinion, it wouldn’t matter, but Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, has proclaimed it. Therefore it matters. Even if you shut up every messenger, the message remains. The eternal God remains. Judgment is coming. There’s no stopping it.

And know this, mockers: God doesn’t grade on a curve. I measure my relative successes against others (and overlook my failures) as well as any sinner, but one man’s scandal doesn’t make you look good to God by comparison. God isn’t comparing you to other people. He’s comparing you to a standard of perfect obedience. If you aren’t trusting in Christ– that is, if you don’t have the imputed, spotless perfection of Christ’s righteousness– then you are on the road to Hell. And you’ll deserve it. The mocking will soon be over.

Mockers, don’t use incidents like this to harden your hearts further. Turn now.

It’s something we’ve always suspected: politicians share personality traits with serial killers. Let’s see here:

Interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others.

Yes, check.

a lack of remorse and/or guilt

Check.

parasitic orientation

Check. Bigtime.

They also lack what most consider a “shame” mechanism.

OK, well, I’m convinced.

This is a good, short interview with Thomas Woods. Along with Peter Schiff, Tom Woods is the clearest economist out there. He’s always funny and lively as an interview, with well-aimed blows.

We often hear the wish expressed that we could just get by all this “divisiveness about “gay marriage.” I heard Peter Schiff say this basic thing recently since he is contemplating a Senate run.

Now, there is no such thing as gay “marriage.” God cannot bless a union He calls an abomination. However, there’s nothing to stop Adam and Steve from tying the knot down at the local Metropolitan Community Church. For that matter, there’s nothing stopping a guy from exchanging rings with his dog out in the back yard. This isn’t a debate about what people can freely do in civil society. People believe in all kinds of heresies and abominations that do not involve the civil authorities.

Some libertarians and “moderates” are offended by the Biblical view, or they wish it would go away, and so they make the leap to supporting the “live and let live” side. However, they’ve taken the wrong side if they believe this. While the popular wisdom is that supporting gay marriage is the freedom-loving side, the exact opposite is the case. Politically, the pro-gay marriage side is all about forcing people to recognize (and pay for) something they do not want to recognize. If an employer finds it repugnant to offer health benefits to a homosexual’s partner because such a “marriage” is illegitimate, well, tough luck for him. He has to pay for it anyway. Similarly, government benefits will be handed out to gay “spouses.” Granted, government benefits are unconstitutional, divisive by nature, and should be eliminated completely, but the point is that while they exist people are forced to support that which they don’t want to support.

This is tolerance? It won’t stop there. Once gay marriage is 100% legal, we can expect legal actions taken against faithful churches that refuse to perform these phony marriages. It will be yet another avenue for persecution.

Gay marriage supporters are the intolerant ones. Shouldn’t this be clear since most of the people who support it also support government meddling in all other areas of our lives?

We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street / Cause we like a livin’ right and bein’ free. -Merle Haggard

The late libertarian Harry Browne once called the Defense Department “the Post Office in battle fatigues.” I believe his point was that people often romanticize the military brass, but really these are just government bureaucrats.

After World War II, the Cold War arose, and conservative-minded folks became suspicious about opponents of war. Didn’t they want to fight communists? This divide deepened in the 1960s, when all the dopey hippies came along preaching free love and flying high. My late father, a WWII vet who fought under MacArthur, despised hippies. He rightly saw them as irresponsible cretins. When I was young in the 1970s, America was still fighting aggressive communism. Those who opposed the fight were distrusted, especially those who told us that if we were just nicer to dictator xyz, then they’d listen to reason and we’d all sing Kumbaya together (we see their descendants today who think Obama some sort of demigod). Middle American conservatives don’t like these people. They distrust those who oppose military involvement. They prefer Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

This was my own thinking on wars for a long time– I favored every war up until Iraq. It was then that my views started changing. I still can’t stand hippies, but I took a second look at the serious anti-war libertarians (as opposed to the liberal posers who’ve suddenly quieted down since their guy was elected). If we don’t trust the government in anything it does domestically, why should we trust its foreign policy wisdom? Perhaps the things they do there backfire. Perhaps they are motivated by non-altruistic concerns.

