Just Too Good to Pass Up

Talk is cheap in politics. We all know that to be the case. Still, it really vexes me when I hear that a politician’s actions are in direct opposition with their principled, conservative rhetoric. Jan Brewer, the one-time Republican darling and current Arizona governor, is one such vacillator who further tarnishes whatever remains of Conservatism.

In her 2010 State of the State Address, Brewer thundered like a natural-born pol:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of public service, it’s that doing the right thing–almost always means doing the hard thing. That’s what it will come down to in the days ahead. Choosing what’s tough over what’s tempting. Choosing commitment over ignorance. Choosing government that is necessary–over government that is merely desired. Choosing the truthful over the false. Honesty, versus lies. Right, versus wrong.

What’s wrong you ask?

Wrong, is the five high-rolling years before I took office when the system was designed and operated to grow government as large as possible.

Brewer, like most politicians, whether Republican and Democrat, will say almost anything for a vote. The reason I quoted a three-year-old speech of hers, steeped as it is in predictable conservative platitudes, is that Brewer either must not have believed a word of it or quickly abandoned ship shortly thereafter. I say this because, time and again, Jan Brewer has chosen—to use her own words—what’s tempting to what’s tough.

Though she originally challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in 2011, Brewer promptly applied for one of Obamacare’s copious grants, a $500,000 federal grant, to be precise, to improve the quality of mental illness care in her state. She then resumed an air of conservative toughness in late 2012 when she refused to create a health insurance exchange, partly due to the steep maintenance costs. However, she has since backslid, yet again. Now, costs be damned, Brewer wants to expand Medicaid coverage in her state to the tune of $1.6 billion.

Cindy Carcamo of the Los Angeles Times writes,

Brewer, whose state joined 25 others in fighting Obama’s Affordable Care Act in court, later became a staunch proponent for Medicaid expansion in Arizona. She said the expansion effort would secure a steam of federal revenue — $1.6 billion — that would cover the costs of the uninsured who already show up in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms across the state.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Obama’s healthcare overhaul but allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion.

Like other GOP governors, Brewer opted out of the health insurance exchange component of the law, leaving it to the federal government to set up the marketplace where the uninsured in the state and businesses can choose their providers.

Still, the federal funding for Medicaid expansion was too good an opportunity to pass up. The $1.6 billion in federal funding will enable Arizona to provide health insurance for an additional 240,000 residents and continue insuring 50,000 childless adults.

What a true conservative would do would be to fight to disassemble the welfare state—not expand it—and allow individuals, churches, and other non-profits to voluntarily care for the poor and feeble. Instead, Brewer sees a pile of other people’s money, becomes giddy, and, like any good statist short on godly character, pounces excitedly like a cat upon a hapless mouse. Like I said, Brewer’s talk is cheap—so cheap that it’s nearly worthless.

There was a time when being conservative meant you fought for smaller government and the diminution of the welfare state. Apparently, times have changed, as have the morals of “conservatives” like Jan Brewer, and not for the better, I’m afraid.

Taking a Dog by the Ears

As everyone knows by now, thanks to Edward Snowden’s document dump, the NSA temporarily lost its invisibility cloak, revealing some of its extraordinary snooping methods to the public. For many people—myself included—the lengths our government is willing to go to for a little additional safety is outrageous and unnerving, but in the view of a sizable minority of Americans, the government is doing just fine and, in fact, should further develop its police state apparatus.

Ironically, it’s the Democrats who have transformed from the civil libertarians of the Bush era to the jingoistic cheerleaders of authoritarianism under the current administration. Meanwhile, the Republicans have experienced a dramatic change of heart over privacy concerns—or so they believe.

Jon Cohen of the Washington Post writes,

A large majority of Americans say the federal government should focus on investigating possible terrorist threats even if personal privacy is compromised, and most support the blanket tracking of telephone records in an effort to uncover terrorist activity, according to a new Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll.

Fully 45 percent of all Americans say the government should be able to go further than it is, saying that it should be able to monitor everyone’s online activity if doing so would prevent terrorist attacks. A slender majority, 52 percent, say no such broad-based monitoring should occur[...]

Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders “acceptable,” while 41 percent call the practice “unacceptable.” In 2006, when news broke of the NSA’s monitoring of telephone and e-mail communications without court approval, there was a closer divide on the practice — 51 percent to 47 percent.

General priorities also are similar to what they were in 2006: Sixty-two percent of Americans now say it’s more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even if those investigations intrude on personal privacy, while 34 percent say privacy should be the focus, regardless of the effect on such investigations.

But with a Democratic president at the helm instead of a Republican, partisan views have turned around significantly.

Sixty-nine percent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government’s main concern, an 18-percentage-point jump from early January 2006, when the NSA activity under the George W. Bush administration was first reported. Compared with that time, Republicans’ focus on privacy has increased 22 points.

The reversal on the NSA’s practices is even more dramatic. In early 2006, 37 percent of Democrats found the agency’s activities acceptable; now nearly twice that number — 64 percent — say the use of telephone records is okay. By contrast, Republicans slumped from 75 percent acceptable to 52 percent today.

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m about as incredulous to the Republicans’ softened stance to the police state as I am unsurprised with the Democrats’ quick abandonment of their civil libertarian values. It all has to do with the trust, or distrust, of the President. For Democrats, tyranny is just fine as long as a Democrat is at the helm. For Republicans, tyranny was fine—that is, when Bush was commander-in-chief. To be fair, some Republicans must have learned something genuine about government overreach over the last five years or so, but, for most, this has everything to do with the man pulling the levers, not that levers are being pulled.

This is exactly why humanism and moral relativism make for a dangerous political cocktail. Anything can be made good in the eyes of a plastic public. It’s this fickle, irrational trust or distrust in man that needs to go. As Peter once declared before the Jewish high priest, “We must obey God rather than men.” But for cowardly Democrats and Republicans, diabolical men can sometimes— and somehow—overwhelm God. God may be powerful and good in private, but in “real life” we need a strongman in office to save the day. Though this belief may be common, it is a dreadful sin to think that way.

Such fickle, cowardly people have surely been finding solace in the claims of Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers when they boast that the NSA’s data-mining has led to the arrest and conviction of two very important terrorists: Najibullah Zazi, the failed New York subway bomber and David Headley, an accomplice in the Mumbai bombing who scouted out the bombing site.

However, the evidence tells us that the role of the NSA’s data-mining program, PRISM, in these two examples was ancillary and even completely unnecessary. Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt of the Guardian write that “data-mining through Prism and other NSA programmes played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots. In both cases, conventional surveillance techniques, including old-fashioned tip-offs from intelligence services in Britain, appear to have initiated the investigations.” In the Zazi case, PRISM didn’t just play a minor role, it was entirely inessential. Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, writing for the Associated Press, state that “government officials have changed their stories and misstated key facts of the Zazi plot. And they’ve left out one important detail: The email that disrupted the plan could easily have been intercepted without PRISM.” Either Feinstein and Rogers were quite aware of these points and disregarded them to bolster their agenda, or they like to bluster without knowing what they’re talking about. Neither explanation inspires much in the way of trust.

