Saturday, April 05, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Leviathan Marches On
"Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
--The character "O'Brien", George Orwell's 1984
The Treasury Department wants more power for the Federal Government to oversee our financial transactions.
The German Government is targeting Swiss banking privacy in order to pursue potential tax evaders.
Bit by bit, measure by measure, the governments of the "civilized" world are crushing freedom in subtlety. It is easy for Americans to forget the plank in their own eye while criticizing the speck in our neighbors. We look at China, and hypocritically think to ourselves that "nothing like that" could happen here. And yet our government snoops into our financial transactions on a daily basis, and even turns our own banks against us as enormous institutional narcs. But this power isn't enough. The mortgage recession, like all recessions since the New Deal, have been used by government to expand its power. Cases like Eliot Spitzer are broadcast in the news, where the government, through its extensive spy network amongst financial institutions turned him in.
This creates fear. Fear is the greatest source of power, for people in power utilize fear to convince people to agree with them. The whole notion of "fearmongering" is certainly nothing new in politics. It is as old as the profession itself (which of course Ronald Reagan likened to the oldest profession). In ages past, the Church and other institutions invented crises and fears in order to enhance their power. Modern politicians and church figures have become more cunning and savvy in their operations, waiting for the forces of time and chance to product circumstances that allow for some demogoguery. Fortunately for them (and not for the rest of us), the world itself is a tumultuous place, and there are ups and downs every day. When it comes to economic matters, the creation of the Federal Reserve and its cycle of expansion and contraction of the money supply guarantees that a recession will come around every few years during the contraction phase.
Terrorism and WMDs are real. I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes the government planned 9/11 or fabricated evidence about WMDs in Iraq. We live in a very cruel world. Yet at the same time, the government never hesitates to jump on opportunities to expand its own power. I have little doubt that the people doing this honestly believe they are doing good. Intoxicated with power, they believe they are doing something positive by taking their friends' keys and driving instead, not realizing that the very elements of human nature that caused the problem to begin with will necessarily infect the solution and its implementation.
I have heard President Bush talk about the long march of freedom. But what we have seen in this administration, the Clinton Administration, and especially in the campaigns of Senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain is instead the long march of Leviathan. Liberty is not something that is on a constantly upward trajectory. Rather, it crescendos and decrescendos throughout civlizations and throughout history writ large. America's great crescendo began in 1776, climaxed in the 1920s, and began its long decrescendo in the 1930s. There have been respites to the decrescendo, but we are on our way down. China, on the other hand, seems to be at the nascence of its crescendo. I hope that the people of Tibet keep fighting, and that the broader population of China will continue to demand more and more liberty.
I wish the same for my own country, but not hopeful that it will resurrect itself. It has fallen too deep in the mire of materialism and consumerism. G.K. Chesterton once remarked that "America is the only nation ever founded on a creed," and I would respond that it is likely the only one that ever crumbled on a fad.
Jesus said that "the love of money is the root of all evil." Oppression is its fruits. We spent a hundred years trying to abolish slavery, and another hundred trying to clean up after it, and yet each day we subject ourselves to a new form of slavery, one that is voluntarily entered into, and exited only with great difficulty. We have lost our way.
Senator Obama claims that we have talked too much about the federal budget deficit and should instead talk more about what he calls "the empathy deficit." He went on to say "Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses."
If there is one thing I have learned to spot a mile away it is a charlatan and a hypocrite. Senator Obama is both, for although he disparages our culture that discourages empathy, he is quick to mandate a host of laws that violate the precious liberties of individuals, individuals who contribute to society, take the risks of an entrepreneur, provide the jobs that millions of people rely on, and give more to charity each year than the good Senator and his wife have given in the last ten. He is quick to call for more laws that criminalize some perfectly legitimate commercial behavior, steal the profits of the rest, and demonize anybody who would oppose his draconian economic agenda. It is not that Senator Obama loves money too little, it is that he too loves it too much. He thinks that the value of a person's life is measured by how much disposable income they have, and that is precisely why he advocates raising the value of some people's life by taking it from others. If in fact, all men were equal and granted protection of their natural rights, then it would not matter what their net worth was, their rights would be protected just the same.
Instead, the Democrats advocate creating two classes of citizens. One class against whom the violation of the right to privacy, property, and the unmitigated pursuit of happiness is ok, and another class which is to be the beneficiary of the violation of the rights of the first. This is just as heinous and just as egregious a violation of rights as the last 8 years of the Bush administration with respect to Habeas Corpus, the right to privacy, free speech, the Patriot Act, etc.
Each day it is Leviathan that marches forward, flanked on the Right by the War Party and the Left by the Welfare Party, and joined by all in the utter obliviation of privacy.
We must all bring ourselves to love liberty for its own sake, for its inherent good, rather than the "things" it brings to us. We must value it more than food, more than cars, houses, money of any kind. We must value it more than prestige, more than even life itself.
Alas, though, it takes men and women of good character to do such a thing, and I fear we have to few of those left in this country.
--The character "O'Brien", George Orwell's 1984
The Treasury Department wants more power for the Federal Government to oversee our financial transactions.
The German Government is targeting Swiss banking privacy in order to pursue potential tax evaders.
Bit by bit, measure by measure, the governments of the "civilized" world are crushing freedom in subtlety. It is easy for Americans to forget the plank in their own eye while criticizing the speck in our neighbors. We look at China, and hypocritically think to ourselves that "nothing like that" could happen here. And yet our government snoops into our financial transactions on a daily basis, and even turns our own banks against us as enormous institutional narcs. But this power isn't enough. The mortgage recession, like all recessions since the New Deal, have been used by government to expand its power. Cases like Eliot Spitzer are broadcast in the news, where the government, through its extensive spy network amongst financial institutions turned him in.
This creates fear. Fear is the greatest source of power, for people in power utilize fear to convince people to agree with them. The whole notion of "fearmongering" is certainly nothing new in politics. It is as old as the profession itself (which of course Ronald Reagan likened to the oldest profession). In ages past, the Church and other institutions invented crises and fears in order to enhance their power. Modern politicians and church figures have become more cunning and savvy in their operations, waiting for the forces of time and chance to product circumstances that allow for some demogoguery. Fortunately for them (and not for the rest of us), the world itself is a tumultuous place, and there are ups and downs every day. When it comes to economic matters, the creation of the Federal Reserve and its cycle of expansion and contraction of the money supply guarantees that a recession will come around every few years during the contraction phase.
Terrorism and WMDs are real. I'm not a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes the government planned 9/11 or fabricated evidence about WMDs in Iraq. We live in a very cruel world. Yet at the same time, the government never hesitates to jump on opportunities to expand its own power. I have little doubt that the people doing this honestly believe they are doing good. Intoxicated with power, they believe they are doing something positive by taking their friends' keys and driving instead, not realizing that the very elements of human nature that caused the problem to begin with will necessarily infect the solution and its implementation.
I have heard President Bush talk about the long march of freedom. But what we have seen in this administration, the Clinton Administration, and especially in the campaigns of Senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain is instead the long march of Leviathan. Liberty is not something that is on a constantly upward trajectory. Rather, it crescendos and decrescendos throughout civlizations and throughout history writ large. America's great crescendo began in 1776, climaxed in the 1920s, and began its long decrescendo in the 1930s. There have been respites to the decrescendo, but we are on our way down. China, on the other hand, seems to be at the nascence of its crescendo. I hope that the people of Tibet keep fighting, and that the broader population of China will continue to demand more and more liberty.
I wish the same for my own country, but not hopeful that it will resurrect itself. It has fallen too deep in the mire of materialism and consumerism. G.K. Chesterton once remarked that "America is the only nation ever founded on a creed," and I would respond that it is likely the only one that ever crumbled on a fad.
Jesus said that "the love of money is the root of all evil." Oppression is its fruits. We spent a hundred years trying to abolish slavery, and another hundred trying to clean up after it, and yet each day we subject ourselves to a new form of slavery, one that is voluntarily entered into, and exited only with great difficulty. We have lost our way.
Senator Obama claims that we have talked too much about the federal budget deficit and should instead talk more about what he calls "the empathy deficit." He went on to say "Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses."
If there is one thing I have learned to spot a mile away it is a charlatan and a hypocrite. Senator Obama is both, for although he disparages our culture that discourages empathy, he is quick to mandate a host of laws that violate the precious liberties of individuals, individuals who contribute to society, take the risks of an entrepreneur, provide the jobs that millions of people rely on, and give more to charity each year than the good Senator and his wife have given in the last ten. He is quick to call for more laws that criminalize some perfectly legitimate commercial behavior, steal the profits of the rest, and demonize anybody who would oppose his draconian economic agenda. It is not that Senator Obama loves money too little, it is that he too loves it too much. He thinks that the value of a person's life is measured by how much disposable income they have, and that is precisely why he advocates raising the value of some people's life by taking it from others. If in fact, all men were equal and granted protection of their natural rights, then it would not matter what their net worth was, their rights would be protected just the same.
Instead, the Democrats advocate creating two classes of citizens. One class against whom the violation of the right to privacy, property, and the unmitigated pursuit of happiness is ok, and another class which is to be the beneficiary of the violation of the rights of the first. This is just as heinous and just as egregious a violation of rights as the last 8 years of the Bush administration with respect to Habeas Corpus, the right to privacy, free speech, the Patriot Act, etc.
Each day it is Leviathan that marches forward, flanked on the Right by the War Party and the Left by the Welfare Party, and joined by all in the utter obliviation of privacy.
We must all bring ourselves to love liberty for its own sake, for its inherent good, rather than the "things" it brings to us. We must value it more than food, more than cars, houses, money of any kind. We must value it more than prestige, more than even life itself.
Alas, though, it takes men and women of good character to do such a thing, and I fear we have to few of those left in this country.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Obama Against His Own Standard
Jesus said "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Chapter 7, Verse 2, NIV)
Unlike most interpretations that see the Sermon on the Mount as an intensely moral, "God will punish you if you don't listen" kind of Sermon, I find that Jesus's most famous speech is full of rather practical admonitions. Some are more spiritual than others, to be certain, like "Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." But others are just good pragmatic recommendations, like the one quoted above. There is nothing in the text to suggest that Christ is saying that God will judge us in the standard we use against others, but rather warning us that if we judge people, other people will judge us in the same way.
Essentially, it seems, Jesus is giving perhaps the best advice I've ever read on not becoming a hypocrite. It is, I think, the same admonition St. James records in his epistle, saying "Not many of you should presume to become teachers, because you know that those who teach will be judged more strictly." Again, there is nothing in the text suggesting that James is writing about the judgment of God. It is merely convenient for many teachers of the text to assume that, in spite of the lack of textual evidence to support the claim. Yet on a human and practical level it makes much sense.
Jimmy Swaggart, the famous televangelist, was judged by others according to the standard he set. Republican sex scandals have been much worse for the perpetrator than Democrat ones precisely because many Republicans hold up family values as their crowning issue. And people, not surprisingly, say "well by his own standard he's unfit to serve." That is the measure we use being used against us. This is why Jesus says we probably shouldn't be in the business of judging at all.
I write all of this as something of a pretext for a thought I had this morning concerning Senator Obama's candidacy for the White House. I think it is time for the thinking members of the electorate to start judging him according to his own standard, and looking for some sort of reason to buy into his claims. I would be willing to admit fault, and even support the Senator from Illinois if I had reason to believe even some of his promises.
The main issue the electorate needs to examine is Senator Obama's claim that he will unite the country in some sort of a post-partisan utopia where party labels, racial differences, religious variations, etc. simply don't matter any more. In contrast, he suggests that Senator Clinton is a hangover of the divide and conquer method of politics, destructive, personal, and ultimately self-defeating.
As an entrepreneur and employer, I have hired and fired a number of people before. I have also conducted many job interviews. Imagine somebody walks into my office and says to me "I will be an excellent salesmen for you." My first response would be "show me where you've been an excellent salesman for somebody else." If they say "Well I haven't ever been a salesman, but I know I would be good at it," then i have two options. 1) Pass on the candidate and tell them to come back when they have experience or 2) Say "well, let's have a trial run and see how you do," that is to say "let's see if you aren't full of it." I would only do the latter if I really though the person had potential...they are energetic, intelligent, and seem dedicated.