Consider these problems with wars:

• People get killed. Our soldiers, their soldiers, and civilians. It sounds simple, and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t instances where wars can save lives, but the fact that people are being killed should invite questions about the necessity of any war.
• Wars waste a lot of money. The government spends huge amounts of money to create weapons. Then it uses those weapons to blow up bridges and buildings in other countries. Then it spends still more to rebuild all those homes and bridges. Where does this money come from? It is stolen from the private sector. Debt and inflation attack the savings that could have funded real investment. A labor force that could have produced useful items instead is diverted to produce things that will be blown up. (This gives lie to this idea that World War II “got us out of the Depression.” This conventional wisdom is a fallacy, as historians like Robert Higgs have pointed out.)
• Wars divert resources from the private to the public sector. Any dollar moved from the private realm to the public realm enervates private society and strengthens the the public sector.
• Government grows bigger and more powerful on the heels of popular support for wars. This leads to new laws that expand government and lessen social and economic freedom. The late conservative Paul Weyrich noted that one should never give to your friend power that your enemy might one day inherit. Recently Rush Limbaugh was deemed unpatriotic for opposing Barack Obama. I’m surprised liberals have yet to trot out the old conservative line of “How dare you oppose the state in a time of war!” If Obama’s popularity persists, will anyone be surprised if its administration eventually use all the new security powers given it by the Bush Administration to persecute all you 2nd-Amendments “terrorists” out there with your guns, or you unpatriotic elements who won’t hire unrepentant homosexuals? It wouldn’t surprise me. As we continue toward a cashless society, it becomes easier to ensure that no transaction goes unnoticed. We usually are told it’s all about “national security.” I guess it’s all just a coincidence that it eases auditing and taxation, and eliminates privacy.
• Randolph Bourne put it this way: “War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. … Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. Loyalty — or mystic devotion to the State — becomes the major imagined human value. Other values, such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.”
• Empires are brought down by expensive wars. The US is, conservatively, $65-100 trillion in the hole now depending on which estimates you believe. Debt and inflation always accompany wars. The U.S. simply does not have the money to be blowing stuff up in Iraq or to be occupying bases across the globe. Necessity is likely going to be forced to bring many of these troops home in lickety-split fashion. Empire is the last stage before collapse.

I am not anti-war in blanket fashion, but I hate big government. I do not trust the state. Why should I?

Why should you, my conservative friends? I am not saying that all wars are evil. But be very skeptical.

As an addendum to the last post, it’s telling that Barack Obama was shocked and outraged at George Tiller’s murder, but he’s not shocked and outraged at George Tiller’s long career of destroying infants.

The infamous Wichita abortionist George Tiller, who has long been one of the most loathsome child killers in the country, was apparently murdered by someone today. Bad things tend to happen to people who spend their lives doing bad things. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Tiller has long had the tacit approval of his “church,” Reformation Lutheran (what a misuse of the word reformation; deformation would be more like it). Tiller was an usher at the church. He was killed while handing out bulletins. Imagine having your bulletin handed to you by a guy who has profited by killing tens of thousands of infants by poking scissors into the back of their skull and sucking out their brains with a vacuum. “May I show you to your seat?” Now Tiller has been ushered into judgment.

Tiller’s murderer, if guilty, will go to trial and hopefully receive his just sentence of death. While I can’t mourn Tiller’s passing, I do pray that God uses this not to harden, but to bring repentance to his family. Pray that pro-abortion evildoers are not successful at using this incident to persecute lawful opponents of Tiller’s wickedness.

Is there a greater example of men’s darkness than how they glorify men like George Tiller? You’ll probably see plenty of it in the next few days.

