The Legacy of Keynesian Economics

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(A shorter version of this article I wrote first appeared in the November newsletter of Christian Voice. It is reprinted here with permission. For information about joining Christian Voice and receiving the monthly newsletter, click HERE.)

British Chancellor of the Exchequer (pictured left), Alistair Darling, has decided to follow a Keynesian approach for getting Britain out of its financial recession.

The words of Richard Nixon in 1971 are an apt description of Labour’s present approach: ‘We are all Keynesians now.’

But who was economist John Maynard Keynes and why have his views exercised such a lasting impact on Western thinking?

This article attempts to answer that question by exploring some of the lesser known facts from the life of Britain’s most influential economist.

The British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883 –1946) is known for laying the groundwork of modern economic policy.

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What few people realize is that his economic theories grew out of his rejection of Christianity and were bound up with the same principles governing his homosexual lifestyle.

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INVERVENTIONIST APROACH

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Known as the father of liberal economics, Keynes advocated an interventionist approach to economic policy, which urged governments to use fiscal measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms. He opposed the gold standard because it acted as a brake on government’s capacity to control the money supply.

This interventionist model led to a paradigm shift in people’s view of government and “provided the intellectual rationale for the transformation of the State from primarily an administrator of law and order (as the Bible teaches) into an economic manager with broad, open-ended powers.” (Ken Ewert, from his article ‘In The Long Run We Are (Not) All Dead: The Anti-Christian Economics of John Maynard Keynes’)

A centrepiece of Keynesian economics is that lack of private spending during hard times is compensated for by increased government spending during hard times. In keeping with what biographer Robert Skidelsky calls Keynes' "lifelong bias against long-run thinking”, he argued that when the national economy is faced with a financial recession, the government must spend its way out of the difficulties. In practice, this means Government putting forward billions of pounds on construction projects, schools, social housing and hospitals. If such projects must be financed by debt, then so be it. The theory was that supply would create demand and stimulate consumption, rather than the other way round, as classical economics maintained. This might actually have worked if it weren’t for the fact that Keynes’ advice about lack of spending during good times was never embraced with the same enthusiasm. (See Melanie Phillips’ article "Saviour or Destoryer")

Keynes urged citizens to trust that government knew best and could manage society’s money better than the people could. However, Keynes was astute enough to recognize that governments were intrinsically untrustworthy. He attempted to overcome this dilemma by arguing that England and America should work in concert since neither one could be trusted on their own (as if one leaky bucket plus another leaky bucket equals a perfect bucket.)

Despite the flaws in his theory, Keynes’ General Theory of Unemployment, Interest and Money helped to convert many influential people, including those within the ecclesiastical establishment, to Labour Party socialism (what Keynes himself called “semi-socialism”.)

As one writer put it

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“The politicians loved him: he was giving academic reasons for budget deficits, price controls, and monetary inflation. The younger economists loved him, for his ideas were creating lifetime employment opportunities for them as government economic planners.

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“It was Keynes, more than any man in the twentieth century, who is intellectually responsible for today's looming bank crisis, the huge government deficits, and the eventual default of governments on their financial obligations. He gave the Western economy a large does of intellectual AIDS.” (From http://www.americanvision.com/baptizedinflation.aspx)

REJECTION OF CHRISTIANITY

Keynes (pictured right) rightly recognized the central role that worldviews play in economic thinking. For example, in an essay he wrote in 1926, titled ‘The End of Laissez-faire,’ he criticized the Christian idea, advocated in a pamphlet written by Archbishop Whately and published by the SPCK, that true liberty “is that every man should be left free to dispose of his own property, his own time, and strength, and skill, in whatever way he himself may think fit, provided he does no wrong to his neighbours...” Keynes asserted, on the other hand, that “It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive ‘natural liberty’ in their economic activities....The battle of Socialism against unlimited private profit is being won in detail hour by hour.”

Because he rejected the Christian worldview, he also rejected the free market. This was accompanied with an almost paranoiac frenzy against thrift, which he pejoratively referred to as the “hoarding instinct.” The General Theory shows an understanding that the ‘virtue’ of saving is rooted in the Christian worldview. As he wrote: “The morals, the politics, the literature, and the religion of the age [are] joined in a grand conspiracy for the promotion of saving.” Elsewhere he argued that the “hoarding instinct” was one of the trinity of evils which also included the family and concern for the future (“the hoarding instinct [is ]the foundation...for the family and for the future...”).

Keynes recognized that the principle behind saving – deferred gratification of immediate desires – indicated a future orientation which pointed beyond oneself. He scornfully dismissed such ‘purposiveness’ with his oft-quoted words, “in the long run we are all dead.” Ken Ewert put it best when he wrote that

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“The effects of the ‘short-run’ and ‘childless’ philosophy of Mr. Keynes are clear: nearly all western governments have followed the Keynesian prescription of spending and consumption, and have run large annual budget deficits for decades.”

HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE

Keynes’ rejection of the Biblical “sowing and reaping principle” in favour of immediate gratification was not limited to his economic theories, but formed the centrepiece of his deviant sexual lifestyle.

Keynes was the chief homosexual protagonist of the Bloomsbury group, which has been described as a “sexual merry-go-round” by biographer Robert Skidelsky.

Arguing that homosexuality was the supreme state of existence, Keynes saw no problem indulging his obsession for little boys. In letters to his homosexual friends, Keynes urged them to go to Tunis, “where bed and boy were also not expensive”, while he himself ranged throughout the Mediterranean area searching out suitable boys for himself and his friends. He was particularly delighted to discover that the poverty and ignorance of North Africa, the Middle East, and Italy allowed him to use English shillings to purchase the bodies of children. (See Lytton Strachey, A Critical Biography).

Keynes’ short-term philosophy of life held no place for abstinence, whether financial or sexual. He campaigned to legalize homosexuality as well as drugs and believed that a restructuring of economics was central to that process. As he put it, “When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years....”

ADVOCATION OF EUGENICS

Keynes was also a strong supporter of eugenics, a point overlooked by his contemporary devotees. He declared that eugenics was "the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists."

He was the treasurer of the Cambridge University Eugenics Society during its early years and served on the British Eugenics Society’s board of directors in 1945.