Many might suggest that Senator Obama should be given a chance to prove himself. I tend to agree. Certainly if we ask him "If you are such a great uniter, could you give us examples of extremely hostile groups you have united before?" he would have to say that his promises of unity are purely theoretical. He certainly has not brought a post-partisan utopia to the floor of the United States Senate, or in the Congress generally, though it is something he promises to do as President since as President "[he] will set the agenda." (Though I wonder where in the Constitution he read that the President sets the agenda....for a Harvard Law Super Star, I would have hoped for somebody a bit better read in our nation's most important legal document)
Why don't we give him a chance to unify something, but without making him Commander-in-Chief. Senator Clinton claims 30 years of experience--I think she should be judged against her claims (the claims are clearly farcical). Senator McCain on the other hand claims that he's qualified, he's tough, and he will not be partisan. So far, Senator McCain is the only one who can point to his actual record to prove that he is capable of doing the things he promises.
Unlike most interpretations that see the Sermon on the Mount as an intensely moral, "God will punish you if you don't listen" kind of Sermon, I find that Jesus's most famous speech is full of rather practical admonitions. Some are more spiritual than others, to be certain, like "Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." But others are just good pragmatic recommendations, like the one quoted above. There is nothing in the text to suggest that Christ is saying that God will judge us in the standard we use against others, but rather warning us that if we judge people, other people will judge us in the same way.
Essentially, it seems, Jesus is giving perhaps the best advice I've ever read on not becoming a hypocrite. It is, I think, the same admonition St. James records in his epistle, saying "Not many of you should presume to become teachers, because you know that those who teach will be judged more strictly." Again, there is nothing in the text suggesting that James is writing about the judgment of God. It is merely convenient for many teachers of the text to assume that, in spite of the lack of textual evidence to support the claim. Yet on a human and practical level it makes much sense.
Jimmy Swaggart, the famous televangelist, was judged by others according to the standard he set. Republican sex scandals have been much worse for the perpetrator than Democrat ones precisely because many Republicans hold up family values as their crowning issue. And people, not surprisingly, say "well by his own standard he's unfit to serve." That is the measure we use being used against us. This is why Jesus says we probably shouldn't be in the business of judging at all.
I write all of this as something of a pretext for a thought I had this morning concerning Senator Obama's candidacy for the White House. I think it is time for the thinking members of the electorate to start judging him according to his own standard, and looking for some sort of reason to buy into his claims. I would be willing to admit fault, and even support the Senator from Illinois if I had reason to believe even some of his promises.
The main issue the electorate needs to examine is Senator Obama's claim that he will unite the country in some sort of a post-partisan utopia where party labels, racial differences, religious variations, etc. simply don't matter any more. In contrast, he suggests that Senator Clinton is a hangover of the divide and conquer method of politics, destructive, personal, and ultimately self-defeating.
As an entrepreneur and employer, I have hired and fired a number of people before. I have also conducted many job interviews. Imagine somebody walks into my office and says to me "I will be an excellent salesmen for you." My first response would be "show me where you've been an excellent salesman for somebody else." If they say "Well I haven't ever been a salesman, but I know I would be good at it," then i have two options. 1) Pass on the candidate and tell them to come back when they have experience or 2) Say "well, let's have a trial run and see how you do," that is to say "let's see if you aren't full of it." I would only do the latter if I really though the person had potential...they are energetic, intelligent, and seem dedicated.
Many might suggest that Senator Obama should be given a chance to prove himself. I tend to agree. Certainly if we ask him "If you are such a great uniter, could you give us examples of extremely hostile groups you have united before?" he would have to say that his promises of unity are purely theoretical. He certainly has not brought a post-partisan utopia to the floor of the United States Senate, or in the Congress generally, though it is something he promises to do as President since as President "[he] will set the agenda." (Though I wonder where in the Constitution he read that the President sets the agenda....for a Harvard Law Super Star, I would have hoped for somebody a bit better read in our nation's most important legal document)
Why don't we give him a chance to unify something, but without making him Commander-in-Chief. Senator Clinton claims 30 years of experience--I think she should be judged against her claims (the claims are clearly farcical). Senator McCain on the other hand claims that he's qualified, he's tough, and he will not be partisan. So far, Senator McCain is the only one who can point to his actual record to prove that he is capable of doing the things he promises.
Here's a thought. Senator Obama doesn't like the Senate much, because his star power isn't terribly influential there. (Thank God the Senate still retains some of its originally intended culture as the Upper House comprised of Senator Statesmen who are deliberative and slow). So let's give him a chance to be a uniter. I bet that John McCain won't run for re-election in 2012. President McCain could appoint Obama as a special envoy to the Middle East or the Sudan, or perhaps China--and let's see if Obama has what it takes to bring people together. Or perhaps President McCain could make Senator Obama his lead Congressional go-between to push through genuinely bi-partisan health care reform. Another possibility would be for him to be President McCain's energy task force Chairman, since the two agree on most climate change-related issues. There are many avenues that during the next four years Senator Obama could prove himself and make a fine Presidential candidate in 2012.
But today, the record is not there, and it is far too high a risk to let him prove himself with a four year term in the White House. The possibility of failure, and the far-reaching impacts such a failure would have, are something the country cannot afford in a time of war and economic turmoil.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
This Lent, and especially this Holy Week and Easter, have served as the most reflective period of my life in over two years, likely since the last time I went backpacking in Alaska. In this reflective process, I have thought a lot about the spiritual journey of my life. I feel like I can describe it in the following way...
As a child, the church of my parents (the Southern Baptist Church) introduced me to Jesus. We carried on an on and off friendship, the off periods due to indifference and the on periods due to crisis. Many people talk of "fair weather friends" and "fair weather Christians" but I was a foul weather one instead. I have found it easier to be a faithful devotee when things are rough than when things are good. Through this on and again off again friendship with Jesus, I figured that being a thinking person I ought to learn a bit more about Theology, and that is what would lead me to greater belief, greater understanding, and greater obedience. It was at this point that a dear friend of mine (one who I have sadly become estranged from, and with whom I long for reconciliation) introduced me to Calvinism and Christian Reconstruction.
Though I hold on to few of the theological positions I acquired at that time, I intensely value that period of my spiritual journey because it was the first time that I was challenged to challenge much of my closely held dogma, to question if my presuppositions were correct, and then to attempt to vigorously defend my new positions against the inertia of my stagnant and theologically empty Baptist church. Essentially,it was John Calvin who introduced me to St. Paul. Yet he certainly filled me with many preconceptions before he made that introduction.
St. Paul and I went on to have one of those relationships of paradox--at once dissonance and concord, though I would contend that much of the dissonance can be blamed on the introduction. Calvin, St. Paul, and I were constant companions for several years. I held dogmatically to the twin doctrines of predestination and limited atonement, and that God's sovereignty was complete, though his reasons opaque. That opacity was not like the mysteries of the faith--instead it seemed at times pernicious, even cruel. Out of one side of my mouth I sang "Jesus loves me" and out of the other I argued vociferously that God predestined many souls to eternal damnation in a literal hell to glorify himself. Quite obviously, the tensions there could not long sustain without snapping the theological rubber band, or else stretching it to the point of weariness such that it could no longer perform its function of keeping things together.
Finally, as a more-than-decade long personal crisis finally came to its climax, my religious house of cards collapsed under the weight of reality. Mr. Calvin and I didn't have coffee anymore, and St. Paul and I stopped doing lunch. Jesus and I remained friends, but the relationship became more distant, not out of anger, not even out of indifference, but rather merely out of fatigue. I delivered a final plea to the people who surrounded my upbringing, and it seemed that the meat of the message fell on deaf ears. That is when the fatigue really set in. I recognized that I needed to reexamine things, but I really didn't have the energy.
So I decided to distract myself with work and wine. The work was interesting, but frustrating. The wine was alluring, but empty. For just over a year (from October 2005-January 2007) I was in what amounted to a period of distracted agnosticism, a spiritual limbo where like Sisyphus I rolled my stone up a hill just to do it all over again the next day. The night life was not exciting and adventurous, it was dull and redundant. Like a metronome calibrated to tick off quarter notes in 4/4 time, the people of the restaurants and bars repeated the same routine evening after evening, weekend after weekend, with an emotionless devotion that made them more machine than man. To stop for but a moment and reflect on the vanity and meaninglessness would have been self-repudiation, and none would dare to face such an emptiness.
Very soon, however, I decided to do just that. For a thinking man, the allure of the empty soon wears off, and the obviousness of vanity is painfully on the mind at all times. And so, like a maid who had neglected one particular room of a house for far too long, I made my way to dust off the cob-webs of my spiritual self. Perhaps ironically, perhaps providentially, it was on Epiphany Sunday, 2007 that I first darkened the doors of the Church of the Incarnation, an Episcopalian Parish near Downtown Dallas. I did not know where I was going after that, but I knew where I was: I was home.
Like returning from a lengthy vacation, no matter how interesting or exciting the trip was, there is a distinctive comfort about going home, and my spiritual coming home was just that: comforting. I have heard the psuedo-spiritual inspirational preachers turn such ludicrous phrases as "there is no growth in the comfort zone and there is no comfort in the growth zone." This is not wholly untruthful, and much of our greatest learning comes from times when we are thrust away from what is comfortable and known, but the comfort I am speaking of is the kind that has fostered and unprecedented level of spiritual and psychological growth.
Although I had been introduced to Jesus many years before, and followed his example through Baptism, it was during Lent and Holy Week 2007 that for the first time I discovered the Christian Faith and Life. Jesus was no longer just a spiritual friend, or an ethereal example to be followed, but rather the full embodiment of genuine forgiveness, faithfulness, hopefulness, and love. For the first time I sang "These Forty Days," and contemplated Christ's fasting in the wilderness as I walked "this pilgrim-way of Lent." I learned what Liturgy was, and I marveled as its beauty. I was forced to encounter my "manifold sins and wickedness" and admit publicly that I had not "loved my neighbor as myself." And at the same time, I was thankful that I was a member "incorporate in the mystical body" of Christ and amongst "the blessed company of all faithful people" and moreover an "[heir] through hope" of God's "everlasting Kingdom."
I took part in the Eucharistic Mystery and feasted on the body and blood of Christ Crucified. I learned why Ash Wednesday was on the Calendar and was grimly reminded with black and gritty ashes that I am dust and to dust I will return while listening to the ominous words of the Misere mei, Deus from Psalm 51,
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness, in your great compassion blot out my offenses."
Indeed, in 2007 I for the first time experienced the Ashes of Ash Wednesday, the Palms of Palm Sunday, the New Command, Stripping Away, and Betrayal on Maundy Thursday, the Emptiness of Good Friday, and the greatness of the Passover of Christ and the mystery of the Paschal Lamb at my first Great Vigil of Easter.
This year, my reflections and progress have been dramatically different. Where last year was my introduction to the Christian Faith through the Liturgy, this year has been my introduction to the Christian Religion through the Liturgy. Last year it was new--it was pageantry and spectacle, as I had never experienced it before. This year, it was familiar, but not in the boring and laborious familiarity of the outside world's grinding machinations, but rather the comforting familiarity of an old friend. Indeed, I came to understand this year that this thing we do, this Lent thing, this Holy Week thing, this Easter thing, it is something we do every year. And we do it the same way every year. And we do it with focus and devotion to carrying it out. It is ritualistic, but it is full of meaning, hope, and joy.
Like a mechanical instrument that must be re-calibrated on a regular schedule, and like a beautiful grand piano that must be re-tuned, our spiritual lives require that same re-tuning in order to remain virtuous and beautiful, in the way that Christ was always virtuous and always beautiful. Lent, Holy Week, and Easter represent this annual re-tuning and re-calibration. These rituals do not make us more robotic, but rather more human and more divine. But it is not something we can always be doing. And this is perhaps the most valuable realization I have come to on this Easter Day: our lives are represented by the Liturgical Calendar.