Trust or no trust, to the unrighteous, the ends still justify the means. As long as one terrorist attempt is thwarted, then the curtailment of liberty is a reasonable price to pay. But what if the erosion of liberty was avoidable and our troubles with terrorism were overwhelmingly the byproduct of flawed foreign policy decisions made by the Feinsteins and Rogerses of the world? The Middle East has been subjected to Western abuse since the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which cheated and deceived the Palestinian Arabs. In return for support during the war, Britain had promised Palestinian Arabs an independent Arab state, but not only did that independent state never materialize, it was never intended to materialize—at least, not for them. Rather, the independent state went to Zionist Jews who then poured salt in the wound by promptly running the Arabs off their own land and, in due time, legally barring them from employment. Rather than finding independence, the Arabs found themselves stateless and, worse still, under the colonial rule of France,  Britain, or Russia. As former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw once remarked, “The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis – again, an interesting history for us, but not an honourable one.” Right he was. This marked the beginning of strained relations between the Middle East and the West and, frankly, things have only gotten worse over time.

In time, our nation’s government helped arrange a coup with the British to depose Iran’s first democratically-elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, only to support financially the iron-fisted and secular Shah who bowed to Western economic interests, which ultimately culminated in the backlash of the Iranian Revolution. Further examples of our meddlesome and incompetent leadership are our relationships with and financial support of such illustrious lunatics as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. One who meddles in the quarrels of others and, presumably, the quarrels of other nations “is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears” (Prov. 26:17). In other words, instead of being surprised and rattled that the dogs of Islam have bitten us for our unwelcome intrusion and treachery, God tells us we should expect as much when we stick our nose where it doesn’t belong. Moreover, for us to be surprised that the people with whom we have have dealt so treacherously, whom we’ve sanctioned into starvation, bombed into oblivion, and occupied indefinitely, are mad enough to retaliate speaks volumes as to the hubris and ignorance of the electorate, not to mention of our elected officials.

Furthermore, the terrorists tell us as much, but, instead, we pretend to see their demands as encrypted messages that need clever psychoanalytical interpretation. It’s not really true that our imperialistic bullying bothers them—as if we’d care if it did— it’s their hatred of freedom and prosperity, fueled by envy, or it’s simply the inherent anti-Semitism and anti-Christianity of Islam that overwhelmingly motivates them to blow themselves up along with others. Right. Believe it or not, prior to World War I, Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, and Jews lived together rather harmoniously. Rather, it’s the intricate mixture of anguish, resulting from the West’s chronic bullying and war-mongering, and the combative Islamic faith that have driven so many Muslims toward extremism. Actions have consequences, which should be obvious to all, but why we can’t we get ourselves to imagine protracted oppression, deception, and manipulation bearing a good part of the blame for Islamic terrorism is beyond me. Maybe then it’s time we quit aggressively wasting blood and spoil on the region and see what transpires when we actually leave them alone.

The bottom line is that climbing inside a tyrant’s panopticon for the sake of national safety is neither liberating, nor necessary. Likewise, handing over one’s data to arrogant pretenders to God’s throne for the sake of freedom from terrorism is no less empty in its salvation or righteousness. If only we fought defensive wars as the Bible suggests (Deut. 20:10), rather than pre-emptive ones, and didn’t covertly, and imprudently, disrupt the world for imperialist, coercive gain, all the while ignoring the complaints of the battered, then we wouldn’t be lining up to sacrifice our freedoms at home. The faithless cowardice and capriciousness of the lemmings, both Democrat and Republican, is not to be esteemed. It’s only fools who think that taking the ears of passing dogs is a keen and just strategy free of reprisal. We have God’s word and nearly a hundred years of oppressive policy blunders that point to the contrary. If we are to find peace and conquer terrorism then I suggest we close up shop in the region, remove the punchbowl from our drunken tyrants, and believe as the Psalmist believes: “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”

Nothing but the Diabolical

Just when you think that the purveyors of big government couldn’t possibly suffer any more scandalous humiliation, another troubling revelation springs forth. This time it involves lurid allegations of underground drug rings and prostitution among the ranks of U.S. diplomats and the State Department’s security contractors. What’s worse is that these allegations seem to have been covered up by the State Department.

CBS reports,

CBS News has uncovered documents that show the State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal and inappropriate behavior within their ranks.

The Diplomatic Security Service, or the DSS, is the State Department’s security force, charged with protecting the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors overseas and with investigating any cases of misconduct on the part of the 70,000 State Department employees worldwide.

CBS News’ John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

The memo also reveals details about an “underground drug ring” was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.

Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator with the State Department’s internal watchdog agency, the Inspector General, told Miller, “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”

In such cases, DSS agents told the Inspector General’s investigators that senior State Department officials told them to back off, a charge that Fedenisn says is “very” upsetting.

Have we now reached the tipping point to be able to say that this growing pile of nonsense is proof that this is just “business as usual” in big government? Or, if not business as usual, then, at least, “business as fairly common”? Let’s quickly take inventory of what has transpired thus far. Since the beginning of Obama’s second term, the IRS, Justice Department, EPA, Department of HHS, NSA, and State Department have all come under fire over charges of malfeasance, negligence, or questionable behavior. I could even include the Department of Defense, given recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) and Government Accountability reports, which found that the Pentagon hasn’t much of a clue as to what the roughly 108,000 private contractors are doing in Afghanistan or if taxpayer money is even being spent wisely. However, this has yet to make waves in the media, likely because the American attention span can only handle so much failure and scandal at any one time.

Nevertheless, David Francis of the Fiscal Times writes,

CRS found that the Pentagon lacked the ability to document the work each contractor is performing. It also found even when the government has information on contractors, it’s often inaccurate and doesn’t reflect the actual work being done. This leaves the Pentagon unable to determine if the hundreds of billions it’s spending are leading to effective results.

It really is hard to imagine any more damning revelations crawling out of this statist cesspool, but never say never, I suppose. Frankly, the stubbornly loyal liberals may need to hear more of them! Just how much evidence has to be belched up before they concede that man is, in fact, fallen and that a cadre of fallen men can’t convincingly play god in any fashion, least of all in the political sphere? What better proof do we have than a messianic Obama and his choice underlings, all preened for greatness, only to be found impotent, foolish, and arrogant? If an enlightened Obama and his lackeys, having granted themselves immense power, can’t help but bungle, overstep, and betray, then should stubborn liberals expect anyone to do any better? I believe the question answers itself. Of course not. No man is a god. In fact, man is depraved (Rom. 3:3), and depraved men equipped with extraordinary power never yield anything but the diabolical.

