Does anyone else bristle at the idea of calling all PhD’s “doctors?” It reeks of pretentious puffery.

For me, a doctor is a medical doctor. I’ll call Ron Paul “Dr. Paul” because he is a an obstetrician. I can’t call RC Sproul “Dr. Sproul.” Plus, RC Sproul has a far more significant title than Doctor: Pastor.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently revealed that the government sends out 80 million checks a month. That’s a lotta dependency. Add in spouses and others who are also dependent on those checks, and you have a lot of slaves on the government’s plantation. Could a citizen 100 years ago have imagined such a monster?

This is why there aren’t going to be meaningful cuts to the government until there is some form of collapse. Mess with the checks going out and you’ll have a problem on your hands. Thus your conservative Congressman talks about a meaningless balanced budget amendment, as if Congress is going to pay any more attention to that than they do the rest of the Constitution. He proposes a 1% cut in year one (the only year that matters in the budget) when a 60% cut is needed (for starters). He supports a gimmicky non-solution. This is the path that wins elections in conservative districts. If you think most conservative voters support a small government in practice, just try to cut off their government checks.

As this article puts it:

The intellectual purpose of the entitlement state – conditioning people over generations toward dependency with vows to loot future taxpayers to maintain the system – has worked perfectly… The welfare state has won over all of society. It has succeeded in making the entire culture dependent on it. Middle class conservatives condemn welfarism even as they clamor for better public schools, apply for student loans for their kids, hold jealously onto their Medicare and Social Security benefits, accept unemployment checks when they’re expedient, and resist any talk about cutting back the government’s support for its police and soldiers. Liberals today say they are realists on welfare but never cease to agitate for more ways to put us all on the dole. As we find ourselves in the wake of fiscal catastrophe, we must recognize that only a tiny portion of government expenditures go to the easy targets – the earmarks, the welfare mothers, the roads to nowhere, the Woodstock museums, the funding to study bird migrations, even the salaries of bailed out CEOs. America is, despite the conservative and liberal propaganda to the contrary, essentially as much a welfare state as most other nations of the West, and the hugest chunk of the entitlement expenditures are going not to the easily scapegoated classes, but rather to the respectable masses.

…is not so gay, says this incredible, searing article. (ht: Baylyblog)

Last night was a festive atmosphere at the White House, as people celebrated Bin Laden’s death. I even saw girls standing on shoulders, falling into arms as a cheerleader would at a college football game. For some reason it reminded me not so much of the jingoism that accompanied the first gulf war on campuses, but instead those revelry scenes from Demille’s Ten Commandments. You know, the ones with bearded men swigging from huge goblets while women with splayed arms and heads to the heavens slink from one arm to another.

I don’t lament the passing of an evil man, but when George Tiller was murdered I didn’t think to dance in the streets. Today there were loads of “rot in hell” wishes for Bin Laden in newspaper headlines and Facebook posts.

It bears reminding that all men are image-bearers. We can thankful when others are spared by a wicked man’s passing, and yet remember Proverbs 24:17: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the LORD see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him.”

I’ve been wondering lately how many innocent people the U.S. government has killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan over the past 10 years. No doubt many times more than those who died on 911. Some believe the deaths number well over 100,000. Who mourns these souls who are nameless to Americans? We rightly remember the dead of 911, but a more immediate question is this: what makes American lives more precious than others? Nothing, Biblically. Foreigners are image-bearers too.

Back in a 2008 debate, Ron Paul offended Republicans by stating something that is so obvious that it’s hard to believe anyone can deny it with a straight face. He said that our foreign policy– bombing, invading, meddling, aiding tyrants for our economic interests — creates blowback. It creates bitterness and hatred among the occupied. We wouldn’t like having Arabian troops in Indianapolis or Chinese troops in Georgia. Why would the Pakistanis want American troops in their country? Shelby Foote told an anecdote once of a confederate who was asked why he fought the North. His reply: “because you’re down here.”

Michael Scheuer long noted that Bin Laden didn’t “hate us for our freedoms.” Instead, he hated American interventionism and support for Arab police states. It doesn’t excuse the evildoer, but if you go down into the hood wearing a lot of bling, don’t be surprised if you’re mugged. Didn’t Jesus counsel his disciples to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves?

