Charlatans and the Gospel

The other night, as I finished my homework, my two roommates were flipping through the TV channels. Sadly, the paid programming of late night TV often has more humor, albeit unintentional, than most comedy sitcoms during prime time. My roommates found their way to the Inspiration Network, which was hosting one of those televangelist programs that more resemble a PBS money drive than the preaching of the Gospel. The pastor, who I will not name, was preaching on the story of Elisha and the widow and the account of the Shumannite woman and her son. After thirty minutes of inchoate shouting and dramatics, characterized with what was at best a questionable hermeneutic, I gleaned that the essential message of his “sermon” (though performance would probably be a more apt term) was that we should pledge $500 and he would pray to God for us and He will solve all of our problems; financial, relational, psychological. His message would probably have made the infamous indulgence salesmen John Tetzel blush. I was regaled with sweeping claims that faith in Jesus (and, more specifically, my giving of $500) would cancel my debt, improve my health, bless me materially, and (I think) even raise loved ones from the dead. It was the health and wealth gospel at its finest. By the way, I like to think that few human beings had more faith in Jesus than St. Paul and he was imprisoned, beaten to near death, lashed, stoned, shipwrecked three times, left adrift at sea, despised by his own people, exposed to the elements, suffered from hunger, and finally was martyred in Rome by Nero.

After his message the pastor ascended to a set of Jesus’ tomb, which was perched in a high corner of the auditorium (for reasons I still don’t understand). For the next half-hour the pastor basically kept shouting the same things over and over again until he was short of breath: you should send me your money so that I can pray for God to bless you. I really wanted to call in and ask him the same question Luther proposed to the pope; if you could pray for people to be blessed, why not do it out of love rather than for money? It seemed that a good proportion of the $500 dollars from each of the 5,000 people who pledged money ($2.5 million total, if his claim was actually correct) must have gone to pay for his silk suit, the vast auditorium that his mega-church met in (10-18,000 members strong!), the Starbucks in his mega-church, and the extravagant set that had been constructed there in the likeness of first century Jerusalem. I am only assuming because he never really told us where all the money for his “ministry” was being spent or what the purpose of his “ministry” really was. After the time for pledging closed, the stone in front of the tomb was rolled away, unleashing a cloud smoke and flashes of light. The pastor had told the audience that true believers would see angels. I’m not sure he was entirely serious. In any case I did not see any angels, but then again I suppose that I am not among the true believers.

The program was simultaneously hilarious and revolting. I could not help feeling that the pastor deserved to be situated nearby one of Dante’s popes in the afterlife. Perhaps my extreme reaction is due to the fact that pastor’s performance comprises all of what I find despicable in contemporary American Christianity. Its style of worship is nothing short of pagan; it demands sacrifices (money) to appease God so he can bless you and give you health, wealth, happiness. God in contemporary American Christianity is little different from a Greek god, albeit more grandfatherly and tame, who can be commanded and manipulated according to certain rituals or actions. Moreover, God does not exist to be worshipped for the mere sake that He is God and or even to bring us salvation. God in the mega-church, like the Greek or Roman pantheon, exists to bless us with health, wealth, and happiness provided that we please him. Essentially he exists to please us. True, many Christians in all ages have turned to God for His strength in hope that He would provide some sort of security for them. And I do not mean to deny that many of the first Christians converted because they saw the power of God displayed before them. The glorious thing about the Christian faith is that it is based on God’s grace with no respect to our individual merit and even our most earthly desires can be used to point us to the greater truths about God. However, I do not believe that the position of a third century Bedouin or a tribal Bushman, who accepted Christ only because of the miracles of a saint or missionary, is someone to be exemplified. Christ tells us that to whom much has been given, much is expected. I believe that in the end we will be judged according to the means to which we have been blessed. But contemporary Americans have been blessed with much; with ample opportunities of education and contemplation (this pastor claimed to be a “doctor,” in what he never tells) and so what churches like this do is inexcusable. Moreover, it may be excusable for recent converts to still be in some degree of darkness but for the Church, who is obligated to spread the truth of the Gospel, to preach base and false doctrines is not.

Christians are commanded to be a light in the darkness. Unfortunately, now, as has often be the case, we do not. We fail and we fail to a miserable degree. We decree that the empire is now the Kingdom of God made manifest, we launched crusades, we burn heretics, we go on holy wars, and we commit fraud. However, we cannot focus on the Church’s earthly existence. St. Paul knew this as well as anyone. He was painfully aware of the failings of the Corinthians, fully admitting that they did what was unheard of, even among pagans. But St. Paul had one comfort, one reason to boast; Jesus Christ. The Gospel, testified to us by the Holy Spirit, is out ideal and the Church is obligated to point all men to this ideal and hold fast to it. Contemporary Christianity has a theology of mediocrity. I like to call it “therapeutic theism.” It involves the belief that God is a grandfather in heaven who exists to bless us and make our lives pleasant and to perhaps, on occasion, rain judgment down on those who disagree with us. It causes contemporary Christians to focus in the things of this earth and to stop there and become complacent. God may indeed bless us materially, but this is not His end. His end is to make us Sons of God and this is a very painful and unpleasant process indeed. The theology of the contemporary American Church ignores Paul’s admonition not to focus on the things of the flesh but to yearn for the things of the Spirit. We do not run the good race, looking toward the finish and the crown of victory, but lay down soon after the start. Christians far too often do not follow the example of Paul but of that of the Hare who was beaten by the Tortoise because he fell asleep during the race. American Christians lust for drama, entertainment, good programs, and nice social gatherings instead of working out our salvation in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, contemplating the glory of God, engaging Him in prayer, marveling at His creation, and proclaiming the good news to the poor.

In short, we Christians do not seek things divine but seek base and trivial things. Part of sin is elevating those things that are part of creation, including ourselves, to the place where God ought to be. We cheat God out of the worship and reverence He deserves when we do this. In this we are terrible fools. I can think of no better example of this than sex. We live an age that glorifies sex, often making it the chief end of man. Christians respond in a very interesting way to this idolatry; they idolize it further. They speak of modern man “debasing” sex, when what he has really done is put it on a pedestal. When I was in high school I went to a youth retreat that dealt with sexual purity, but did so by speaking of sex with a reverence that is akin to communion or baptism! The problem with sex outside of marriage is not that it debases sex, but that sex becomes banal substitute for our true purpose; to be sons of God. We become so enthralled by the pleasures of sex that we turn away from our calling for something higher; true love. Love is a reflection of the most holy Trinity in which for all eternity the three Persons surrender to each other in love becoming one Being. For this is what Scripture says; “the two shall become one flesh.” As Christians, we need do what the hymn says and turn our eyes upon Jesus. As best as we can, we must endeavor to run the good race with our eyes constantly on the prize of becoming true sons of God, living not according to the flesh but of the Spirit. I leave you with this passage of St. Paul to reflect on these things:

¹If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ²Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. ³For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-3)

Faith

In the last post I talked about faith and reason without really defining either. I do not know that the definition of either is really understood by most people in a clear or correct way. When most think of reason they probably think of rational intuition; perceiving whether things make sense. Others might think of reason as the formal rules of logic, say modus ponens and syllogisms. Yet it is also proper, I think, to add perception and the senses to this definition, hence including the sciences as well as mathematics and philosophy. Suffice it to say, reasoning is something that men do; it is how men figure things out about the world. Many contemporary Christians are in the habit of rejecting reason to a certain extent, believing that it is wholly corrupted by sin. In a sense they are right, sin affects our whole being, including our reasoning capabilities. Men seek not the truth. Yet I know of nowhere in Scripture where the Word preaches skepticism. It was Athens and not Jerusalem that produced the school of the Cynics. What I believe Scripture does teach is that while the world can produce knowledge it is not the knowledge of the City of God but of the City of the World; it can produce truth, and truth that can be incorporated by Christians, but truth that is aimed not at knowing God but at pleasing man. And that is where faith comes in. Faith is that which corrects our noetic structure. What, then, is faith? I believe that the Heidelberg Catechism explains it better than I could:

Question 21. What is true faith?

Answer: True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, (a) but also an assured confidence, (b) which the Holy Ghost (c) works by the gospel in my heart; (d) that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, (e) are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits. (f)

Question 22. What is then necessary for a Christian to believe?

Answer: All things promised us in the gospel, (a) which the articles of our catholic undoubted Christian faith briefly teach us.

Question 23. What are these articles?

Answer: 1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: 2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord: 3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary: 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell: 5. The third day he rose again from the dead: 6. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty: 7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: 8. I believe in the Holy Ghost: 9. I believe a holy catholic church: the communion of saints: 10. The forgiveness of sins: 11. The resurrection of the body: 12. And the life everlasting.

Faith and Reason

This is currently one of the topics I have been thinking heavily about because it is playing a crucial role in many of my classes this year. I am taking a class on Rise of Christianity and a class on athropology this semester so naturally this question has been coming up quite a bit. As far as I can see there are essentially three views of reason:

1. Faith Completes Reason - The Thomist view. The view of Aquinas and many Catholic philosophers/theologians today. Faith and reason are both forms of warranted belief but they exist in their own spheres. Faith is something extra added to reason. E.g. the existence of God may be shown true or probable by philosophy but it requires faith to know about doctrines such as the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Trinity.

2. Faith Justified by Reason - The Lockean view. The view of most modernists. Faith can only be accepted in so much as reason confirms it. Reason is the bar to which all else must bend. Doctrines such as the existence of God, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Trinity are to be believed only to the degree that reason shows them to be rational. E.g. One can only believe Scripture if one has good proofs that Scripture ought to be believed.

3. Faith Complements Reason - The Augustinian View. The view of Augustine, Anselm, and the Reformed thinkers (both modern and pre-modern). It takes the deliverances of faith on the same ground as the deliverances of reason and does philosophy (or any other discipline for that matter) on the assumption that both are reliable sources of knowledge. Faith is a priori knowledge and therefore needs no argument from reason just as sense perception needs no argument from reason (nor is a non-circular one even possible). Faith and reason are seen to complement one another.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I personally see the third as the best choice because I see the deliverances of faith on the same epistemic grounds as reason and sense perception. Just as I perceive, say, a tree, so I also perceive that God exists or that God speaks to me through Scripture and Sacrament.

Joy

I think that the thing that irks me the most about the world today is the reduction of all things to their utility. No doubt if anyone has taken an economics class they will be told that the value of a thing is found in its utility, or, to be more precise (as in the case of the water/diamond paradox), in a thing's personal utility. What this does, I think, is create a world of mediocrity; a world of power, fitness, and survival. Everything is good in so far as it achieves our ends. Indeed, the modern world hates excellence for the sake of excellence. The reason is that excellence is difficult to attain and it has absolutely nothing to do with gaining power, making money, or being biologically fit. Therefore, moderns try to reduce excellence to fitness and power. They think a scene beautiful because our ancestors found food or shelter there. They think love is good because it helped make society better. But can we really accept this? Why is it when all of the supposedly transcendent and excellent things in the world have been reduced, allegedly, to biochemistry do we feel so utterly disconcerted? Why must something be good simply for the sake of being good? I think because in the end we know that these things are not really what the moderns have reduced them to being. Its not merely that we like art or nature or good morals or that we think they are useful. They have an ought quality to them. They have a feeling of transcendence about them and we know by their very nature that they are intrinsically good. We know that ultimately they point to a reality that is above our own and no dose of doublethink can convince us otherwise.

What these things are, are pure joy. I think nothing can prove my case more than to point out that excellence has very little survival advantage. How can someone honestly think that love really has survival advantage? Maternal and paternal love and camaraderie may indeed be beneficial. But the belief that we should honestly "Do unto others that you would have them do unto you," or yet "Love one another as I have loved you" because it is beneficial for ourselves or even society is foolish. Take one glance modern politics, modern business, and every single civilization that has ever existed and you will see that the opposite of these values are the ones that truly have fitness. Every civilization has been assembled by violence and cruelness. Justice is a particularly annoying thing when it comes to constructing a nation or business; for everywhere we must sacrifice what really needs to be done for the sake of what is "right." The same with beauty. Can one really think expending time and resources to make art has survival advantage? It might be said that all art is a reflection of nature and artistry is tied to our desire for nature, but this just begs the question; why nature should be beautiful. Why should be find it beautiful, good, and desirable. True some aspects of nature should have been attractive (say a fertile river valley) because men would have settled there and survived there. But the irony is that it is not the tame things of nature that we find beautiful. Rather it is the most exotic things that fill us with a sense of beauty and joy. Seas and the rain forests are hardly suitable to survival. Neither are storms or dangerous animals. Yet all of these things exude beauty.

Ultimately, we pursue excellence and transcendent things for one simple reason; joy. And what is joy? Joy is God and enjoying him forever. This is because all of the joyous things were made by God and reflect his nature. Joy in the Christian faith is not an easy thing. It does not have fitness. As Christ said, "whosoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Neither does Christian joy produce material blessing and power. As James, the brother of our Lord, said, "Count it as all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds." The joy of a Christian is not in survival. Rather it is God, who gives meaning to our survival. We must seek God even if it means the end of survival for us, such as the martyrs do. Joy is ultimately to be complete in God and to find in His grace our adoption as sons. This is because, as St. Augustine said, our justification is in God since we are created beings and our being is derive from God. He who forsakes the things of God forsake a part of his very being. Is this not what the existentialists found? The nihilism of the modern age had severed people like Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus from all sense of being and thus they tried to regain that being through existentialism. But why, if we are all just part of nature and our being (i.e. the universe) just is and is not derived from anything else, should we need to anchor our being in something transcendent? The reason is we are made by God and our hearts can only find rest in him.

Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga gives his defeater of naturalism. I have to say, it is one of the most clever arguments I have ever heard. I takes evolution, which, to me, seems indespensable to naturalism (how did all of this fauna and flora come about?, as Plantinga would say) and makes it an argument against naturalism. The sound isn't fantastic but its the best example available online. It comes in five parts (so roughly a fifty minute lecture). A tab should appear on the screen to take you to the new part.

Part I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWVoi_IjTKs&feature=related

Proper Patriotism

"Love becomes a demon when it becomes a god."

-M. de Rougemont

Patriotism, when perverted into nationalism, becomes poisonous. When we become deceived by the myth of our own superiority we become capable of unspeakable acts; we who become gods become demons. For Christians, nationalism is especially dangerous because all too often it replaces that love that belongs to the Church or even to God. True religion is due only to God and not to our nation. Our joy must be in our God and not our country. Nationalism is what causes good Christian men to forget the commands "love thy neighbor as thy self" or "love one another as I have loved you." There is no more tragic cause of this than the multitude of German Christians who mistook Nazi national renewal for Christian renewal, for their nationalism and Christian faith become intertwined, and could thus reconcile the extermination of millions of Jews with Christian ethics. Nationalism can cause Christians to become prideful. St. Augustine’s fundamental message in his monumental City of God is that the patria of Christians is not on earth but in heaven. Christians must always remember that true love country must be according to the apostle's command: "Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant."

C. S. Lewis on nationalism: "If there were no broken treaties with the Redskins, no extermination of the Tasmanians, no gas chambers and no Belsen, no Amrisar, Black and Tans or Apartheid, the pomposity…would be a roaring farce."

Qualities of Proper Patriotism

*Love of home - This is our love of the familiar; of national particularities. It is our love of the land. It is our corporate sharing of a familiar culture; our love of baseball, apple pie, the English language, and the Fourth of July. Our love for our nation should mirror our love of our home. America is our country and the land is our land. It is what enables a Californian to feel closer to a Pennsylvanian than he would a European. This is quality in patriotism that enables us to fight for our patria and protect it from the foreigner.

*Sense of duty - We are not born into this world autonomous. We depend on others to nurture us and bring is to maturity. We rely on our country for protection, for a job, for survival, for socialization. We owe certain duties to the government, the military, and the local police who protect us; to the land that provides us with food and shelter; to the communities and institutions that bring us to maturity. For all that our country has done for us we owe it love.

*Tradition - In the same way we owe much to those who presently occupy our country so we also owe much to those who occupied it formerly. For everything we inherit at our birth is the creation of our ancestors. The nation of the past, in addition to the nation of the present, contributes to our well-being. This is seen in the stories of the pioneers who settled new American lands and of the immigrants who, with their distinct skills, melted into the American way of life.

*National virtues - Few nations are devoid of virtues and it should be a nation's privilege and joy to have pride those virtues. This should not be a snobby or arrogant pride that smacks of pretensions to national superiority. It should be like a father who has pride in his son. It is wholly good to cherish the hard-work, the strength, and the honesty of the American people; as long as we remember that America has no monopoly on virtue and it is far from sainthood.

Excellence and Education - Part I: The "Secular" Benefits

I cannot tell you how many times, after telling someone that I am a history major, I get a puzzling look following by the same query: “So what are you going to do with that? Teach?” There are two assumptions here; 1) Historical knowledge is mainly useful for teaching (presumably American history so that the eternal glories/damnable failures of America can be elucidated) and has no other real “practical” value and 2) a college education is primarily good for getting a job. I usually grit my teeth and answer that I plan on grad school and then either an academic or government career (which usually soothes their utilitarian spirit). Why do I get so vexed you might ask? The reason is that it represents the death of excellence in American society. Excellence is never pursued for its own sake, rather it is pursued only in as so much as it gets you a good job and makes you money. This in turn reveals the consequence (or maybe motivation?) for the death of excellence; shallow consumerism.

Education has been largely abandoned for its own sake. I see this every day. Students are annoyed with general education classes. They spend lecture playing games or surfing the Internet and then contenting themselves with an average grade in the class. What matters to them is that they pass college and get a degree that will enable them to get a job. “When will I ever have to know this?” they lament. It grieves me tremendously that this is at a Christian college! Evangelicals, I think, need to do everything in their power to improve their intellectual life these days (but more on that later). The reason that history, literature, theology, or other humanities classes seem useless to students is that their entire focus for college is their job. When will you have to know about the French Revolution, The Wasteland, the nature of God, the big bang, or existentialism in your career? Well, never. But that is only because you view college as a vocational school. That education is meant primarily to get you a good job is a very modern idea. Prior to the 20^th century, and especially to the post-World War II era, education was not so much about vocation as about excellence. Education made you a better person.

Today, people are completely uninterested in being a better person – unless it gets you something in return. Think of all the books on the spiritual life, for instance. So many books tell you that cultivating a spiritual life will get you rich or make you healthy and happy. They hardly ever say (at least the best selling ones) that closeness to God is something good in and of itself. In the realm of “secular” education (the inappropriateness of this term will be discussed later) this is no different. The contemporary American is inert. “Betterment” involves a better car, a better computer, a better house, a better paycheck, or a better yard. In a recent class, my professor lamented how more than half of the students in the 1960s majored in the humanities. Today it is less than 10%. Students simply do not see the benefits of the humanities because their value system is materialistic, not intellectual or spiritual. Yet education is valuable. It is indispensable to the pursuit of excellence. Indeed, can we truly say that there has been any widespread betterment in society because of this switch from the humanities to “practical” subjects? I’d be prepared to argue that any societal changes since the 1960s (apart from the Civil Rights movement, which began before then) have not generally improved society.

Firstly, the humanities help you to understand humanity. History enables a person to understand the complexity of human society in the past and present. The present is nothing more than the product of the past and without a proper understanding of what made the present, you will never understand it. I like to use the analogy of a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Imagine a boyfriend who decided one day that remembering anything about his girlfriend’s past was useless and he would from now on concentrate solely on the present. Can you honestly imagine that this person would be able to understand and interact with his significant other? He would forget how to make her happy, the nature of their present relationship, their anniversaries, how to please her, what to buy her for her birthday or Christmas, how to get along with her parents, etc. Essentially, their relationship would deteriorate. They would have no idea how to get along or fulfill each other’s needs. There would be hostility. The same is true if we forget our history. We cannot interact in any meaningful way with the present no matter how well we try to understand the here and now because it involves a long history.