I think it was Benny Hill who once did a skit where he slowly plays a G chord from top to bottom. When he comes to the final string where where you expect to hear that familiar high G note, he mistakenly hits G#. The disagreeable note is funny.

As a fan of the original Star Trek series (if not always its philosophies), I was hesitant about the new movie. There was little reason for this hesitance. Star Trek is a deeply satisfying action film and great reintroduction to the series. It’s arguably better than any of the preceding Star Trek movies. It may be as good as the first Star Wars film. The young stars, especially the guy who plays Kirk, were all well-cast, and that was no easy task given our long familiarity with these characters. The script is taut and the director keeps the movie rolling along. He never gets caught in the weeds of most action films (yes, you, Batman Returns), where there’s one mindless and overdone action sequence after another. Star Trek relentlessly pushes its story through the action. There is only a small amount of (totally pointless, of course) profanity.

Then, at the end, after the first five notes of the chord were struck beautifully, the G# sounded. The classic Star Trek intro was voiced over by Spock, and ended with this:

To seek out new life and new civilizations / To boldly go where no one has gone before.

Did you catch that? “No one” instead of “no man.” After a full-throated, masculine adventure, the movie ends on an effeminate G#. They changed what may be the most famous voice-over in TV history in the name of political correctness. I left the theater with a sour taste in my mouth.

I’d like to suggest that the director and producer grow a pair. If that sounds crude, it isn’t meant that way.

Barack Obama implores us to find “common ground” on abortion. Lather, rinse, repeat. The liberal playbook never changes.

“Common ground” means that we all be nice and talk to each other while liberals and their abortionist friends get their way. The killings will continue and all will be as it ever was. Big loser: the hapless unborn.

The other day Obama was warning about a debt crisis as if he were a passerby instead of a powerful Senator who faithfully voted to expand federal spending at every turn, or as if was not he, but instead his evil twin who’s been insanely pushing the expansion of the national debt. Now he’s playing the nation’s pastor-in-chief.

The man’s lawbreaking shamelessness is just amazing.

When Peter Schiff goes on TV and spreads his bearish message, it’s never long before he’s called “Dr. Doom” and people joke about what a downer his message is. The idea seems to be that if you see a train wreck coming, you’re either suicidal or a doom-and-gloomer who needs to lighten up. Most Christians I’ve talked to seem content to “trust God” and do nothing. Many Christians have bought this triumphalist idea that “we’re America” and economic laws don’t apply to our “shining city on a hill.” Or they believe that something will turn up. I call it Mr. Micawber Syndrome.

Of course, we do need to trust God, but that doesn’t free us from acting. If you are mowing the lawn and you see a tornado coming, you don’t keep mowing and “trust God.” You run into the basement and then trust the outcome to the Lord. God works through means. A lot of warning bells are sounding. Will you heed them?

Folks, you need to get prepared now, mentally and materially and tell others who will hear to do the same. This brief talk provides a good start on practical ways to prepare for economic disruption. It won’t tell you to build a bomb shelter out by a creek. It isn’t going to tell you to buy a shack full of emergency meal kits. It will tell you to get a few months of canned food ready and start rotating it and making it a part of your lives. My brother-in-law has started a garden and learned to can. These are good ideas. Even if nothing happens (which I doubt very much), you’ll be prepared for temporary disruptions. You’ll have new skills.

The talk will tell you to get your, er, personal security in place. I’m a believer in concealed carry. If you can do in your state, then get your license and get in the habit. As the dude from Argentina will tell you, the place you’re likely to get attacked isn’t inside your castle, it’s outside your castle. Also, you’re doing a public service by creating a more dangerous world for criminals to inhabit. You can carry a lot more places than you might think. Oddly, in Ohio they put a silly exclusion in so you can’t carry in churches unless the church expressly allows it (hint hint, elders and deacons), whereas with most establishments you CAN carry unless prohibited (unless you’re drinking there) or unless (surprise surprise) it’s a government facility.

