For my entire lifetime, I have been hearing the word “racism.” For 25 years, phrases like “Dr. King’s dream” have been cues to either change the channel or prepare for a tiresome torrent of cliches.

There has always been something tedious and artificial about discussions of racism. The real problem is hatred and pride. People hate or look down on other people for a hundred reasons: they’re pretty, they’re ugly, they smoke, they’re red state, they’re blue state, they’re rich, they’re poor. And yet we single out one peculiar form– racism– above all the others. It’d be as if we all decided in concerted fashion to stamp out gluttons addicted to Moon Pies, or men who lust after green-eyed women. Not that these aren’t evils, but why these specific evils?

There’s little desire to combat sin, of course. The word “racism” has become just another club used by those with political agendas to pummel and marginalize others.

It’s gotten so silly that I’ve heard people say that the “worst thing” you accuse someone of is racism. Really? Worse than adulterer or blasphemer? Worse than sodomite or whore?

“Animal rights” is one of the great fads of our time. It has bound weak consciences with a false view of creation.

This week, a video hit documenting abuse on an Ohio farm. Farmhands are shown repulsively cursing as they beat cows. The outrage poured in internationally. A domineering, regulatory mindset was on display in spades: Put the farmer out of business! Increase regulation! Stop eating dairy!

It’s good, of course, to expose people who abuse animals. I doubt these people show compassion to people, either. People have always loved animals for good reason: they are a fascinating example of God’s creativity and brilliance. Animals bless us in so many ways. Most of us have affection for our pets. Many years ago, a huge moth flew into a room where I was talking with my former pastor. My pastor scooped it up in his hand, opened the window, and let it go, saying something like “we should spare God’s creation when possible.” Most of us don’t wantonly kill creatures.

Many have made the excellent point that the people protesting the beating of cows often support the slaughter of infants in abortuaries. One’s moral priorities do reveal the heart’s darkness. However, Christians should also consider the intent of the groups who exposed these cruel farmhands. The goal of vegan-friendly groups like Mercy for Animals and the Humane Society of the United States isn’t to prosecute a few wrongdoers, but to introduce more farming regulations. They’d love to end animal farming altogether, but if they can’t do that at least they can make it so expensive that people can’t afford it. This is an unbiblical, evil intent which flows from rebellion against the Creator.

Christians in general need to be more concerned about individual liberties, particularly now that our government is spending much of the nation’s economic output and running up unpayable debts. Interest groups and politicians use events like this cow beating to seek unlawful government power over citizens. The government has been increasingly binding us with silly legalisms that the Pharisees would think idiotic and regulations that Joe Stalin would consider overkill. Cities force us to waste money recycling. New York City has banned trans-fats. Government at all levels is now trying to regulate salt content. The federal government wants to regulate carbon, which is like trying to regulate nitrogen. It’s an idiotically corrupt money-making scheme.

Walter Williams has noted that anti-smoking crusades started in the 1960s with advocates pushing merely for a non-smoking area on planes. Today, smoking isn’t only banned on planes, it’s banned in all private businesses in many states (including Ohio). Government works this way. It gets a foothold, then grows like a cancer.

Remember, they don’t need to seek outright bans on anything. Regulation does wonders to making stuff less accessible. Regulation and “higher cost” are synonyms.

Envy is a constant of human nature. So is a desire to steward other people’s money, whether they like it or not.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately that almost half of all citizens pay no income taxes. This, it is said, leads to a populace that is more open to tax hikes.

Indeed, tax hikes are sometimes palatable when people are told that only the rich will pay. Why should people be living the high life when I’m struggling to get by?

Those who vote to increase the burdens of “the rich” need to realize something: the joke’s on you. Supply side economists are right about one thing: wealth does trickle down. A prosperous society with a large middle class has more wealth to go around. In the material sense, which is all that matters to the world, the poor benefit from nicer schools, deluxe shopping centers, green space, more security, incredible inventions such as computers, and inexpensive food. Meanwhile, the trees have been kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw in Cuba. What have they given the world lately? How are the poor doing there?

Still, tax hikes are politically unreliable. They can be dangerous to a politician seeking re-election.