The same is true for literature. Literature has been the primary way that humans have expressed their ideas and meaning throughout history. This is also true of art and music. In my political philosophy class we have discussed how modern society has de-humanized humanity. The primary passions of humanity are things material. The neglect of ideas and meaning has bred alienation and existential crisis in modern man. This is because meaning (something that has nothing to do with survival value or success) is an intrinsic part of man. This is damnably vexing to the modernists who argue for a pragmatic philosophy and insist that humanity is nothing more and economics or rational self-interest. Understanding the ideal aspect of humanity will not get a six-figure job but it will breed beauty, peace, and joy. It will also give a deeper understanding of humanity and help the way humans interact with one another as a result.

The modern American has also forsaken the joys of contemplation. He or she rarely stops to ponder life in all its depth. Americans are far too concerned with getting ahead in life to opt for a life of reflection. People are too busy climbing the corporate ladder, hauling their kids off to soccer practice, or engaging in banal entertainment to stop and contemplate. Self-reflection is essential to excellence and is mainly engendered by making people think, something that the liberal arts and humanities have a habit of doing. Reflection will yield great insight both into humanity in general and yourself specifically. I would argue that reflection is critical to the Christian because he or she is required by their faith to either contemplate God and their own moral lives. Self-reflection, like learning about literature, art, or music, has intrinsic value. I cannot explain in words the simple joy of finding a quiet, beautiful place and simply engaging in reflection and contemplation. While I am no advocate of monasticism upon serious theological grounds, I have to imagine that the time for reflection afforded by the monastery is one of its most attractive characteristics. To be truly successful in reflection and the pursuit of excellence, however, one needs this next critical skill.

Education instills critical thinking – a characteristic that is woefully lacking among most Americans. Critical thinking has to do with disseminating information, understanding it, and then making judgments about it. It means not uncritically accepting a proposition. It means thinking for yourself and not just thinking whatever the media, talk radio, Hollywood, advertisements, or pastors on TV tell you to think. Modernity has been most detrimental to critical thinking since it has introduced mass media, a psychology of propaganda, and advertisements. However, it is impossible to excel without critical thinking. As Socrates said long ago, the unexamined life is not worth living. Critical thinking is essential to any coherent world view because it refines and corrects thinking. There are no simple answers and only critical thinking enables an individual to navigate through the complexities of existence. Perhaps aversion to critical thinking among Americans, especially conservative Americans, is its confusion with cynicism. The difference is that critical thinking seeks to build up and pursue excellence while cynicism is usually aimed only at tearing down. Cynics are often nihilistic and get pleasure from the act of criticizing rather than its goal.

Finally, on a very practical level, education and the pursuit of excellence is necessary to be a good citizen. The American system of government is related to the traditional English system with its emphasis on common law. The common law approach to government gives importance to judicial precedent and tradition. In the British system, the constitution is not written but the accumulation of tradition whereas in the American system we have a written constitution that provides a very general basis of law. However, many of the rights in the Constitution have their base in the English common law tradition (property rights, a right to a jury by your peers, limitations on the executive/king). Therefore, the American system is inherently a historical system. One cannot fully comprehend the American system of government without understanding how it evolved historically. Equally important is an understanding of general political philosophy. Most Americans are ignorant of the political and moral assumptions that undergird policy. I am completely vexed by the belief by many Americans that what we need is more “common sense” that works toward the “common good.” Politicians are endlessly trashed for putting their political ideologies above the “good of the nation.” What most Americans do not understand is that political ideologies and ideas cannot be divorced from the “common good” of the nation. The very idea that governments are the creation of the people to protect their rights (life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness) is an assumption/pre-supposition formed by Locke and was completely foreign to anybody living prior to the sixteenth century. Yet we are told endlessly that the consent of the governed is a “self-evident” right. Whether or not Lockean Social Contract Theory is right or wrong is not the point here. What I am emphasizing is that what we believe to be “common sense” is really creations of political philosophers. History has shown that there are very few characteristics of government that have been “self-evident” to all people. We cannot appeal to “common sense” for the common good but instead need to traverse the winding trail of pre-suppositions and political theory, which can only be properly introduced by education. On a final note, it would not hurt for most Americans to have a general understanding of the mechanics of American government and constitutional history if they plan on taking part in American democracy. Unfortunately, few Americans do and their voting patterns have reflected such ignorance.

Kirk's Ten Principles of Conservatism

I agree to pretty much every aspect of all of these. Here is the link. Hopefully this will clarify what exactly I believe about government and society.

http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html

One further note concerning political theory in regard to no. 9. I disbelieve in the traditional republican and libertarian adage that "the government that rules best rules least." This contains the notion that governments are inherently evil, though a necessary evil. I see governments as a dispensation of grace by God that keep sinful man from falling into anarchy. The best kind of government is a limited government. One that is limited to its proper sphere (see post of spheres below) though this does not mean that the government is small (in the libertarian/Jeffersonian republican sense) since there are things which I deem part of government's sphere (e.g. labor laws, environmental legislation, a degree of moral censorship, a very limited amount of social relief) that most classical Jeffersonians and libertarians would consider to be marks of "big government." I think that my post on the sphere is the best explanation of my political beliefs. While I belief that limited governments have a definate positive benefit on society, I don't think governments are a panacea for society like modern liberals do. When governments overstep their limits they do more harm than good. In this sense I am allied with libertarians.

As an aside, I would see myself as an avid supporter of the (classical) British system. In American politics, I would ally myself more with the Washington/Adams vision for American (though not the Hamiltonian. Adams was distinct from Hamilton in many ways and it is not fair to lump all Federalists into one generic category) as opposed to the Jeffersonian one. Jefferson was far too influenced by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution for my taste.

A New Generation of Christians

After going to GCC for two and a half years and meeting Christians from all around the nation, I have found that my generation of Christians have distinctive characteristics. These are characteristic that I believe will be important to what the American Church looks like once my generation grows up to fill roles in the church; pastors, elders, Sunday School teachers, etc. I have picked five that I think are the most important and also the most likely to remain characteristics after college. For instance, I have noticed the tendency of many Christians to be libertarian politically (i.e. beyond economics; legalized marijuana, the end of censorship laws such as the FCC, ambivalence toward gay marriage, etc.). This is a characteristic that I think will be muted quite a bit after they marry and have children since, as one history professor at GCC reminded me, people tend to become more conservative after they have children. The individualism inherent in libertarianism dies whenever you realize that you are going to have children and you don't want them smoking weed or watching obscene television. Thus these are the five that I feel will be instrumental in shaping the 21st century Church:

*Ecumenical - Although a new generation of Christians may have doctrinal beliefs they are kept personal for greater unity on catholic doctrine, i.e. the tenants of the Apostle's Creed. I find the sectarianism that kept Catholics and Protestants (or even PCA, OPC, and ARP) denominations for cooperating in the past is looked on with disgust among most of my generation. This is not to say that there will necessarily be new unity within the Church in the 21st century. This is expressed by many in my generation by joining non-denominational churches.