Just as crops do not benefit from being pruned and fertilized every day (though they must be fed and watered each day), we would not benefit from having Holy Week every week, Good Friday every Friday, and Easter every Sunday. Although Easter is my favorite day of the year, and my favorite Holiday, it would not be as special if we celebrated it every week. This leads me to the explication of the statement I made at the end of the last paragraph:
In life, as in the life of our liturgy, we cannot have Christmas without Advent, we cannot have Easter without Good Friday, and we can't have Maundy Thursday without Palm Sunday, nor can we have Lent without Ash Wednesday. And in between all of these things we must have Ordinary Time. Advent Prepares us for the Birth of Christ by reminding us that the Israelites waited the Messiah for centuries. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality so we can appreciate the sobriety of Lent. Palm Sunday brings Christ to the focus of life, foretells of his Passion, only to have him give his parting words a few days later, witness his betrayal after giving us the new command, and then being turned over to pain and death. Good Friday is our period of emptiness, our experiencing of that pain, and though it is a remarkable thing, it is not one we can or should do everyday. And Easter is the restoration of all things. It is the celebration of life--indeed, of new life, resurrected life.
Our individual lives likely do not follow the liturgical calendar, but we can learn much from the liturgical calendar. We will have days of mourning, and we will have days of dancing. Each should be appreciated when it comes. The weeping as a reminder of our sin, pain, and mortality, the dancing a reminder of our blessings, life, and vitality. And in the midst of it all, there will be ordinary time. And we must appreciate that for what it is too, for it is what allows us to understand the feasting and fasting when those times come. There is no Easter without Ordinary Time either, for Christ spent most of his time on earth not suffering and dying, nor resurrecting. These were but brief, though significant moments in his earthly existence. Most of the time he was admonishing and teaching, serving and loving, praying and traveling.
With Holy Week behind us, and as we enter into the Easter Season looking ahead to the celebration of Christ's Ascension, let us utilize the time of celebration to prepare us for Ordinary Time. For I think we are keenly aware of our need for Lenten Preparation for Holy Week and Holy Week's preparation for Easter, but we must then prepare ourselves to settle back in to Ordinary Time, where we labor for Christ in the details of life, working to make our prayers a reality that
"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
But for the time being, let us celebrate. The resurrection and new life we have through Christ is reason for much fanfare and much rejoicing. We are no longer captive to sin and death, hell and grave. The grave has been conquered, the sting of sin extinguished.
For, The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!
As a child, the church of my parents (the Southern Baptist Church) introduced me to Jesus. We carried on an on and off friendship, the off periods due to indifference and the on periods due to crisis. Many people talk of "fair weather friends" and "fair weather Christians" but I was a foul weather one instead. I have found it easier to be a faithful devotee when things are rough than when things are good. Through this on and again off again friendship with Jesus, I figured that being a thinking person I ought to learn a bit more about Theology, and that is what would lead me to greater belief, greater understanding, and greater obedience. It was at this point that a dear friend of mine (one who I have sadly become estranged from, and with whom I long for reconciliation) introduced me to Calvinism and Christian Reconstruction.
Though I hold on to few of the theological positions I acquired at that time, I intensely value that period of my spiritual journey because it was the first time that I was challenged to challenge much of my closely held dogma, to question if my presuppositions were correct, and then to attempt to vigorously defend my new positions against the inertia of my stagnant and theologically empty Baptist church. Essentially,it was John Calvin who introduced me to St. Paul. Yet he certainly filled me with many preconceptions before he made that introduction.
St. Paul and I went on to have one of those relationships of paradox--at once dissonance and concord, though I would contend that much of the dissonance can be blamed on the introduction. Calvin, St. Paul, and I were constant companions for several years. I held dogmatically to the twin doctrines of predestination and limited atonement, and that God's sovereignty was complete, though his reasons opaque. That opacity was not like the mysteries of the faith--instead it seemed at times pernicious, even cruel. Out of one side of my mouth I sang "Jesus loves me" and out of the other I argued vociferously that God predestined many souls to eternal damnation in a literal hell to glorify himself. Quite obviously, the tensions there could not long sustain without snapping the theological rubber band, or else stretching it to the point of weariness such that it could no longer perform its function of keeping things together.
Finally, as a more-than-decade long personal crisis finally came to its climax, my religious house of cards collapsed under the weight of reality. Mr. Calvin and I didn't have coffee anymore, and St. Paul and I stopped doing lunch. Jesus and I remained friends, but the relationship became more distant, not out of anger, not even out of indifference, but rather merely out of fatigue. I delivered a final plea to the people who surrounded my upbringing, and it seemed that the meat of the message fell on deaf ears. That is when the fatigue really set in. I recognized that I needed to reexamine things, but I really didn't have the energy.
So I decided to distract myself with work and wine. The work was interesting, but frustrating. The wine was alluring, but empty. For just over a year (from October 2005-January 2007) I was in what amounted to a period of distracted agnosticism, a spiritual limbo where like Sisyphus I rolled my stone up a hill just to do it all over again the next day. The night life was not exciting and adventurous, it was dull and redundant. Like a metronome calibrated to tick off quarter notes in 4/4 time, the people of the restaurants and bars repeated the same routine evening after evening, weekend after weekend, with an emotionless devotion that made them more machine than man. To stop for but a moment and reflect on the vanity and meaninglessness would have been self-repudiation, and none would dare to face such an emptiness.
Very soon, however, I decided to do just that. For a thinking man, the allure of the empty soon wears off, and the obviousness of vanity is painfully on the mind at all times. And so, like a maid who had neglected one particular room of a house for far too long, I made my way to dust off the cob-webs of my spiritual self. Perhaps ironically, perhaps providentially, it was on Epiphany Sunday, 2007 that I first darkened the doors of the Church of the Incarnation, an Episcopalian Parish near Downtown Dallas. I did not know where I was going after that, but I knew where I was: I was home.
Like returning from a lengthy vacation, no matter how interesting or exciting the trip was, there is a distinctive comfort about going home, and my spiritual coming home was just that: comforting. I have heard the psuedo-spiritual inspirational preachers turn such ludicrous phrases as "there is no growth in the comfort zone and there is no comfort in the growth zone." This is not wholly untruthful, and much of our greatest learning comes from times when we are thrust away from what is comfortable and known, but the comfort I am speaking of is the kind that has fostered and unprecedented level of spiritual and psychological growth.
Although I had been introduced to Jesus many years before, and followed his example through Baptism, it was during Lent and Holy Week 2007 that for the first time I discovered the Christian Faith and Life. Jesus was no longer just a spiritual friend, or an ethereal example to be followed, but rather the full embodiment of genuine forgiveness, faithfulness, hopefulness, and love. For the first time I sang "These Forty Days," and contemplated Christ's fasting in the wilderness as I walked "this pilgrim-way of Lent." I learned what Liturgy was, and I marveled as its beauty. I was forced to encounter my "manifold sins and wickedness" and admit publicly that I had not "loved my neighbor as myself." And at the same time, I was thankful that I was a member "incorporate in the mystical body" of Christ and amongst "the blessed company of all faithful people" and moreover an "[heir] through hope" of God's "everlasting Kingdom."
I took part in the Eucharistic Mystery and feasted on the body and blood of Christ Crucified. I learned why Ash Wednesday was on the Calendar and was grimly reminded with black and gritty ashes that I am dust and to dust I will return while listening to the ominous words of the Misere mei, Deus from Psalm 51,
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness, in your great compassion blot out my offenses."
Indeed, in 2007 I for the first time experienced the Ashes of Ash Wednesday, the Palms of Palm Sunday, the New Command, Stripping Away, and Betrayal on Maundy Thursday, the Emptiness of Good Friday, and the greatness of the Passover of Christ and the mystery of the Paschal Lamb at my first Great Vigil of Easter.
This year, my reflections and progress have been dramatically different. Where last year was my introduction to the Christian Faith through the Liturgy, this year has been my introduction to the Christian Religion through the Liturgy. Last year it was new--it was pageantry and spectacle, as I had never experienced it before. This year, it was familiar, but not in the boring and laborious familiarity of the outside world's grinding machinations, but rather the comforting familiarity of an old friend. Indeed, I came to understand this year that this thing we do, this Lent thing, this Holy Week thing, this Easter thing, it is something we do every year. And we do it the same way every year. And we do it with focus and devotion to carrying it out. It is ritualistic, but it is full of meaning, hope, and joy.
Like a mechanical instrument that must be re-calibrated on a regular schedule, and like a beautiful grand piano that must be re-tuned, our spiritual lives require that same re-tuning in order to remain virtuous and beautiful, in the way that Christ was always virtuous and always beautiful. Lent, Holy Week, and Easter represent this annual re-tuning and re-calibration. These rituals do not make us more robotic, but rather more human and more divine. But it is not something we can always be doing. And this is perhaps the most valuable realization I have come to on this Easter Day: our lives are represented by the Liturgical Calendar.
Just as crops do not benefit from being pruned and fertilized every day (though they must be fed and watered each day), we would not benefit from having Holy Week every week, Good Friday every Friday, and Easter every Sunday. Although Easter is my favorite day of the year, and my favorite Holiday, it would not be as special if we celebrated it every week. This leads me to the explication of the statement I made at the end of the last paragraph:
In life, as in the life of our liturgy, we cannot have Christmas without Advent, we cannot have Easter without Good Friday, and we can't have Maundy Thursday without Palm Sunday, nor can we have Lent without Ash Wednesday. And in between all of these things we must have Ordinary Time. Advent Prepares us for the Birth of Christ by reminding us that the Israelites waited the Messiah for centuries. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality so we can appreciate the sobriety of Lent. Palm Sunday brings Christ to the focus of life, foretells of his Passion, only to have him give his parting words a few days later, witness his betrayal after giving us the new command, and then being turned over to pain and death. Good Friday is our period of emptiness, our experiencing of that pain, and though it is a remarkable thing, it is not one we can or should do everyday. And Easter is the restoration of all things. It is the celebration of life--indeed, of new life, resurrected life.
Our individual lives likely do not follow the liturgical calendar, but we can learn much from the liturgical calendar. We will have days of mourning, and we will have days of dancing. Each should be appreciated when it comes. The weeping as a reminder of our sin, pain, and mortality, the dancing a reminder of our blessings, life, and vitality. And in the midst of it all, there will be ordinary time. And we must appreciate that for what it is too, for it is what allows us to understand the feasting and fasting when those times come. There is no Easter without Ordinary Time either, for Christ spent most of his time on earth not suffering and dying, nor resurrecting. These were but brief, though significant moments in his earthly existence. Most of the time he was admonishing and teaching, serving and loving, praying and traveling.
With Holy Week behind us, and as we enter into the Easter Season looking ahead to the celebration of Christ's Ascension, let us utilize the time of celebration to prepare us for Ordinary Time. For I think we are keenly aware of our need for Lenten Preparation for Holy Week and Holy Week's preparation for Easter, but we must then prepare ourselves to settle back in to Ordinary Time, where we labor for Christ in the details of life, working to make our prayers a reality that
"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
But for the time being, let us celebrate. The resurrection and new life we have through Christ is reason for much fanfare and much rejoicing. We are no longer captive to sin and death, hell and grave. The grave has been conquered, the sting of sin extinguished.
For, The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Goodness of Good Friday (Holy Week Reflections, Part 4)
"Where there is doubt, (let me sow) faith." -St. Francis of Assisi
Perhaps rather than focusing on the miraculous nature of the Resurrection this Easter we can instead put it into practical use. That is, in place of marveling at the risen Lord, we can instead commiserate with him. Then we can have more than merely an ethereal comprehension of the simple old hymn that says
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.
What privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer
Oh what peace we often forfeit
Oh what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.
Yesterday I heard what was probably the most remarkable sermon on the crucifixion of Christ that I have ever heard or read in my life. I'm not sure the Priest realized the profundity of some of the things he said, perhaps because he never came out and said them, but rather there was a distinct desire to move to them as a logical conclusion of what was said.
The question of theodicy--that is, how an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God and evil can co-exist in the world--is the primary objection I hear to religious faith. It is perhaps the most difficult issue I must wrestle with myself, in fact. Many different answers are given, in the Christian context, to explain this.