Regulations aren’t dangerous. With every new scandal, the solution is always “more regulation.” The voters agree: “Someone needs to keep an eye on xyz.”

The obvious truth is that regulations lead to the same end as a tax hike: the diversion of wealth from productive to unproductive use (namely, enriching the government and its trough-feeders) and the hampering of the creation of new wealth. The business owner who has to comply with minimum wage laws, health care mandates, handicapped parking spots that sit unused 98% of the time, and a hundred other things must pass his costs along to his customers. He can’t eat all of the costs. Moreover, every small businessman regularly calculates the real worth of keeping his business open. If he can make as much money as a grunt for someone else, then maybe he’ll decide that the freedom of owning a business isn’t worth the hassle and the risk. This hassle increases with every increase in regulations.

The Federal Register is now over 75,000 pages long. Can you think of one item in your home that isn’t regulated by the government in some way? I can’t. Consider all the time and money your workplace spends in various forms of regulatory compliance.

One last thing: Leftists always like to tell us how much they hate corporations, but their confiscatory politics ensure a world of big corporations. The large companies have the economies of scale to comply with the high taxes and the mounting pile of regulations. In fact, large companies often like regulations. They have cozy financial relationships with the government. They like the idea of hamstringing their smaller competitors.

I’d rather the Federal Register be two pages long… double-spaced.

Pastor Timmons had a conversation with Paul Young, author of The Shack. It’s a worthwhile read. Charm. Check. Pragmatism. Check. Gnostic speculation. Check. Denial of hierarchy. Check. Fudging. Check.

The documentary First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women is well worth viewing. It confronts feminism in a friendly but uncompromising fashion. One day, perhaps I’ll blog on it more fully, but one of many points it makes is about the fungibility of abortion funding.

Planned Parenthood receives huge federal grants through Title X (administered by Health and Human Services) and other avenues such as Title XIX (Medicaid). Republicans tout the Hyde Amendment, which supposedly prohibits federal funding of abortions, but money is fungible in any budget. If the government gives a dollar to Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion family planning, then that’s one less dollar that Planned Parenthood needs to find to meet that budget. Non-targeted monies can then be directed over to abortion-related funding. (Not only that, “family planning” services such as contraception encourage sexual activity and thus create more opportunities for “unwanted” pregancies.)

What happened all those years that Republicans had both houses of Congress and the presidency? Title X funding increased. They could’ve nixed it altogether. They didn’t. (I don’t think George Bush was any more pro-life than Mitt Romney or John McCain, but that’s another matter.)

Ron Paul, who is disliked by much of the pro-life movement, is the only one I know of who advocates ending all entitlement funding. The goal shouldn’t be to put strings on Title X funding, the goal should be to eliminate it. In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services should be abolished, too. Not one red cent should go to Planned Parenthood for any purpose. Any libertarian worth his salt would agree. How many Republicans would agree?

I know, I know, it’s not politically feasible to eliminate and abolish stuff in the short term. I’m all for interim steps. However, it’s hard to get to a destination if it isn’t really your goal. Eliminating entitlement funding simply isn’t the goal of most Republicans. Pandering while making as few waves as possible is.

Ron Paul and libertarians in general want to pull out the roots of these noxious weeds, not prune their branches. This is what needs to happen. After all, when you prune a plant, it often grows back stronger.

Well, that was a nauseating debacle. I hope Bart Stupak enjoys his mess of pottage.

We might call this the day that private insurance died. I doubt that the imperial throne will need to fight like this again to complete the move to single-payer health care. Economics will do the dirty work. That is, private insurers will exit because they can’t cover pre-existing conditions (imagine selling fire insurance and being required to take people whose house has just burned down. It’s not the best business model). The government will enter in its usual role as the “lender of last resort” (aka. savior), using its printing presses of course.

I predict that we’re 5-6 years away from the health care system being on the verge of collapse. The revenues will be spent (in fact, they’re already spent) long before the “benefits” of this disaster are implemented in 2014. As Massachusetts discovered, it’s a pretty short trip to insolvency.

The people who are going to lose the most in all of this will be the baby boomers. As Gary North has said, expect a hard retirement. If you’re not in shape, think about getting in shape.