*Intellectual - Anti-fundamentalist to the core. My generation, I have found, is far more concerned with having an intellectually informed faith. A faith that communicates effectively with non-Christian circles and is capable of applying the Christian faith to secular learning and vice versa. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the simple Christianity of a generation ago that was strictly dogmatic. A more complex faith is cherished.

*Grace-oriented - There is an emphasis among my generation of Christians on God's mercy and grace. It is understood that these things were completely undeserved by any human effort and true Christianity is celebrating mercy and grace rather than human good works. The person who shows evidence of God's grace is seen as truer than a person who is a teetotaler and Victorian. Tendency to see salvation entirely as a gift of God without human cooperation or at least limited human cooperation. This is, I think, a reaction to the legalism found in so many Christian churches a generation ago. A danger is ignoring the doctrine of sanctification.

*Non-political - although Christians have political ideals they reject that the Church should be tied to one political movement. They are against special-interests as a whole. They are very anti-Religious Right. They emphasize the Church's role in cultural renewal instead of the government's. As a friend told me recently, "I get very nervous when the Church and the Republican party are bound together."

*Missions/Charity emphasis - Many believe that missions and charity are a primary concern of the Church and the best way to spread the Gospel as they display visually God's love. Though this is certainly distinct from Social Gospel of the late 19th and early 20th centuries because missions and charity are the means not the ends.

More Clarifications

By setting myself apart from libertarians (I would set myself apart from neo-cons but there are less of those at GCC so I don't feel it as necessary to discuss them) I have been trying to establish myself as a Classical Conservative. My political philosophy can be summed up in one phrase: the tolerable society. We cannot hope for one single institution, as has been commonly held in in modernity, whether the market or the government, to create the perfect society. Indeed, utopia is, I believe, non-existant. The good society, which is merely the tolerable society, is one where the various institutions of human existance are in balance and all are tempered by faith - or well-ordered inner order. Above I have added a figure of my concept of limited spheres. What it means is that each institution conrtrols a sphere of society. For government, this means I support a limited, but not necessarily small, government. These spheres are best defined by some sort of national constitution. Overlappin all of these spheres, however, is the large sphere of faith which influenes all the other spheres. In my political philosophy this is, or ought to be, the Christian faith but in non-Christian societies this would whatever worldview is dominant. Inevitably, our "religion" - that set of beliefs that we bind ourselves to (the literally meaning of religion) - influences every aspect of society. In the diagram it is distinct from the institutional church which is confined to its own sphere - the sphere of salvation. The sphere of faith does not mean that the institutional Church should influence all spheres of society.

Why I am not a Libertarian - Part III

Idolatry of Mammon

Finally, I am not a libertarian because I do not belief in the inherent “magic” of the market. Now, I would describe myself as a capitalist in the sense that I believe that the capitalist system is the most efficient economic system available. Yet, economic efficiency is not always the most desirable thing, especially when it comes at the expense of other important aspects of society. To this extent, I believe the “free market” should be chastened by two things; morality and law. For morality, I naturally believe that the Christian religion is most useful here. I believe that the libertarian faith that the market is inherently self-correcting and will, by itself, create a just social and economic situation is unfounded. Capitalism, by itself, is not perfect. The problem is that too many people (economists especially) have a “Cold War framework” where they polarize all economic theories into two opposing camps; the free and the centrally planned or, in more abstract terms, the “socialist” and the “capitalist.” It leads to a sort of fatalism among libertarians who admit that capitalism is perfect yet resort to say that its “the best we got.” Yet I believe that there is another option, one that has pure capitalism chastened by faith and justice.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Christian groups worked very hard to alleviate poverty and Christians today to keep up with that tradition. Unfortunately, it seems that many Christians today have the attitude that the poor, especially those on welfare, are lazy and immoral and therefore do not deserve our charity. Libertarianism, at times, almost takes on a Social Darwinian aspect where inefficient businesses or workers must wither and die for the betterment of society. Yet, charity, by its very definition, is something that is not deserved. In all Christian economic thought, as in all Christian thought, the model of Christ should be at the fore. For Christ did not come to those who deserved him but to those that did not and he came to them (us) give grace. Perhaps the poor do deserve their poverty (though I think we must be very careful about generalizing) but those who have been successful, who have accumulated “merit” as Christ did, ought to give to economically poor just as Christ gave to the spiritually poor. Perhaps through this ministry of grace those who are poor because of their lifestyle may become overwhelmed by charity and may be transformed. I do not mean this simply in the sense of soup kitchens. It is true that during the early industrial revolution that the workers were receiving “fair” wages in that based on the supply of labor and the productivity of the worker they were fair. Yet there were far from ideal. The Victorian factory owner that prided himself in his faith ought to have given parts of his income to improve the income of his workers. This would have been the Christ-like thing to do. Instead, they held to Social Darwinian ideas and the “Iron Law of Wages” that helped to perpetuate Marxism and socialism after mid century. Marx became so popular because, while his theories about improving society were off the mark, his sympathy with the worker and the indictment of bourgeois society was spot on. The Christian must always chose charity in his disposable income instead of luxury to feed his prideful greed. Always bear in mind the proverb: “give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me.”

Also, I personally reject the mysticism that the far left and the far right have attributed to business and economics. To the left, business is the greedy and all-corrupting facet of society that poisons the government and exploits the worker. Business is therefore controlled by the state or the "vanguard of the proletariat." To the far right (or libertarians) the market and business is a pure and perfect institution that, magically, transforms greed and vice into virtue. So holy is it that the sinful hands of government bureaucracy cannot even touch it. I do not see the realm of business as any different from any of the other areas of society and government involvement in it should be the same as in any other facet of society; enough to secure justice. In the wake of the recent economic collapse, caused in part by the scams of corporate executives, I believe that tougher regulation is definitely needed to ensure that there more oversight to catch fraudulent businessmen and harsher penalties to discourage fraud to begin with. It is true that people who do business with banks and other financial institutions do so voluntarily but they do so under the assumption that the law will force these institutions to act honestly and responsibly. Moreover, the actions of these institutions affect more people than those who voluntarily do business therefore they need to especially be watched to ensure that they are conducting business honorably and responsibly. I also, unlike some libertarians, believe that certain reforms from the Progressive era (the FDA, laws regulating working conditions, safety regulations, environmental regulation, etc.) are very necessary because they are concerned with justice. Again, this all builds on my first principle that justice is the primary function of governments and not “securing rights.” As a final remark, I want to distinguish between regulation and control. I do not believe that government should control businesses. Their involvement in regulating business should be on the same level that governments regulate aspects in society to ensure justice is upheld. The economy is a complex system and cannot be run by any central planning committee or jobs czar.