The Calvinists say that ultimately everything was pre-ordained before time that God might glorify himself. This answer was initially appealing, because if you granted the premise (that the ultimate end of all of history is the glorification of God), then the conclusion followed quite nicely. Yet it doesn't sit quite right, as it makes God into an egotistical, self-absorbed being who pleasures in the pain of his creatures. This kind of masochistic deity is not only unappealing, but unpalatable. Other explanations tend toward limiting God's omnipotence (saying there really are things God is incapable of doing) or his omniscience (that God does not have foreknowledge of future events, the claim of Open Thesists, for example, would mean he isn't morally culpable for letting something occur since he didn't know of its occurrence).
None of these have ever been satisfactory to me, either, and all have seemed to diminish God in some unnecessary way. Baptists from my childhood told me that God is sovereign and everything works together for some sort of good even if we can't see it. This, I think, makes good sense if we are talking about ordinary evil, but not egregious evil, or horrendous evils, like the Holocaust, Nagasaki, etc. It is hard for us to imagine what overall good really came from the slaughter of millions of innocents. (Though the Calvinists and many Baptists would suggest that they weren't innocent because they were born with original sin and thus deserved what was coming to them.)
I finally came to the point of accepting this as one of the great mysteries not only of Christianity but Theism in general. This hasn't changed significantly, but yesterday I had a new insight and realization about the subject that would have sown faith in me were I sitting there as an agnostic or questioning believer. The Crucifixion of Christ, and the symbol of the Cross itself are the evidence of God's solidarity with us in our suffering. Indeed, the Cross is the image of the Suffering God. The Priest delivering yesterday's sermon rightly noted that the very Christ that ought to inspire the most belief is the one who was ridiculed by Nietzche for being weak and inept.
Christ's death on the Cross does not give us great insight into why there is evil in the world, but it does give us a better understanding of why it is ok that evil is present simultaneously with the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God.
I am not sure if the idea I am about to espouse has been espoused before (I'm sure that it has, I just have not read it), but it is the epiphany that I had yesterday that has suddenly caused me reason to love God even more.
Most people, commenting on the Crucifixion, focus upon the justification it provided for sinners--that substitution, or propitiating sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Certainly this is the central theme of the rest of the New Testament as it reflects on the death of Christ. Yet I think almost equally important, and virtually completely overlooked in the exegesis not only of the Crucifixion accounts in the Gospels but also in the reflections on the Crucifixion by the other New Testament writers, is that the suffering of Christ, and the suffering of God, is equally a vindication of God himself.
It would seem that prior to Christ, there was a legitimate reason to doubt God's love for his creation. Not that he didn't love his creation, but rather the evidentiary record left room for reasonable doubt. Not bearing to look upon his creation and see the great violence committed by it on itself, he flooded the world. Looking upon the violence of ancient cities, he destroyed them. His mercy on his people was manifested, he relented, indeed, but there was no evidence of his giving of himself. After all, the creation of Manna ex nihilo did not cost God anything. Nor did his absolution of the sins of people when they made animal sacrifices at the Temple.
Although, I would contend that the Flood and other examples of God destroying large groups of people is evidence not of wrathful vengeance, but instead of God putting them out of their misery, for violent hateful people are the most miserable and unhappy form of humanity one can find.
When Job asked that eternally human question "why?" God did not respond with an answer. And I do not think we are any closer to such an answer, even after the Crucifixion. God instead responded with over 60 rhetorical questions, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" and so on. A modern day Job asking why might get a different set of questions, or at least a supplementary set.
"Where were you when I was suffering in flesh as you are now? Where were you when they hung me on the cross? Where were you when they pierced my side? Where are you when they mock me now and continue to crucify me today?"
Although no less of a mystery, I believe evil and suffering are softened in light of the Cross. Indeed, Paul recognized this when he so boldly asked "Death where is they sting?" For now we have a new perspective on God's relationship to our suffering, one of co-experience. The greatest act of solidarity, and indeed I believe much of the meaning of the salvation (which comes from the word salve, as in ointment rubbed on a wound to heal it) is wrapped up in this very solidarity. Indeed, his sacrifice was able to cover the sins of the world by veritably annihilating the gap between man and God. God's mercy was ever heightened for his Creation after experiencing humanity, in all of its pains, turmoils, and struggles.
A couple of years ago, I wrote this poem, and it seems to have recognized something that I did not even understand at the time. The last stanza truly expresses and I think sums up the thoughts I have already written today:
But when the pain seems at its worst,
The light of glory will then more brightly shine,
And there walking beside me
Is Christ whose wounds are mine!
Perhaps rather than focusing on the miraculous nature of the Resurrection this Easter we can instead put it into practical use. That is, in place of marveling at the risen Lord, we can instead commiserate with him. Then we can have more than merely an ethereal comprehension of the simple old hymn that says
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.
What privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer
Oh what peace we often forfeit
Oh what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.
"For it is in dying that we are born again unto eternal life. Amen." -St. Francis of Assisi
Friday, March 21, 2008
The New Mandate (Holy Week Reflections, Part 3)
Since becoming an Anglican, I have been astonished at how much I draw from church services that has nothing to do with the sermon. I count it one of the greatest strengths of the Anglican tradition, in fact: that it is the least anthropocentric worship I have ever encountered. Indeed, the preaching takes up so little of the service (as it should) and the focus is on the reading of scripture, the singing of hymns, prayer, and culminating in the Holy Eucharist.
Having been raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I must claim that for most of my life I had no idea such a thing existed, and given the things I heard growing up at church and at home, I honestly didn't believe that anybody who wasn't an evangelical (that is, had been "born again" in the narrow understanding the evangelicals have of that phrase) probably wasn't a real Christian.
Yet last night, at the Maundy Thursday liturgy, I was moved to tears on a number of occasions. It had nothing to do with the sermon. Not that the sermon was bad; it wasn't. But it just so happened that although making a couple of rather important points, it was just a fraction of what the service was about. For those of you who, like me, were raised in a non-liturgical church, Maundy Thursday is the commemoration of the night in which Christ was betrayed in which he did two things that are now essential elements of our understanding of Christianity.
For one, he instituted the Holy Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. This is the focus of the Synoptic Gospels' account of the night. Additionally, as we find in the Gospel according to St. John, Christ instituted the new command (from whence we gain the term "Maundy" from the latin for mandamus or mandatem, meaning "mandate"). In John's Gospel account, in fact, we get a rather lengthy treatment of the night's events.
It begins with the Christ's washing of the disciples' feet:
After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand." "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." "Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!" Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
What a remarkable passage. I could not stop thinking about it after it was read; throughout the service, last night after getting home, this morning when I woke up. These are my reflections on that passage and its place in the context of the rest of the New Testament.
First, there is a distinctive parallel between Peter's refusal to allow Christ to wash his feet and John the Baptizer's incredulity at Christ's desire to be baptized by John. From St. Matthew's Gospel, we hear him say "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" To which Christ replied "Let it be so now, for it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness."
In both circumstances, a follower of Christ was in some way served by him, although thinking that it should have been the other way around. In the case of John the Baptizer, Christ said that "it is proper for us to do this." Not being a Greek scholar (though I wish I were), I can only interpret based on the English translation, but it certainly seems that Christ's use of the word "us" is in the literal and immediate sense of he and John there and at that point in time.
I come to this conclusion by interpreting the circumstances through the parallel we find with Peter in St. John's Gospel account. The operative hermeneutical tool is the penultimate line of the foot-washing narrative, where Christ says "I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him." These twin circumstances seem to point towards Christ's reverence of God the Father--and his desire for his disciples to ensure that their reverence was rightly placed. Christ always references himself as being sent by God--that is, as a messenger.
We find further evidence of this entire paradox (though only compounding the paradox) in St. Paul's cryptic discussion of the subject in his letter to the Philippians, saying, "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."
Far from denying Trinitarianism and the begottenness of Christ these Scriptures help us from straying into the realm of semi-Docetism (Docetism being the heretical view that Christ's physical body was only an illusion). The humanity of Christ is as important as his divinity, and I have found that many, especially in the evangelical community, tend to de-emphasize the fullness of Christ's humanity. For it was not that Christ was half human and half divine or half human and fully divine, but rather that he was both fully human and fully divine. And he invites us to be like him. Not to act like him, but to be like him.
By virtue of the fact that he was the begotten Son of God, his divinity was manifested from all eternity, as we find expressed in the words of the Nicene Creed, that he was "begotten of his Father before all worlds, God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God, begotten and not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made." Yet as created beings, and not begotten ones, we humans in our own incarnations are invited to become immortal beings, as part of the divine essence with Christ.
I believe this is a correct rendering of St. Paul's usage of the forms of the word "adoption" in his letters to the Romans and the Ephesians. We are all to be adopted as Children of God, to reign with Christ in God's Kingdom, being all "members incorporate in the mystical body of Thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people," to quote from the final Eucharistic Prayer in Rite I of the Anglican liturgy.
All of this is likely enough to take in, but I would be remiss if I did not continue, for there is an even greater richness in our original Gospel passage. As we begin to reverence Christ in this new context, and to take heed in his words that we do likewise to our neighbor, I believe that the message we must extract from the foot-washing narrative culminates in the New Mandate Christ instituted on Maundy Thursday, which is:
"Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Given the perpetual New Testament theme of the triplet set, it is not surprising that Christ, in as many sentences, commands his hearers three times to love one another. Yet again we overlook a crucial word of the text. Christ says "a new commandment I give to you." Some might argue that this is technically inaccurate, for how could this commandment be new? When pressed by the Pharisees to cite the greatest commandment of the Old Testament, Christ had previously stated that it was "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and all your soul. And the second, which is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself."
But notice the difference in the New Commandment and the old one. The point of reference had changed. For the Old Testament reader, one could possibly conceive of no greater love than one had for himself. Indeed, the Old Testament said in essence "put people on equal footing with yourself." The Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" fits directly into this context. Christ, however, truly gives us a new command. For when he says "Love one another even as I have loved you," he is veritably saying "Love your neighbor more than you love yourself," and its corollary, "Do unto others in a manner than is even better than you would have them do unto you."
Perhaps now we have an even better understanding of the previously quoted passage from St. Paul's letter to the Philippians that we are to be like-minded with Christ. Christ, being in nature God made himself lower than his equal. We, being human, ought to make ourselves lower than our fellow humans. This is how we reach the divine presence; this is how we realize our full status as the adopted sons of God. This is the same, but differently worded paradox of Christ that "he who will save his life will lose it, and he who will lose his life will save it."
It is with that single condition (and notice none others are mentioned in this passage, which is Christ's last teaching session with his disciples) that Christ says we shall be known as his disciples: the loving of one another with a sacrificial love, that is, one that imitates Christ's love. In the grammatical sense, the logical antecedent of Christ's conditional statement is "if you love one another." The consequent is "then you will be known as my disciple." The antecedent is a sufficient condition for the consequent. That is, in any context in which one is abiding by the commandment to love one another, then that person is known as Christ's disciple. It is unequivocal and unqualified. This is the highest calling of man. All other good things flow from it.
This is why St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans that the greatest of the virtues is love, and that without love there is nothing. There is no grace, there is no faithfulness, there is no joy, there is no freedom, there is no peace. Without love, all is for nought. This is the consistent, redundant, and perpetual message of the Gospels and the entirety of the New Testament's writings. The moment we get away from this--the moment we stray into adding commandments, is the moment we lose sight of the entire life of Christ, the purpose of his death, and the meaning of his resurrection.
But it is also the loftiest of the commands. I have frequently heard many Baptist preachers talk about how much easier things are because of Christ, that we are no longer under the weight of keeping the thousands of technicalities of the Old Testament laws. I would argue (and not at all contradicting Paul's pleadings with the Jewish people about being liberated from the law) that it would be easier to keep the technicalities of the Old Testament Law than to remain in a constant spirit and state of loving one another in the way that Christ loved us. There is a reason that only one man (Christ himself) can make the claim that he achieved that end, for it is not an easy accomplishment.
As we now look to this day's services, the Good Friday liturgy and the Stations of the Cross, let us be ever mindful of the emptying of Christ, both spiritually and physically, so that he could perform that ultimate act of love, the laying down of his own life. More thoughts to come this afternoon and evening.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Holy Week Reflections, Part 2
"O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
-The Book of Common Prayer
In our time of war and as there are a multitude of conflicts across the world, we must be reminded this Holy Week that we are to be instruments of God's peace (to draw from the saying of St. Francis), and not only of God's peace in the context of armed conflict, but in the context of all conflict. For we are not at peace with our neighbor if we hate him, nor are we at peace with ourselves if we hate and revile ourselves. As an Episcopalian and thus an Anglican, I am acutely reminded of our present enmity within the church of God.
