The great columnist, Joseph Sobran, noted how egalitarian usages like “person” instead of “man” destroy the simple vigor and beauty of the language. A master of the English language like Sobran would find plenty of bad grammar on this site (the problem is that I don’t know where), but I don’t willingly abuse the language. “Spokesperson” is a grating and willful abuse of good taste.

But it’s more than that. It’s even more than protecting smelly little orthodoxies. At heart, usages like “he and she” instead of “he” are a denial of the Scriptural truths of creation and and godly submission. These Biblical truths are an offense to rebellious hearts, and thus we get nauseous words like “spokesperson.”

It’s necessary to see the larger picture before putting Obama on a special pedestal of infamy on the specific topic of government spending. I believe that we’re seeing a historical crescendo. Since 1971 the dollar has been unhinged completely from gold, and this, along with other factors such as the dollar’s currency reserve status, has led to an explosion of spending and debt. Politicians became addicted to cheap money and huge deficit spending (even the “balanced budgets” of the 90s were frauds because they were raiding the misnamed “Social Security Trust Fund” the whole time, and thus massively growing unfunded liabilities). As the heroin addict needs ever greater hits to get the same high, a debt-laden economy requires ever greater infusions of government spending to postpone collapse. The federal debt has more than doubled since 2000, and the debt ceiling has been raised with increasing regularity. The scope of government bailouts continues to widen. Problems are hitting the shore in waves, with the largest wave hitting in late 2008. Ensuing waves have been increasing the destruction, and the government response (propping up large and insolvent banks, guaranteeing nearly all mortgages, and so on) is ensuring that larger waves are in store. In short, the crescendo is building.

Eventually, just as a junkie will crash, so will the economy. The government will be forced to stop spending and make life-altering changes when it can’t find enough borrowers, or if it sees prospect of monetary collapse, or some other crisis. Perhaps it will lose control and we’ll see a hyperinflation. You will definitely be seeing broken promises. They were never sustainable promises.

If the crash doesn’t happen in the next few years, expect the next president, regardless of party, to be a larger spender than Obama. Both parties share a devotion to Keynesian economics and both parties realize that, politically, they don’t have any other choice but to keep spending. Economically, they do. Morally, they do. Politically, they don’t.

Politics always wins out with political parties. They are not going to do the right thing and let the economy (that is, all of us) freely restructure through a lot of pain. The voters won’t stand for it, and politicians know it.

I don’t diet. I don’t count calories. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m full, I usually stop. If my scale is to be believed, I currently have 11% body fat.

I’ve written before about exercise. What follows are my theories on eating, based on reading and personal experience, in hopes that it will help someone, somewhere. I don’t claim to be an authority on nutrition. A lot of people do. There are doctors recommending low-fat diets, internet experts recommending high-fat diets, low carb and high carb camps, vegans and primals. Organic devotees. On it goes.

My philosophy: eat a balanced diet of mostly whole foods. Few people get fat eating steak, chicken, apples, sweet potatoes, brown rice, whole wheat, carrots, peas, and so on. They get fat eating chips, frozen pizza, Pillsbury biscuits, juice drinks, Frosted Flakes, Hamburger Helper, french fries, soda, white bread, and lots of condiments. When they get the urge to “eat healthy,” they’ll buy a processed food with Omega 3 or vitamin additives instead of eating whole (i.e. real) food.

The problem with these highly processed foods is that they are expertly engineered to taste good by adding lots of sugar, sodium, and 15 other mysterious and unpronounceable ingredients. My wife theorizes that people eat more bad food than they need to because their bodies are grasping for nutrients (we learn more every year about the good things in the fruits and vegetables God has made for us). My wife may be right. After a baked potato and two eggs, I’m satisfied. After a few Double Stuff Oreos, which is about the same number of calories, I’m just getting started. I eat cookies by the row. I used to eat chips by the bag, and mac and cheese by the box. Does anyone actually eat the serving size listed on a package of processed food? You’re better than me if you do.

Some people are addicted to caffeine. I still need to conquer a love of sugary junk food. By “conquer,” I don’t mean “avoid completely,” but instead to desire it with self-control instead of as an enslaved addict seeking a fix. Gluttony is still a sin.