Some Distinctions

Before I write more on my series (which I haven't had time to do since the beginning of the semester) I thought I would share an insight that we discussed in my political philosophy class that perhaps clarifies what I have been arguing.

There is a disctiontion between true political conservatism (which was and is extremely rare in the 20th and early 21st centuries) and conservative liberalism. Neo-conservatives and libertarians are NOT political conservatives, they are in fact conservative liberals. This is true of many of the "faces" that one associates with American "conservatism": Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck. They are, essentially, politically liberal but more on the conservative end. This is because they accept, whether or not they consciously understand it or not (I would wager they don't), the political liberalism of the Enlightenment. This tradition began with Locke and his social contract theory int he late 1600s which emphasized radical freedom of volition, rights, equality, and reason. It also violently opposes tradition, customs, and religion. What I have been attempting to show is that this understanding of government is utterly opposed to Christianity and my political conservatism is inherently Christian-based.

Thus liberal conservatives, while they may oppose so-called libera liberal policies such as the welfare state, Keynsian economic theory, internationalism, and cultural diversity, they core assumptions are the same as their liberal liberal foes. They believe that freedom, not justice or virtue, is the chief political value. They operate on the understanding they there is a "common good" for society that can be deduced by reason. Thus we get books such as Glenn Becks Arguing with Idiots and its counterparts on the American left. The idea is that those who disagree with us must be stupid. Why else would they disagree with us? I personally believe this is because they have fundamentally different pre-suppositions about how society should be. Thus the ultimate value for both conservative liberals and liberal liberals is the self (or perhaps the nation in the nationalism of the American right, but I believe this is just another self-justification principle; I am and American, America is great, thus I must be great). They also greatly value equality and egalitarianism and both caricature the opposition as "elitist." Both hold to social contract theory and believe the governments are legitimized by a mandate from the people. Thus both follow in the Enlightenment tradition of Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Jefferson opposed the to the tradition of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Burke.

Why I am not a Libertarian - Part II

What is the Purpose of Governments?

Libertarianism also presents a completely different view of government than the view espoused by Scripture. It holds the to the social contract theory of government formulated by John Locke in the late seventeenth century. This political theory says that governments gain their legitimacy from the people since the first governments were formed when human beings decided to endow certain individuals with powers that would preserve their rights to life, liberty, and property. Therefore, governments are the creation of the people and can be formed or dismissed at the whim of the general will (Locke, of course, believed that the overthrow of governments should not be common, however). Libertarians have a very solid foundation for this theory in the American Declaration of Independence which is essentially an argument from social contract theory.

However, this theory of government is not the same as the one put forth by the Bible:

¹Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. ²Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ³For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, ⁴for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. ⁵Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. ⁶For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. ⁷Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

(Romans 13:1-7)

According to this famous biblical text about governments, governments are not instituted by the people but by God. Also, the text does not say that the only point of government is to protect people’s rights (that is, freedom of indifference) and in fact rights or any precursor to rights are not even mentioned in the verses. Instead, Paul says that the government is “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Thus the purpose of government is not the upholding of rights but the upholding of virtue and justice. St. Paul is writing, contrary to what many libertarians teach, that the government is a benefit to society because it establishes justice. Libertarians see government as a necessary evil and believe that the government should be extremely small in scope.

Some theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, even taught that the even if the Fall had not occurred, governments would still be a intrinsic part of human society. Even if it did not exist to restrain evil, as evil would not exist among men, it was still necessary to the ordering of society and the production of culture. This was because Aquinas believed that earth would mirror Heaven; just as God is king of Heaven, so a man would be king of society. I do not know that I would subscribe to this belief necessarily, but in contrast to modern theologies I do believe that governments exist for a positive good rather than a negative good. What I mean by this is that in libertarian thinking government is intrinsically bad, but the world would be much worse without them. Thus, governments are an evil, but are the lesser of two evils. I, however, believe in the Pauline view that governments, even ones that are not Christian, are still an integral part of God’s sovereign plan to redeem the world. They exist to propel man to excellence (redemption) not just to maintain indifference.

The reasoning behind my stance lays in a simple question: What is the first command that God gives to mankind? Many will no doubt answer that it was “do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Yet this is incorrect. This command does not come until Adam and Eve are placed in Eden in Genesis chapter two. The first words, recorded in the Bible anyway, that God speaks to his creation man is "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:24). God’s primary mission is to be stewards of the earth for God and rule over it. Many have seen in this, and I would agree with them, a cultural mandate. Human beings are mandated to create culture, to “fill the earth and subdue it.” The command is, in short, the pursuit of excellence. Now rule and dominion implies government of some sort or another and, interestingly, despite human sin we are never told in Scriptures that the command is removed. In fact, God reiterates a command similar to this one to Noah after the Flood subsides in Genesis 11. It would seem that, even in human sinfulness, we are commanded to pursue excellence in culture knowing that one day the world will be redeemed and made new by God.

Thus I believe that governments can have a hand in God’s redemptive plan even when they are un-Christian. First they restrain human willfulness and ensure that justice is upheld in society that enables the members of society to safely pursue the activities of their lives. Among these activities is economic, cultural, and intellectual production which aids in the fulfillment of the cultural mandate. This restraining of willfulness also extends internationally where a nation or group of nations can stand against oppressive and evil regimes across the world, whose citizens lack the ability to enact change from within. However, more on this subject will be discussed in part three.

Governments can also create infrastructure to support these activities. They can create a centralized system of roads, highways, ports, waterways, etc. In essence, governments support infrastructure. While it is true that private companies or even states/provinces can also do these things, they will not be centralized, ordered, or uniform. One only needs to look at the difference between state and federal highways to understand this. Before the Eisenhower Highway System built during the 1950s it took far longer to travel across the United States because highways lacked any coherent, uniform order. Libertarians also do not acknowledge that, historically, governments were the first institutions to provide these components of infrastructure. Governments also have the resources to create many public places and spaces. Many of the greatest edifices and parks in the world were the creations of governments. While it is true that private institutions can do this as well they are not available to the public since they rely on profits in order to function. Public museums, parks, and concert halls all help humanity continue to fulfill the cultural mandate by making cultural activities publically accessible. Governments can also create uniform environmental policies. What has completely bewildered me is the hostility that many Christians have toward environmental movements. Part of the cultural mandate is that we are stewards of the earth and that we are to rule the world wisely. This certainly implies conservation of biological diversity, resources, and scenic places. We forget that world is God’s handiwork and that our rule, while pursuing cultural excellence, should not destroy that handiwork. As one GCC college professor has put it, he would hate to have to stand before God one day and have to admit to killing God’s last bear cub. As a caveat, I admit that this must be done according to reason. Many environmentalist groups (e.g. PETA) go too far. We must balance conservation with dominion. There is also ever present dilemma of how to balance economic growth and people’s livelihoods with environmental protection.