The collapse that seems likely won’t be a post-apocalpytic world where we wander through junkyards with shotguns. It’ll be more like Argentina. Savings accounts and retirement plans will be wiped out by a monetary crisis (debts will probably go with it, which is good for debtors and bad for creditors). The government will default on its bonds via inflation. Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs will show themselves to be Ponzi schemes and empty promises (You know all that FICA money they collected from you? Well, they’ve spent it.) There will be a period of crisis where things could get ugly, but then reality will set in. A lot more businesses will close. Office parks and buildings will be abandoned. Cities will see revenue sources dry up. We’re seeing it already. Tax receipts are WAY down. Capital-intensive businesses that can create stuff to export won’t be started because savings are depleted. The personal debt spigots — credit cards and home equity loans — are drying up as people’s credit limits are reduced or eliminated altogether. The government’s deb spigots are being slowly turned off by those who are tired of lending to our spendthrift government. The government, meanwhile, is busy attacking the foundations of prosperity (savings and production). They are spending like madmen. Due to the lack of work, and to escape taxation, people will start more of a subsistence style of living. They’ll grow their own food, make their own clothes, and do odd jobs for the neighbors. This has already started happening. Crime is going to more prevalent. The standard of living will be much lower. Material things will start looking shabbier because people can’t replace them. It’s going to be a long road out of what Mr. Schiff calls “our phony economy” based on debt. Those who saved and acted wisely won’t be spared; inflation will see to that, as will (likely) a more aggressively criminal government.

You get the point by now. Maybe it won’t be all bad, though. Maybe we’ll be blessed to see government and education bureaucracies collapse. Maybe we’ll have more freedom. Maybe we’ll be forced to learn how to make things and grow things again instead of just consuming things other countries make. Maybe people will realize that we don’t have “rights” to things that burden the backs of people in other countries (i.e. our creditors who are going to be paid back in devalued dollars). Maybe the government and popular culture will become more irrelevant. Maybe people will stop believing the false prophets (and false profits) in Washington. We can hope.

It’s a good idea to get in shape, too. That doesn’t guarantee our health, but in a world where health care is going to be rationed it’s best to try to stay out of the hospital.

We got used to a boom world and thought it was normal. The bust is now upon us. Get ready and spread the word as the opportunity permits. Don’t be the proverbial person battling someone at Walmart for the last bottled water on the shelf. Plus, if a panic hits, the last thing you want to be doing is helping to increase the panic by picking that moment to start hoarding resources. There will be a million people jamming the stores. They won’t need a million and one.

And remember: you’re probably going to need extra to help those who are blindsided or who foolishly refuse to prepare. A church can be a great blessing if its members are exhorted to be prepared. It may be worth talking about with your pastor, elders, and/or deacons.

Here’s a thoughtful article on McDonalds, one of my favorite dining establishments. The article makes keen points about elitist snobbery and the moral aspects of capitalism. A sample:

One of the reasons that the elites loathe places like McDonald’s, or Wal-Mart, or Target, or any of these places that cater to Everyman – and you might suppose that the champions of the workers and peasants would love these places – is precisely their capacity to rob the rich of their distinctive social markers. One day it was a sign of class and distinction to drink a latte; the next day, every construction worker is doing it.

There is a group on Facebook called “Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy.” The group has just under 200,000 members (!). Its arguments are absurd, but no more so than any other arguments for bailouts.

At best, public stimulus is inefficient. At worst (which is where government decision-making normally resides), it’s downright destructive. Not only does it remove private savings that would’ve been used to create or expand real enterprises, it’s used for handouts to groups that stifle innovation, that regulate, that create bureaucracies, etc. We’d be better off as a country if the government just printed up all the stimulus money and drove it off a cliff.

I was reminded of this great old article by the late, great economist Murray Rothbard. Rothbard posited that the the answer to an unpayable public debt is outright repudiation. He distinguished between public and private debt:

If I borrow money from a mortgage bank, I have made a contract to transfer my money to a creditor at a future date; in a deep sense, he is the true owner of the money at that point, and if I don’t pay I am robbing him of his just property. But when government borrows money, it does not pledge its own money; its own resources are not liable. Government commits not its own life, fortune, and sacred honor to repay the debt, but ours. This is a horse, and a transaction, of a very different color.