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IT ISN'T ALL BAD

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Despite his problems, Keynes early works are scattered with some amazing economic insights. For example, his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, opens with the following words:

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“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. – As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

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Keynes asked us to imagine a government that increases the stock of money from nine million to twelve millions currency notes without other conditions being changed. “In taking this step,” writes Herbert Schlossberg summarising Keynes’ position, “it has transferred from the public to itself an amount of resources equal to three million currency notes ‘just as successfully as if it had raised this sum in taxation.’ Who paid the inflation tax? Those who hold the original nine millions notes, because each of those notes will purchase 25 percent less than before the inflation. The inflation of currency means its depreciation in value. ‘The burden of the tax is well spread, cannot be evaded, costs nothing to collect, and falls, in a rough sort of way, in proportion to the wealth of the victim.’ (Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction)

Understanding that the money-printing policy he came to favour would eventually lead to economic collapse, Keynes struggled mightily to devise a way to prevent it. He settled finally on a capital levy, whereby the state despoils the creditor and confiscates part of its debt held by the citizens. Seizing the money directly by repudiating the debt seemed better than depreciating the purchasing power through inflation.

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FURTHER RESOURCES

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For more of my writing on the economic problems of our day and the false solutions, see The Bush Bailout and What's Wrong With It.

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Church Calendar

With the beginning of the church year nearly upon us with the coming of advent this Sunday, I think it would be appropriate to post some quotes and comments on the church calendar and why it should be important to us as Christians. The first quote is taken from N.T. Wright's excellent little book For All The Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed (which I simply cannot recommend highly enough).

“The church’s liturgical year is rooted in ancient custom. It follows the story of the key events in the life of Jesus: his birth at Christmas, his death on Good Friday, his birth at Christmas, his death on Good Friday, his resurrection on Easter Day, his Ascension forty days later, and his sending of the Spirit at Pentecost (‘Whitsun’).

“Into this sequence, again in ancient custom, the church inserted Advent and Lent. Advent offers four Sundays of preparation before Christmas, recalling simultaneously the preparation of Israel and the world for the coming of Jesus at Christmas and the preparation of the church and the world for his final second coming. Lent, the forty penitential days leading up to Holy Week, which itself climaxes in Good Friday, recalls the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the desert at the start of his ministry. Advent and Lent have traditionally been seasons of penitence and preparation for the awesome events to which they point.

“Other key moments have also been added. Epiphany (the showing of Jesus to the non-Jewish world) commemorates the coming of the Wise Men to teh boy Jesus in Matthew 2. Candlemas (Jesus’ presentation i n the Temple) picks up the theme of ‘light’ from the song of Simeon (‘a light to lighten the Gentiles’) in Luke 2. And so on. At a different level, the western churches have for a long time kept the Sunday after Pentecost as Trinity Sunday, celebrating the complete revelation of God which has been granted through the events of Jesus’ life and his sending of his own Spirit.
 
"...many churches have found that by following the liturgical year in the traditional way they have a solid framework within which to teach and live the gospel, the scriptures, and the Christian life. The Bible offers itself to us as a great story, a sprawling and complex narrative, inviting us to come in and make it our own. The Gospels, the very heart of scripture, likewise tell a story not merely to give us information about Jesus but in order to provide a narrative we can inhabit, a story we must make our own. This is one way in which we can become the people God calls us to be. The traditional Christian year is a deep-rooted and long-tested means by which that biblical aim can be realised.”

As I have been reflecting on Wright's words, it occurs to me that a robust embracing of the church calendar is an antidote to spiritual Gnosticism and rationalism since it reminds us that what matters is chiefly events not ideas. An understanding of salvation and doctrine should flow out of the Christian story we tell through the church year, rather than the other way round, since then we will be constantly reminded that what we are living out is a story not an idea.

 

I am also impressed with the fact that historically, the rhythm of a liturgical year has been one of the chief means for inculcating a metanarrative into the fabric of society and transmitting it to the next generation. And this does not merely apply to Christian liturgies. In pagan societies this would reflect itself in the recurring rituals connected to the seasonal cycles and the harvest. Therefore, it is not a question of whether human beings will celebrate a religious calendar. Because human beings are inescapably liturgical and religious, we invariably organize the year into rhythmic structures that reflect our priorities. If those priorities are not the great feasts of the church, then by default our year will probably end up being structured around secular holidays that tell the story of political redemption or else holidays that pay homage to the god of hedonism, such as vacation time (I have no problem with vacation time, but I do question the tendency to structure one's priorities around vacation instead of around the church calendar).

 

At the risk of stretching my point, I would like to suggest that the church calendar protects us from the totalitarian state. By saturating Christian worship in the story of redemption as outworked again and again through the liturgical calendar, we will be less vulnerable to forms of secular regeneration told through the liturgy of statecraft (see my article on the eschatology of the European Union). This is particularly needful in America where many Christians tell the story of liberal democracy as their own, operating in what Leithart calls ‘Eusebian mode’, treating America as the culmination of redemptive history.

 

The American state provides us its own meta-narratives, its own sacramental feast and its own rhythms with which it seeks to structure our lives. And, like the EU, it also provides its own eschatology. This is why politicians increasingly need to be good story-tellers. To be successful the vying candidates much each convince us that they come from traditions that are bringing civic maturity. In countless ways we are urged to trust them, like we trust our mothers, and to structure our lives around the benefits they bring and the obligations they demand. Obama’s acceptance speech was typical in that he told the story of American history, from its inception to its growth into civic maturity, a process which climaxes in his own utopian announcement: “Our union can be perfected.” Okay, I didn't intend to get started again on Obama! My point is simply that Christians who have not had the church’s story ingrained in their hearts through the continual retelling of our story in word, symbol and sacrament (for which a robust celebration of the church year is central) are easy victims for the error which says that the story of American statecraft is our fundamental story and is that which gives us our identity.Finally, I'd like to end with a quote from the introduction to the book Common Worship: Times and Seasons (this book is a liturgical feast for family worship, by the way):

“The rhythm of the Church’s times and seasons...is one of the primary ways in which Christians learn, and are strengthened in their grasp of, the story of Christ – just as Jesus himself was familiar with the Jewish festivals, and with the way that the annual remembrance of Passover shaped the identity of the chosen people.”