I’m surprised that more people, especially those given to “anti-government” views in economic matters, aren’t more skeptical of the military. It’s another government bureaucracy that wants to grow as bureaucracies do, and an especially dangerous one given that it’s armed to the teeth. The old conservatives were well aware of the danger to liberty posed by wars. Yet today the same conservatives who think of the post office, the EPA, and the IRS as hopelessly corrupt unflinchingly embrace the military and militarism. And few think of the innocent lives in foreign lands or the potential for blowback that Ron Paul has so wisely warned us about for many years.

Although I think both parties are part of the abortion problem rather than the solution since they both support the entire entitlement state that undergirds it, this just takes the cake. Our evil emperor strikes again…

For more than an hour in an Oval Office meeting on April 7, House Speaker John Boehner had insisted that any compromise on the government’s budget include a prohibition on federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Obama already had reluctantly agreed to a provision banning the District of Columbia from spending funds on abortion services — and that was as far as he would go.

“Nope, zero,” he told Boehner, according to a senior Democratic aide. “John, this is it.” The room went silent.

And there there’s this. Listening to the balderdash the last few days, why you’d think that PP was all about breast exams (which shouldn’t be subsidized by the public either, by the way). They always run from what they are, amid clouds, misdirection, and euphemisms. Only 3% of our services involve abortion (never mind that we do 300,000+ a year). Serving women. Protecting women’s health. Blah blah blah.

We have just witnessed the budget charade.

Not long ago, the Ryan plan was introduced with some fanfare. It promises lots of cuts… over decades. Few cuts of significance in the first year. When you hear someone say that they want to cut trillions over 10+ years, remember that budgets are redone every year. The shelf life is one year. The only part of the budget that matters is the first year. No one is basing the 2012 budget on what the 10-year outlook was in the 2003 budget.

One of the invariable parts of these plans is to oversee the slow privatization of retirement money by cutting benefits to those under a certain age. This is a good thing in that social security needs to be phased out.

The problem is how these things are sold. People are told that by privatizing they will get better returns at lower costs. True in the past. The problem is that the economy is headed down the tubes due to all the debt, and this promise will be empty (plus, 401K offerings usually provide little protection against inflationary forces since those are deemed “unsafe” investments by advisers living in the bubble past). So what’s going to happen when people see their “safe” bond funds getting killed and their money market funds losing purchasing power due to inflation? If it’s anything like I remember 2008, we’re going to hear a loud outcry. People believe that Wall Street is ripping them off (somewhat true, although the Fed is the far bigger culprit). People are going to want this corrected. It will be another outburst of what I call “stupid populism,” which asks good questions and proposes bad answers.

The gimmicks will fall apart from voter anger. Politicians will empathize but their inability to deliver the goodies will be more transparent. (If it were earlier in the Ponzi scheme, big government could ride to the rescue, but alas, the hour is late.)

I just finished Tom Wood’s book Rollback. Woods hammers away at historically false assumptions such as how the government saved us from sweatshops, or how the financial meltdown was caused by “deregulation.”

This questioning is what is needed with the Medicare and Social Security debate, too. The greatest assumption of all is that the government owes you a retirement. Instead of promising people increased returns through private/public gimmicks like subsidized 401Ks, the government should get out of the promise-making business altogether. The assumption that the government can protect our retirement “security” needs to be exploded. People need to be told that they are responsible for their own retirement. The entitlement mentality needs to be shamed. People need to buy their own insurance, work cooperatively with their churches or civic organizations, plan ahead, etc. There’s no free lunch.

It would help if the government would get out of the game of encouraging debt through low interest rates and backstopping loans, and spending massive amounts of money, but that is a topic for another post.