The key with eating is simply to see diet as a noun, not a verb. Dieting ends, usually with a return to bad eating habits, but a good diet is for a lifetime. When I started eating whole foods, I honestly didn’t know if I liked enough of them. I created a list of foods that I do like and split the list into categories like carbs, meats/proteins, fats, fruits, and vegetables. I’m trying new things and adding the stuff I like to the list. Slowly, I’m finding that I don’t desire processed stuff as much. I don’t really miss most of it. I just ate it because it was easy and because I’d always eaten it.

Here’s the kicker to this “exercise and eat mostly whole foods” lifestyle: I can eat my fill without my clothes getting tighter. I am not forever hungry as I was on Weight Watchers. No more Lean Cuisine or counting out how many pretzels I eat. If I like a certain condiment, I use a bit of it without fretting that it’s adding a point or two. Sometimes I find a replacement food that I like just as much (e.g. a spritzer or apple cider vinegar instead of salad dressing). If I want some pizza on occasion, I have some pizza. When you eat mostly whole foods, you can “cheat” occasionally. My concern is more with eating too little rather than too much.

(One last thing: I’m not a big believer in the organic movement. Take some of the tired myths about conventional farming with a grain of salt. While Michael Pollan has useful insights — his larger theories on whole foods have influenced me — farmers and nutritionists often contradict his details. Farming industry reps may be biased, but the people who push organic foods, free range chickens, veganism, and all that rot have their own agenda. Also, your whole foods don’t need to come from the expensive, good-on-health-care, bad-on-Planned-Parenthood grocery chain that goes by that name and actually sells its share of highly processed stuff.)

Yes, solar energy.

The author commits the same error as politicians: he thinks he knows how everyone else’s money should be spent. Since the wealthy pay an indiscriminate share of taxes (the top 10% of earners pay over 70% of the taxes), he’s replacing the wisdom and knowledge of all the entrepreneurs and businessmen out there. He thinks he has the knowledge and intricacy to spend the confiscated assets of tens of millions of people more wisely than those people would’ve done it.

Think about how arrogant that is. It’s what politicians and bureaucrats do every day.

Politicians have the advantage of trafficking in what is seen. People see $50 million spent on some boondoggle and the jobs it produces despite massive inefficiencies. They don’t see what businesses and products and employment will never come into play because that $50 million has been spent.

The ruling party comes up with a spending plan, they blow hundreds of billions of dollars, and then six months later the opposition says “ha, it didn’t work!” … as if politicians ever spend money on anything that does. The opposition party’s stimulus plan wouldn’t have worked either.

A better idea is to stop all “recovery” and “stimulus” plans, but that’s seen as inaction. Egged on by the voters who want them to “fix” problems and end the suffering, the politicians will never let it be. They have to “do something.” They’re like alchemists in a lab, squandering wealth day after day to find that elusive golden formula.

Anyway, the guy who played Obama was spot-on. There were many fine moments, such as when he promised to freeze government spending for three years… except for Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. Then he told us that the “worst of the storm has passed.”

However, best of all:

Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created.

Yes, it’s the Broken Window Fallacy in action, and Obama’s hero in the example is a glazier! Nice!

It has to be the most unintentionally funny line ever delivered in a SOTU.

The Blind Side offers a kind of liberal Hollywood version of conservative values: all rock-solid valor, all the time. -Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly.

I haven’t seen the movie, but that’s a very perceptive comment.

We often see Hollywood portraying Christians as perverted hypocrites. When someone proclaims (i.e. repeats, based on the plain meaning of Scriptures) God’s judgment against sins like homosexuality, it’s all too easy to change the subject by highlighting the hypocrisies of the Christian. You don’t have to dig too far into anyone’s life to find hypocrisy and sin. We’re all a mess.

However, I never really thought before about how Hollywood creates the even more unreal “rock-solid” Christian who always acts with purpose and kind intentions. This creates a useful standard to judge Christians against, since no one is really this way (though some are closer than others).

I’ve been disappointed by other Christians at times, shocked to see someone I thought saintly to have some weird sinful tendency– egotism here, self-righteousness there. And yet, why should I be surprised that another man deals with envies, lusts, self-absorption, and anger just like I do?

You never see the real Christian life in movies. You never see characters who distrust their own motives. You don’t see those who recognize their ongoing need of a Savior, which only deepens as their sanctification proceeds. You don’t see people who know they need to be forgiven regularly. You don’t see folks warring against their own fallen hearts and minds. You don’t see an ebb and flow to their faithfulness. And you surely don’t see Christians whose proclamation of God’s forthcoming judgment comes from a sure understanding of their own horror of standing naked before a holy God, without the banner of Christ’s righteousness.