Has there ever been an instance in all of history where government involvement in something led to increased quality and lower costs for all? Think public education. The government provides direct funding, cheap credit for student loans, and other forms of subsidy (by the way, artificially-low interest rate loans are a boon for the seller, not the buyer). These actions increase resources. Demand explodes. Prices rocket upward (prices are a form of rationing). The bureaucracy expands, employees get raises, and empowered unions secure large pensions and are able to provide time and money for the reelection campaigns of their benefactors. Meanwhile, students and their parents go heavily into debt. Taxpayers pay through the nose (for example, the Cato Institute notes that public schools cost $25K/yr per student in some cities). High prices increase calls for more gov’t help to make education “affordable.” And so the government responds with more funding, and prices go even higher. Lather, rinse, repeat. One government intervention begets another.

You have to wonder if people will ever figure it out.

I think the U.S. health care system will be on the verge of collapse by 2017 (several years after the “benefits” kick in), but that optimistically assumes that the U.S. economy avoids collapse under the weight of unsustainable debt it has already accumulated. All the money that will be collected is already spent, unless the U.S. can use the revenues as collateral of sorts to borrow even more money at low rates.

Which leads to death panels. I’m not a huge fan of Sarah Palin, but she’s right that death panels are coming. There’s no getting around it, just as I see no way (short of repeal) around the fact that this bill is pretty much the death of private health care. Care will have to be rationed because the money eventually will not be there. This bill’s astronomical cost makes it worse.

The government isn’t going to ration fairly or humanely, it’s going to ration politically. I’m guessing that working-age taxpayers will eventually get first dibs, while old timers with extended problems are going to see their plug pulled. Economic malaise, the lack of free market competition/incentives, the addition of millions of people to the system, and government subsidies are going to make health care even more expensive. The stifling effect of the government on the economy is going to make things even worse, because it really is true that a prosperous society materially benefits all in that society. A poor society does not. You cannot build a prosperous society by attacking production and savings, and that is exactly what big government attacks through its spending, its debt, and its costly regulations.

You can’t legislate away economic reality.

It’s baffling to see how much conservatives direct fire at Ron Paul on abortion. Ron Paul has been pro-life his entire career. Consistent with his views on federal power, he wants to overturn Roe and send it back to the states. He notes that laws can be passed by Congress to restrict the courts using Article III, section 2.

Let’s not kid ourselves. There is no political support nationally to outlaw abortion. The Republicans did nothing when they held the legislative and executive branches. Tactically, Ron Paul would rather get power out of federal government’s hands. Why isn’t this acceptable? Extending federal power over the abortion issue is every bit as likely (and probably more likely) to work against abortion opponents. Sure, the federal government could one day outlaw abortion (and do so constitutionally), but its track record has been to extend abortion. That’s what it did by judicial fiat in 1973. Federal courts have also overturned modest state restrictions.

Furthermore, the explosion in federal entitlement spending has also been the backbone of the abortion industry in so many ways. Ron Paul is also the lonely voice in Washington who wants to eliminate all entitlement spending.

What’s really amazing is how many conservatives have thrown in their lot with Mitt Romney. Have a listen to “pro-lifer” Mitt Romney from 2002. At best, the guy is a phony.

I’m out of the loop with popular culture, but apparently a book called The Shack is very popular. There are many articles and podcasts dissecting its errors. For example, here and here and here.

I first heard of The Shack when family members mentioned that it discusses the Trinity. Just a tip: When a popular work discusses the Trinity, warning flags should go up. Historically, attacks on the Trinity have been at the core of all sorts of heresies.

One of the chief heresies of the last century is feminism. While feminism may seem spent as a political phenomenon, its errors have invaded the church so deeply that they are unrecognized. Feminists hate the doctrine of the Trinity, not only because it speaks of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as “He,” but also because it is a model of godly submission. The Son submits to the father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son in the same way that the church submits to Christ, wives submit to husbands, children obey parents, slaves obey masters, etc. (Ephesians 5:22-24, Ephesians 6). The head is then called to love the one submitting.

Here’s a helpful article on the Trinity.