Some random thoughts as we watch the battles play out between public unions and government officials…

• Why do so many people look upon policemen, firemen, and public school teachers as sacrosanct? To use the latter example, public schools are an incredibly inefficient use of resources. If someone says “we can’t put a price on a good eduction,” to that I say yes, we can. We have to. We do it with everything in our lives because scarcity is a fact of life.
• Teachers sometimes tell us that they have a masters degree, as if that’s a reason why they should be paid at above-market rates. From an economic standpoint, you are worth what someone is willing to pay you. In a free market, most teachers would be making less money. Why? Because there is always the option to learn at home, to form cooperative education groups with other parents, to use digital learning methods, etc. Teachers would have to compete like everyone else. That’s a world teachers want to avoid, thus the desire to maintain coercive collective bargaining laws.
• In the end, the unions are going to lose (and it can’t come soon enough). Maybe not this year, but the fact is that state deficits are out of control. The pensions that past politicians agreed to (because promises of future payouts were easy to make way back when) are unaffordable. Unions can recall hard-headed governors, but states are still going to default on much of these debts. That’s economic reality.
• Does anyone else find it annoying that public workers think that private workers owe them an above-average living? Many of us in the private sector have seen declining living standards over the past 10 years.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. -Gandalf to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings

I was at the doctor the other day, and as usual when the lady pulled up my sleeve to draw blood I braced. The nurse studied my arm for a minute, then I barely felt a prick (she should teach others how to draw blood correctly). I thought to myself: “That’s it?”

Recently I watched an atheist named Michael Shermer on John Stossel’s Fox Business show. Shermer had three reasons for being skeptical about God: 1. Where you happen to have been born tells you which God you happen to adhere to. 2. Why does God allow innocent children to suffer? 3. The moral problem. The creator of the universe couldn’t even get it right on slavery and how women should be treated, the OT is abominable in that regard, etc.

That’s it? Don’t get me wrong, there are unfathomable mysteries here, but… The essential similarity between all these issues is presumption and arrogance.

Is where you were born a good predictor of your beliefs? Of course. It always has been in Scripture. God called Abram, but not presumably thousands of others from that region. Israel was God’s chosen, but all that time people lived in Asia and America without a true knowledge of him. In 500AD, many in what is today Turkey knew the Lord; today most do not. Millions of Americans are Christian today; there were few 2,000 years ago. The examples are endless, but here’s the point: God is above nations and cultures. He works through them to accomplish His means, and His spirit goes where it will. It’s always been assumed that way in Scripture.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Technically they don’t, because none are righteous (Romans 3). So why does God allow children to suffer? For His glory. How exactly? We don’t know. We aren’t invited to God’s counsel. We don’t know eternity. We can’t see behind the curtain. Isn’t that a key point in the book of Job?

As for the moral reason, Who are you, o man, to think you have a greater capacity for love and morality than God? Why do you think your view of morality is righteous?

We are men. God is God. God is good. We are corrupt. God sees all and knows all. We see little. God it the alpha and the omega. We aren’t. God is holy. We are sinners.

There’s an apocryphal story that I’ve heard in multiple contexts, but it goes something like this. A lady is on a train with two rambunctious kids. A nearby passenger is annoyed with the rude behavior of the children, and the mother’s disinterest in controlling them. Murmuring under his breath, he finally says as calmly as possible that that they are rather loud. The mother sadly responds that her beloved husband and their beloved father has just died and, given the circumstances, she is letting them have a bit of fun. The passenger is humbled. It’s a parable of presumption.

We don’t know the whole story.

What we really ought to ask the liberal, before we even begin addressing his agenda, is this: In what kind of society would he be a conservative? -Joseph Sobran

A perceptive quote. For most, the answer is “in whatever society I can keep getting whatever I’m currently getting, and I don’t care or I don’t think about how it is extracted from others with threats.” For the true believers in the social gospel, it will occur when we reach an earthly Utopia. We have eternity in our hearts, but we want that eternity in the now. The spending cannot stop until every mouth is fed and everyone is cared for. Which, in reality, means that the spending can never stop, because it ain’t gonna happen.

And so the social security checks and the Medicare reimbursements and the wars will go on until we ram head-on into the wall at the end of the road. Then it’s going to get interesting.

The refusal to confront economic reality is evident in this discussion about raising the debt limit. Why, if we do this, there will be a default! Exactly. These people prefer the delusion (or deception) that there’s a way around this, when in reality adding more debt is just setting up a greater default, and more pain, down the road. Why not just get it over with? There is no way the government can legitimately “stimulate” the economy out of this problem. A bank makes a loan to a company with the idea that the company will be able to expand or grow production, and from that production pay back the loan. The government couldn’t produce its way out of a paper bag.