What about the savers, the elderly fixed-income holders, and the foreigners hold these IOUs? Rothbard’s words were stern:

The public debt transaction… will be paid back not out of the pockets or the hides of the politicians and bureaucrats, but out of the looted wallets and purses of the hapless taxpayers, the subjects of the state. The government gets the money by tax-coercion; and the public creditors, far from being innocents, know full well that their proceeds will come out of that selfsame coercion (my exmphasis).

I for one had never really thought of it that way. Why hold ANY government debt? First, there’s no way they’ll ever pay it all back, and so, for example, the kids out there with unpayable college debts will likely make off with cheap and probably worthless educations (the government is the “creditor” for most college loans, but it borrowed that money from someone else). Second, why should I loan the government the means to extend its own power? Third, and most important, isn’t it immoral to hold debt in hopes of receiving interest that is forcibly extracted from others? I’ve concluded that yes, it is immoral. (That said, there’s no real way to get around holding some government debt since every Federal Reserve note i.e. dollar in your pocket is debt courtesy of the government’s counterfeiting operation, and legal tender laws force us to hold these false weights and measures. We have to swim to some extent in the cesspool.)

To those who argued that no one would loan to the government again if they repudiate the debt, Rothbard responded with a thumbs-up:

Apart from the moral, or sanctity-of-contract argument against repudiation that we have already discussed, the standard economic argument is that such repudiation is disastrous, because who, in his right mind, would lend again to a repudiating government? But the effective counterargument has rarely been considered: why should more private capital be poured down government rat holes? It is precisely the drying up of future public credit that constitutes one of the main arguments for repudiation, for it means beneficially drying up a major channel for the wasteful destruction of the savings of the public. What we want is abundant savings and investment in private enterprises, and a lean, austere, low-budget, minimal government. The people and the economy can only wax fat and prosperous when their government is starved and puny.

Anyway, it’s a great article on a topic that will be increasingly prominent in coming years.

Years ago, I worked with a software developer from the Ukraine. We were talking about something related to Russian politicians, and he abruptly looked at me and said: “They’re all creem-een-als.” Those of you who’ve known Eastern European emigres or read their materials know that they possess a certain biting wit. But this guy wasn’t joking. He meant it. He’d seen it. At the time, I laughed it off as hopeless cynicism.

Now I think I finally understand. I’ve really come to see politicians as largely a criminal class. Here’s yet another example.

There’s really no difference between this congresswoman and a thug in an alley with a switchblade.

That title sounds appropriately pretentious.

Environmentalists, at least those interested in politics, are essentially authoritarians. They want to regulate how much water is in our toilets, what kind of light bulbs we use, how much we use our air conditioners, etc. The lash of the state’s whip is their friend. They take something we all agree about — good stewardship, which the market price system handles quite well — and seek power through it. The latest fad is the use of debt and inflation to “create alternative energy jobs.” They are spending our savings and the savings of our descendants because they know what is best for the planet. Sure they do.

Today is liberal Easter. Instead of a cross, there’s a bin where paper can be thrown and spring anew after loads of costly energy is spent recycling it. On this high holy day, we were reminded a million times again to “do our part.” A friend of mine said that he felt like littering today. I know the feeling.

Chesterton’s well-worn line is that when people don’t believe in God, they’ll believe in anything. As a corollary, when people deny the law of God, they create all sorts of rules and regulations to live by as they work their way to heaven (or whatever they call it).