Protestants and Catholics aren't killing each other with swords anymore, but American Anglicans and African Anglicans are lobbing verbal nuclear devices at each other, decimating our credibility in preaching Christ crucified, and leaving in the aftermath children of God with no mother church and shepherd to feed them.
I have meditated much on this subject, and have debated it as well. "What end ought the church pursue most fervently, unity or truth?" Of course I believe that we ought to pursue both ends as fervently as we can, though I find that people who come down on the side of pursuing truth at the expense of unity rarely find themselves in need of the pursuit since they are of the opinion they have already caught it.
The Apostle Paul reminds us that we have only a limited understanding of the world, "for now we see through a glass darkly." Even if we achieve Truth in this lifetime, we will have no way of being sure we have achieved it, living under the veil of mortality and finiteness. Rather, I believe, Truth is progressively revealed to us through our reading of Scripture, our participation in Tradition, the use of our Reason, and our daily Experience. Thus, if Truth is not manifestly something we can fully grasp, or even be aware of when it is grasped, it would seem that we should pursue, above all things, the Unity of Christ's Church.
Certainly in the context of the Anglican Communion, we all pray, weekly "For Thy holy catholic church: that we all may be one." Yet we can, as the Collect I quoted earlier says "confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and work together with mutual forbearance and respect." As the Proverbs remind us "a harsh word stirs up wrath, but a gentle word breaks a bone." We can have our disputes and attempt to convert others to our way of thinking, but we should do so by being like Christ, not Caiaphas.
-The Book of Common Prayer
In our time of war and as there are a multitude of conflicts across the world, we must be reminded this Holy Week that we are to be instruments of God's peace (to draw from the saying of St. Francis), and not only of God's peace in the context of armed conflict, but in the context of all conflict. For we are not at peace with our neighbor if we hate him, nor are we at peace with ourselves if we hate and revile ourselves. As an Episcopalian and thus an Anglican, I am acutely reminded of our present enmity within the church of God.
Protestants and Catholics aren't killing each other with swords anymore, but American Anglicans and African Anglicans are lobbing verbal nuclear devices at each other, decimating our credibility in preaching Christ crucified, and leaving in the aftermath children of God with no mother church and shepherd to feed them.
I have meditated much on this subject, and have debated it as well. "What end ought the church pursue most fervently, unity or truth?" Of course I believe that we ought to pursue both ends as fervently as we can, though I find that people who come down on the side of pursuing truth at the expense of unity rarely find themselves in need of the pursuit since they are of the opinion they have already caught it.
The Apostle Paul reminds us that we have only a limited understanding of the world, "for now we see through a glass darkly." Even if we achieve Truth in this lifetime, we will have no way of being sure we have achieved it, living under the veil of mortality and finiteness. Rather, I believe, Truth is progressively revealed to us through our reading of Scripture, our participation in Tradition, the use of our Reason, and our daily Experience. Thus, if Truth is not manifestly something we can fully grasp, or even be aware of when it is grasped, it would seem that we should pursue, above all things, the Unity of Christ's Church.
Certainly in the context of the Anglican Communion, we all pray, weekly "For Thy holy catholic church: that we all may be one." Yet we can, as the Collect I quoted earlier says "confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and work together with mutual forbearance and respect." As the Proverbs remind us "a harsh word stirs up wrath, but a gentle word breaks a bone." We can have our disputes and attempt to convert others to our way of thinking, but we should do so by being like Christ, not Caiaphas.
As we look ahead to the almost inevitable collisions with Iran, China, North Korea, and other nations, let us pray that we will first resort to the admonitions of the Collect. Let us only respond with military arms as a means of defense, and never offense. The doctrine of pre-emptive strike is contrary to the teachings of Christ and of Holy Scripture. We are to love our enemies, not hate them. This was one of the new teachings of Christ, breaking from tradition. In the Garden of Gethsemane, in a story familiar to all Christians, Peter draws his sword and cuts off the ear of one of the people who appeared to arrest Christ. Christ rebuked Peter for this. We must all put our swords back in their sheaths...
Whether we are Americans, looking across the ocean and hearing chants of "Death to America,"
Or if we are gay Anglicans looking across the ocean to the African Bishops and hearing their reviling cries of damnation...
Or if we are African Bishops looking back across the Atlantic to what we think in our understanding is immoral...
Or if we are businessmen who have been defrauded and are looking to the Courts to restore us...
Or if we are involved in the political process and tempted to use lies and deceit to carry the day...
Or if we are angry with a family member for the wrong done to us...
Whoever we are, whatever our conflict, whatever our dispute, however we think we have been wronged or will be wronged, even unto injury and death, let us hear the call of Jesus to Peter, and take it as our own:
"Put your sword in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
Instead, we should "walk in love as Christ loved us," remembering the words of Christ "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. For this is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
Amen.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Fraud by any other name
If Ben Bernanke were a CEO he would be tossed in jail under Sarbanes-Oxley for defrauding his shareholders (the American people). But, fortunately for him, government officials are immune from the laws that the rest of us have to follow. Bear Stearns is bankrupt--and they should go belly up. That's what would happen to the average person if they made the kind of investments Bear Stearns made. But, the Federal Reserve Act was designed by bankers, for bankers, that they should not perish from the earth--especially the big banks.
So Ben Bernanke and his fellow counterfeiters at the Fed are revving up the electronic printing presses. $200 Billion here, $200 Billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. Except it isn't real. It's fake.
Counterfeiting has been a problem for all of history. Look at the ancient prohibitions we find in the Old Testament:
These efforts were intended to prevent fraud, whether it was by falsifying the amount of wheat one was selling or the amount of gold. The trouble is that the Fed can just keep printing more greenbacks for the explicit purpose of bailing out the banks and the financial sector and it's the rest of us who suffer the inflation from it.
If you want a tax that the truly rich are immune from, inflation is it. The Fed creates money out of thin air and puts it into circulation by purchasing debt in the open market. Who usually owns this debt? The big banks. The big banks, being the first recipients of this money, rush out to lend or spend it before prices adjust. The act of lending and spending it is precisely what causes the inflationary pressures. Demand is artificially inflated and prices follow. But the banks spent it before prices rose. They win. The rest of us lose.
Since Paul Volcker became Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Fed has been revered--almost worshiped--by the American public and especially Wall Street. We had finally reached that glorious Utopia that was immune from recession and inflation. We had bullet proofed the economy, thanks to the brilliance and omnipotence of the Central Bank.
But that dream is over. The dollar is in free fall against foreign currencies, with no signs of a bottom. Commodities prices are soaring, and we are all feeling the crunch. The Fed is only going to make it worse. They will rescue the banks at our expense through outright fraud.
Don't expect the SEC to prosecute them, though.
This crisis, probably the worst since the Great Depression, is evidence that we must wrest control of our money from the government. It's time to revoke the Federal Reserve's charter and return to a hard money standard. It's the only way to keep an honest currency. Sure things have been good for the last 30 years, but if this crisis undoes two decades of progress, will it really have been worth it? I do not think it is ethical to take the position "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die," when we are eating and drinking at the expense of our children.
As a member of Generation Y, I am quite offended that the previous two generations have run up a big bar tab and left it for me to pay. The tab will just keep going up. If Barack Obama is elected president, the tab will go up exponentially. We don't have much time.
So Ben Bernanke and his fellow counterfeiters at the Fed are revving up the electronic printing presses. $200 Billion here, $200 Billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. Except it isn't real. It's fake.
Counterfeiting has been a problem for all of history. Look at the ancient prohibitions we find in the Old Testament:
- Leviticus 19:36
Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt.
- Deuteronomy 25:13
Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light.
- Deuteronomy 25:15
You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
- Proverbs 11:1
The LORD abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.
- Proverbs 16:11
Honest scales and balances are from the LORD; all the weights in the bag are of his making.
- Proverbs 20:10
Differing weights and differing measures— the LORD detests them both.
- Proverbs 20:23
The LORD detests differing weights, and dishonest scales do not please him.
- Micah 6:11
Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States.
These efforts were intended to prevent fraud, whether it was by falsifying the amount of wheat one was selling or the amount of gold. The trouble is that the Fed can just keep printing more greenbacks for the explicit purpose of bailing out the banks and the financial sector and it's the rest of us who suffer the inflation from it.
If you want a tax that the truly rich are immune from, inflation is it. The Fed creates money out of thin air and puts it into circulation by purchasing debt in the open market. Who usually owns this debt? The big banks. The big banks, being the first recipients of this money, rush out to lend or spend it before prices adjust. The act of lending and spending it is precisely what causes the inflationary pressures. Demand is artificially inflated and prices follow. But the banks spent it before prices rose. They win. The rest of us lose.
Since Paul Volcker became Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Fed has been revered--almost worshiped--by the American public and especially Wall Street. We had finally reached that glorious Utopia that was immune from recession and inflation. We had bullet proofed the economy, thanks to the brilliance and omnipotence of the Central Bank.
But that dream is over. The dollar is in free fall against foreign currencies, with no signs of a bottom. Commodities prices are soaring, and we are all feeling the crunch. The Fed is only going to make it worse. They will rescue the banks at our expense through outright fraud.
Don't expect the SEC to prosecute them, though.
This crisis, probably the worst since the Great Depression, is evidence that we must wrest control of our money from the government. It's time to revoke the Federal Reserve's charter and return to a hard money standard. It's the only way to keep an honest currency. Sure things have been good for the last 30 years, but if this crisis undoes two decades of progress, will it really have been worth it? I do not think it is ethical to take the position "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die," when we are eating and drinking at the expense of our children.
As a member of Generation Y, I am quite offended that the previous two generations have run up a big bar tab and left it for me to pay. The tab will just keep going up. If Barack Obama is elected president, the tab will go up exponentially. We don't have much time.
Holy Week Relfections, Part 1
As we entered into Holy Week yesterday with the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we are all called to reflect backwards for the purpose of anticipating forward the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. In fact, the entirety of the Christian religion is predicated on this kind of historical see-saw of looking back in order that we might look forward.
Throughout Lent we are reminded by our lectionary 's pairing of Scriptures that that which is old has become new again, but always new in a different way. We see Christ offering water in a weary spiritual land to the woman at the well as we are also called to reflect on Moses striking the rock in the wilderness and it springing forth with water for the people of Israel after their exodus from Egyptian captivity. On Palm Sunday, we read the 22nd Psalm and feel the foreshadowing of Christ by the Psalmist's declaration "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and then we read The Passion.
Today we read from the Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 42, where again we have the forward-looking to Christ
"Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him
and he will bring justice to the nations.
Just as Christ suffers alongside each of us, we must labor alongside him, as the prayers of the people say in the Anglican liturgy "that there may be justice and peace on the earth." We all have a part to play in this long struggle. None of us are exempt, not by account of our age, race, gender, social status, or even religion. For every faith puts great value in justice and peace.
We need not look far to find injustice that we can and should fight to end. Turn on the local news, read a newspaper, look around you and be conscious. We have lulled ourselves into unconsciousness because the injustice is overwhelming. So this Holy Week. let us become conscious, let us raise ourselves to a new life of awareness and let that new life of awareness breed action that is swift and efficacious.
There is an old 19th Century hymn sung frequently in the Baptist tradition called "When the Roll is Called up Yonder." It goes like this...
When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more,
And the morning breaks eternal bright and fair,
When the saved of earth shall gather over on the other shore,
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.
--
My question is when the roll is called here tomorrow, where will I be? And where will you be? When we see violence in the Third World, will we be brave enough to stand up and do something about it? When we see our fellow countrymen getting defrauded by our own government, will we fight for justice? Will we say, as the prophet of old "Here I am Lord, send me"? Or will we flip the channel, navigate to another website, or crack open a bottle of wine and say "It is too much, I am only one person."
This Holy Week let us be mindful of this call and ethical duty. Let us discern what in fact we can do, and then pray for the will and desire to do it. We must be contemplative and active. The two are not mutually exclusive. It is much easier to do one or the other, however. To do both requires much discipline. And Holy Week is the best time to begin this process.