From Bad to Terrible

It’s official: Obama has lost much of his luster among the Left and sealed his legacy as one of corruption, secrecy, and ineptitude. The first trio of scandals from last month left little more than a bad taste in the mouth of most liberals, but within the last couple of days, something even more damning has come to light. It appears that Verizon, thanks to the shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s orders, has been forced to hand over to the NSA three months of “metadata” of millions of Verizon users. Though this metadata doesn’t include the actual content of users’ conversations, it tells the government far too much. This has massive fourth amendment implications. This is what has the Left reeling and feeling a bit despondent.

Just as no one remembers Richard Nixon for creating the EPA and signing the Clean Air Act, neither will history remember much of the supposed successes of the Obama administration in light these caustic revelations.

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker writes,

That metadata doesn’t tell the government what was said, but gives it ‘comprehensive communications routing information,’ phone numbers at both ends of the call, equipment codes, the time of the call, and how long it lasted….The government seems to have a list of all the people that Verizon customers called and who called them; how long they spoke; and, perhaps—depending on how precise the cell-phone-tower information in the metadata is, where they were on a given day.

How, one might ask, is this possibly legal? The answer involves an interaction of FISA and the Patriot Act. FISA’s purpose is to allow the government to investigate foreign threats in a way that harms the privacy of Americans as little as possible. If the government wants access to an American citizen’s phone number because it thinks that person might be communicating with someone from Al Qaeda, and wants the warrant to be secret, it goes toFISA, which almost never turns it down.

This isn’t exactly a warrant; it’s an order to turn over “tangible things”; it refers to the Patriot Act, whose Section 215 allows the government to ask for “business records” that are “relevant” to an investigation, and that is what the government has decided to call these communication records. (Despite referring to these as “business,” the order says that the government doesn’t need “financial information.”) The sophistry lies in pretending that “metadata” is just about the transaction with Verizon—the business—rather than about the privacy of the callers.[...]

Should we have known this was going on? Last year, Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall wrote to Attorney General Holder about their concerns, based on classified briefings, about what they called “the controversial ‘business records’ provision” of the Patriot Act: “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn how these secret court opinions have interpreted Section 215.” They raise serious questions about how honest the Administration has been in describing this program, and make what may be the crucial point:

As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says….

To put it another way, Americans know that their government will sometimes conduct secret operations, but they don’t think that government officials should be writing secret law.

The problem, then, is not just secrecy, but meta-secrecy. The government let the public think that certain words mean one thing, while operating on the idea that they mean another.

Apart from Wyden and Udall, Congress was not nearly present enough. Nor were the courts: the FISA judges need to reëxamine their mandate. (This is where whistleblowers and investigative reporting come in.) And President Obama has to examine the question of what he can and can’t ascribe to the Bush Administration.

The Administration has, so far, let an official, who insisted on anonymity, speak for it. The official didn’t deny the report, but instead made four points: that this wasn’t about listening to actual voices; that it believed that knowing whom Americans were calling was “a critical tool in protecting the nation”; that “all three branches” knew; and that “there is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” That this is the defense does not make the story better; it makes it worse. It indicates that the assumptions here are systematic; Senator Dianne Feinstein came out and joined in them. Wyden and Udall are right: this is a sort of moment that requires a public debate—a political response—not just a gentle judicial reminder.

All three branches knew about this? Ah, how comforting! Then they are all complicit in this tyrannical invasion of privacy. Regrettably, the Obama administration’s woes don’t end there. Perched on top of this crisis is another blistering scandal that has just percolated into the public consciousness. This time it involves a top secret directive from last October detailing the administration’s plans to unleash the cyberattack hounds, both abroad and, possibly even, at home. The goal? To aggressively advance American objectives across the globe. Now, that’s what I call imperialism!

Glenn Greenwald writes,

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging”.[...]

The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency.

After having just barely shrugged off a troika of scandals and the creeping doubt that the Obama administration might be fallible, liberals seem to, once again, be succumbing to the reality that they’ve been had by a secretive, imperialist puppeteer. This time it won’t be nearly so easy to pull off the mental gymnastics needed to justify the administration’s devious behavior. Maybe liberals will finally come to understand what we silly libertarians have known all along: that the man in office is not just a capricious despot, but that party distinctions are largely farcical and imagined on the national stage. “It’s called protecting America” is how Sen. Feinstein, a so-called liberal Democrat, jingoistically described the NSA’s snooping, while Sen. Graham, a hawkish Republican and Verizon customer, said he was”glad” that the NSA might be prying into his private life and the lives of others. When a neoconservative hawk and a supposedly liberal Democrat are found holding hands on such ominous grounds, liberals better do some soul searching about their beliefs, their trust in elected officials, and the party they believe has their best interest at heart.

The temple of Obama has even been reduced to rubble among certain voices of the liberal press. For example, the Huffington Post recently headlined with a photoshopped picture, blending the White House portraits of Bush and Obama, with the name “George W. Obama” in bold lettering running across the screen. Even the New York Times, that vaunted rag of liberalism, dealt a stinging blow to  the administration by saying it had “lost all credibility” as a result of the NSA’s behavior. Now, if liberals could only just remember these days forevermore and learn from their folly.

Whether they will is hard to say. Regardless, this growing train of scandals proves that big government isn’t really accountable to voters, let alone capable of pulling all the levers as needed. Let’s face it: the depiction of our elected officials and bureaucrats as enlightened, altruistic servants of the people is overwhelmingly a figment of the liberal imagination. Sorry, liberals. These stories also prove that post-modernist moral relativism, though comforting and appealing in its lack of personal accountability, leads to dangerous political results. Those in Washington can do no wrong as long as truth and morality depend on the situation. Tyranny can always be made to look just when moral absolutes are discarded for convenience. It’s because we’ve exalted compromise and allowed our ethics to mutate with the circumstances that we’ve built and, then, foolishly wandered into the talons of, a bloated police state that supposedly exists for our own good, adored by both Democrats and Republicans alike. We don’t need the perverse, self-serving whims of secular megalomaniacs; rather, we need Jesus and godly leaders who will protect the oppressed and uphold the unyielding moral absolutes of God. I know it’s a lot to think about, liberals, but in case your despair leads you away from the empty political promises of man and toward the Lord, the light is on and the door is unlocked. Go ahead and make yourself at home. We have a lot to talk about.

One Question

If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

That is the question asked by Salon’s Michael Lind that libertarians supposedly can’t answer.

Lind writes,

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.

But this isn’t an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.

So, is Lind right? Has he slain the small government beast? Lind may think that he has libertarians cornered, but he’s not even close. First of all, Lind’s hypothetical libertarian says a lot about his weak understanding of libertarianism. Lind imagines libertarians, when pressed by the opposition for examples of libertarian policies, dredging up Chile’s private pension system or Sweden’s school voucher program as some of the most compelling examples of libertarian policy. Personally, I would have gone with something like President Harding’s “do-nothing” approach to the Depression of 1920, which was wildly successful, but, alas, Lind didn’t ask me, he asked a figment of his imagination. But I’ve got news for him: aside from maybe those lightweight, beltway libertarians over at the Cato Institute, neither of his examples would, or should, be wielded by most libertarians.