Further Reading

Sacred Times and Seasons (Part I)

Sacred Times and Seasons (Part 2)

 
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Reply to Perry Robinson

After having a debate in August, on whether or not Protestantism is heretical, Perry Robinson’s put some comments on his blog about it. His comments, which are actually a rebuttal to my answers to questions he posed in his formal evaluation of the debate, as well as a rebuttal of my response to his evaluation of the debate as well as a reply to one of the other contributors to the debate, raise a number of good points which need to be dealt with.

I begin with answering the new questions that Perry has posed.

“Of the bodies you denoted as the visible church, which of them and during what periods did they teach the gospel as you understand it via sola fide?”

You would have to first define what criteria counts as a body “teaching” sola fide. For example, would such “teaching” need to be limited to creedal affirmations or could it include specific individuals and movements within a body?

“If the church as a whole could not fall away, then wouldn’t in those circumstances when it spoke qua church be infallible, since the contrary would be impossible?”

No because there is a difference between the church not falling away and the church not being infallible. There is no inconsistency in affirming both that the church as a whole cannot to fall away and that the church, as a whole, is fallible, just as there is no inconsistency in affirming that an individual Christian can error (fallibility) without falling away (apostasy).

“Where does 2 Tim 3 teach that any Christians is to act as a judge in such a way that their judgment is equal to that of the body? Or where does it teach that each individual judges for himself what he is obligated to believe? There is a difference between judging in terms of knowing that something is the case and judging so as to bind the conscience. It is not clear to me which judgment you think 2 Tim 3 has in mind.”

I do not think that 2 Tim 3 teaches that any Christian can judge in such a way that his judgment is equal to that of the body. When I spoke of judgment I meant judging in terms of knowing that something is the case. Because this is what I meant, I can answer your second question (where does it teach that each individual judges for himself what he is obligated to believe?) in the negative without inconsistency.

“On what basis do you conclude that the phrase “man of God” refers to any and all believers? Why is it only used of those ordained to minister in the OT and NT then?”

I would need to see your evidence that the phrase is only used for those ordained to minister in the OT and NT before I would be comfortable commenting on this. However, in general my understanding is that the criteria for elders in the NT is not a different sort of criteria than that required of lay people; rather, ministers and elders are those who reflect the characteristics that all of us should exemplify.

“The standard evidential arguments move from the reliability of the NT to the Resurrection and then back to the inspiration of Scriptures, with the Resurrection functioning as confirmation of the Scriptures. So the Resurrection is true because the Scriptures are reliable and the Scriptures are reliable because of the Resurrection. Is that circular or no?”

It is circular and that is why I would never use that argument in my apologetic endeavors.

"Further, even if our position were circular, not all forms of circularity are problematic as Van Til points out. It may be a sign of internal consistency."

Sure. I agree with that. Any epistemological system has to be self-referring in the end if it is to avoid inconsistency. All beliefs eventually form webs of multiple reciprocities.

“It may be a principle of reason that our thoughts are caused, but what is reasonable doesn’t necessarily map reality. Euclidian Geometry is rational, but it does not map real space since in the former, space cannot be curved, but in reality it can be so. Further, one can think that our thoughts are caused and it not be axiomatic and it also not be the case that they are not caused by anything else but ourselves.”

I think you need to distinguish between rational suppositions of potential reality and rational suppositions of actual reality. Your statement that “what is reasonable doesn’t necessarily map reality” can apply to numerous rational constructs which might be true (potential) but do not map reality (actuality). For example, I can say that the moon is made out of blue cheese and I can form syllogisms based on that. In a strict logical sense, it is possible, because there is no contradiction inherent in the supposition that the moon is made out of blue cheese (as there would be if I said that the moon was made out of blue cheese and not made out of blue cheese at the same time). In that sense it is rational. However, it is irrational to believe that the moon is made out of blue cheese in the sense of actuality, seeing that evidence supports the view that the moon is not made out of blue cheese. When I spoke about it being a principle of rationality that our thoughts are caused, I was referring to rationality in the latter sense: exercising our minds rationally in how we deal with the data of actuality. The data of actuality does support the view that an uncaused event can never occur.

“The fact that I can use the same skeptical argument against the variety of deterministic views shows not that the skeptical argument is flawed, but rather than those deterministic models suffer from the same problem. But since you only hold to one of them, it doesn’t follow that it is not effective against the one position you do hold, since it equally affects all of them. So again, how is it that predestinarianism doesn’t undermine assurance, since God can determine you to be reprobate and think that you are elect?”

I dispute that my earlier statement that thoughts are caused is a species of deterministic views. Does the belief that my dinner is caused by my wife make me a determinist? If not, then why would my belief that thoughts are caused make me a determinist?

With regard to assurance, your question is a red herring since there is no clinical, detached, rationalistic formula for assurance anyway.

Finally, while it is true that God could cause me to think I was elect when I was reprobate, I don’t see how this helps your argument since it is equally true that He could cause you to think that you are a living being when you are really a pixel on the computer of a giant who lives in the middle of the moon. I don't see how these hypothetical scenarios get us anywhere.

“Part of your counter argument was concerning private judgment, namely that it is inescapable. That is what I was attempting to address. While it is true that I would need to meet the conditions on knowledge to know about normative and binding judgments, but that is just to note that it is a knowledge claim. As to normative and binding judgments, I was thinking of just the kind that Protestants think that the church can’t make, namely with respect to the canon, doctrinal or moral formulations, excommunication, etc.”

Okay that helps. We were talking at cross purposes. I meant the first kind of judgment. With regard to the second, I do believe that which you say Protestants do not believe. How can I believe that the church can make binding judgments and not be infallible? The same way we all believe that the federal government can make binding judgments and not be infallible. Given this clarification, I think some of your statements which follow from the above are now mute, so I will not bother to deal with them.

“To be fair, Barnes did attempt to sketch or at least gesture at internal tests for councils, so it is not clear to me that his comments amount to a failure to address the point in question. To be speculative for a moment here, what would be a sufficient test at the time of its convening of say the council in Acts 15 on your view of things? It can’t be Scripture since the NT wasn’t anywhere near to completion. How would you test it?”