That describes the Christians I know. They are flawed, sometimes idiotically so, but they are forgiven. They know on what Rock they stand and and they evince wondrous evidences of God’s work in them all along the way. In the end, they are humbly relying on a righteousness not their own (Romans 3).

It’d be much harder for the heroic and perverted protagonist of countless films to be seen as prevailing against such an antagonist.

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. -Garet Garrett, 1954

I was at a children’s function a month or two ago at a Lutheran church (ELCA). During it, they did the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn’t join in.

Have you ever thought about the pledge? Joe Sobran once noted that the phrase many want to remove– “under God”– is the only good part of it. The Pledge was written by a 19th-century socialist. It speaks against secession (“indivisible”), which is something that the Founders saw as a necessary bulwark against Federal tyranny. Unlike the National Anthem, the pledge calls on us to… make a pledge. It’s not a binding oath in the sense that I will be prosecuted for disobeying it, but why would I want to say something I do not necessarily believe? Christians believe that kingdom of Christ supersedes the state. Why would a man leave a wayward denomination (where he may have once given membership vows) and yet pledge unqualified allegiance to his country?

I admire the soldiers who risk their lives overseas. However, the U.S. is broke. We need these kids here in America. We need them producing stuff instead of consuming resources. All government employees, soldiers included, are consuming resources. Peter Schiff once created an illustration to explain America’s interaction with foreigners since the end of World War II. Consider an island, he said, where a couple of foreigners and an American are stranded. One foreigner’s job is to gather the wood. Another creates the fire. Another obtains the food. They come to the American and ask what his job will be. His answer: He’ll eat the food.

Government employees are eating the food.

Military spending is a key contributor to what is likely to be more calamitous for this country: a currency crisis caused by overspending. Conservatives rail about government spending, and yet unflinchingly support massive military spending. This defeats the purpose. If even 20% of the populace denied legitimacy to 99% of federal spending (and that includes Medicare, social security, and war spending), I’m guessing that would be a huge problem for the legitimacy of the federal government. Things would change. Among those who should know better (including me a few years ago), the military is the best possible propaganda for federal legitimacy and overreach. People believe dubious claims that soldiers in, say, Iraq, are “fighting for our freedoms.” I don’t question our soldiers’ motives. I do question the government’s motives and the real effect of interventions like this.

The government isn’t “protecting our freedoms” overseas. They are ticking off people who do not want foreign troops in their country. Foreigners may strike back repulsively, but in the same way that you don’t flash jewels in a bad neighborhood and expect to come out unscathed, you shouldn’t blow things up in pagan lands.

Joe Sobran once quipped that the Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government. Other than setting terms of office, the Constitution has been a dead letter for generations. It isn’t even a small speed bump for Congress. The massive entitlements that are far and away the greatest financial threat to the country are all unconstitutional. Every war since World War II has been undeclared. The federal bureaucracy has over 14 million (the figure is probably much larger by now) employees and/or contractors. The Constitution hasn’t changed in the past 50 years, but federal spending has risen steeply. So much for “limited, constitutional government.” Were they still celebrating the republic in imperial Rome?

The older I get, the more I’m questioning “first things” when it comes to politics. Pundits debate who should run the Fed. Better to debate why the Fed should exist in the first place. People debate what the president is or is not doing. It’d be better if people were questioning whether the presidency itself is really a good idea.

The government wants us to believe that it protects our freedoms and rights. It’s easier to prove that government works to restrict our God-given rights. By spending our money and issuing regulations, they take our fields and redistribute them (c.f. 1 Sam 8:14). I think it was Milton Friedman who correctly noted that all government spending is taxation. Politicians are simply connected people who administer goodies to others for political and financial benefit. Congressmen parlay their connections into quite lucrative careers after leaving office, in areas like banking and lobbying that benefit lavishly from political connections.

One way to consider fighting back against the government is to stop, as much as legally possible, feeding it. Stop buying its bonds, use Fedex instead of the post office, don’t join the military, avoid funding public schools as much as possible, etc. Stop feeding into the legitimacy of the current American state as if it is run by anything other than corrupt power-mongers. Don’t buy the lie that a Republican takeover is the answer.