Let’s start with school vouchers, Swedish or otherwise. Since Salon chose to sandwich a picture of Ron Paul between Lind’s headline and the body of his crummy diatribe, why not get Paul’s opinion on school vouchers? Here’s Paul speaking on the issue in 2003:

Vouchers are a taxpayer-funded program benefiting a particular group of children selected by politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, the Federal voucher program supported by many conservatives is little more than another tax-funded welfare program establishing an entitlement to a private school education. Vouchers thus raise the same constitutional and moral questions as other transfer programs. Yet, voucher supporters wonder why middle-class taxpayers, who have to sacrifice to provide a private school education to their children, balk at being forced to pay more taxes to provide a free private education for another child.

It shouldn’t then come as a surprise that Paul consistently voted against voucher programs while in Congress. Therefore, I doubt he’d see much reason to celebrate Sweden’s voucher program any more than the one he’s already opposed.

The father of anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard, who was a giant of libertarianism and a primary inspiration to Ron Paul, had this to say about Milton Friedman’s efforts to promote school vouchers:

For Friedman maintains that it is legitimate for the government to interfere with the free market whenever anyone’s actions have ‘neighborhood effect.’ Thus, if A does something which will benefit B, and B does not have to pay for it, Chicagoites consider this a ‘defect’ in the free market, and it then becomes the task of government to ‘correct’ that defect by taxing B to pay A for this ‘benefit.’

It is for this reason that Friedman endorses government supplying funds for mass education, for example; since the education of kids is supposed to benefit other people, then the government is allegedly justified in taxing these people to pay for these ‘benefits.’ (Once again, in this area, Friedman’s pernicious influence has been in trying to make an inefficient State operation far more efficient; here he suggests replacing unworkable public schools by public voucher payments to parents – thus leaving intact the whole concept of tax-funds for mass education.)

What’s interesting is that Friedman is often construed as some “hardline libertarian” among liberals, but he was quite the statist in many regards, public education being one of them. In fact, Michael Lind is one such person to mistake Friedman as the premier libertarian thinker of the last half-century.

And though I’m not sure if Paul has ever weighed in on Chile’s pension system, I’m certain that he, as well as most libertarians, would not find Lind’s Chilean pension example to be any more compelling than school vouchers. In 1981, Chile switched from its pay-as-you-go system to an ostensibly private system, but “private” is not the same as “free market” or “laissez-faire,” and I don’t think Lind gets that. Ironically, this statist ploy was devised by some of Milton Friedman’s Chicago School acolytes. Friedman or not, Chile’s private system is still one rooted in statist coercion, which violates libertarianism’s “golden rule”: the non-aggression axiom. This principle simply states that all aggression is unjust and illegitimate. In 1981, Chileans were required by law, and under threat of force, to either continue in the old PAYGO system or contribute to the new private pension system. There’s nothing voluntary or libertarian about that arrangement. And even more to Lind’s chagrin, Chile’s private pension system, according to Barbara Kritzer of the Social Security Administration, ”is not a fully privatized system. The government plays a large financial and administrative role.” If Lind thinks that a subsidized pension system, where government has a “large role” to play is libertarian, then I don’t think he knows what libertarian means. In other words, that’s another swing and a miss, Michael.

But doesn’t the lack of libertarian countries destroy the libertarian argument? Not in the slightest. In no way does it detract from the righteousness of minuscule government, sound money, and free markets. If anything, this lack of libertarian nations only corroborates the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, though not all libertarians would agree with my Christian appraisal, which only goes to show that there’s more variety among libertarianism than Lind probably realizes. As I see it, it’s man’s depraved heart, once again, that prevents him from doing as he should. This may come as news to Lind, but power is intoxicating and free lunches are alluring.

Libertarian author Tom Woods handily eviscerates this silly point of Lind’s in a recent blog post. Woods writes,

For some reason, the finger-waggers at Salon think they’ve got us stumped with this one: “If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country in the world ever tried it?”

So this is the unanswerable question? What’s supposed to be so hard about it? Ninety percent of what libertarians write about answers it at least implicitly.

Let’s reword the question slightly, in order to draw out the answer. You’ll note that when stated correctly, the question contains an implicit non sequitur.

(1) “If your approach is so great, why doesn’t local law enforcement want to give up the money, supplies, and authority that come from the drug war?”

(2) “If your approach is so great, why don’t big financial firms prefer to stand or fall on their merits, and prefer bailouts instead?”

(3) “If your approach is so great, why do people prefer to earn a living by means of special privilege instead of by honest production?”

(4) “If your approach is so great, why does the military-industrial complex prefer its revolving-door arrangement and its present strategy of fleecing the taxpayers via its dual strategy of front-loading and political engineering?”

(5) “If your approach is so great, why do businessmen often prefer subsidies and special privileges?”

(6) “If your approach is so great, why do some people prefer to achieve their ends through war instead?”

(7) “If your approach is so great, why does the political class prefer to live off the labor of others, and exercise vast power over everyone else?”

In closing, I think it’s safe to say that poor Michael has struck out. Lind may think that he can baffle libertarians with his unassailable question, but judging from his overwhelming ignorance as to what libertarians believe and what humans are wont to do, I’d say the only one baffled is Michael Lind.

Up in Smoke

Beginning on May 19th, Sweden revealed its inner grotesqueness. Its placid, idyllic reputation was dashed to bits after the police fatally shot a 69-year-old immigrant wielding a machete. In ten of Stockholm’s immigrant enclaves, immigrants mostly of Iraqi and Iranian descent spent the ensuing week pelting local police with rocks and torching cars, police stations, and schools. On the first day of rioting, more than 100 cars were burned to a crisp. By the following Tuesday, the number of incinerated cars fell to approximately fifty. On Sunday, only 20 cars suffered such a fate.

So why have tempers flared in such a felicitous and peaceful place as Sweden?

The left squarely places the blame on the reduction of welfare benefits, the privatization of some public services, unemployment, and growing income inequality. But this isn’t so. Sure, benefits have been reduced and income inequality has risen, but benefits are remarkably extensive in comparison to most other countries, while the Gini coefficient of Sweden is still one of the lowest in Europe. And while the rate of immigrant unemployment may be three times the average unemployment rate, there are parts of Sweden with higher unemployment rates that are as quiet as can be.

That means that something else is to blame.

Andrew Higgins of the New York Times writes,

Sweden’s center-right prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, scornfully described the riots as “hooliganism,” while the Swedish Democrats, a far-right party, have seized on the violence to push their anti-immigrant stance and called for the deportation of nonnative Swedes who break the law. “This is not just a police issue,” said Jimmie Akesson, the party’s leader, but “a direct result of an irresponsible immigration policy that has created deep cracks in Swedish society.”