Testing the Acts 15 council at the time would be no problem for me because I have always acknowledged that the apostles and church leaders had genuine God-given authority. I simply dispute that the church is infallible.


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The Way of a Man With a Maid

Many years ago I wrote a book critiquing the courtship and betrothal movements, with particular emphasis on the teachings of Jonathan Lindvall and Bill Gothard. I am pleased to say that the book has now been updated and is available for free download as a pdf by clicking HERE.

The new edition includes some changes in perspective which are detailed in a new forward. Following is a copy of the new forward.

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It is a pleasure to present a new edition of The Way of a Man With a Maid.

Since writing this book in 2001, I have received many positive responses from people all over the world who have been helped by my work. Esther and I have been very blessed to meet a variety of people who have contributed their insight and stories to the discussion.

Not all of the responses I have received have been positive, however. People on both sides of the debate have sometimes drawn erroneous conclusions about my position and even my motives. In the minds of some critics, my cautions about certain tendencies within the courtship movement has been equivalent to a full-scale advocation of recreational dating together with a rejection of parental authority.

For this reason, I would like to use this new edition as a chance to set the record straight, in addition to charting some of the areas where I have changed in my outlook.

First of all, I do not and have never advocated recreational dating. Neither have I ever thought that parental non-involvement in the marriage decision is the Biblical norm. Rather, my objections to courtship and betrothal fall roughly into five areas, all of which are fleshed out in the book:

1) a technique-based approach to life and relationships which often underpins courtship and betrothal proposals;

2) faulty exegesis which is sometimes used to defend courtship and betrothal;

3) the unbiblical theory of emotional purity, which sometimes plays a key role in the courtship movement and plays a necessary part of betrothal;

4) authoritarian and oppressive patterns of parenting which are sometimes present in the courtship model and permeate the betrothal model.

5) a general attitude of pessimism towards romance and sexual attraction which can sometimes accompany both courtship and betrothal.

It should be apparent that the above points are concerns about principles rather than particular schemas. There is nothing intrinsically wrong or right with any method for finding a spouse so long as Biblical principles are being observed. Even my objections to Jonathan Lindvall’s theory of betrothal are, at root, concerns about a framework of wrong thinking, of which betrothal is merely a symptom.

Having made these clarifications, some qualifications are now in order.

Preparing this new edition has forced me to revisit the subject of courtship and to think these issues through afresh. I do so from a vastly different standpoint than when I first wrote the book. I am now not merely a researcher, but a parent of teenage children, forced to deal practically with the very issues I wrote about. Moreover, I am now part of a church community that is generally sympathetic with the concerns of the courtship movement. This has forced me to re-evaluate some of my earlier contentions.

While still standing by the substance of what I wrote eight years ago, I am now prepared to say that where courtship is absent of the five errors above, it has the potential to be a valuable alternative to the modern dating system. In his book Her Hand in Marriage, Douglas Wilson has made some progress trying to understand what Biblical courtship/dating might look like without these added factors, while being acutely conscious that, in the hands of the wrong kind of man, his teaching on authority would lead to disaster. While I do not agree with everything in Wilson’s book, Esther and I have been quite happy to give it to our teenage son and daughter to read and follow. Other books we have given our teenagers to read and which I would recommend to those wanting to study the topic further are Rick Holland’s entry in 5 Paths to the Love of Your Life, John Holzmann’s book Dating With Integrity and Debbie Maken's book Getting Serious About Getting Married.

When I originally wrote The Way of a Man With a Maid, my perspective was predominantly that of an immature romanticist. Little did I realize that I was simply over-reacting to the viewpoints of my opponents in the same way that they had over-reacted to the perspective of dating culture. This led to certain extreme positions which I would now no longer defend. For example, since I believed that a divine spark was the only justification necessary for two people to marry, I vigorously denied the role that character can play as a father vets a young man for his daughter. By wrongly applying the principle of unconditional love, I argued that young men shouldn’t have to meet conditions in order to prove themselves ready for marriage. I now realize that there does need to be a “price of admission” to love. Simply put, it would be irresponsible for a young woman to say "yes" to a man who cannot support her financially and spiritually, regardless of how deeply in love they are with each other. If a marriage is going to stand the test of time, character not less than compatibility, needs to be an important consideration. I have attempted to edit the book accordingly to reflect this shift.

I am conscious that this was not the only area where my previous perspectives were tinged with an unbiblical romanticism. Ironically, I seem to have fallen into the same trap as my opponents by elevating one particular pattern (i.e., the “falling in love” pattern) above all other patterns and principles. In focusing on whether “falling in love” was good or bad, I unwittingly committed the same error that Lewis’ devil Wormwood made in The Screwtape Letters. When writing to the junior tempter on how to corrupt his Christian patient, the demon Screwtape remarks:

"You complain that my last letter does not make it clear whether I regard being in love as a desirable state for a human or not. But really, Wormwood, that is the sort of question one expects them to ask! Leave them to discuss whether “Love”, or patriotism, or celibacy, or candles on altars, or teetotalism, or education, are “good” or “bad”. Can’t you see there’s no answer? Nothing matters at all except the tendency of a given state of mind, in given circumstances, to move a particular patient at a particular moment nearer to the Enemy or nearer to us. Thus it would be quite a good thing to make the patient decide that “love” is “good” or “bad”. …get it quite clear in your own mind that this state of falling in love is not, in itself, necessarily favourable either to us or to the other side. It is simply an occasion which we and the Enemy are both trying to exploit. Like most of the other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age and youth, or war and peace, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material."[1]

I cannot guarantee that I have successfully expunged all traces of unbiblical romanticism from the present edition and I welcome reader input to help in the ongoing revision process.
The Way of a Man With a Maid has been criticized for failing to show the shape that a truly Biblical approach to courtship might take. In so doing, it has been argued, the book presents a misleading caricature of the entire movement. There is some merit to this objection. I would urge my readers to see this book as the beginning, and not the final say, to the discussion. Anyone wishing to know what a positive approach to courtship might look like should refer to the above recommended books (although not all of them use the term courtship).