Yes, I know, we live in a fallen world. However, the Bible doesn’t get sentimental about Rome. Paul used his prerogatives as a Roman citizen, but his letters are bereft of state worship. Jesus steered clear of Judean politics. He and John the Baptist knew who Herod was.

Maybe Christians should take a hint from this.

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.

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. -Luke 2:8

“How They See It: People Who Matter on What Matters Most.” So says the cover of the current issue of Newsweek. Pictured are Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Tim Geithner, Eric Holder, etc. In other words, the people who matter are politicians and bureaucrats, the white-collar parasites who work with politically-connected elites to feed lavishly off wealth created by productive people in all countries. Yes, it’s the rich and powerful who matter.

The wealthy didn’t see the glory of the Lord the night described in Luke 2, however. Shepherds did. How many untold saints have wished to see what those blessed shepherds saw?

That’s how the Lord works. Local events change the world. They don’t usually occur in Herod’s palace, but instead among those who don’t “matter.” Years and years of tedium, and then boom, a surprise. The church was built and maintained by people who don’t matter to those who worship at the altar of this perishing world.

Malcolm Muggeridge was in Russia during perhaps its most vicious era in the early 1930s. Encompassed by Stalinist oppression and starvation, which has few parallels in human history, this was his impression:

It just suddenly seemed to me that Russia was a beautiful place– these pine trees, dark against the snow which had now begun to fall, the sparkling stars so far, far away, the faces of the Russians I met and greeted, these also so beautiful, so clumsy and kind… In the woods there was a little church, of course disused now. The fronts of such churches, like the Greek ones, are painted with bright colours; blues bluer than the bluest sky, whites whiter than the whitest snow. Someone — heaven knows who — had painted up the one in the Kliasma woods. Standing in front of this unknown painter’s handiwork, I blessed his name, feeling that I belonged to the little disused church he had embellished, and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love. This was another moment of perfect clarification, when everything fitted together in sublime symmetry; when I saw clearly the light and the darkness, freedom and servitude, the bright vistas of eternity and the prison bars of time. I went racing back over the snow to K[itty, his wife], breathing in the dry icy air in great gulps of thankfulness.

This is what our Lord offers. Not the compromised wishes and power trips of thieving politicians, but the “brights vistas of eternity” in His glorious presence.

Merry Christmas!

Health care is a good. This is a key concept to understand, because if you concede the premise of a “right” to health care or education or anything else that others have to pay for, then you have lost the argument.

Look at the math. The government is slated to take in about $2 trillion in tax revenue this year. Around $866 billion of that is from the income tax, while another $842 billion comes from FICA (which is supposed to be earmarked for various entitlements like social security). Meanwhile, the U.S. government is spending over $1 trillion a year on wars, overseas bases, and missiles (note: the US debt clock shows less, but that figure does not include supplemental appropriations).

Let us reason together, conservatives: How do we scrap the income tax and yet spend $1 trillion a year on defense? The government isn’t bringing in enough from the income tax to even fund current defense/war spending. Surely you don’t want to raise taxes. Surely you don’t want to continue the ruinous borrowing. Surely you don’t want the Fed to further debase the money supply.

Limited government and foreign interventionism are simply incompatible. The current level of defense spending is unsustainable.

Here is the argument I always hear: “Yes, but defense is a constitutional function. If the government didn’t spend so much on unconstitutional things like social entitlements, it could afford to fund Iraq and Afghanistan and our overseas bases!” While it is imperative that all social entitlement spending be phased out, the argument is simply wrong. Again, look at the figures. The current budget for wars and defense ALONE is enough to ensure “big government.”

Financially, these wars are a real danger to freedom, especially if a dollar collapse results in social chaos. I’m with Ron Paul that our presence in foreign countries does more harm than good anyway, but we’ve hit a point where the U.S. either brings the troops home and closes its bases now in orderly fashion, or it scoots home later with its tail between its legs.

Some women have this notion that men prefer to be alley-cats. This may describe younger men here and there, but look around you: most men get married sooner or later. There is a deep instinct at work. Men are tempted to be more like the mythological Zeus. They want their Hera, their wife who provides a public face, love, stability, support, and children. She’s the main course. Then they want their nymphs, but the nymphs are decidedly a side dish. Deep down, these mistresses probably realize that they are nothing more than fleeting pleasures.