The left, which dominated Swedish politics for decades and devised the cradle-to-grave welfare system, has blamed reduced state benefits and a modest shift toward the privatization of public services for the unrest, pointing to an erosion of the country’s tolerant, egalitarian ethos[...]

But Stockholm’s immigrant enclaves, including Tensta and the nearby suburb of Husby, where the riots began May 19 after the police fatally shot a 69-year-old immigrant wielding a knife, show few outward signs of deprivation.

Created in the 1960s as part of a state building blitz to create a million new homes in a decade, Stockholm’s northern suburbs now offer well-tended parks, graceless but well-maintained public housing, well-equipped schools, youth centers, libraries and legions of social workers financed by the state.

Dejan Stankovic, the Serbian-born manager of a team of government youth workers that has joined parents and other volunteers on nightly street patrols, recalled a visit to the area by a group of mystified American social workers. “They said, ‘It is green and safe, so what is the problem?’ ”

One big problem is the lack of jobs. The national unemployment rate is about 8 percent, but the rate is at least twice as high in immigrant areas and four times as high for those under 25. But, said Nima Sanandaji, a Kurdish-Swedish author of several books on immigration who was born in Iran, remote areas in the north of Sweden have more people out of work, “but they are not throwing rocks and burning cars.”

Mr. Stankovic said he was sympathetic to immigrants’ complaints of discrimination in the job market. But, he added, many job seekers, particularly young men, had unrealistic demands and expected the state to find them work in their own neighborhoods. “There are a lot of people aged from 20 to 22 who say, ‘I want a job, I want it now, and I want to stay here,’ ” he said. “This is their problem, but it becomes a government problem.”

So, what exactly is to blame?

Human depravity. Though neither Sweden’s secular humanists nor its Muslim immigrants believe in original sin and the inherent depravity of man’s heart, this riotous experience affirms what Paul wrote to the Romans: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Rom. 3:10-11).

Depravity in Sweden

Sweden, though decades deep into its glorious socialist reeducation, has some pretty unenlightened racial attitudes. In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Swedish novelist Jonas Hassen Khemri described the typical Swedish immigrant’s experience as “low-intensity oppression.” According to a Swedish paper, the rioters in Husby were provoked by the police’s use of racial slurs. And while there’s surely more to the story, it should be noted that this isn’t the first time that accusations of racism among Sweden’s law enforcement have bubbled to the surface.

I can’t help but feel that part of Sweden’s act as intergalactic ambassadors of egalitarianism and fairness is just the nation’s way of flagrantly overcompensating for its history of involvement in eugenics. After all, Sweden was the first nation to create a government-subsidized eugenics institute; by the time its eugenics program came to a close in 1976, some 63,000 of its “socially unfit” had been left sterilized. It seems that this sentiment never really went away or, at least, not as much as Swedes would like to imagine.

Still, it takes two to tango, as they say, and Sweden’s dance partner would have to be the faith of the rioters: Islam. As I mentioned earlier, this recent week of rioting is the third incident among Muslim immigrants within the past five years. Native Swedes may be somewhat condescending and racist toward outsiders, but Muslims are a dyspeptic bunch who generally don’t care to assimilate and can justify their violent reactions according to the Qur’an.

Depravity in Islam

Sura 5:51, 54 read,

You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies: they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them—God does not guide such wrongdoers—[...] You who believe, if any of you go back on your faith, God will soon replace you with people He loves and who love Him, people who are humble towards the believers, hard on the disbelievers, and who strive in God’s way without fearing anyone’s reproach.

Being humble toward fellow Muslims and hard on the rest is the Muslim way. Whether it’s the torching of numerous embassies and death threats over a drawing of Muhammad or the torching of dozens of Christian homes by a massive mob in Lehore, Pakistan over one man’s single blasphemous remark, devout Muslims are anything but peaceful, except to their own kind. Not all of them are lunatics, of course, but there is undoubtedly a strong correlation between a Muslim’s religious devotion and his disgust toward disbelievers. The Qur’an speaks clearly: peaceful Muslims who avoid conflict with disbelievers are of a lower caliber than those who “strive in God’s way.” Sura 4:95 reads, “Those believers who stay at home, apart from those with an incapacity, are not equal to those who commit themselves and their possessions to striving in God’s way. God has raised such people to a rank above those who stay at home—although He has promised all believers a good reward, those who strive are favored with a tremendous reward above those who stay at home.”

The Way Forward

Decades of supposed socialist excellence have done nothing to attenuate the racist and arrogant hearts of the Swedish people. Truth be told, socialism has done nothing to make Swedes, the French, or the British any less depraved. Sweden is living proof that dispensing entitlements is not the same as being compassionate in a Biblical sense. While Sweden’s welfare state may be mighty, it certainly isn’t one that is rooted in respect or love for God and one’s fellow man—rather, it is based upon a system of coercive taxation that is nothing more than legalized theft. True charity and compassion are characterized by giving as one has decided in his heart (2 Cor. 9:7), without reluctance or compulsion, not by what government tax assessors demand from the people.

Likewise, the moral bankruptcy of Islam is just as apparent as the hollowness and arrogance of Sweden’s statist compassion. Islam is supposedly a moderate religion of peace, and yet the Qur’an is clear that disbelievers are not to be trusted and are, in fact, to be opposed. Those who devote their lives and lucre to Allah are superior to those Muslims who don’t, who are then greater than all those miserable disbelievers who deny Islam.

If you juxtapose the haughty attitude of native Swedes with the fractious and insular attitude of Sweden’s Muslim immigrants, it’s no wonder that Stockholm was blitzed. While immigrants need sincere dignity and respect, and not some subsidized veneer of respect that is financed through coercive taxation, native Swedes need the love and prayers of the immigrants, not their vengeance and strife. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:44: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The panacea doesn’t lie in reducing income inequality, upping welfare benefits, or cracking down on immigrants. Policies come and go, and yet the darkened hearts will always remain. Short of God’s grace bringing them in concordance with His righteous will, the Swedes will remain blind, conceited in their falsely compassionate welfare state and ethnic superiority, while Muslims, Swedish or otherwise, will continue to see the disbelieving world as deserving of their hardness, rather than humbleness. Short of a miracle, these two will come to blows again.

Irreverent Babble from the Ivory Tower

This morning, my wife gave birth to a lovely (and massive) baby boy and  so, until I’m back in the saddle, I’m going to post some “oldies but goodies.” Blessings!

“Oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge,’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.” – I Timothy 6:20

Some things don’t seem to have changed. Despite Paul’s best efforts, it’s undeniable that faith in “knowledge” and scientific research rules the roost these days. Materialistic determinism still seems to be the predominant philosophical worldview of academics, whereby the world is here by chance and is merely the product of matter interacting with other bits of matter. For the laity, “peer-reviewed” is synonymous with indisputable fact and the professional suffix of PhD is tantamount to unquestionable brilliance. But what if the scientific literature, as revealing and fascinating as it can sometimes be, isn’t worthy of such idolatry, but is often contrived, biased, of mediocre quality, and, thus, of little value to anyone? Moreover, what if whatever redeeming qualities that can be found in scientific research only exist because of God’s consistent nature (Mal. 3:6) and the fact that man, every unbelieving academic included, is made in His image?