It has been said that an author is his own worst critic. I am certainly no exception. Upon re-reading The Way of a Man With a Maid to prepare this new edition, I was struck by the fact that many of the truths presented in this book are simply assumed rather than defended with rigorous Biblical exposition. I would urge my readers to play the part of faithful Bereans and search the scriptures to see if the things I have written are true.

If these qualifications are kept in mind, I believe my basic message is one which still needs to be heard, if only so that the air can be cleared for a truly Biblical approach to “courtship”.

Footnotes

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (London: The Centenary Press, 1942), pp. 98-100. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his son in March 1941 about the tendency to make an idol out of love. He said: “There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. It idealizes ‘love’ – and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, ‘service’, courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity…This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril. But combined and harmonized with religion…it can be very noble. Then it produces what I suppose is still felt, among those who retain even vestigiary Christianity, to be the highest ideal of love between man and woman. Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly ‘theocentric’. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man’s eyes off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) …It inculcates exaggerated notions of ‘true love, as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a ‘love’ that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts.) J.R.R. Tolkien, cited in Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: Man and Myth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998, p. 48-49.

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Autumnal Joys

So Much For Tolerance

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In an earlier post I argued that those Californians who supported Proposition 8 were actually the true defenders of freedom and a libertarian view of government. The reaction of the homosexual community to the passing of Proposition 8, and the fascist-type attacks many of them have levelled against those who supported it, suggests that I may have had a point. Chuck Colson has reported on some of these attacks in his Breakpoint commentary So Much For Tolerance.

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The Anti-Federalists Were Right!

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The Anti-Federalists were right. Click HERE to find out why.
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The ACLU

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) present themselves as being the defenders of liberty, human rights and limited government. As they say on their website,

"The American system of government is founded on two counterbalancing principles: that the majority of the people governs, through democratically elected representatives; and that the power even of a democratic majority must be limited, to ensure individual rights.

Majority power is limited by the Constitution's Bill of Rights, which consists of the original ten amendments ratified in 1791, plus the three post-Civil War amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th) and the 19th Amendment (women's suffrage), adopted in 1920."

Despite these high-sounding ideals, the ACLU's track record presents a very different story. In George Grant's book The Family Under Siege, he shows that

The ACLU supports the legalization of child pornography while it opposes voluntary school prayer.

The ACLU supports the legalization of drugs while it opposes sobriety checkpoints.

The ACLU supports tax exemptions for Satanists while it opposes tax exceptions for churches.

The ACLU supports legalization of prostitution while it opposes religious displays in public.

The ACLU supports abortion on demand while it opposes medical safety regulation and reporting.

The ACLU supports mandatory sex education while it opposes parental consent laws.

The ACLU supports busing while it opposes educational choice or home schooling.

The ACLU supports automatic entitled probation while it opposes prison terms for criminal offences.

The ACLU supports public demonstrations for Nazis and communists while it opposes public demonstrations for direct action pro-lifers.

The ACLU supports legalization of polygamy while it opposes teaching ‘monogamous, heterosexual intercourse within marriage’ in the public schools.

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Some of the ACLU's landmark cases include:
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The Palmer Raids Case of 1920: The ACLU combated Attorney General Mitchell Palmer over the deportation of a number of resident aliens who had been convicted of violent labour disruptions or who had been proven to be actively involved in various communist subversive activities throughout the country.

The Draft Amnesty Campaign of 1921: The ACLU launched a nationwide drive to release draft objectors and convicted subversives following the First World War.

The Patterson Strike Case of 1924: The ACLU defended a group of textile union members and other social activists – including the ACLU’s own founder, Roger Baldwin – who launched a large-scale strike and illegally occupied private property.

The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925: The ACLU launched its ‘manipulated test case’ strategy against the state of Tennessee’s education standards, locating a small town biology teacher to act as a plaintiff and a showcase lawyer to focus national attention on the issue. Despite the fact that the ACLU and its high profile defender, Clarence Darrow, lost to the state’s attorney William Jennings Bryan, the publicity prove to be invaluable.

The Sacco and Vanzetti Case of 1927: The ACLU defended two notorious anarchists who had been charged with first-degree murder following a payroll robbery. With a long list of ties to the subversive socialist underground, Sacco and Vanzetti sealed the ACLU’s reputation as a radical instrument of the Left for some time to come.

The Gastonia Case of 1929: The ACLU defended seven striking workers who had been convicted of murdering a North Carolina police chief during a particularly violent confrontation. After declaring their anti-Christian and communist beliefs, the seven defendants jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union.

The Scottsboro Case of 1931: The ACLU and the communist-led International Labour Defence worked together to overturn the convictions of nine black men who had been found guilty of raping two white women on a freight train. Sentences for all nine were reduced or reversed….

Smith Act Reversal of 1957: The ACLU supported the defence of fourteen men convicted of conspiracy to violently overthrow the government of the United States. Lawyers argued on First Amendment free-speech grounds.

Nativity Scenes Man of 1960: The ACLU launched several legal initiatives to prohibit Christmas decorations or the singing of carols in public schools or on public property.

Regent’s Prayer Case of 1962: In this case – one of several anti-prayer suits that the ACLU was involved in - lawyers argued that a prayer recited each day in the New York public schools constituted an unlawful ‘establishment of religion.’…

Doe v. Bolton of 1973: In this ‘manipulated test case,’ the ACLU led the legal fight in a case that – with the companion Roe v. Wade ruling – eventually overturned the restrictive abortion laws in all fifty states.

The Watergate Hearings of 1974: The ACLU abandoned its façade of political neutrality by pursuing, in both the media and through legal channels, the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

Christmas Pageants Ban of 1976: The ACLU has long fought against any form of public demonstration of religious faith. In this case they brought suit in New Jersey in an effort to prohibit Christmas pageants in the public schools.

The Skokie March of 1978: The ACLU shocked its liberal support by defending the right of American Nazis to march through a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago.

Newark School Board Case of 1981: The ACLU took this case in an attempt to prohibit the Gideons from distributing Bibles to students in the public schools on the grounds that such programs constitute a violation of the ‘separation of church and state.’