This is my favorite snippet of his. It’s the funniest way you can spend three minutes learning how politicians think. Republican ones, too.

That’s Peter Schiff on how the health care bill will destroy the private insurance market. The proposed bill doesn’t take effect until after 2012, conveniently bypassing the next presidential election. In 2016, when the scope of the disaster is dawning on people, they probably won’t tie it back to the 2009 bill. Instead, greedy insurance companies and speculators will be blamed, just as oil greedy oil companies are blamed for high gas prices instead of the devalued dollar.

Regardless of whether the health care monstrosity passes, the size of unfunded liabilities (most of which are health-care related) ensures that rationing will ratchet up in the next decade. It’s going to take longer to see the doctor, especially specialists. Fewer treatments will be available. The process will be even more bureaucratic. The wages of big government is poverty.

Start thinking in general about how to deal with your health situations when your doctor’s office is less available. If you rely currently on, say, monitoring your blood pressure regularly and you do this at your doctor, think about getting your own home unit. These are the kind of things where one could expect to see shortages.

Email arose to get around the postal service mail monopoly. Cell phones have circumvented heavily taxed and regulated local phone services. How will the free market circumvent the government health care monopoly?

I think you’ll see more trips to Mexico and other countries for medical care. Walk-in pay clinics? Great idea, although those will be threats to the gov’t system and likely there will be pressure to outlaw them. There is already a huge amount of medical data online, professional and homespun. Maybe we’ll see more businesses arise allowing people to ask questions of specialists on the internet. These will have to be careful with all the personal injury attornies out there. Another way would be to let people buy prescription drugs with cash, without seeing a doctor, but that will never be allowed for various reasons (almost none of them good). Maybe some enterprising people will come up with ways to do various medical tests and solutions at home. More of these would undoubtedly exist if it weren’t for government regulatory oversight that adds huge cost barriers to innovation.

By the way, if any of you make any of these ideas fly, I fully expect to be reimbursed.

It’s an odd thing to sit and watch the country you grew up in being dismantled piece by piece. Some of this, like the end of the U.S. empire that grew up after the World Wars, is likely a good thing for America. However, the reason that the empire will end– massive debt– is not. Nor is the ongoing push for more regulation and more capital creation roadblocks in the name of environmentalism, fairness, etc.

The push toward national health care is probably not stoppable. Young people, who support Obama’s policies far more than older folks, want it. Twenty-somethings don’t understand economics or what makes an economy grow. They just know they’re unemployed and prospects don’t look good. Maybe more slavery will help.

I was recently in an emergency room for the first time. I naively expected periods of calm punctuated by the seriously-ill being wheeled in noisily and hurriedly. It wasn’t like that. It was a leisurely affair, with people sauntering in with their kids. Some were apparently being tested for the flu. Adults were coming in to have casts checked. No one was crying or distraught. In short, it was a lot like my doctor’s office.

I bring this up because emergency rooms are one of the first things brought up by liberal “reformers.” They tell us that further government mandates are necessary to deal with free riders who abuse the system.

Now, of course those who use an ER as a doctor’s office are consuming resources without paying for them. But what else is new? These freeloaders are already living on all sorts of public assistance– housing, food, child care, etc. Free emergency room care is just another brick in the wall of dependency. Liberals aren’t interested in phasing out the massive welfare/entitlement system that makes it all possible, they just want to use a valid point to grow the government further. It’s no different than when they tell us that reform is needed because expenses are climbing out of control… and yet their “solutions” greatly increase costs.

The ER situation is yet another example of the government creating a large mess — in this case, by forcing hospitals to provide free ER care for those who cannot pay — and then telling us that we need more more mandates and cost-shifting to clean it up. Yet again, only the government and its vast “resources” can deal with this one, so everyone scoot out of the way, please!

There’s a better way to handle ER care.

But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business… 1 Thess 4:10-11

Those who are busy-bodies, meddling in other men’s matters, generally have but little quiet in their own minds and cause great disturbances among their neighbours. -Matthew Henry

A thought has been occurring to me lately: Why do people think they can steward my money better than I can?