Ultimately, God makes scientific research possible, which means non-believing researchers are unwittingly borrowing from the Christian worldview when they assume the constancy of certain physical laws and the predictability of the future. According to the late theologian and apologist, Greg Bahnsen,

The espoused or consciously used presuppositions of the non-Christian cannot account for or theoretically ground factuality or knowledge, explain the amenability of unifying logical principles and diversifying factual particulars, or do anything but inevitably destroy reason and human personality and the very possibility of meaningful prediction. On the other hand, the presuppositions of the Christian (taken from the Word of God) salvage the scientific endeavor, account for the fruitful connection of logic and facts, ground human personality, provide a theoretical basis for knowledge, and guard the meaningfulness of prediction and the usefulness of reason.

Of course, this is not how godless men see things. Such men place scientists on a pedestal under the pretense that they are somehow devoid, or at least less prone, to the crass biases of ordinary folks and are better equipped to assess and interpret reality. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

First of all, a lot of research is not replicable. For example, a former researcher and his team at Amgen Inc., a prestigious biotech firm, attempted to replicate the results of 53 landmark studies in the field of oncology, most of which came from university labs, but his team only managed to do so for 6 of the 53 studies. Mind you, these were important, high-impact studies. In another attempt to replicate a large number of studies, all of which claimed to find sex differences, Dr. John Ioannidis and his colleagues were able to replicate the results of only one out of 432 studies. That’s a whopping 0.2%. Dr. Ioannidis’s comment on the matter was simple: “There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims. A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true.” Ouch.

To be fair, results may not be replicable for a variety of reasons. Sometimes variables are assumed to be held constant, when, in fact, they are not. Sometimes poor experimental design is to blame, and sometimes it’s something more subtle like bias. Occasionally, even fraud is to blame. One practice that seems to be fairly common is that of torturing the data until they confess. As Robert Lee Hotz, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, put it, “Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets.”

Secondly, the peer review process, though held in high esteem for its alleged rigor, is prone to bias and serious error. Richard Smith writes in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that “People have a great many fantasies about peer review, and one of the most powerful is that it is a highly objective, reliable, and consistent process.” Smith goes on to describe a notable study by Peters and Ceci that looked at bias among reviewers. According to Smith, Peters and Ceci “took 12 studies that came from prestigious institutions that had already been published in psychology journals. They retyped the papers, made minor changes to the titles, abstracts, and introductions but changed the authors’ names and institutions. They invented institutions with names like the Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential. The papers were then resubmitted to the journals that had first published them. In only three cases did the journals realize that they had already published the paper, and eight of the remaining nine were rejected—not because of lack of originality but because of poor quality.” That sounds like bias against “less prestigious sounding” institutions, if you ask me.

Some biases make academics’ sensibilities out to be a lot more crass than what the awestruck laity is aware of or would like to believe. Publication bias against negative studies is certainly one example of such base sensibilities. There’s nothing sexy about publishing studies that find interventions to be ineffective, so they usually don’t make it into the journals. What’s sad for those holding out hope that academia will change and improve is that this particular problem was addressed in the literature some 35 years ago when psychologist Michael Mahoney pondered the possible courses of action against, what he described as being, the “apparent prejudice against ‘negative’ or disconfirming results.” Mahoney continues by saying, “I have argued elsewhere that this bias may be one of the most pernicious and counterproductive elements in the social sciences” (Mahoney, 1976). But, hey, maybe academia will things right in the next 35 years.

And despite the perception of scientists being rational and thorough, researchers are about as vain and cliquish as a bunch of high school girls. If one submits good work in a field that is nascent and underdeveloped or currently unpopular, then it’s likely to be rejected. A paper with noticeable design flaws that fits the current paradigm held by the reviewers is more likely to get a pass than a paper that challenges their paradigm, but possesses sound analysis and robust results.

What’s particularly odd is that peer review’s exalted, high-quality status seems to be unsubstantiated and based, ironically, upon faith. In 2002, Drs. Jefferson, Wager, and Davidoff attempted to measure the quality of editorial peer review and found that “Despite its wide acceptance, peer review has been subjected to a variety of criticisms, and, indeed, surprisingly little is known about its effects on the quality and utility of published information, much less about its beneficial or adverse social, psychological, or financial effects.” Simply put, scientists haven’t a clue how deleterious or beneficial the peer review process is or has been, but cling to it anyway.

Finally, there is the problem of just outright mediocrity. Academia is simply brimming with average scholars and is awash in unimportant research. As the number of researchers has grown over the years, the number of refereed/scholarly publications has grown with it at a pace of 3.26% per year. As wonderful as that may sound in theory, it’s seemingly leading to poorer research quality. Bauerlein et al. found that while innovative research continues in some areas, “the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in recent decades.” Twenty years ago, Science found that only 45 percent of the articles published in the top 4,500  scientific journals were cited within the first five years after publication. In 2009, Péter Jacsó published an article finding that only 40.6 percent of the articles published in the top science and social-science journals were cited between 2002 and 2006. If most research ends up being of little value even to fellow academics, either because of study design flaws or inconsequential findings, then wouldn’t it be fair to say that most research has been a waste of precious time and resources?

A good example of just how shoddy research might actually be comes from just a few years ago. A British study assessed the experimental design, analyses, and the reporting of 271 recent studies using animals as test subjects. The results were embarrassing. Kilkenny at al. found “problems both with the transparency of reporting and the robustness of the statistical analysis of almost 60% of the publications surveyed.” Only 8% of the studies surveyed provided the raw data necessary for others to reproduce the results. Only 59% of the studies stated a hypothesis or the objective of the study and the characteristics of the animals used. Only 70% of the publications that used statistical analyses described their methods with any measure of error or variability. Only 13% of the studies were randomized, while only 14% used blind assessments, thus indicating that bias probably distorted the results in most of the studies.

What makes this pervasive mediocrity even more frustrating is that retractions are almost nonexistent. According to the aforementioned Wall Street Journal article, “informatics expert Murat Cokol and his colleagues at Columbia University sorted through 9.4 million research papers at the U.S. National Library of Medicine published from 1950 through 2004 in 4,000 journals. By raw count, just 596 had been formally retracted, Dr. Cokol reported.” There is no way that such a minuscule number of retractions is reflective of the quality of the research, especially considering the copious flaws discovered in the research as of late. If anything, it alludes not only to how overworked many reviewers are, but it also sheds light on the academic culture at large. Namely, there’s no glory for those who want to double-check the work of others and set the record straight. Furthermore, picking apart the work of one’s colleagues is a show of poor decorum in the academic world. Quite frankly, I can’t help but believe that academia thrives on the laity’s presumption that men in lab coats almost always know better.