David Wegener cleverly conveys a loathsome style of writing in his excellent summary of the deterioration of Christianity Today over the years:

Articles: There used to be serious articles on core doctrines of the faith: progressive revelation, inerrancy, the Trinity, original sin, justification, sanctification, the Day of Judgment, hell, etc., all of them written by learned pastors and theologians. Today, we’re taken on a journey as the free lance author recounts her confusion on some topic (like fashion or global warming or endangered species) and how she decided to investigate this topic and went to a conference put on by evangelicals on her topic. She tells us how her plane was delayed and she had trouble checking in to the conference hotel, and missed her first session, but how it was okay, cause she ran into the seminar leader in the restaurant and ate lunch with him and how he was nice and funny and normal even though a great man. Then she details all the difficulties in coming to any firm conclusions on this topic and tells us how nuance and humility are really important and necessary, but we can be sure of this, and then out comes some platitude worthy of a 7th grader in Sunday school.

Beyond the self-absorption and shallowness, there’s an aspect of this style of writing that I see also in the Episcopal church newsletter that still comes to our door (don’t ask). Every page of it is a denial of the faith, but it never really comes right out and says it. That’s not nuanced. Just coming out and saying what you think doesn’t befit an elitist. It’s too… doctrinaire. And so, amid the anecdotes about the foibles of life and descriptions of actions that unite us all, you just look for the clues like Muggeridge used to do in Pravda. To use a fictional example, when someone explains the sterling team effort involved in restoring a city garden, along with all the humorous (i.e. unfunny) things that happened along the way, you’ll be informed that Robert and his life partner Steve participated in the project. Or, amid the heart-rending departure of another congregation that can’t hack your denominational activism any longer, you’ll be gently told that some value unity above others. Or you’ll learn that some see nuance instead of “easy answers.”

It’s the equivalent of a pitcher nibbling around the plate all night. You know he’s trying to get you out, but he’s not going to come right out and challenge you. He’ll save his fastballs for the church courts.

Samuel Johnson once wondered, “How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” Along those lines, I wonder: How is it we hear the loudest yelps for separation of church and state among those who speak of the state in messianic terms?

Tiller the Killer escapes again (from a misdemeanor charge!), but a day is coming when there will be no escape.

This is a good talk by Phil Johnson. One of the oddities of church culture over the past decade or two is a rising acceptance of vulgarity. It’s this idea that we need to “keep it real” because that’s what people relate to. How we get them beyond it when we’re sitting there cussing with them is never explained. Nor is how we avoid being corrupted by corrupt speech, as if our flesh is somehow above such considerations.

I wonder if all this faddish evangelicalism is yet another relic of the economic boom years. Now that our phony wealth is melting away, perhaps the pretentious hipster nonsense and titillation will follow it out the door in favor of a mature Christianity.

The means of grace as the Bible spells it out: that’s what we need. All of us. And there’s no need to arrogantly pretend otherwise.

This speech is to my ears an instant classic. Peter Schiff is not (as far as I know) a Christian, but he’s speaking the truth on the economy and the criminal actions of our government. It’s funny and pointed, with priceless reminiscences (MP3 version of the speech is here). Can anyone deny Schiff’s outrageous logic on how our government will proceed? The big ripoff is ahead– first for the Chinese and our other creditors, and then for anyone who holds dollars.

Such thievery by our government is downright embarrassing. Even though God uses even evil men in government for his purposes (Romans 13), I see more and more the truth in Murray Rothbard’s aphorism with each passing year: “The state is a band of thieves writ large.”

Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought. -JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is my favorite piece of fiction. It describes a world so vibrant and whole that it is astounding that it came from the mind of one man. Apparently it was derived from its language. I don’t claim to understand it, but I am in awe.