I shall close now with the Collect of the Day for Monday in Holy Week from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer...
"Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."
Throughout Lent we are reminded by our lectionary 's pairing of Scriptures that that which is old has become new again, but always new in a different way. We see Christ offering water in a weary spiritual land to the woman at the well as we are also called to reflect on Moses striking the rock in the wilderness and it springing forth with water for the people of Israel after their exodus from Egyptian captivity. On Palm Sunday, we read the 22nd Psalm and feel the foreshadowing of Christ by the Psalmist's declaration "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and then we read The Passion.
Today we read from the Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 42, where again we have the forward-looking to Christ
"Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him
and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his law the islands will put their hope."
We wait for the full realization of this promise. We labor with Christ to bring justice to the nations--or at least we should. Yet we are reminded by our reading of St. John's account of the Gospel that wickedness and violence pervade--even in the physical presence of Christ himself.
"Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him."Just as Christ suffers alongside each of us, we must labor alongside him, as the prayers of the people say in the Anglican liturgy "that there may be justice and peace on the earth." We all have a part to play in this long struggle. None of us are exempt, not by account of our age, race, gender, social status, or even religion. For every faith puts great value in justice and peace.
We need not look far to find injustice that we can and should fight to end. Turn on the local news, read a newspaper, look around you and be conscious. We have lulled ourselves into unconsciousness because the injustice is overwhelming. So this Holy Week. let us become conscious, let us raise ourselves to a new life of awareness and let that new life of awareness breed action that is swift and efficacious.
There is an old 19th Century hymn sung frequently in the Baptist tradition called "When the Roll is Called up Yonder." It goes like this...
When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more,
And the morning breaks eternal bright and fair,
When the saved of earth shall gather over on the other shore,
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.
--
My question is when the roll is called here tomorrow, where will I be? And where will you be? When we see violence in the Third World, will we be brave enough to stand up and do something about it? When we see our fellow countrymen getting defrauded by our own government, will we fight for justice? Will we say, as the prophet of old "Here I am Lord, send me"? Or will we flip the channel, navigate to another website, or crack open a bottle of wine and say "It is too much, I am only one person."
This Holy Week let us be mindful of this call and ethical duty. Let us discern what in fact we can do, and then pray for the will and desire to do it. We must be contemplative and active. The two are not mutually exclusive. It is much easier to do one or the other, however. To do both requires much discipline. And Holy Week is the best time to begin this process.
I shall close now with the Collect of the Day for Monday in Holy Week from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer...
"Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Abdication of George W. Bush
As I have mentioned before in this space, I regrettably voted for George W. Bush twice. Most people will argue that I should have learned my lesson the first time, to which I always respond "at least we don't have two more socialists on the Supreme Court." Unfortunately, I have only grown increasingly disappointed and cynical about this administration. Many of us had hoped in 2000 that we would have a free market President. What we got was a big spending socialist.
Those of us who believe in free markets and liberty gave him a pass in the first term saying "let's give him a chance to build a coalition so he can have a mandate in 2004." Then 9/11 happened. Then the War in Iraq. The Farm Bill, No Child Left Behind, the Prescription Drug Benefit, massive deficit spending, the Patriot Act, Wiretapping, Torture, and did I mention....more deficit spending.
The President was originally envisioned to be the big red stop sign to Congress. I recently read an excellent article in the Village Voice (strange that I should say such a thing, I know) by a convert to free market causes. He pointed out that the Founders knew that the President would try to become King and Congress would try to sell off all the silverware. That's why Congress made the laws, not the President. That's why the President was given a veto: to prevent the sale of the silverware.
However, President Bush, like many professed Conservatives before him, came into office with a legislative agenda. In this day and age, Presidents have to promise bold legislative agendas in order to get elected, and President Bush was no different. He needed to be able to placate the Christian Right. He needed education and health care initiatives to cut into the Democrats' base of moderates and independents. He co-opted Ted Kennedy to show bipartisanship on Educational Reform. But in return for getting his agenda through, he had to abdicate the greatest and most important legislative power given to him by the Constitution: his veto.
President Bush has vetoed or pocket vetoed only 9 pieces of legislation. One of them has been overridden. He has vetoed fewer bills than any President since Warren G. Harding, who died barely over 2 years into office.
The problem with modern presidents is their need to leave a legacy. They think much of this should be done legislatively. We no longer have a statesman who temporarily presides over the Republic as its caretaker--we have a Caesar who wants to be immortalized in the history books with bold reform agendas. Reform and Change have become cliche. You find few people who boldly advocate dispositional conservatism--that is "just leave things alone." Activists on both sides of the aisle now think we need massive changes. Although I agree we do, I'd be fine if we just didn't do anything for a while. We might find it's quite a relief.
This is probably why most people tune out politics: people do not want to face problems, and they do not like to confronted with a million crises. This has led to crisis fatigue. Both sides of the aisle present bogeymen who must be fought, be it poverty or terrorism, health coverage or economic growth. And though we have now entered into some truly dangerous times with respect to our economy, I believe the American people are overloaded.
So they are becoming escapists. "If we don't like how things are, we'll just pretend that they aren't." I would contend that this is the source of much of the euphoria surrounding the Obama campaign. Empty promises of hope are a lot more appealing than talking about crises. But pay attention: this is why the Obama campaign is going to suffer a great decline, either between now and the Democratic Convention, or between the Democratic Convention and election day. Since some in the media and all of his political enemies have called him out on the emptiness of his promises, he has started attempting policy speeches. They are bad. He rambles, can't make a point, and his charisma is supplanted by inarticulate babbling. A master of the English language he is not. A master of policy he couldn't dream to be.
But I ask the next President, whether it is Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain: use your veto pen, and use it often. Be the caretaker of our Republic, not the Caesar of an Empire. Stop Congress from selling the silverware rather than conspiring with them in order to get your legislative legacy adopted. We can't afford another president who abdicates his responsibilities.
Those of us who believe in free markets and liberty gave him a pass in the first term saying "let's give him a chance to build a coalition so he can have a mandate in 2004." Then 9/11 happened. Then the War in Iraq. The Farm Bill, No Child Left Behind, the Prescription Drug Benefit, massive deficit spending, the Patriot Act, Wiretapping, Torture, and did I mention....more deficit spending.
The President was originally envisioned to be the big red stop sign to Congress. I recently read an excellent article in the Village Voice (strange that I should say such a thing, I know) by a convert to free market causes. He pointed out that the Founders knew that the President would try to become King and Congress would try to sell off all the silverware. That's why Congress made the laws, not the President. That's why the President was given a veto: to prevent the sale of the silverware.
However, President Bush, like many professed Conservatives before him, came into office with a legislative agenda. In this day and age, Presidents have to promise bold legislative agendas in order to get elected, and President Bush was no different. He needed to be able to placate the Christian Right. He needed education and health care initiatives to cut into the Democrats' base of moderates and independents. He co-opted Ted Kennedy to show bipartisanship on Educational Reform. But in return for getting his agenda through, he had to abdicate the greatest and most important legislative power given to him by the Constitution: his veto.
President Bush has vetoed or pocket vetoed only 9 pieces of legislation. One of them has been overridden. He has vetoed fewer bills than any President since Warren G. Harding, who died barely over 2 years into office.
The problem with modern presidents is their need to leave a legacy. They think much of this should be done legislatively. We no longer have a statesman who temporarily presides over the Republic as its caretaker--we have a Caesar who wants to be immortalized in the history books with bold reform agendas. Reform and Change have become cliche. You find few people who boldly advocate dispositional conservatism--that is "just leave things alone." Activists on both sides of the aisle now think we need massive changes. Although I agree we do, I'd be fine if we just didn't do anything for a while. We might find it's quite a relief.
This is probably why most people tune out politics: people do not want to face problems, and they do not like to confronted with a million crises. This has led to crisis fatigue. Both sides of the aisle present bogeymen who must be fought, be it poverty or terrorism, health coverage or economic growth. And though we have now entered into some truly dangerous times with respect to our economy, I believe the American people are overloaded.
So they are becoming escapists. "If we don't like how things are, we'll just pretend that they aren't." I would contend that this is the source of much of the euphoria surrounding the Obama campaign. Empty promises of hope are a lot more appealing than talking about crises. But pay attention: this is why the Obama campaign is going to suffer a great decline, either between now and the Democratic Convention, or between the Democratic Convention and election day. Since some in the media and all of his political enemies have called him out on the emptiness of his promises, he has started attempting policy speeches. They are bad. He rambles, can't make a point, and his charisma is supplanted by inarticulate babbling. A master of the English language he is not. A master of policy he couldn't dream to be.
But I ask the next President, whether it is Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain: use your veto pen, and use it often. Be the caretaker of our Republic, not the Caesar of an Empire. Stop Congress from selling the silverware rather than conspiring with them in order to get your legislative legacy adopted. We can't afford another president who abdicates his responsibilities.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Ron Paul's Potential Legacy
Ron Paul is an unlikely savior of the American political system. To hear the mainstream press tell it, he's a kooky libertarian who represents a fringe minority. To hear his supporters tell it, he is a symbol of liberty who would lead us into a libertarian utopia and promised land and represents what most people really feel deep down. Something in the middle is likely closer to the truth.
Yet this OBGYN-Congressman-Presidential Candidate has the potential to leave an important legacy. At 72, the Texas Congressman is unlikely to make another run for the presidency. He was a long-shot this time. But he did something important: he forced a debate. Ridiculed by war-mongers like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani for "not understanding" the threat of Islamic terror, he remained firm: America's global military empire is causing more harm than good. On economics, he blasted the socialistic tendencies of some in the Republican Party and especially the overt marxism of Obama and Hillary on the Democrat side.
Yet his legacy will not be defined by what he did in the 2008 campaign, but what he does after. He is likely to win re-election to his seat in the U.S. House. But whether or not he does, he now has the ability to become the Grandfather of the Liberty movement. By transitioning his massive network of loyal supporters and donors into an organization rallied around the Liberty cause, and by moreover making it non-partisan, he can oversee the creation of a concerted effort and leadership to advance the libertarian agenda. There are many card-carrying members of the ACLU who will join on civil liberties issues. There are many NRA members, Club For Growth supporters, and others on the right who will join based on economic issues and gun rights issues.
My hope is that the movement he has helped catalyze does not die with his Presidential prospects. America needs to recognize that it lives under the most extensive bureaucracy in the history of mankind, one that has more involvement in its citizens daily lives than under the Roman Empire. Privacy rights are not just eroding, but quickly evaporating. Property rights and economic rights are being trampled on by Congress, the States, and the thousands of municipal governments that meddle in even the most menial affairs of the public.
This all has adverse implication for prosperity and happiness in the long-term. Ron Paul can, and should, see to it that the small flame he kindled with his candidacy turns into a burning fire that engulfs the ever increasingly oppressive government we live under in the United States.
We probably don't have much time left, but Ron Paul's candidacy, in spite of its "failure" in the traditional sense, gives me hope.
Yet this OBGYN-Congressman-Presidential Candidate has the potential to leave an important legacy. At 72, the Texas Congressman is unlikely to make another run for the presidency. He was a long-shot this time. But he did something important: he forced a debate. Ridiculed by war-mongers like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani for "not understanding" the threat of Islamic terror, he remained firm: America's global military empire is causing more harm than good. On economics, he blasted the socialistic tendencies of some in the Republican Party and especially the overt marxism of Obama and Hillary on the Democrat side.
Yet his legacy will not be defined by what he did in the 2008 campaign, but what he does after. He is likely to win re-election to his seat in the U.S. House. But whether or not he does, he now has the ability to become the Grandfather of the Liberty movement. By transitioning his massive network of loyal supporters and donors into an organization rallied around the Liberty cause, and by moreover making it non-partisan, he can oversee the creation of a concerted effort and leadership to advance the libertarian agenda. There are many card-carrying members of the ACLU who will join on civil liberties issues. There are many NRA members, Club For Growth supporters, and others on the right who will join based on economic issues and gun rights issues.