One more thing: I heard a guy say the other day that the government has a “fiduciary responsibility” to pay the pensions of public workers. Nonsense. If I contractually agree to pay someone $10 an hour, then I have an obligation to pay it. If politicians from 20 years ago passed a law saying that government workers get a massive pension, the law should be changed without scruple because politicians have no right to borrow and steal money from others to pay for it.

If you live by the government, you will die by the government.

All my heart this night rejoices
As I hear / Far and near / Sweetest angel voices.
“Christ is born,” their choirs are singing
Till the air / Everywhere / Now with joy is ringing.

I admit it, Christmas-time is my favorite time of the year. The wreaths are a closed loop, a reminder of eternity. Evergreens are lovely in the dead of winter. How can’t you love Christmas lights and their association with the Father of Lights and the light shining in darkness? Not that we attend church for its aesthetics, but last week we had morning communion and big snowflakes were falling outside, and I thought there it was one of the most wondrous moments in my life.

This year the time with family seemed extra special. When little, time with family compared weakly to presents. For teens, friends or a book seem paramount. You get a little older and the gifts end up in landfills and you’ve moved on to other friends, and you finally realize– perhaps after some of them have gone on to the next world– that your family was what mattered all along.

Enjoy the season. For the believer, these snippets of joy are a precursor to joy never-ending. Merry Christmas.

I hate public education, but I love college football on fall Saturdays.

When I was at OSU, I think it’s fair to say that most of the bureaucrats aka. “educators” there hated the football program. “Here we are providing enlightenment to young minds and, alas, our public face is a most distasteful, crass game with young men smacking each other around.” Of course, a cash cow isn’t going anywhere with the brass.

I suspect that professors seethe about the football program to this day. If so, it’s a feather in the football program’s cap.

Still, while we all have to swim in the cesspool of an intrusive state that is hard to bypass, I wonder sometimes how many people would be outright hostile to universities if it weren’t for college football (and basketball). College sports advertise to conservatives almost as effectively as the military. Sean Hannity, who is on the radio when I drive home, rails about federal spending and then in the next breath is upset at how Obama is gutting the military (which isn’t true, but what kind of sense does that make anyway?).

If it weren’t for the military, the endless wars, the Pledge, etc., more people would be wholly alienated from the predatory Federal government.

If it weren’t for college football, wouldn’t the image of universities be much worse? The military, college football… these are the things that lend credibility and warm feelings to the state.

Even though I fully support the elimination of all public education, I still watch the games and love them. I’m trying to stop buying the merchandise, though. Little steps.

This never happens when I’m at the mall. A church we attended back in the 1990s would hire an orchestra some Christmas’s, and I remember noticing one of the cello players reading a paperback during the sermon. I note this just because some of the singers here look like those kind of studious unbelievers. I often wonder if they ever really realize the wonders that they sing about. The smug title “Random Act of Culture” tells you nope, most of them probably don’t get it.

Anyway, never mind that. A huge choir, an organ, all really loud in a cavernous space. This must have been one of those rare moments in these shadowlands when the clouds part and, as Muggeridge put it, one sees “the bright vistas of eternity and the prison bars of time.”

War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.

Few things are as demotivating as motivational speakers. Today in Columbus, we had this event. Among all the shining luminaries — Laura Bush! Terry Bradshaw! Lola Heatherton and Dr. Tongue! — guess who was the keynote speaker? Yes, the same former board member of Dallas Planned Parenthood who has so many companies sporting pink ribbons on their packaging.

The great columnist, Joe Sobran, has died at the age of 64. Sobran wrote for the National Review back when it was interesting, largely because of him. He’s in that handful of my greatest influences. His syndicated column was popular in the 1980s, but that went away with some well-publicized (and very unfair, in my estimation as a 25+ year reader of his columns) judgments by William F. Buckley. Awful attacks followed by writers such as the insufferable David Frum.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Sobran wandered off the conservative plantation into anarcho-libertarianism about the time of Buckley’s attacks (politically, I’m moving in Joe Sobran’s footsteps, 20 years behind). He wrote plaintively of his alienation from the militaristic William F. Buckley school of conservatism that still informs Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity:

Surely we all wanted the same things! … [I]t was only toward the end of more than two happy decades there that I began to realize that we didn’t all want the same things after all. When it happened, it was like learning, after a long and placid marriage, that your spouse is in love with someone else, and has been all along.