Finally, governments can counteract the effects of sin. Libertarians offer an extremely inaccurate picture of the historic development of welfare. They preach that welfare last a late-nineteenth/early twentieth century development that was directly related to Marxism/democratic socialism. In reality, social welfare programs go back centuries to the Middle Ages. It was not uncommon for kings or lords to subsidize poor houses or economic relief for common folk. The great reformer, John Calvin, encouraged the introduction of a welfare system during his time in Geneva. Again, I must offer a caveat. I am by no means advocating the welfare state as it exists in Europe and is beginning to exist in the United States. Such programs are offer cumbersome, hinder economic growth, and make people reliant on the state. However, I think that programs that give people temporary relief and help them develop skills and seek unemployment. Therefore, I do not seek that destruction of American welfare but its reform and limitation that will temporarily aid people and help them regain their feet. I do not believe that any handouts should be long term and should be more in the form of education and career development.

I must offer one final caveat for this entire section. I have said that governments are instituted by God and serve his purpose in the plan of redemption by upholding justice and virtue in society in the forms of law, economics, and education. What I do not mean is that governments are, in and of themselves, redemptive. They may be a tool of redemption but they are not the sources of redemption. This has been a problem throughout the twentieth century; the state plays of the role of God and acts as a redeemer. This has been the case in Nazi, Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. What happened was that governments and states ceased to see themselves as under God and elevated themselves to the position of God and thereby became idols. The government must always be limited by some higher law so that people understand that governments only have a restrictive role, a role assigned to them by God who is their institutor. What breeds tyrannical governments is when a leader or group of leaders see the state as the mechanism of salvation and not just an aid to it according to the mysteries of God. All the great totalitarian governments did not set out to do evil but rather believed that they were achieving good. However, they became horribly twisted when they made their institutions an absolute and suddenly the end justified the means. Thus government cannot become an idol and when it does the results will be horrifying. Thus two things are important for governments. The first is recognition that there is a higher being and a higher reality above the government so that citizens and politicians realize that the government does not cover the whole of human existence but only part of it. Secondly, which is a practical application of the first, governments need constitutions that limit them to their own sphere of influence so that they do not cross into other spheres (such as the Church of family) and thus become tyrannical. More of this will be said in the next section.

What I am Not a Libertarian - Part I

Introduction

One of the biggest shocks that I had coming to Grove City College (and besides the lack of social skills there is little about GCC that is shocking) was the proliferation of libertarianism on the campus. One of the first classes I took for my first semester was Foundations of Economics, which I like to refer to as “Libertarianism 101.” In it my professor taught that libertarianism was, at the very least, the logical economic/political system per Scripture. He bordered on saying that anything other than laissez faire capitalism and libertarian politics was unbiblical and for about a year I struggled with this point of view. Yet in the fall of my sophomore year I took another class, Early Modern Europe, which would equally shock my economic and political thinking. Although the professor of that class was not the most endearing teacher I have had during my college experience, I found the lectures very interesting. Often we in the twenty-first century view the past through our contemporary worldviews which leads to anachronisms in our historical knowledge. What Early Modern Europe did for me was to understand that the past was “another country.” What I mean is that their ways of thinking, pre-French Revolution, were completely antithetical to our modern sensibilities.

It also gave me a large magazine of ammunition against libertarianism. The pre-modern era was fundamentally a far more Christian era that the modern one. Being a historian, and a Christian, I was quite prepared to accept that people in the past actually had something sensible to say about the way human affairs should be ordered. One of the ironies of libertarianism is that this political philosophy that proclaims to be antithetical to Marxism in fact embraces a Marxist view of history; contempt for elites and a belief that power is the chief motivator in history. By the time I took Mirco Economics in Spring 2009, “Libertarianism 102,” I had developed a vehemently anti-libertarian political philosophy. The reason was that I understood that the chief axioms of libertarianism (hyper-free markets, individual rights, and limited government) were completely foreign to anyone living pre-1776. They were, in fact, creations of the Enlightenment, which was notoriously secular and rationalistic. Therefore, the second great irony is that while Christian libertarians preach libertarianism as a logical conclusion of Christian theology, what they are in fact preaching is a system of thought that was in actuality produced by the anti-Christian European Enlightenment. Below I was specifically record why I reject libertarianism in favor of classical conservatism.

What is Freedom?

Freedom seems to be a word that is thrown around flippantly, especially at Grove City, without any real definition given. What exactly is freedom? When I questioned my political science professor on this last semester I did not get a clear answer. Where I did get an answer was in George Wiegel’s book The Cube and the Cathedral for my political science book review. Weigel, an American Catholic theologian, argues that in Western history there have been two understandings of history. The first “freedom for excellence” had its origins in Classical Greek philosophy and was formally born in the writings of Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages. “Freedom for excellence” argues that freedom is foundational to human nature and the fulfillment of the human life because it is one of the chief components of the imago dei (image of God). As human beings are made in God’s image, and God is a free Being, humans have some degree of freedom. Freedom was inherent in the Garden of Eden where God gave Man the ability to choose to serve Him willingly by not eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or to rebel against Him by eating of the fruit and indulging in the service of the self. Man, unfortunately, chose the latter. Yet freedom still important to human being because, though the imago dei was corrupted by the Fall it was not destroyed. Moreover, Christ promises us Christian freedom whereby we will be free of the slavery of sin and once again freely chose God as a result of the grace of the cross.

Therefore, freedom for excellence is freedom of conscience. Each individual should be free to pursue the “good life” – which is the excellent or righteous life. The caveat is that this freedom is not boundless. It is fenced in by morality. The individual is not free to indulge in actions that pervert society and hinder other people’s pursuit of the good life. Freedom is by necessity not simply about individual about society as well. The good life involves helping society by striving to make it better. This is because man is, according to Aristotle, “a political animal” – i.e. finding human fulfillment in human society. Society and culture are creations of God, I believe. Thus, the individual is free so long as his or her actions are for the benefit of society. I am free to do what I wish and believe what I will per my conscience as long as it is pursuing the “good life.”