My hope is that the movement he has helped catalyze does not die with his Presidential prospects. America needs to recognize that it lives under the most extensive bureaucracy in the history of mankind, one that has more involvement in its citizens daily lives than under the Roman Empire. Privacy rights are not just eroding, but quickly evaporating. Property rights and economic rights are being trampled on by Congress, the States, and the thousands of municipal governments that meddle in even the most menial affairs of the public.
This all has adverse implication for prosperity and happiness in the long-term. Ron Paul can, and should, see to it that the small flame he kindled with his candidacy turns into a burning fire that engulfs the ever increasingly oppressive government we live under in the United States.
We probably don't have much time left, but Ron Paul's candidacy, in spite of its "failure" in the traditional sense, gives me hope.
Across The Board Tax Increases
Attention America: Your taxes are going up no matter who you vote for in November. They're already on the rise. They will affect everybody, but will especially hurt people whose incomes aren't going up, people on fixed incomes, people who save, and people of low income.
The tax I'm talking about is the silent tax of inflation--and there's nothing you can do about it. And there's little that the next President will do about it, no matter who he (or she) is.
Speaking recently at an economic forum, President Bush made the following statement:
"I guess the best to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car on a rough patch. If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it's important not to overcorrect -- because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch. And so it's important to be steady and to keep your eyes on the horizon."
Growing up in Northwest Arkansas, I drove on my fair share of icy roads, since we far more frequently got freezing rain than snow. The President is right--overcorrecting is bad news. I've been in that ditch before. What Mr. Bush forgets to tell us, however, is that the government spend billions of dollars on freezing equipment, froze the roads, and then poured water on them, and froze them again. Then they let just a little sunlight peek out, melt a small layer of ice into water on the top, while the underlying bit is still frozen solid. And now they are telling us that we need to be weary of overcorrecting.
There is one radical move that would not be an overcorrection, but a permanent correction: Get government out of our money and require a balanced budget.
Right now, the Federal Government has quite a racket going on with respect to our money (which is merely a medium of exchange for our labor, ingenuity, and valued goods. money itself has no intrinsic value). First, Congress and the President can go on a spending orgy, spending far more than they receive each year in revenue. The Federal Reserve and the Chinese government, meanwhile, snap up this debt by infusing more money into the US system.
Here's how that works:
The Federal Government borrows money through the sale of treasury bills. These treasury bills are things like U.S. Savings Bonds that are bought by the average person. This represents an extremely small proportion of our debt. Most of our debt is purchased on the open market by the Federal Reserve when it is trying to effect a lower interest rate and by foreign governments, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, and other institutional investors. When the Chinese government buys US debt, it first has to buy dollars with Yuan (the Chinese currency). This is beneficial (in the short-run sense) as it drives up the demand for dollars and helps keep the currency's value afloat. When the Federal Reserve does it, however, it is inflationary.
By increasing the supply of money in the open market through the financing of the Federal Budget Deficit and the National Debt, the Fed causes the relative value of our money to decline. This is inflation. This is what we are witnessing today. Gas prices are at a record, reaching $4 a gallon in many places. Crude Oil exceeds $111 a barrel. In the past four years, crude prices have jumped 270%. In the same period, demand for crude has only increased about 8%. Something is going on other than the Chinese driving more cars.
In January of 2001, the average price of a gallon of 2% milk was $2.85. Today, that price is $3.70. That's almost a 30% increase. Not coincidentally, that is the approximately the same increase in the value of the Euro against the dollar over the same period.
The Government measures inflation through two primary measures (at least these are the ones that get publicized): Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI). The CPI measures, primarily, inflation at the retail level, where the PPI measures it at the wholesale level. The graph below is based on CPI data published on the St. Louis Federal Reserve's website. It illustrates retail inflation since 2004.
It represents a roughly 13% rate of inflation since 2004. But something seems to be seriously wrong. The U.S. Currency has rapidly declined against the Euro in the same period, Gold has jumped to $1,000 an ounce, and oil is up 270%, yet the government's figures show only 13% inflation during that period. What gives?
Well, for one, the core CPI excludes the prices of food an energy because they are more volatile. It certainly does not measure against commodity prices like gold, either. Further, CPI attempts to approximate cost of living and measure against that. It is widely thought to inaccurately state these figures. Unfortunately, many argue that it overstates inflation, rather than understating it.
The reality, however, is that government, and especially the Federal Reserve, has a distinct incentive to mask the real effects of inflation. It keeps them their jobs. But the average American feels the squeeze. $4 at the pump, doubling grocery bills, not to mention the rapid increase in the prices of cars, health care, etc.
In spite of this ignored tax, the Democratic Presidential candidates want to raise income taxes even more, corporate taxes too. What those who support such policies fail to understand is that such tax increases have other effects on the economy. An increase in corporate taxes (which are already among the highest in the industrialized world) does not mean they will pass the tax along to the consumer. The consumer won't pay. They don't have limited resources either. So what the corporations will do is lay people off. They will most likely lay off middle management and the people at the lowest end of the pay schedule, the latter of which is precisely the group that these tax increases are supposed to benefit through government spending on health care and education.
Right now, however, I'm more concerned about the across the board tax increases through monetary inflation than I am about what Sens. Clinton and Obama are proposing. There is at least a chance of a tax revolt if they enact their plans. Yet the silent tax of inflation will keep on slicing the Average American's disposable income, penny by penny. Sadly, it will tkae a period of hyperinflation before people realize what's happened to their money.
I will close today with an image from history--the Weimar Republic, which was the government that ruled Germany during the Inter-war period had notorious hyperinflation, where people ran to the grocery store with wheel barrels full of money, rushing to get there before prices went up. Here is a picture of what worthless money looks like. In the days of electronic currency, we won't have this problem. Just an ever-increasing number of zeros after prices, and an ever-decreasing number of zeros after our income.
The tax I'm talking about is the silent tax of inflation--and there's nothing you can do about it. And there's little that the next President will do about it, no matter who he (or she) is.
Speaking recently at an economic forum, President Bush made the following statement:
"I guess the best to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car on a rough patch. If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it's important not to overcorrect -- because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch. And so it's important to be steady and to keep your eyes on the horizon."
Growing up in Northwest Arkansas, I drove on my fair share of icy roads, since we far more frequently got freezing rain than snow. The President is right--overcorrecting is bad news. I've been in that ditch before. What Mr. Bush forgets to tell us, however, is that the government spend billions of dollars on freezing equipment, froze the roads, and then poured water on them, and froze them again. Then they let just a little sunlight peek out, melt a small layer of ice into water on the top, while the underlying bit is still frozen solid. And now they are telling us that we need to be weary of overcorrecting.
There is one radical move that would not be an overcorrection, but a permanent correction: Get government out of our money and require a balanced budget.
Right now, the Federal Government has quite a racket going on with respect to our money (which is merely a medium of exchange for our labor, ingenuity, and valued goods. money itself has no intrinsic value). First, Congress and the President can go on a spending orgy, spending far more than they receive each year in revenue. The Federal Reserve and the Chinese government, meanwhile, snap up this debt by infusing more money into the US system.
Here's how that works:
The Federal Government borrows money through the sale of treasury bills. These treasury bills are things like U.S. Savings Bonds that are bought by the average person. This represents an extremely small proportion of our debt. Most of our debt is purchased on the open market by the Federal Reserve when it is trying to effect a lower interest rate and by foreign governments, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, and other institutional investors. When the Chinese government buys US debt, it first has to buy dollars with Yuan (the Chinese currency). This is beneficial (in the short-run sense) as it drives up the demand for dollars and helps keep the currency's value afloat. When the Federal Reserve does it, however, it is inflationary.
By increasing the supply of money in the open market through the financing of the Federal Budget Deficit and the National Debt, the Fed causes the relative value of our money to decline. This is inflation. This is what we are witnessing today. Gas prices are at a record, reaching $4 a gallon in many places. Crude Oil exceeds $111 a barrel. In the past four years, crude prices have jumped 270%. In the same period, demand for crude has only increased about 8%. Something is going on other than the Chinese driving more cars.
In January of 2001, the average price of a gallon of 2% milk was $2.85. Today, that price is $3.70. That's almost a 30% increase. Not coincidentally, that is the approximately the same increase in the value of the Euro against the dollar over the same period.
The Government measures inflation through two primary measures (at least these are the ones that get publicized): Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI). The CPI measures, primarily, inflation at the retail level, where the PPI measures it at the wholesale level. The graph below is based on CPI data published on the St. Louis Federal Reserve's website. It illustrates retail inflation since 2004.
It represents a roughly 13% rate of inflation since 2004. But something seems to be seriously wrong. The U.S. Currency has rapidly declined against the Euro in the same period, Gold has jumped to $1,000 an ounce, and oil is up 270%, yet the government's figures show only 13% inflation during that period. What gives?
Well, for one, the core CPI excludes the prices of food an energy because they are more volatile. It certainly does not measure against commodity prices like gold, either. Further, CPI attempts to approximate cost of living and measure against that. It is widely thought to inaccurately state these figures. Unfortunately, many argue that it overstates inflation, rather than understating it.
The reality, however, is that government, and especially the Federal Reserve, has a distinct incentive to mask the real effects of inflation. It keeps them their jobs. But the average American feels the squeeze. $4 at the pump, doubling grocery bills, not to mention the rapid increase in the prices of cars, health care, etc.
In spite of this ignored tax, the Democratic Presidential candidates want to raise income taxes even more, corporate taxes too. What those who support such policies fail to understand is that such tax increases have other effects on the economy. An increase in corporate taxes (which are already among the highest in the industrialized world) does not mean they will pass the tax along to the consumer. The consumer won't pay. They don't have limited resources either. So what the corporations will do is lay people off. They will most likely lay off middle management and the people at the lowest end of the pay schedule, the latter of which is precisely the group that these tax increases are supposed to benefit through government spending on health care and education.
Right now, however, I'm more concerned about the across the board tax increases through monetary inflation than I am about what Sens. Clinton and Obama are proposing. There is at least a chance of a tax revolt if they enact their plans. Yet the silent tax of inflation will keep on slicing the Average American's disposable income, penny by penny. Sadly, it will tkae a period of hyperinflation before people realize what's happened to their money.
I will close today with an image from history--the Weimar Republic, which was the government that ruled Germany during the Inter-war period had notorious hyperinflation, where people ran to the grocery store with wheel barrels full of money, rushing to get there before prices went up. Here is a picture of what worthless money looks like. In the days of electronic currency, we won't have this problem. Just an ever-increasing number of zeros after prices, and an ever-decreasing number of zeros after our income.
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Religious Right Makes a Left Turn
Many non-religious Libertarians have long wondered why the Conservative movement in America, which was supposedly predicated on less government intervention, has had to include so many socially Conservative Evangelical Christians. The thinking, as it goes, is that the God-mandate (for whatever it is) is wholly incompatible with limited government and religious liberty. Yet Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush could never have been elected without the so-called Religious Right. These folks, though were shrewd politicians. They saw that particularly in the South, white Christians had been voting traditionally Democrat.
Nixon's Southern Strategy originally divided white Southerners along racial lines. However, very quickly this division deteriorated and Republicans had to come up with another way to straddle the ideological fence and rope in this essential bloc of voters. At just the right time for the 1980 election, something was happening in Christianity--the Baptist Reformation. Led by the likes of Adrian Rogers and Jerry Falwell, the Southern Baptist Convention was about to become the first major Christian denomination in America to turn back from Liberalism and toward a decidedly Conservative theology. Conveniently, this brand of Conservative Christianity was primarily concerned with what they saw as the destruction of "traditional values," symbolized at the time by Roe v. Wade. As the Gay Rights movement evolved, this too was perceived as an attack on Christian doctrine, and Republican politicians of the era abandoned their traditional agnosticism towards Faith & Politics and jumped on the opportunity to rally Southern Whites to their cause in a post-segregation society.
It worked. The "Values Voter" emerged to support Ronald Reagan who frequently and eloquently invoked the name of God in his speeches and promised to appoint "Strict Constructionist" judges to the nation's Supreme Court, code in the mind of Conservatives for judges who would roll back many of the liberal decisions of the 60s and 70s. Led by Falwell, James Dobson, and others, the Evangelical vote became a core component of the Republican base, and in 1996, Bob Dole's lackluster support of this bloc's issues helped to defeat him by lackluster turnout at the polls in spite of Newt Gingrich's revolutionary seizing of Congress just two years prior.