Like Muggeridge, Sobran was a great observer of the modern landscape. He wrote hilariously of Clintonian rottenness and with fierce moral insight into topics like sodomy and abortion. Always an inspiringly gifted writer, his style evolved into the very definition of “pithy.” He was staunchly Catholic, especially in latter years (I hope that he found the Lord). He wrote a column once that spoke of how he came back to his faith because he pondered Jesus’s words. No one has ever spoken as Christ spoke. Next time you read Jesus’s words, step back and think about that. The depth, the authority, the insight… it’s amazing. Who but God speaks this way? Almost every line Jesus speaks is a memorable line that rings with power, even two thousand years later. You begin to understand why his hearers were so often amazed and silenced by his authority and wisdom.

For that insight alone I’ll always be grateful to Joe Sobran. May he rest in peace.

10/2 addendum: In reading some of the remembrances, it’s interesting that many fine writers had the same thought I always did after reading a Sobran column: “I wish I could write like that.” I also should underscore that it was Sobran who first caused me to question my views on war. He helped me realize that opposition to (most) war was not only the domain of unhinged left-wingers, but also serious men on the right who found both moral and political reasons to oppose it. As has been said many times, “war is the health of the state.”

People are upset about the economy. They’re grasping for alternatives to the current political class. Someone recently noted that the great danger of the Tea Party is that it feels like a revolution to its members, but it doesn’t address any of the issues that really matter.

This is true. It is fun to watch incumbents squirm and then lose, but if the “new people” are just going to repeal Obamacare, maintain tax rates, and cut discretionary spending to the level of a few years ago, well, then they’re using a teaspoon to shovel snow during a blizzard. It’s nothing but a start. Drastic problems need drastic solutions. The public isn’t there yet, no matter how much we hear the word “revolution” this fall.

I now call myself a libertarian for lack of a better word. I’m not wholly comfortable with that term. Like other terms (“conservative”), it has its baggage. There are a lot of competing understandings of the word. But that’s true in the conservative world, too.

However, let’s summarize the solutions to the massive spending that threatens a complete economic collapse in this country. First, entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc.) must be phased out. The money has already been squandered and we have seen the devastation welfare has caused. Second, government control of the money supply that enables overspending and boom/bust cycles needs to end (eliminate the Fed, repeal legal tender laws, end the moral hazards such as the FDIC). Third, the U.S. needs to end its military presence in over 100 countries. Don’t we all know the course of empire? Fourth, the Federal Register needs to be thrown into a bonfire. An economist noted that federal regulations alone cost $1.2T a year. That’s over 30% more than the government collected in income tax revenues last year. Fifth, public education needs to end. Why do people to see something sinister in countries with their red-scarved children, and yet they imagine that our government schools do not advance the state’s agenda? Public schools– and I include universities, of course– are government indoctrination centers.

Reread that last paragraph. Do conservative Republicans advance that kind of agenda? No. Libertarians like Ron Paul do.

Of all the workouts I do, if I had to keep one it’d be the yoga. I’ve found nothing better to improve strength, flexibility, posture, and especially balance. It’s not fun to do, but you feel great afterward. It’s good for your back. It complements weight training and aerobics.

Until I did P90X, I thought that yoga was for Hindus and New Age goofballs. Indeed, if you look into yoga it won’t be long until you start hearing about organic yoga apparel, and, worse, “spirituality” (always a red-flag). However, yoga is slowly getting shorn of its pagan roots. Although P90X Yoga does have a little of secularized “ohm” stuff at the beginning and end (which I faithfully skip), the rest of it is simply a tough workout. I watch TV while I’m doing it, just as I do while lifting weights. Jillian Michaels, for one, has a power yoga DVD that has no “spiritual” component. Just the moves: stretching, postures, and using your own body weight. People tell me that fitness clubs now offer “just moves” yoga classes, too. Yoga moves are being used in physical therapy. Yoga stretches at the beginning of aerobic workouts.

Yoga is going mainstream. The deceivers and goofballs are still out there, though, so discernment is necessary. If you’re doing yoga to empty your mind and find inner tranquility, or if you’re after anything more than a good workout and stretch, then you’re on shaky ground at best. I’d avoid yoga that has any “spiritual” component whatsoever. Proceed with caution. Just the moves, ma’m.