Now, I’m not trying to claim that scientific experiments are pointless intellectual exercises. I’m sure some atheistic liberal will read this and simply, albeit fallaciously, dismiss this as another “anti-science” screed from a loopy Christian, but I can assure you that I’m not opposed to science. Rather, I believe that the God of the Bible must be presupposed in order for scientific research to be possible. In my mind, it’s God’s world that scientists scrutinize, not some inert ball of matter that is the product of chance. Lord willing, I hope, at the very least, this post challenges some deeply held convictions about the primacy and supposed excellence of scientific research. Ineptitude, hubris, fallacious reasoning, and ignorance are common to all men, even our most venerated scientists. After all, science is only ever performed by biased and flawed humans, which will necessarily result in biased and flawed research. In other posts, I’ve talked about how laymen, even well-educated laymen, are often guided by gross misconceptions, like the belief that gays constitute 25% of the population when the number is actually 1-3%. I wonder—if people actually knew that the majority of research out there is irreplicable and irreparably burdened by false claims, would academia still hold such a hallowed status in the minds of so many? I think not.

Abenomic Dross

Keynesians are watching with bated breath to see if the full-throttled quantitative easing of Shinzo Abe’s Japan will rescue the nation as they hoped. In April, the Bank of Japan promised to buy $1.43 trillion worth of Japanese bonds, and maybe even more, over the next couple of years in order to hit its target of 2 percent inflation.

And, of course, in May the newly printed yen coursed through the Japanese economy in a predictably bullish fashion, and Keynesians uncorked their champagne in celebration. They celebrated all month long…until last Thursday.

On Thursday the Nikkei, Japan’s stock market index, collapsed 7.1 percent in an unexpected flash crash. By the following Tuesday, it had taken another beating or two. In fact, in just five or six days time, all of May’s gains have evaporated.

Could this be the beginning of the end for Abenomics? Maybe. It will fail in the long run, because God will not be mocked. Diluting the value of a currency is indeed dishonest thievery; it’s fraud. The yen of yesterday is not the yen of today—it’s becoming increasingly worthless, and God hates that. Devaluing currency particularly injures the poor, the elderly living on fixed incomes, and those prudent citizens who have played by the rules. However, no one oppresses the poor and weak and gets away with it. No one turns silver into dross (Isa. 1:22) or uses false scales (Prov. 20:23) and gets away with it.

It may take some time for Keynesianism to implode finally and completely, but at least these past five days have forced Keynesians to wipe the smug, triumphant smirks off their faces and put the corks back in their bottles of champagne.

The Wolf in Pretty Red Slippers

On Wednesday, at an informal morning Mass, Pope Francis revealed himself to be fraudulent in a most humiliating fashion. He propounded the heretical notion that atheists are good and have even been saved by Jesus Christ. For a man who sits in Peter’s throne, you’d think he would know better than to contradict God and His word, but I guess not.

Pope Francis’s troubles began with his interpretation of Mark 9:38-40, the basis of his homiletic message on Wednesday. His teaching of Scripture should be infallible and flawless, assuming the doctrine of papal infallibility is correct. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines “papal infallibity” as “the supernatural prerogative by which the Church of Christ is, by a special Divine assistance, preserved from liability to error in her definitive dogmatic teaching regarding matters of faith and morals.” Keep that in mind.

The passage in Mark reads:

John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us.

And here’s Radio Vatican’s synopsis of Pope Francis’s exposition:

Wednesday’s Gospel speaks to us about the disciples who prevented a person from outside their group from doing good. ‘They complain,’ the Pope said in his homily, because they say, ‘If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.’ And Jesus corrects them: ‘Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.’ The disciples, Pope Francis explains, ‘were a little intolerant,’ closed off by the idea of ​​possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.’ ‘This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.’ Pope Francis said, ‘The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.’

John, a godly but nevertheless fallen man, is rebuked for wanting to exclude a presumably unrecognized, self-described Christian. It’s John and the other disciples who were the special ones charged with the power to heal, not this anonymous healer. This comes across as well intentioned, but haughty. It was for this haughtiness toward another Christian, who was not part of the elite circle, that John was rebuked. But what is problematic about the Pope’s interpretation is that he seems to miss that the healer was, indeed, a Christian and not an atheist. The healer may have foolishly balked at the disciples’ authority, but he knew Christ. His theology may have been muddled, and he should have submitted to their authority, but as long as he was working in the name of Christ—which he was—then Jesus was pleased.

But the Pope seems to think this man casting out demons in Jesus’s name was a fraud, an unbeliever. He seems to think that Jesus taught his disciples a new precept, that unbelievers, not explicitly against us, are for us. However, that would mean that the Pope’s Jesus is at odds with the authentic Jesus who says in Matthew 12:30, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” Unbelievers are not with Christ, therefore they are against Christ. Proverbs 24:9 tells us that scoffers are an “abomination to mankind.” The man in Mark 9:38 was not a scoffer against Christ, though his understanding was surely flawed. The same can’t be said for atheists, though. They aren’t doing anything in Jesus’s name or seeking to glorify God as this healer was. To all of them, Jesus never saved a single soul; to many, he never even existed. Atheists are scoffers. So, no, Jesus didn’t broaden any horizon as it pertains to the ability of atheists to do good.

But let’s suppose Jesus did broaden the horizons a bit. If He did, then Paul promptly narrowed them in Ephesians 4:17-24:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

There is a distinct difference in quality and power between the new self and the old self. Yes, we all should do good, but as long as the atheist remains ignorant, darkened, and futile in this thinking and conscience, thanks to sin, then he can’t do good as he should, save for God’s occasional and temporary restraint. This temporary restraint of sin and its sting is called common grace. The late Calvinist theologian A. A. Hodge described the effects of common grace as “superficial and transient, modifying the action, but not changing the nature; and its influence is always more or less consciously resisted, as opposed to the prevailing dispositions of the soul.” Atheists simply aren’t equipped as the Christian is to do good. The Pope speaks of everyone having a duty to do good, but if atheists suppress the truth by their unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18), then their duty is to the idols of their darkened hearts (Rom. 1:23), not to the one, true, living God.

But Pope Francis’s foolishness didn’t stop there. He then went on to repeatedly and emphatically assert that everyone is redeemed, even the avowed atheist. This conclusion has to follow from his tortured exposition of Mark 9:38-40. If he thinks the accosted healer was an unbeliever, and Jesus gave his blessing for his false ministry, then atheists today have Jesus’s blessing, too. This is not merely bad exposition, though. It’s heresy.

Here are some of Francis’s remarks:

The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.

Today is [the feast of] Santa Rita, Patron Saint of impossible things – but this seems impossible: let us ask of her this grace, this grace that all, all, all people would do good and that we would encounter one another in this work, which is a work of creation, like the creation of the Father. A work of the family, because we are all children of God, all of us, all of us! And God loves us, all of us! May Santa Rita grant us this grace, which seems almost impossible. Amen.