Imagine if I were granted the right to steward your money for you. Perhaps I’d make you buy cloth diapers. You can forget about that SUV; a used Cavalier will do. Don’t give me that nonsense about an easier way to ferry the kids home from school! You can cram three in the back of that Cavalier if you try. Your kids should be riding the school bus anyway (oh, I forgot, they will be going to public school because the private one costs too much). You can plan to start eating soy instead of steak, chubby. Also, your clothing will be furnished off the Old Navy clearance rack, and Old Shep will be dining on the cheapest 50lb bag of dog food that I can find.

Can you imagine being such an arrogant busybody, nannying the lives of other adults? Well, when we vote for a bond issue, or we support a new tax or a new government entitlement, that’s what we are doing. We are putting a claim on other people’s money. We’re reducing the money that they have available to steward for themselves. In effect, we are telling the government to spend other people’s money for them in accordance with our wishes.

How about we let people steward their own money instead, and let them be answerable to God for it?

I often do not steward my money wisely, but I can guarantee you one thing: I steward it more wisely than the government stewards its money. I’m not $100 trillion in debt, for example.

Granted, it’s not a very high bar to jump over.

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. -1 Cor 10:25

In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis talked of us peopling the earth with nymphs and elves to express a desire to be united with the beauty we see. Today, we people our animals. My generation watched Bambi and Bugs Bunny as kids, but really, animals were seen as animals.

How things have changed in 20 years.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is unaffiliated with local humane societies. Their agenda is to veganize America. They are supported by many of the usual celebrity suspects. Flush with success in other states like California and Michigan, HSUS began targeting Ohio for farming regulations. Farming groups responded by putting Issue 2 on the Ohio ballot.

Issue 2 is ugly: it seeks to amend the state constitution and it gets the politicians’ noses further under the tent when it comes to regulating farm policy. However, the alternative is very likely an HSUS-supported issue on a future ballot that’ll enshrine activist idiocy in the constitution. Thus you see “Yes on 2″ signs galore along rural roads. And it’s why you have groups like the Sierra Club — normally lovers of regulation and government control — opposing issue 2.

The animal rights argument really is theological. Almost everyone believes that animals should be stewarded humanely. However, animal rights activists deny the creation mandate, especially Genesis 1:30. They deny that farm animals are on earth to bless mankind with food. They deny that a man is more important than many sparrows. They seek, in the usual authoritarian fashion, to force others to abide by their bad morality (for now, this will come in the form of higher prices, which is exactly what isn’t needed during a severe recession).

Sadly, animal rights groups have bound the weak consciences of many young people, deceiving them into believing that meat and dairy are evil. There’s no Scriptural basis for this. This is why young Christians who become vegans or announce sympathy with veganism should be challenged.

Two stories hit recently: the coming end of don’t ask, don’t tell and the extension of “hate crimes” protection to homosexuals. Expect the latter to be used eventually against a recalcitrant (i.e. faithful) church.

This came to mind again while reading a recent Baylyblog post on Derek Webb. I’ve never cared for Webb. He’s always supported the earnest and trendy leftist causes of the sort championed by Bono (Bono’s support for a cause should always ring alarm bells). I had my fill long ago of “mold-breaking” artists who are too self-consciously cool and precious. They’re the incarnations of an Ipod commercial.

Now Webb is angered about intolerance. Not surprisingly, this anger is accompanied by cussing. You know, the intentional cussing that is seen a mark of liberation and righteous anger, despite Ephesians 4:29. This is cool stuff in a certain subset of “evangelical” culture.

I used to blog occasionally about old-school legalism (don’t drink, smoke, or chew), but came to realize there aren’t many of these legalists left. Similarly, the “intolerant” (i.e. those who take Scripture seriously) are dwindling. The homosexual train rolls on, unimpeded. Remember the conservative firestorm when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was implemented just 15 short years ago? The new move will occur with nary a peep. The “climate of fear” that the other side tells us about is there, it’s just that the careers at stake are those who dare question sodomy.

And yet people like Derek Webb remain offended.

Too bad. The consciences of a remnant will always be pricked, and the seeds will grow. There’s no stopping it because there is no stopping the kingdom of God. People can be publicly silenced, but unnatural is unnatural, sin is sin, and God is the maker and changer of hearts.