What intrigues me most about LOTR, other than its tremendous story and “tips of the hat” to Byzantium, is its genuinely mature worldview. Middle Earth is a world inhabited by conflicted characters facing ascendant evil. Often an air of defeat and doom hangs over it. This is occasionally relieved by sometimes stunning victories. Mordor is evil, but even Middle Earth’s heroes are tempted, conflicted, wavering, and even overcome by darkness. Some of its most virtuous characters — Gandalf, Galadriel — are supremely suspicious of wielding power. They do not trust themselves with the Ring (the subject of power in Middle Earth is fascinating). Sometimes the Fellowship fails miserably. Frodo fails at the greatest moment of his worldly glory. However, a silent One works behind it all, often using the unimportant things of the world. The creation is blessed by the small and seemingly insignificant. These blessings come as unexpected, unrecognized surprises. The darkness is wounded as it seems ready to triumph completely. A small band that has not bent the knee to Sauron triumphs.

It doesn’t seem as if all these things are there purposely. You don’t really notice it just by reading the story. There are no tendentious attempts to pound it home. It’s be there because that’s just the way it is in Middle Earth.

That’s the way it is for us, too. The moon surprises us one night and we never quite forget how it looked. Someone says something at a grocery and we are never quite the same. A book someone gave us long ago suddenly is ready to speak to us. When I look at things that have changed my life, I always get the sense that I’ve stumbled over them while heading elsewhere.

God the great Creator of all things does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy. -Westminster Confession, Chapter 5

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is yet another wasteful, counterproductive, unconstitutional bureaucracy of the federal government. Barack Obama recently appointed Kathleen Sebelius to head the HHS cabinet post. This is a woman who has enjoyed steak and lobster with the infamous late-term abortionist George Tiller.

But the president looks good on TV, has a nice family, and believes in hope and the children. So never mind.

I’ve noted before that I believe that our debt-laden economy is headed toward collapse, and that this collapse will be worse than the Great Depression.

To digress a bit, I’ve noticed that churches that believe strongly in word, sacrament, and godly discipline attract solid, godly people. They also attract the occasional oddball, the kind of person you just won’t run into at your average (worldly) megachurch. Similarly, principled political movements attract great people, but also a few folks who are off-kilter. You’ll see eccentrics at a Ron Paul rally that you wouldn’t have seen at a McCain rally.

In Intellectuals, Paul Johnson noted Karl Marx’s journalism background and his apocalyptic, melodramatic tendencies. If you’ve read boards about surviving a crisis, you’ll find similarly apocalyptic folks who spread (imo) as much chaff as wheat (e.g. Alex Jones). Folks whose imaginations seem a bit overheated, who’ve maybe watched a few too many zombie movies and read a few too many novels. Just the other day I came across a thread where a man polled others to ask if they would eat another person if things were bad enough. The majority of the poll respondents would not rule it out. Alrrrrighty.

How do we approach the topic of “surviving an economic collapse” which is so attractive to crackpots and unstable people? First, one should be discerning, because history shows that strange people attract followings in hard times (a good church will aid in your discernment). Second, though, don’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater by closing your eyes to the real possibility of economic collapse. The road we’re headed down– the destruction of the currency– is a road other countries have taken. The result isn’t pretty. Although I don’t agree with everything this guy says, including his occasional profanity, posts like this are instructive (note: not for the squeamish) as we face a possible time of troubles in the next few years unlike any we’ve known.

Pastors: This will add some real power to your next sermon. So much for Romans 10:17.

Its hard to imagine that the popular culture in American once embraced elegant, adult (in the good sense of the word) entertainment like this. Imagine people going out for an evening in a suit and tie. I’m not sure if I even have a suit that fits.

This isn’t a call to return to the 1940s, but just to note that we have become a society that venerates youth. Instead of young singers singing adult songs to adult audiences, we have classic rock geezers still making futile attempts to hit notes they haven’t hit since 1974. Compare that to a Tony Bennett who is singing the same standards he sang 50 years ago. Bennett’s arrangements may be in a different key, but it still sounds “right” because it’s timelessly clever pop music instead of youthful fantasies about a scarred old slaver whipping his “brown sugar” around midnight. An old man just can’t do a credible version of, say, Black Dog.

Have you heard this? Surreal satire like this must make even rock music fans admit that pulling a rock vocal from its context generally reveals the essential ridiculousness of it all.