The Pope seems to forget that we are all, by nature, fallen creatures incapable of doing good on our own. If all are redeemed, as he says, then so are the atheists, despite their unbelief. But if one is guaranteed salvation without believing in Jesus, then what is the value of believing? Moreover, what was the point of Jesus’s death?  If Pope Francis were correct in his understanding, then there would be no point to faith or in Jesus’s atonement. It would likewise be senseless to differentiate between wheat and chaff (Matt. 3:12), and sheep and goats (Matt. 25:32-33, 41). It would be inexplicably bizarre that Jesus, during the Lord’s supper, told his disciples that the blood of the covenant was poured out for many, but not all (Matt. 26:28) and, in the book of John, prayed, not for the world, but only for those whom the Father had given Him (Jn. 17:9).

Though this news pleased atheists to no end, it understandably rattled many in the Christian world. For the Pope to be who he says he is, and his doctrinal teaching to be infallible, the Bible must be false along with the God who wrote it. Now, either the Pope’s moral teaching isn’t infallible after all, and he is a ravenous wolf with rotten fruit, or he’s still right and infallible in his teaching, and it’s everyone else that has made errors in criticizing the man. Can you guess which explanation Catholics pursued?

Dan Merica of CNN wrote,

The Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, said that people who [are] aware of the Catholic church “cannot be saved” if they “refuse to enter her or remain in her.”

At the same time, Rosica writes, “every man or woman, whatever their situation, can be saved. Even non-Christians can respond to this saving action of the Spirit. No person is excluded from salvation simply because of so-called original sin.”

Rosica also said that Francis had “no intention of provoking a theological debate on the nature of salvation,” during his homily on Wednesday.

Although the pope’s comments about salvation surprised some, bishops and experts in Catholicism say Francis was expressing a core tenant [sic] of the faith.

“Francis was clear that whatever graces are offered to atheists (such that they may be saved) are from Christ,” the Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a conservative Catholic priest, wrote on his blog.

“He was clear that salvation is only through Christ’s Sacrifice. In other words, he is not suggesting – and I think some are taking it this way – that you can be saved, get to heaven, without Christ.”

Sorry, but Pope Francis was abundantly clear when he exclaimed, “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!” There is no mere offer or possibility of salvation, it is undeniably certain that all are redeemed. In fact, one would have to be blatantly disingenuous to view the obviousness of Pope Francis’s remarks as something else. The only way for the Pope to weasel out of this disaster would be if the transcript were falsified and made to look heretical, but I’ve yet to hear such an allegation.

So, what does this mean? It means that Catholics are lemmings wandering in darkness, because they follow a Pope who is nothing more than a false prophet and false prophets are ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing. It means that mature Christians, who have been given discernment (Heb. 5:14), know him by his fruit, and this fruit stinks to high heaven.

Good Lap Dogs

More than a couple times now I’ve written about the supposed psychological traits of liberals, especially those researchers whoj portray them as a fiercely independent and intelligent bunch, bravely suspicious of authority. But as I’ve demonstrated before, that’s not exactly true.

The question isn’t “Do they oppose authority?” but “Whose authority are they opposing?”

It’s certainly not Obama’s.

Jill Lawrence at Atlantic Monthly writes,

Another day, another poll showing that President Obama’s job-approval rating is not collapsing under the weight of scandals and controversies. Why is he holding steady? Will it last? And will Republicans take any cues from his staying power?[...]

Republican Bill McInturff and Democrat Stan Greenberg agree that Obama is in a relatively strong position short of “a real set of facts that implicates the president,” as Greenberg put it. The reasons include Obama’s steadfast coalition of blacks, Latinos, and young people, and a Washington tradition of leaving the president in the dark.

The president’s core base has kept his approval rating in the mid-40s or higher through the five years of his presidency, McInturff says, and won’t desert him. He calls that unusual, and you only have to look back one administration to see why. George W. Bush had job-approval ratings in the 20s and 30s for most of his second term. Obama’s job approval could drop over time due to the controversies, McInturff says, “but will they restructure his job approval? Not with the information we have today.”

What good lap dogs.

And why are they such good lap dogs?

For some, it’s only because Obama hasn’t yet been directly implicated, even though his underlings at the IRS, State Department, DOJ, Health and Human Services, and EPA have all looked like bullies, dopes, or dopey bullies. For others, it’s probably because—in their minds—there’s no one better to cling to.

Neither excuse is godly.

Firstly, if the President is loyal to a cabinet and certain pet bureaucrats who lack scruples and competence, then that is reflective of the President’s moral character, whether he’s directly involved or not. There’s either legitimate malfeasance or mere absent-minded negligence involved in these scandals. And, secondly, to support a lesser evil in the face of greater evil still suggests that one is comfortable supporting evil. God never forces us to approve of evil (1 Cor. 10:13).

In other words, liberals are such good lap dogs because of sin.

Their hearts are dark as pitch and, because of this, they lack understanding (Eph. 4:18-19). Scripture also tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10) and liberals don’t fear the Lord. It’s no wonder, then, that their moral compasses are so broken that they indifferently shrug off these events as “faux-scandals” that were “concocted by the GOP outrage machine.” Really, it’s those expressing righteous indignation at this nebulous confluence of government overreach, arrogance, and incompetence who are truly annoying and contemptible. Surely, some of that annoyance—if not most of it—is because their idol of a powerful, competent, and compassionate government looks more and more like an impossible figment of their imaginations the longer it is raked over the coals. They hate being made to feel stupid, but the facts are the facts. What’s worse is that liberals are so calloused and senseless that they even lie to themselves about their very nature and personality. They see themselves as intelligent, independent questioners of authority and yet, here they are, almost unquestioningly glued to that budding tyrant in the White House, regardless of the facts.

And speaking of facts, there are plenty that should give them pause in their support of Obama. That burgeoning despot Obama and his lackeys have perpetuated the Patriot Act, repeatedly signed the NDAA with its language of indefinite detention, encouraged extrajudicial drone killings, failed to close Gitmo as promised, and prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined (yes, including Bush’s). That’s one authority that doesn’t deserve approbation, but chastisement. And yet many don’t agree and if they do, their indignation doesn’t last for very long. Pretty soon, their disgust fades and they return to proper flying formation, lock-step with the rest of their fellow loyalists.

This is what happens when secular liberals don’t submit to the counsel and rule of Jesus Christ. They waffle about, arrogantly deceiving themselves and others as to their superior intelligence and autonomy, all the while clinging to a series of false authorities and tyrants for salvation without a modicum of that fabled liberal “reason.” Only darkened hearts would lie to themselves and others that ignoring, condoning, or celebrating evil, as it is conveyed in the Bible, is the way toward “hope and change.” And that’s often just what they do and what they have done in light of these recent scandals. But evil doesn’t possess a whit of hope or change. Only Jesus has claim to those.