Maybe a “cheap dessert” is a better way to put it. Tiger’s women are all from the service sector. The job of these hostesses, porn stars, and cocktail waitresses is to please men for money. It isn’t surprising to see them magnetically drawn to an iconic name who radiates money, power, and fame. There was probably much competition to bed him, particularly once it was known that he was all too willing.

Stable people are rarely attracted to fame, in the sense that they don’t become groupies or throw themselves at famous people. An autograph or picture is enough. Most people have desired fame at one point or another, but it is mostly unstable people who do what it takes to achieve celebrity. We can make exceptions for the rare man who achieved fame accidentally by excelling at his craft, but think Hollywood. Drugs, bed-hopping, failed marriages, vulgarity, attention-seeking.

This is nothing new. I watched an old movie from the early 1930s recently and looked up info on the main players. Every one of them had at least four spouses. If you read the biographies of the great old actors and actresses, you’ll learn that this is the rule, not the exception. Long before that, the theater was known as a domain of immorality. We don’t need to discuss the music business.

Tolkien once said that not one man in a million is fit to have power, much less those who seek it. I wonder if the same is not true about fame.

Tiger Woods was on the road a lot. An unrooted life on the road goes hand in hand with immorality, and things that wouldn’t come to mind at home come to mind on the road… especially when you have beautiful women actively enticing you. It cannot be easy to live with this day after day, even if you (unlike Tiger Woods) realize the greater joys of trust and fidelity, and even if you’re a Christian who trembles at the threatenings (Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch 14).

It seems to me a curse to have the kind of fame that gains the world, especially at a young age. I would not seek it. One’s soul may be the price (Matt. 16:26).

There’s a reason for this.

Consider this list of of classics that I compiled as they came to mind. The year of the (arguably) definitive recording is in parentheses.

• White Christmas: 1940 (Bing Crosby: 1947)
• Christmas Song: 1944 (Nat King Cole: 1961)
• Silver Bells: 1951 (Bing Crosby: 1951)
• Jingle Bells: 1857 (Frank Sinatra: 1957. Notable: Elvis Presley)
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: 1944 (Judy Garland: 1944. Notable: Frank Sinatra 1957)
• Let It Snow: 1945
• Jingle Bell Rock: 1957 (Bobby Helms: 1957)
• Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer: 1949 (Gene Autry: 1949)
• A Holly Jolly Christmas: 1962 (Burl Ives: 1965)
• The Christmas Waltz: 1957 (Frank Sinatra: 1957, Gordon Jenkins version)
• Blue Christmas: 1948 (Elvis Presley: 1957)
• Christmas Time is Here: 1965 (Vince Guaraldi Trio: 1965)
• Rockin Around the Christmas Tree: 1958 (Brenda Lee: 1958)
• Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town: 1934 (Gene Autry: 1950?. Notable: Fred Astaire)
• Frosty the Snowman: 1950 (Gene Autry: 1950. Notable: Jimmy Durante)
• I’ll Be Home for Christmas: 1943 (Bing Crosby: 1943. Notable: Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra)
• It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year: 1963 (Andy Williams: 1963)
• Home for the Holidays: 1954. (Perry Como: 1954)
• Happy Holidays: 1942. (Andy Williams: 1963)
• Here Comes Santa Claus: 1947. (Elvis Presley: 1957)
• Sleigh Ride: 1946. (Johnny Mathis: 1958)

Note that almost all of them were written between 1940 and 1965. This tells you a lot about the fall of popular music as a whole.

Oh yeah, you say? How about “Do They Know It’s Christmas Time” and Lennon’s “Happy Xmas?” To which I respond, hey, if those weak sisters are playing at your house, then there’s nothing I can do for you.

I kid… sort of. It’s no coincidence that the popular Christmas standards hit when popular music songwriting was at its finest. It was the era of the Great American Songbook. Even the early rock period drew on older musical forms.

Alas, “easy listening” big band swing was long ago replaced by the treacly “adult contemporary” music that now floods the airwaves. Mature sensibilities were long ago replaced by the 18-34 demographic.

This is why you hear an hour of junk on most stations before they play a good song. You have to wait for something from the old school.

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.

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.