Arkansas Creationism Case of 1982: Fifty-six years after it had argued against educational exclusionism in the Scopes Trial, the ACLU reversed itself, fighting against the right to teach various views of origins in public school classrooms.

The Akron Case of 1983: The ACLU successfully fought to overturn the right of localities to regulate the medical safety and proper disclosure of abortion-related businesses.

Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1984: The Washington office of the ACLU led the four-year-long legislative battle to overturn the Supreme Court’s Grove City decision, thus requiring institutions receiving federal grants to extend privileged service access to homosexuals, abortionists, and drug abusers.

Jager v. Douglas County of 1986: The ACLU was ale to forbid religious invocations before high school football games. For the first time, the lawyers successfully used ‘endorsement’ language instead of the traditional ‘establishment’ language – the implication being that the government is not only forbidden to establish or institutionalise religion, it is even forbidden to endorse or condone it.

The Bork Confirmation of 1987: Once again abandoning all pretence of political neutrality, the ACLU led the smear campaign designed to deny Judge Robert Bork confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Equal Access Act of 1991: The ACLU was successful in making voluntary student prayer or Bible study meetings before or after school the one exception to the federal Equal Access Act of 1984. So, while students may father in public schools to discuss Marxism, view Planned Parenthood films, play ‘Dungeons and Dragon,’ listen to heavy metal rock music, or hold gay activist club gatherings, they are not allowed to pray or read the Bible together….

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Echoing comments I made about Britain's growing thought police, Henry Porter has just pointed out that "both women [Blears and Smith ] argue that a calmer, more ordered society would be created if only people would stop expressing their opinions. In reality they propose to sedate our society at the same time as eliminating criticism of the government.... Anyone likely to express an inconvenient opinion should know to bend over soon." From Henry Porter's article "Land of the unfree"

Two Great Books

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We've been reading some enjoyable books to the children recently. Not too long ago we finished the book Watership Down by Richard Adams. It is about a community of rabbits and the adventures they have. By watching the rabbits, you learn a lot about human nature. The book, which is both beautiful and exciting, is one which I highly recommend for children and adults alike.

Earlier in the year I finished reading to Matthew G.A. Henty's book The Young Carthaginian. It is well researched and really gives you a feel for life during the Punic Wars, in addition to being highly enjoyable and exciting. It's an especially good book for boys.

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Why I Did Not Vote For Obama

A good friend left the following comment on my previous post, Confusing Obama With God:

“Some good points about the tendency to deify human leaders, and the conflation of religious and political ideals. Though being your brother's keeper isn't the worst of them. If Obama wants to "perfect our union," recall that George Bush set out to defeat evil. Both projects are utopian and naive. Yet neither is to be despised. What's wrong with trying to realize religious values like equality or justice through politics? We evangelicals always tout the abolition movement for doing just that. Well, the awful admission - I voted for Obama, despite his wrongness on abortion. Why? I read his first, and better, book, Dreams from My Father. I sensed a world-class intelligence, a deep moral seriousness, an extraordinary feel for language, and a budding Christian spirit. I think his profession is true, but undeveloped (consider who discipled him for 20 years). I think that, as with Lincoln, the pressures of office my have a converting effect. The Civil War forced Lincoln to a deepened humility and humanity. I hope Obama faces nothing quite that horrific, but at some point he must confront the contradiction of his ideals. There is no basis for racial equality beyond the same one for the sanctity of life - the claim that we are all made in God's image. The Democrats, coming out of the secularist wilderness, can't evade that truth forever.”

I will begin by observing that I had a friend (my boss in fact) who fell out with a girl over Obama. I won’t fall out with you, Old Tom, even though you did vote for the man.

But I will address your concerns because others may have also wondered how I could equate Obama’s views on abortion with his desire to be his brother’s keeper. I did so intentionally, because it is precisely his zealousness to realize religious values through politics that makes him so dangerous. Don’t misunderstand me here: the problem is not that Obama has religious values to impose, for all law-making is an inescapably religious endeavour if ‘religion’ can be used broadly to include a person’s worldview. Rather, the problem is that Obama’s particular religious perspective orients him to view government as a vehicle to proactively transform society for the better, to bring equality, moral consciousness and values back to the American people. In short, Obama wants to make us good. That is what makes Obama and all utopian endeavours appealing, but it is also what makes them so perilous. As C.S. Lewis remarked,

“The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good – anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name ‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers’. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.” (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, ‘Is Progress Possible?’ in The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis (New York: Inspirational Press, 1933), p. 514.)

For Barack Obama and his utopian aspirations, our whole lives become government’s business. Hence, his words which I have already quoted from his acceptance speech at the democratic national convention:

“[government] should...protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.... Our government should work for us...That’s the promise of America...the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.”

To many, this does not seem a very revolutionary comment to make and it pails into insignificance next to his views on abortions. After all, we already live in a society where the air we breathe, the water we drink, the size of our toilet tank, what medicines we may take, the water pressure in our shower, the words we can speak under oath and in private, how our physician treats our illnesses, what our children study in school, what risks we are permitted to run in our own businesses, how fast we can drive our car, what wealth we may retain are all regulated by federal law. We take it for granted that the government should be working, like a good parent, to direct out every move and meet our every need. Only when a law goes against one of our cherished freedoms do we sit up and cry “tyranny”, while never challenging the basic underlying paraidgm of government. We tend to focus on whether we agree with the actual policies, plans and goals in questions that someone like Obama may be proposing, rather than asking the prior and more fundamental question, "Is it government's job to even be legislating in these areas?"

The model of government that I am challenging is one which I call “the maternal state.” The maternal state is there it nurture us, to train us, to instruct us, to keep our toys safe, to be guardian of our possessions, to be our tutor in the way of virtue and, like a good mother, to make sure we share our belongings with our brothers and sisters.

The confusion between statecraft and motherhood is an ancient one. When Diocletian published his Edict of 301, mandating the persecution of Christians and destroying the few remaining liberties of the old Roman republic, he justified it by referring to himself and his associates as “the watchful parents of the whole human race.” Contemporary governments are increasingly following the pattern of Diocletian by acting, not simply as the guardians of law and order, but as mother to their citizens.