One last concern: Do you lose your man card? Maybe, but I don’t find it particularly effeminate.

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will. -Proverbs 21:1

In his sermon this morning, our pastor noted that Mary responded to the Lord calling to her (John 11:29). Then, soon after, Lazarus responded from the grave to the Lord’s call (John 11:43-44).

This is an exceedingly powerful voice. If He can call a man back from the grave, can He not call your unbelieving relatives and friends?

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?

The economy hasn’t recovered, but there is currently no 2008 feeling about it right now, that feeling of imminent doom. I think it’s a mistake to see “this is the worst it will get” in this lull, though. Now is the time to be preparing yourself for the next downturn.

There are good books out there telling you how to protect your existing assets: Charles Goyette’s Dollar Meltdown, Peter Schiff’s books, etc. There are neo-survivalist books telling you how to survive. If you want it raw (warning: occasional profanity), this book by an Argentine who lived through his country’s currency crisis is insightful.

Few books, however, talk about the importance of growing your ability to earn income. In a world with fewer “good” jobs (thanks to the government’s ongoing spending and resulting destruction of capital), you may have to outwork others to get those jobs. Or keep your job.

I started a new job a few months ago. Let me give you a few examples that I’ve stumbled into re: protecting my ability to earn income.

First, I work extra hours but I don’t charge for them. There’s nothing wrong with working more than 40 hours a week, even if you’re only paid 40. Obviously one has to balance family and life, but I’m finding that those additional hours learning software, learning ways to streamline your job, etc., make a difference.

Second, I no longer waste any of my work day surfing the web or reading email. I spend my work day working. I’m a lot more productive at work because of it. I don’t have to hurriedly close a web page because someone busted me reading Drudge Report instead of working (I think we all know that feeling).

Third, I invested a little money. I was fretting a little because I couldn’t find a certain technical manual at the library, and I didn’t want to pay for it. Finally, I just broke down and bought the thing. I should have done it two months before I did. I’m not talking about motivational books; I find them a gimmicky waste of money. I mean professional or training materials.

Fourth, better than books are simply spending time hacking around in a piece of software, or talking to someone who is an expert at a professional discipline. I find many people like this at my workplace. Three months into my job, I’ve learned enough that people have started asking me questions.

Fifth, I’ve had a few opportunities of late to apply for other jobs. I’ve decided not to because I’m learning a lot at this job. If I’m growing in a role, then that’s a big factor in whether I stay in it. Similarly, I don’t discount a positive or even “half-decent” work environment any longer. I had a job a few years ago where I hated the work environment and the company culture. It was a miserable time.

To be valuable, you have to put in the time. You have to work. You have to learn. It’s your sacrifice to learn and grow that blesses others.

Who knows, it may be that thing that keeps you employed down the road.

For all the saints, who from their labours rest, /
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, /
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. /
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Another aunt died recently. Dad had nine siblings, mom had eight, and many have died over the last few years. They have followed their fathers and mothers to the grave. My prime will pass soon enough and I will go there too. So will you.

As I get older I feel the weight of loss more. I miss my departed elders more than ever. Those born two generations before me are slowly passing on. They won’t be there to provide guidance, or to explain the world that preceded me. Perhaps people will look to me for that. Life, as it unfolds, slowly replaces those who came before you with those born after you. The losses mount.

Then, at the height of our loss, we die and pass on to eternity. Dawn breaks. Not only will we reunite with our fathers and forefathers — for our loss is a temporary one — but we will join in that communion of saints throughout the ages: Abraham, David, Isaiah, Irenaeus, Polycarp, Athanasius, and Luther. Is there anything to desire more fervently?

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, /
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, /
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost: /
Alleluia, Alleluia!

They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. -Judges 5:20

Comments Matthew Henry:

Those whom God is an enemy to the whole creation is at war with.

“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.

For years the financial services industry has instructed us to salt away 10% of our income and watch it grow. They send us brochures showing sweater-clad retirees hanging around a golf cart. Yes, friends, through the miracle of compounding, even a man of modest means can become a millionaire.