Perhaps I should define “collapse” (or “tsunami,” as I sometimes call it). I do not mean Mad Max or Omega Man. I do not necessarily mean that the economy will disappear and we’ll be back to barter, or that we’ll be pointing rifles at dudes throwing Molotov cocktails. What I do mean is a watershed time of huge economic downturn. The Argentine Fernando “Ferfal” Aquirre put it this way about his country’s 2001 economic crisis (allow for the fact that English is Ferfal’s second language):

Most man kind divides the world’s history according to the birth of Christ. So do we, but Argentineans also refer to “before and after 2001” or “before and after the crisis or 1:1″ (when 1 peso = 1 dollar). I kid you not, this kind of reference is used several times a day on ordinary conversations.

Example;
“Nice car! How did you afford it?”
“No, I bought it before the 2001 crisis”

“Have you ever been to Paris?”
“Yes, beautiful place”
“Really, man I wish I could go there”
”Yea, but I went before 1:1”

This is just an example, of how such an event transformed everything for us, in such a terrific scale.

When I say collapse or tsunami, that’s what I mean. I believe that a currency crisis and severe inflation will be involved, because (and you’ve heard this all before) the U.S. government has massive debts it cannot possibly pay back. It has made promises to entitlement recipients that it cannot keep. It has creditors who have been moving away from the dollar to cut their losses. The government is doing all the wrong things.

The end result of the collapse will be a more hardscrabble existence for all of us. Historically, people may look back and say that the collapse began in earnest last year, but I think it’s going to get much worse.

The U.S. Debt Clock has updated its figures and now lists unfunded liabilities of over $100 trillion. Note that the unfunded liabilities of the infamous Bush “prescription drug program,” which was rammed through by the Republican party leadership (whose hacks are often in the media complaining about irresponsible spending), now exceeds that of Social Security. Both programs are pikers, though, compared to Medicare.

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.

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.

The health care and banking systems are examples of economic fascism, which is the whorish entanglement of government and big business (with government playing the role of Daddy). Let’s take the banks for example. U.S. banks are a cartel under the thumb of the price-fixing Federal Reserve. The banks are “private,” but they operate under heavy regulation (which they embrace). Government agencies like the FDIC “guarantee” bank deposits with money they do not have, which means instead of one bank being at risk, the entire system is at risk of broad collapse. The big banks benefit from government guarantees that ensure privatized gains and socialized losses. Politicians benefit by getting large campaign contributions from financial interests, and they get their big government programs funded by the Fed’s counterfeiting. There is also a swell revolving door between lobbying and banking interests and government agencies. Look at the fantastic wealth accumulated by the Rubins and Hank Paulsons of the world.

The current banking system wouldn’t exist in a free market. To call the banking system “capitalist” is a horrid misuse of the word. Capitalism is simply private ownership of the means of production. It involves the voluntary interaction of buyers and sellers. I grow corn on my property and offer it for sale. You (or a middleman) decide whether to buy it. We must agree on a price. The capitalist system is simply millions upon millions of these transactions.

In other words, the capitalist system means freedom. That’s why I prefer the term “free market” to “capitalism” because it speaks to peaceful, voluntary exchange. The alternative is that Michael Moore and others decide how to spend much of our money for us (since they arrogantly assume that they know how to allocate resources more efficiently and “fairly” than us uncaring dolts).

Michael Moore is an authoritarian socialist dressed in populist garb, so he has an interest in confusing his terms. He is another reminder of this observation by Paul Elmer More:

There is something at once comical and vicious in the spectacle of those men of property who take advantage of their leisure to dream out vast benevolent schemes which would render their own self-satisfied career impossible.

Imagine a movie where a college student gets pregnant. The girl isn’t “ready” for a child and doesn’t want to impede her future, so she goes down to a clinic and writes a check for a few hundred bucks. The woman is in tears while they show the clinic workers skillfully using their tools. There is blood. Not the blood that attends the joy of a new life, but the blood that accompanies the draining of life. The blood of murder and death. Then later they show some nameless functionary putting the bloody remains into a garbage bag and throwing it in the dumpster out back.

That’s the flip side of the “choice” coin. It’s the side we never see in the “respectable” media or Hollywood. And we all know why. In all things, do no harm to the movement!

Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, “See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.” -Harry Browne

There was a town hall event a few weeks ago where it transpired that one of the people who was there calling for (if I remember correctly) the abolition of Medicare had to be treated by Medicare for an injury. Haha, what a hypocrite!