Part of a mother’s vocation involves educating her children in the path of virtue (Proverbs 1:8-9) and nourishing their bodies in growth. When government assumes the role of mother, the state begins to have a constant eye on our education, an eye on our virtue, an eye on our growth and an eye on the all-round development of the human personality. Our lives become their business because, like a good mother, they have assumed responsibility for our growth and training.

While no one would dispute the fact that virtue is necessary in a society, when government assumes responsibility for the cultivation of virtue, the result is more likely to be terror. (See Michael Ovey, ‘Beyond scrutiny? Minorities, majorities and post-modern tyranny’)

The French Revolution is one of the prime modern examples of a state assuming responsibility for the private lives of its citizens under the guise of promoting virtue. During the Revolution’s ‘Reign of Terror’, Robespierre justified the use of terror by appealing to the need for both private and public virtue. (See ‘Justification of the Use of Terror’, available online HERE).

The incessant eagerness of the law-maker to act as parent to citizens is expressed in Abraham Lincoln’s words that “the legitimate object of government" is only "to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves...." The presupposition behind this idea is that the State, like a good mother, must offer a helping hand wherever the citizens are incapable or in need. Otto von Bismarck, the great German Chancellor of the 19th century, suggested similarly when he asserted that government must act “in fulfilment of the workers' right to look to the State where their own good will can achieve nothing more.”

A good mother will determine what objects her children are allowed to possess and how they are allowed to use them. If a brother is using a stick to hurt his little sister, the mother has the right – indeed the duty - to step in and remove the instrument. This only makes sense because there is a prior understanding that a child’s ownership is provisional and can be overruled at any given time by parental interference. This not only protects the child from potentially harmful objects, but helps them learn to be responsible with their possessions and to share them with other siblings when appropriate. All ownership proceeds from the parent in so far as the child owns nothing that the parent has not given or allowed.

In following the maternal paradigm, the modern state has no scruples exercising ownership over all the land and the fullness thereof. One of the ways the “public welfare” does this is by redistributing wealth and dictating how citizens can utilize their property. A.P. Lerner was typical when he defended governmental interference with the economy on the grounds that it was “a form of guardianship…to prevent foolish spending.” (Abba P. Lerner, The Economics of Control) In following the maternal paradigm, Obama has advocated such redistribution on numerous occasions, not least in his comments on the Warren Court:

"The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it's been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that, generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted....I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way."
See my friend Russell Mann's comments on this quote here.

Not only does Mother State believe she has a right to plunder the profits of individuals (effectively forcing us to share our toys with our siblings), but she also views herself as possessing ownership of money in the collective. This can be seen in the pervasive assumption that it is government’s job to control and manipulate the economy, interest rates, cash flow, etc, (which I commented on in my article on the financial crises). At the risk of over simplification, that is the whole point of the American Federal Reserve: to regulate the economy through manipulation of interest rates.

Unconsciously, many in the West are oriented to think that everything belongs to the state by default and what is ours is only that which government has graciously allowed us to keep. However, a citizen population presupposes citizen ownership, seeing that a citizen who cannot engage in free trade and ownership is not properly a citizen at all but bears the same relation to the state that a slave bears to its master or a dependent child to its mother.

Karl Marx was wiser than most when he recognized this relationship between property and family. Marx claimed that because the family is based on capital and private property, a successfully attack on private property would necessarily also involve an attack on the family. The family, he and Engels wrote, “will vanish with the vanishing of capital.” One of the methods communism used to ensure the vanishing of the family was state control of education. (See chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto) Marx knew that destroying the family was central to destroying private property, and destroying private property was essential to destroying the family. When the family was destroyed it would be replaced by the family of the state. Communism was as much about a new form of motherhood as it was about economic theory.

Marx ideas about private property were hardly novel. According to many of his Enlightenment predecessors, the advent of private property represented a kind of fall of man. As J.L. Talmon observed,

"Not only avowed Communists…but also Rousseau, Diderot and Helvetius were agreed that ‘all these evils are the first effect of property and of the array of evils inseparable from the inequality to which it gave birth’. Diderot contrasted the ‘esprit de propriété’ with the ‘esprit de communauté’. He admonished the Legislator to combat the former and to foster the latter, if his aim were to make man’s personal will identical with the general will. Rousseau’s eloquent passage on the first man who enclosed a plot of land with a fence, deceived his neighbors into the belief in the legality of his act, and thus became the author of all the wars, rivalries, social evils and demoralization in the world, is not more radical than Morelly’s and Mably’s obsessive insistence that property is the root cause of all that has gone wrong in history." (J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy)

A good parent assumes responsibility for fixing problems that exist in the home and the family. Consequently, a child’s problem is never just the child’s problem: it is also the mother’s problem. The similarity between this aspect of motherhood and the contemporary state hardly needs pointing out. We live in an age where the prevailing assumption is that all problems in society are the government’s responsibility to fix. William Buckley described this tendency well.

“If there is crime in the street, it is because government does not provide enough day care. If there is unemployment in the steel mills, it is because the government is using too much steel making submarines. If there is a growing number of broken homes, it is because government has not passed the Equal Rights Amendment.”

A state that assumes maternity feels compelled to keep a careful watch over the education, money, speech and even thoughts of its citizens. Political scientist Andrew Hacker defended government’s role in taking responsibility over all the activities of its citizens on the grounds that

"If government is to govern it must be able to tell people they must stop doing things they are now doing; it must be able to curtail private activities and privileges so that society will be more orderly. Leadership is meaningless unless citizens are prepared to follow: to sacrifice individual pleasures and agree to redistributions in which they may be losers. To be a nation, in short, a society must have a citizenry willing to surrender a substantial portion of its freedom to public authority."

As a good mother shows compassion to her children, especially when they are ailing, so the maternal state offers its own compassion to the masses. As President George Bush once revealingly remarked: “when somebody hurts, government has got to move.”

When Mussolini first coined the word “Totalitarianism”, it was not a pejorative slur, nor was it something connoting tyranny. Rather, Mussolini used totalitarianism to refer to a humane society in which everyone was taken care of and looked after by a state which encompassed all of life within its grasp. Because this is not the job of the government, compassion from the state is usually a prelude to tyranny. The beneficent state naturally morphs into a malignant state.