They don’t tell you that while your money may compound, the government is stealing your savings through the “miracle” of inflation. At best, you’ll stay even. The question is this: What will a million buy you in a few decades? It’s not the amount of money in your pocket that matters, it’s what that money can purchase. All other things being equal, a man with $1 in an economy where candy bars cost $.05 is wealthier than a man with $5 in an economy where a candy bar costs $.80.

A financial advisor may can show you that saving pre-tax money can save you a lot of money over the years. Consider their assumptions, however. First, most 401Ks have limited investment options. They are heavily geared toward investing in U.S. bonds, U.S. stocks, and the U.S. dollar. What if inflation effectively wipes out the value of the dollar? Most 401Ks allow no means of hedging in foreign currencies or hard assets such as commodities, real estate, etc. Second, you have to pay taxes on the money once you withdraw it, and when you don’t know what tax rates will be then. They could be much higher. Third, there are penalties that come from withdrawing early, which means that you have less control of your assets. (One hook financial companies give young people is this idea that if they just set up the automatic investing every paycheck, they don’t have to think about it. Well, you can do that with individual accounts. You can set up online bill pay to “pay yourself” by sending a check somewhere automatically each month. There’s nothing magical about a 401K or IRA. People still can and do withdraw money from them. It just costs a lot more.)

I think the biggest issue with 401Ks and IRAs is that they are a sitting duck for a financially-strapped government. Consider the ready-made government pitch if we have another major downturn: “Look at how your mutual funds have fallen! You trusted Wall Street (it’s their fault!) and look what happened! This is why we are graciously stepping in. Your monies will now be safe and secure, transferred to government securities with a guarantee to pay.” This will entice people who, for good reason, distrust the advice of their financial adviser and yet don’t know what else to do with their money. A lot of people are in this boat.

This is how the government works. What Gary North calls “kicking the can” i.e. pushing the day of reckoning downstream, is often accomplished by pulling panicked people out of a small pool and dumping them into a large pool with promises of government security. “Don’t worry, you won’t drown! We have lifeguards on duty.” Because the government is a studiously irresponsible, however, it just sets up the the risk of a wider-ranging disaster (witness the U.S. financial system).

If private retirement accounts are nationalized by forcing people into government securities, we’ll be witnessing Social Security redux. In effect, all of the money you save will be borrowed and spent by the government. They will leave you with an IOU. All entitlements hinge on a promise to pay. In true Ponzi fashion, the government is promising you that it will find future suckers to pay you when your time comes. Remember, it has already spent all of the money you’ve paid into FICA.

Financially, it isn’t going to work. The government will forfeit on its obligations mainly through inflation since it’s the sneakiest way to do it, but it will also use means testing (i.e. penalizing responsible savers), and raising the retirement age. This means that your effective return is going to be a lot less.

What can one say in favor of 401Ks and IRAs? Well, the government could legislate in favor of retirement plans and at the expense of individual accounts. Also, in certain legal actions, your retirement money may be exempt. In other words, it may be a form of risk mitigation to have some money in retirement vehicles. However, you have to balance that against the risk of confiscation.

When I was younger, I was suckered in by the employer matching on a 401K, but many employers are no longer matching. If I was starting out today, I wouldn’t bother with a 401K. I’d save my money on my own. You don’t need a quasi-government program like a 401K or IRA. Save it in individual stock accounts, real estate, commodities, or use it to build your ability to produce income (Gary North is big on pushing people to focus on producing income as much or more than than protecting their assets; I’m coming around to his view.) Save your money in things a desperate government will find harder to get its hands on. I’m not going to give investment advice here, except to say that Peter Schiff’s Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets is a better place to start than Kiplinger or Money magazine.

Ronnie James Dio, the man on the silver mountain, died earlier this week. His lyrics were sometimes loathsome, but I always admired his incredible pipes.

One of rock’s oddities is the 1980 collaboration between Dio and Kerry Livgren, the blonde guy from Kansas who wrote Carry On and Dust in the Wind in the late 1970s. Livgren was a new Christian when he wrote and recorded a solo album called Seeds of Change (Livgren’s autobiography of the same title is worth a read if you can find it). On Seeds of Change are two songs with Dio on vocals: Mask of the Great Deceiver and To Live for the King. Look past the cheesy, early 80s orchestration and it’s interesting stuff.