One day the only opinion that will matter is the Lord’s opinion. Who is on the Lord’s side? That’s the question that really matters.

I’m not a fan of George Will, but he has hit on what seems to be Barack Obama’s defining trait: arrogance.

Will also hits on the tiresome political-speak, a feature of every presidency of my lifetime. It’s a reminder of what Orwell said in Politics and the English Language:

[Political p]rose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

He doesn’t hit the target 100% of the time (who does?), but few writers land harder punches than Gary North. Here is yet another example.

“Keep your eye on the yellow buses.” Indeed.

Well, it looks like the foot-draggers have finally lost out. The mainline Lutheran church (ELCA) voted 559-441 to allow homosexuals in “lifelong” and “committed” relationships to serve as clergy.

At least until the next convention, it has been made clear that the sodomy must be monogamous sodomy. How’s that for a qualification? Could we actually see the spectacle of an “unfaithful” sodomite pastor being hauled before a church court to explain why he cheated on his “life partner?”

Monogamous sodomy makes about as much sense as monogamous bestiality or monagamous whoredom. It’s as if the monogamy lends an air of self-control and virtue to damnable perversity.

Nevertheless, the ELCA– the denomination I grew up in and that family members still attend– is further along than I thought. As usual, the move is accompanied by unbelievably ignorant lies like this:

“We live today with an understanding of homosexuality that did not exist in Jesus’ time and culture,” Tim Mumm, a lay delegate from Wisconsin and supporter of Lutherans Concerned, an gay-rights organization, said during the debate. “We are responding to something that the writers of Scripture could not have understood.”

It seems like The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and other mainline denominations have been debating sodomy forever. While some ELCA pastors are correctly saying that the debate is about the authority of the Word, that ship sailed long ago for the ELCA and the other mainline denoms. It sailed even before they decided that “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” didn’t really mean “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.” Sodomy is just the next exit down the highway.

I’ll hazard a guess that all of the mainline denominations would have capitulated on this issue years ago but for one reason: money. Namely, the dollars that older folks throughout small-town America give to the church. The hicks have sadly made their peace with egalitarianism– most don’t even know that it’s a Biblical issue any longer– but they won’t accept sodomy.

Their leadership knows it. They know it’s best to deny the faith at a subdued volume, using measured tones and well-starched collars. Better yet, let’s just talk about unity and teamwork and caring and skip the controversy altogether. How it must annoy these moderate modernists when the loudmouths on both sides start riling things up! Let us have peace, friends.

The mainline churches will continue shrinking. At some point they’ll reach that critical mass where the political activists in the leadership will finally outnumber their foot-dragging modernist brethren. And then the stragglers who still stand on a modicum of Biblical authority will see their leaders get the boot. And that will be that.

This is the best definition I’ve seen, courtesy of some guy on Lew Rockwell’s blog. It’s fitting for progressives inside and outside the church:

Progressive: A self-congratulatory word used by the lemming at the front of the pack to describe himself, as he and his fellows “progress” toward the edge of the cliff.

I caught about 5 minutes of a cable show about the 60s counterculture. In it, the actor Danny Glover informs us:

[Haight Ashbury of 1967] was about taking mescaline and [having sex]. It was about smoking weed and [having sex]. [I]t was almost like the revolution was now you can [have sex] every night whether it was having an orgy, whether it’s going to an encounter group. I remember going to the Grateful Dead’s ranch, where everyone would spend the whole weekend nude.

If that sounds like pure hedonism, it just shows how clueless you are. Glover continues:

But it’s hard to reduce it to that, because I don’t want to diminish any of my political commitment and what we were trying to do.

LOL! The documentary plays along with this pretentious conceit. These kids weren’t just there to get stoned and have sex. No sir, they had loftier goals. They were reevaluating societal mores and exploring their freedom.

Hopefully parents feed their kids heads with discernment to see through this wistful, juvenile nonsense. It’s amazing that anyone still sees the 1960s as meaningful, at least in a good way.

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.

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 pew?” 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.

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.

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.