Just as the impulse to be a faithful dog is ennobling in a dog but demeaning when exhibited by a man, so the mothering instinct is nurturing in a mother but tyrannical when assumed by the state.

And that is why I did not vote for Obama. I see in him someone who is honestly, sincerely and wholeheartedly acting from altruistic motives, and that is why I consider him so dangerous. As C.S. Lewis again put it,

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." C.S. Lewis, ‘The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment’ in God in the Dock (op. cit., p. 499). See also R. Andrew Newman, ‘Stay Out of Our Wardrobe! The libertarian Narnia state’

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Two More Articles

In my previous post, Confusing Obama With God, I mentioned bumping into Peter Hitchens in Moscow Idaho and the conversation which ensued. Peter's own article about the election and his time in Moscow from a British perspective has appeared in the Mail on Sunday and is available HERE.

While I'm recommending articles, check out THIS astute piece on the presidency and the constitution. He helpfully puts Obama's view of the constitution in a larger context. It reminds me of something Peter said: "every 4 years, you guys elect Goerge the III all over again." Only this year it is George the III in his madness.

List of Other Posts About Obama
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Why I Did Not Vote For Obama
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Confusing Obama With God
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What I'm Reading Right Now
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Obama's Not ‘New’
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Barack Obama and Race
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Obama's gonna lead 'em
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Worshiping Obama
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Two More Articles
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Worshiping Obama

K. Daniel Glover has written an article titled 'Worshiping Obama', which explores how the personality cult surrounding our next president is verging on idolatry. Read it HERE.

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Obama's gonna lead 'em

This song, which was composed and sung by Obama supporters (children manipulated into supporting him), was put to a clip from the famous movie "Cabaret."

Confusing Obama With God

(Warning: this post contains a violent photograph.)

There is a small British-style pub in a town about two hours South of where we live in Northern Idaho. I happened to be in the area so I decided to go into the pub and do some writing before returning home.

My impression that the pub seemed British was confirmed when I bumped into Peter Hitchens from The Mail on Sunday. Going up to him, I asked what he happened to be doing in America, and in a small town in North-West Idaho of all places.

Mr. Hitchens, author of The Abolition of Britain, a staunch defender of monarchy and one of the most insightful columnists in all of Britain, explained that he was covering the election from a small-town point of view. I was thankful that he decided to choose Moscow Idaho as his “small town”, because it gave me the privilege of picking his brain.

As we began talking about the differences between American and British politics and culture, Mr. Hitchens made the point that Americans are not electing a president; they are electing a king. Moreover, he said, sometimes it even sounds like some people think they are electing God, which is bound to lead to disappointment.

Electing God? There is more than a little truth to Hitchens’ observation. The misidentification of Barack Obama with the Almighty has been a recurring confusion throughout the junior senator’s campaign. Routinely Obama is treated as a Messiah figure who will lead America out of darkness into a utopia of prosperity and happiness.

This theme has been behind the emergence of a growing corpus of Obama iconography. When the ‘Manifest Hope’ gallery put on an exhibition of Obama art, the Weekly Standard reported about one work which “invoked the sacred, picturing Obama's great head--illuminated by sunbursts--emerging from the clouds over a bare-breasted maiden who is robed in an American flag and emerging from a volcano. Note that in the lower-right-hand corner an assemblage of people are literally kneeling before Obama.”

The Messianic adoration has not been limited to visual art. Obama supporters have also been composing anthems to him (one of which even parodies the Christian worship chorus ‘Sanctuary’). (Click here for a number of videos of Obama hymns).

Obama has himself implicitly encouraged this perception by describing his mission in Messianic terms. In his acceptance speech in Chicago on November 5, Obama told the story of American history, from its inception to its growth into civic maturity, a process which climaxes in his own utopian announcement: “Our union can be perfected.”

Frequently, Obama takes Biblical phrases and categories and re-applies them to his own mission and promises.

God-Like Responsibility

In order to attain this eschatological climax, Obama must attribute to the state a God-like responsibility. Thus, instead of viewing the government as a mechanism for merely maintaining law and order, the state becomes a parent who is responsible to look out for its children. As Obama himself puts it,

“[government] should...protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.... Our government should work for us...

That’s the promise of America...the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.” (From Obama’s acceptance speech at the democratic national convention, Thursday, August 28th, 2008.)

Redefinition of Sin

According to the Genesis account, the devil deceived Eve by saying she could be like God knowing good from evil. Barack Obama takes the devil’s lie one step further: he apparently thinks he can be God, defining good and evil. In an interview in 2004, he defined sin as “Being out of alignment with my values.” What are the values Obama has chosen to adopt for himself? While Obama likes to think he has adopted the values of Christianity (as he puts it, “Jesus is the only way for me”), he also maintains that if someone else chooses to adopt an alternative worldview, that becomes true for them: “All people of faith – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Animists, everyone – knows the same God.... I believe that there are many paths to the same place.”

Given the redefinition of sin as “being out of alignment with my values”, and given the fact that all worldviews (and presumably the value systems which proceed from those worldviews) all hit the target in the end anyway, it follows logically that right and wrong become completely relative concepts, devoid of any objective meaning.

This subjective approach to ethics is reflected in Obama’s views on abortion. Not only does he support abortion, but he supports partial-birth abortion, a procedure so brutal that it is illegal in Britain.

In this brutal procedure, the entire baby is delivered except for the head. The back of the baby's head is then punctured with scissors, causing excruciating pain to the child. A catheter is then inserted and the baby's brains are sucked out with a vacuum.

On 4 occasions, Obama has voted against bills that would protect infants who are born alive after a botched abortion attempt. In justification of his decision, he said:

“whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a - child, a nine-month-old - child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional.”

The “previable” foetuses in question were those born entire and alive!

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List of Previous Posts About Obama

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What I'm Reading Right Now

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Obama's Not ‘New’

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Barack Obama and Race

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To Join My Mailing List
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Send a blank email to phillips7440 (at sign) roadrunner.com with “Blog Me” in the subject heading if you would like to be notified every time new material is added to this blog.