Really? The government takes over half of our incomes, perhaps 3/4 of it once you trace the taxes everywhere. The government creates the inflation that slowly robs people of their savings and taxes false gains (e.g. If you buy a stock for $50/share and sell it 10 years later for $75/share, you have to pay capital gains on $25/share even though much of that gain is due to currency debasement i.e. inflation). All of these factors have created hardships if both spouses are not working. The government’s massive subsidies and other interventions in the health care, education, and financial markets have jacked up costs to the point where it’s difficult to survive outside of the system. The government created a massive bubble with its monetary policies that are wreaking havoc on family wealth.

Given all this, it’s hard for people to avoid the government net at some point. It’s hard to avoid an elephant that spends $4 trillion a year, especially if the majority of your income goes to fund its large appetite. Even principled people may have to swim to some extent in the elephant’s cesspool.

As regular readers know, I state often that nothing will change until the collapse brought about by the unavoidable, coming tsunami (this may not necessarily hit at once; it could be a wave that hits over an entire generation and causes the standards of living to fall dramatically). The reason to inform people of the “freedom” position is to hopefully influence what happens “on the other side,” after a currency crisis or some other spark that causes broken government promises. This is when people will be looking for answers.

Things can work out for the better after the tsunami. One reason the founding fathers hated paper money was because they experienced the ravages of it during the Revolutionary war. A similar thing occurred after the demise of the Civil War greenback. The post-Civil War era (up until the Progressive era came along and began dismantling it) was perhaps the most prosperous and soundest economic era in the nation’s history. The government was far less invasive then.

Things can also work out for the worse. Germany and Russia of the early 20th century come to mind. So does the corrupt French monarchy, which fell to the wickedness of revolutionary France, which in turn fell to the warmongering Napoleonic state that ended hundreds of thousands of lives.

Lew Rockwell believes that the best thing “average” people can do is spread the word with friends, family, and others you can influence. Help to create an informed minority (speaking of which, Ron Paul’s book End the Fed is now out).

My pastor reminds me on occasion that this is how it works with the Christian life too. Sprout where you’re planted.

Here’s what: there will be more borrowing and spending. There will be the requisite complaining about the borrowing and spending to mollify the conservative base, but much of that base doesn’t really want entitlements cut any more than the rest of the electorate. Entitlement spending is the main reason why the tsunami is coming, but politicians don’t get elected by promising to cut such spending. Voters may congratulate politicians for straight talk about the coming insolvency, so long as it stays talk. Politicians know they’ll get safer mileage out of focusing on inconsequential discretionary spending and abstractions such as “We need to get our fiscal house in order!”

I’m all for driving a stake into Obamacare, but politicians who aren’t seeking to drastically cut entitlement spending are part of the problem because entitlement spending is the problem. In other words, all but a handful of Congressmen are part of the problem. That includes the conservative flavor of the week: Congressman Joe “You lie!” Wilson. It’s noteworthy that Rep. Wilson voted for Bush’s prescription drug entitlement, which now has liabilities exceeding $16 trillion. He voted for the September 2008 bank bailout, too.

The Republicans are using Obama’s dissembling about Medicare rationing against him. Do you think Republicans are going to turn around and push their own cuts to a Medicare Ponzi scheme that is $70+ trillion in the hole and well on its way to collapse? Are you kidding me? They aren’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. They know that people who hang around for an explosion tend to get blown up. (The idea that the government will move toward fiscal soundness before the collapse is as laughable as Barack Obama’s fondness of using the excuse that he inherited a economic crisis, as if he would’ve acted more fiscally responsible than George W. Bush. Who was that former senator from Illinois pushing for all that big government? It must have been the current president’s evil twin.)

Voters won’t accept that their entitlement programs are hosed until they’re actually hosed in the coming tsunami. Most of them contributed payroll taxes, and as the masterful and reprehensible FDR once said, “no d*** politician can ever scrap” such entitlements, even if they were a fraud from the beginning (which they were) and the money was spent long ago (which it was).

Republicans are often better than Democrats on key issues like gun rights and abortion funding, even if at best they tend to just maintain the status quo. However, unless the tsunami has already hit, the 2010 election won’t propel meaningful economic change, nor will it remove the inevitability of the tsunami… even if the Republicans win every contested seat in Congress.