The other type of freedom that Weigel identifies is “freedom of indifference.” This concept of freedom has its origins in another Christian thinker, William of Ockham. While Ockham by no means subscribed to such a concept about freedom, his philosophical movement, nominalism, would greatly influence its conception later on. Ockham outright rejected universal absolutes and claimed that only particulars of the human mind existed. Therefore, things such as the pursuit of the good, life were not universal to man by particular to each individual and his relationship to God. What this thinking did was to shift an emphasis away from God and his universal laws and toward the genius of the individual. While Ockham and his followers by no means moved away Christianity, they shifted the focus of Christianity from beginning first with God and moving down to individuals to individuals first moving up toward God. Essentially, it would emphasize the genius of the individual, an increasingly theme in Western thought from the Renaissance on. The individual would become especially important in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The culmination of this thinking would be Nietzsche, Sartre, and the post-moderns. Freidrich Nietzsche was a late nineteenth German philosophy who has been called the harbinger of both nihilism and post-modernism. He taught that the death of God brought the death of absolutes, such as truth and morality. Humans were thus radically free. The expression of humanity was thus not found in the pursuit of excellence but in human volition. Human beings find fulfillment through free action and creating their own truths and meaning. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre writing in the mid-twentieth century would also highlight radical volition as the defining characteristic of human beings. The way to human meaning lay in the exercising of human freedom. Likewise, the ultra-democratic post-moderns also teach that the chief concern of humanity is the construction of individual narratives and the deconstruction of established power narratives. If there is one unifying theme of modern philosophy, therefore, it was radical freedom. Thus we have freedom of indifference; individuals having a veritable right to pursue their own meaning, their own truth, and their own happiness regardless of what anyone (especially the damnable elites) have to say. Freedom is no longer seen as a means to an end but an end in itself.

Of the two version of freedom, libertarians undoubtedly adhere to the second. What I constantly hear is that elites, especially government, have absolutely no business in bounded human freedom, so long as the freedom of other individuals is not interfered with (say, by the taking of life or property). The chief virtue in libertarian thought is that the individual is free to find his own way in life regardless of whether it is self-destructive (say, narcotic) or culturally corruptive (say, pornographic). This is completely and utterly antithetical to the Christian believe that the chief end of man is not the exercise of volition but the enjoyment and pursuit of God.

If You are Putting Your Faith in the New Year, You May Want to Think Again

As the ball dropped in New York City at 12:00 AM on New Year’s Day, a rather plastic-looking Dick Clark wished everyone a Happy New Year and assured us that 2010 will be a good new year. Although 2009 hadn’t been the greatest of years with a declining economy and a string of terrorist attacks near the year’s end, Dick Clark assured us of a brighter 365 days ahead. Similar calls were proclaim elsewhere on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Optimists pointed what they saw as rising national economy, some even predicting a “mini-boom” with growth rates of 4-5%. Even President Obama’s slow but steadily declining approval rating shot back up to almost 50%. As we said good-bye to 2009 and welcomed 2010 we blindly have placed our hope in the future. Americans have bought the ma

Thus, throughout the last decade Americans aggressively consumed in a vain attempt to define themselves and bring themselves happiness. This caused Americans to borrow increasing amounts of credit in other to fuel their spiraling consumption. This includes federal and state governments that sought to bring political salvation to Americans through entitlement programs. In both private and public cases, there was a sense that we could spend our way to salvation. If only we threw enough money at our problems (poverty, ignorance, unhappiness) they would all go away. However, this over-consumption fueled a credit crisis. This first became evident when the housing bubble burst in 2007. The Feds had reduced interest rates for banks encouraging the banks to lend out loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Cheap loans fueled over-production in the housing industry. However, when it became apparent that people could not meet the payment on their loans, people stopped buying up houses and the housing market crashed. This caused a downturn in the economy which revealed serious over-extension in credit and caused the collapse of several business scams, notably Bernard Madoff’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. This caused a full-on market failure in which stocks and economic growth dropped precipitously and unemployment rose. Yet, rather than being chastened by our greedy-consumption and over-spending, our government, in bipartisan action, decided to throw more money at the problem (at the tune of about $700,000,000,000 by Bush and Obama each).

In further evidence that Americans have not taken serious the lessons learned from 2009, wall-street and government economists proclaimed economic recovery because Americans were spending more again. So Americans re-engaging in the same self-destructive behavior that caused this depression and this is seen as a positive turn of events? It is for this reason that I put no faith in free markets beyond their pragmatic value. The free market is just a tool and, like all tools, it must be used wisely. Our consumption must be chastened by commitment to a set of values beyond ourselves (I believe religious values to be the best solution, namely because I believe they are on the only legitimate values that exist. But that is another matter entirely). Yet Americans in general have not learned with lesson and perhaps are not likely to learn it. That is why I put not hope in 2010; Americans will merely resort back to the same behavior as they did last decade. The stimulus has “saved” our economy by keep it artificially afloat but at the expense of a massive expansion in the federal deficit. Unfortunately, the government does not procure its funds out of thin air; it gets funds through taxation. Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration are suggesting that we need new taxes to curb the federal deficit. They blame the deficit, in part, on tax cuts during the Bush administration. But wait they fail to realize (perhaps it has only dawned on you a year into his presidency that Obama lacks any semblance of economic sense) is that tax cuts ensure national prosperity which leads to higher revenues in the future. However, tax cuts are meant to coincide with temporary spending cuts in order to avoid an increasing deficit. The Bush administration cut taxes but without reducing spending and thus increased the deficit. High spending, not high tax cuts, is responsible for our nation’s mounting debt.

What Obama fails to understand is that raising taxes on an economic that is still on shaky ground will breed disaster. All of bailout money that was given out by the government in 2009 will simply be re-collected by the government in 2010. To make matters worse, much of this tax money will be exacted from businesses that remained sound during the financial crisis. Essentially, it will be the honest and stable businesses that will end up footing the bailout for the dishonest and poorly run companies that nearly collapsed during the economic downturn. Thus all the bailouts will really have done is delayed the inevitable. New taxes will hamper the growth of our economy which is in the process of recovery, which will be much higher than the $1.4 trillion given out in bailouts in the last year of Bush and the first year of Obama due to entitlement programs that are spiraling out of fiscal control (social security, Medicare, Medicaid) and an entitlement program that will spiral out of fiscal control (ObamaCare). If you really believe that the government is going to run ObamaCare in a fiscally responsible manner, please remember “Cash for Clunkers” and social security which were likewise suppose to be fiscally sound. If Obama and the Democrats get their way with Health Care “reform” and tax hikes, you will most definitely want to revise your hopeful stance on 2010.

ntra that 2010 will see a reversal of American fortunes. Yeah, don’t bet on it.

One Year of Obama Foreign Policy

Very good piece. While I disagree with the overall neo-conservative tone of this article (i.e. that America should spread democracy all around the world) I agree with Kagan that America needs to be a pillar of justice in the world, opposed to tyrants and evil. Obama simply isn't doing this by making nice with people like Hugo Chavez, Hu Jintao, and Vladimir Putin.

In other notes, since I got Windows 7 Enterprise I have been unable to paste stuff from Word documents or OneNote. Since I typically write my blog posts in either of these formats first, I haven't posted a blog since before finals last semester as they won't copy. Hopefully with some help (Jason?) I can get back to posting more blogs.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2010%20-%20JanFeb/full-Kagan-JF-2010.html