Record Evangelical turnout propelled George W. Bush and his "compassionate conservatism" to victory in 2000 and 2004 and helped he and Karl Rove break with history in 2002 to be one of few modern Presidents to have their party make gains in Congress in their first mid-term election. Bush appointed social conservatives to many of his top cabinet posts, supported "Faith based initiatives" in his first term, and nominated Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the court, both perceived as traditional strict constructionist judges. Yet the fissure in the Conservative movement has begun to be apparent.
Mike Huckabee, rallying Evangelicals around his populist platform in this year's Republican primaries, eschewed the usual economically conservative rhetoric in favor of a his own brand of compassionate conservatism. The Evangelicals rallied to his cause in a clear indication that their "values" issues were what really mattered to them--not economics. Increasingly, younger evangelicals are finding themselves more closely aligned with the social agenda of Barack Obama than John McCain--if only Obama were pro-life, it would be a match made in heaven. Now, we find increasing support amongst evangelicals for the Environmentalist agenda and the fight against so-called "Global Warming."
The new generation of evangelicals even seems to care less and less about abortion and gay rights and more and more about helping the poor--with tax dollars rather than charitable donations of course. The Reaganesque Rugged Individualism of older evangelicals seems to be in the process of being supplanted by the "It Takes a Village" mentality of the Socialist Left. All in the name of Christ-like compassion, of course.
There is increasing evidence that the Dobson evangelicals are about to break with the Republican Party for lack of progress on abortion and gay marriage, and that younger evangelicals are likely to switch over to the Democrats because of "social justice" issues. This will leave a substantial vacuum in the Republican party, removing an essential element of the coalition that has kept the Republicans more or less in power since 1980.
For those of us who believe that Christian social justice, like morality generally, is to be accomplished through individual choice and not coercion, this Socialistic turn is worrisome. Yet the break-up of the evangelical bloc also means there will be a less than center stage focus on gay marriage and abortion and more on other, less tired issues.
What appears to be happening, though, is that these well-meaning Religious Conservatives are merely being co-opted by both sides of the aisle for their respective agendas and they don't even realize it. They think they are closer to heaven as a result. The legacy of the end of Christian pietism is likely to be negative.
I am reminded of a beautiful quote by C.S. Lewis, one that characterizes many on the Right and Left when it comes to making people moral--whether with their checkbooks or by banning perceived immoral actions...
“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 busybodies. 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
Whether this attitude takes the form of confiscatory taxation or preventing a man from visiting his gay partner in the hospital, it truly does "sting with intolerable insult." Let us hope that these busybodies do not win in November--on either side of the aisle. Sadly, "none of the above," doesn't appear on our ballots.
Nixon's Southern Strategy originally divided white Southerners along racial lines. However, very quickly this division deteriorated and Republicans had to come up with another way to straddle the ideological fence and rope in this essential bloc of voters. At just the right time for the 1980 election, something was happening in Christianity--the Baptist Reformation. Led by the likes of Adrian Rogers and Jerry Falwell, the Southern Baptist Convention was about to become the first major Christian denomination in America to turn back from Liberalism and toward a decidedly Conservative theology. Conveniently, this brand of Conservative Christianity was primarily concerned with what they saw as the destruction of "traditional values," symbolized at the time by Roe v. Wade. As the Gay Rights movement evolved, this too was perceived as an attack on Christian doctrine, and Republican politicians of the era abandoned their traditional agnosticism towards Faith & Politics and jumped on the opportunity to rally Southern Whites to their cause in a post-segregation society.
It worked. The "Values Voter" emerged to support Ronald Reagan who frequently and eloquently invoked the name of God in his speeches and promised to appoint "Strict Constructionist" judges to the nation's Supreme Court, code in the mind of Conservatives for judges who would roll back many of the liberal decisions of the 60s and 70s. Led by Falwell, James Dobson, and others, the Evangelical vote became a core component of the Republican base, and in 1996, Bob Dole's lackluster support of this bloc's issues helped to defeat him by lackluster turnout at the polls in spite of Newt Gingrich's revolutionary seizing of Congress just two years prior.
Record Evangelical turnout propelled George W. Bush and his "compassionate conservatism" to victory in 2000 and 2004 and helped he and Karl Rove break with history in 2002 to be one of few modern Presidents to have their party make gains in Congress in their first mid-term election. Bush appointed social conservatives to many of his top cabinet posts, supported "Faith based initiatives" in his first term, and nominated Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the court, both perceived as traditional strict constructionist judges. Yet the fissure in the Conservative movement has begun to be apparent.
Mike Huckabee, rallying Evangelicals around his populist platform in this year's Republican primaries, eschewed the usual economically conservative rhetoric in favor of a his own brand of compassionate conservatism. The Evangelicals rallied to his cause in a clear indication that their "values" issues were what really mattered to them--not economics. Increasingly, younger evangelicals are finding themselves more closely aligned with the social agenda of Barack Obama than John McCain--if only Obama were pro-life, it would be a match made in heaven. Now, we find increasing support amongst evangelicals for the Environmentalist agenda and the fight against so-called "Global Warming."
The new generation of evangelicals even seems to care less and less about abortion and gay rights and more and more about helping the poor--with tax dollars rather than charitable donations of course. The Reaganesque Rugged Individualism of older evangelicals seems to be in the process of being supplanted by the "It Takes a Village" mentality of the Socialist Left. All in the name of Christ-like compassion, of course.
There is increasing evidence that the Dobson evangelicals are about to break with the Republican Party for lack of progress on abortion and gay marriage, and that younger evangelicals are likely to switch over to the Democrats because of "social justice" issues. This will leave a substantial vacuum in the Republican party, removing an essential element of the coalition that has kept the Republicans more or less in power since 1980.
For those of us who believe that Christian social justice, like morality generally, is to be accomplished through individual choice and not coercion, this Socialistic turn is worrisome. Yet the break-up of the evangelical bloc also means there will be a less than center stage focus on gay marriage and abortion and more on other, less tired issues.
What appears to be happening, though, is that these well-meaning Religious Conservatives are merely being co-opted by both sides of the aisle for their respective agendas and they don't even realize it. They think they are closer to heaven as a result. The legacy of the end of Christian pietism is likely to be negative.
I am reminded of a beautiful quote by C.S. Lewis, one that characterizes many on the Right and Left when it comes to making people moral--whether with their checkbooks or by banning perceived immoral actions...
“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 busybodies. 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
Whether this attitude takes the form of confiscatory taxation or preventing a man from visiting his gay partner in the hospital, it truly does "sting with intolerable insult." Let us hope that these busybodies do not win in November--on either side of the aisle. Sadly, "none of the above," doesn't appear on our ballots.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Where it Stops, Nobody Knows
News websites could just permanently affix a headline to their pages with the words "Dollar drops to new low against the Euro." This could be the headline everyday. It isn't likely to stop anytime soon. The Federal Reserve has made it clear: rates are heading lower. The European Central Bank has also made themselves clear: rates aren't heading anywhere. Inflation (like misery) loves company. But the dollar isn't getting any love these days.
And this is where the dirty little secret about oil prices begins to expose itself. This week we have heard President Bush calling for OPEC to boost oil production because prices are putting a squeeze on Americans and "causing" inflation. As if we needed any further proof that President Bush doesn't have an understanding of economics, he keeps bringing it our way.
First, we might need to play Myth Busters: The Economy Edition. There is a pervasive notion that a rise in energy prices causes inflation. Even the President of the United States seems to believe this. This concept, known as "cost plus" inflation, posits that whenever the price of an essential input into a good goes up, then it drives up the cost of the good and if it is something like oil, which is an input into almost everything, then it drives up the cost of everything else. This is pure fantasy. In an economic setting where there is no monetary inflation--that is, there is a perfectly stable money supply, prices do not rise, but rather demand for certain things fall, some goods are no longer profitable produce and their production ceases, and everything goes back into equilibrium. We do not live in that world, however, because we do have monetary inflation. And it is monetary inflation that is the cause of price inflation, not oil.
To illustrate this point, I found three important historical charts that I am reprinting below for your convenience. The first chart is a five year historical chart of the US Dollar's exchange rate with the Euro. For those of you who might not be familiar with the way exchange rates are quoted, the graph you are seeing immediately below shows the value of the Dollar relative to the value of the Euro. You will notice that the Dollar has more or less steadily fallen against the Euro since January 2004, with the total depreciation reaching 28%.
Similarly, we find that Oil prices have risen, meaning that the dollar has lost value relative to oil, over the same period. The graph below illustrates this, showing the price of oil in Dollars from 1999 to present:
The twin culprits for this massive atrocity are U.S. Fiscal Policy (Thank you Congress & President Bush) and U.S. Monetary Policy (Thank you Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke). Let's start by looking at why Fiscal Policy is responsible for the situation.
Fiscal policy refers to taxing and spending, the powers of which are delegated to Congress by Article I of the US Constitution. Due to the ascension of the Imperial Presidency since The New Deal, the President now plays a pivotal role in fiscal policy, certainly not one envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, who saw the president as purely a referee, stopping bad fiscal legislation, rather than being responsible for proposing the government's budget each year. But these days, Congress serves more of a consultative role in the budget process. Nevertheless, Congress has as much blood on their hands as the President has on his, since budgets can't gain adoption without Congress's approval.
And Congress and the President have been on a spending orgy for the last 8 years. Balanced budgets and fiscal discipline are nothing more than the rally cry of the opposition--whoever it is. It reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton once wrote "When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it." Nowhere has this been more true than on the subject of balanced budgets.
The only two times since the Eisenhower Administration that the U.S. has run a balanced budget have been under the two most scandal-ridden Presidents (Nixon and Clinton) when Congress was controlled by the opposite party of the President. Should it really require complete gridlock to achieve responsible spending policies?
Our other culprit is of course the much venerated Federal Reserve. If consumerism were a religion, the Fed Chairman would be its Pope. Everybody waits to hear the edict from on high that "everything will be ok. God is taking care of it." In this case, The Fed thinks itself both Pope and God. And just like the Old Testament manna from heaven, the Fed has promised more liquidity than we could ever ask for. The only problem is that unlike manna, Greenbacks aren't edible. Especially electronic ones.
Everybody is looking to Ben Bernanke to save the economy. Congress brings him in to testify and assure them that the economy will get better so that they can keep doing nothing and still keep their jobs. Yet Mr. Bernanke could not offer them much hope. In his recent testimony before the House committee charged with overseeing the Fed, he offered up what the Fed is doing at present to help remedy the situation:
For an institution who has been given god-like respect, the Fed doesn't seem to have all the answers--and certainly not all the power. If I had been an ancient Israelite after the Exodus, complaining to Moses that we were fat and happy in Egypt and now we are starving, I don't know that I would have been satisfied if he had said "The Lord your God continues to work with Aaron and I to support the development of streamlined, systematic approaches to expedite the food provision process. He has also been providing us with detailed analyses about how hungry you are and how you might hunt, if there were actually any animals around, or to farm if it happened that you were to occasion upon fertile soil."
Like the spoofed George W. Bush from Saturday Night Live's 2000 Election Debate special, we hear Mr. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve giving us a blank stare and shouting "PASS." But they can't pass. When it comes to monetary policy, the buck stops with the Fed. Or does it?
The Federal Reserve Act was passed on December 23, 1913, in a late-night session that threatened to prevent members from being home to their families on Christmas. As an attempt to prevent future bank runs and shore up the stability and credibility of the American currency, the Federal Reserve was created to oversee America's money. Its legacy is not so grand. Within the first two decades of the Fed's existence, America endured its most memorable and lasting depression, the legacy of which remains with us today in the form of crippling entitlement programs and worse, an entitlement culture that threatens the solvency of the Republic.
Congress created the Federal Reserve, and Congress can constrain it, criticize it, and even eliminate it. The Constitution envisioned Congress with the authority to control the monetary policy of the country--which was surely less complicated in 1787 than it is today. I certainly would shudder at the thought of Congress manipulating the money supply in the way the Federal Reserve does, but if we lived in a fantasy world where members of Congress were responsible, then one could theorize that we could have a stable monetary policy based on a hard-money standard with strong anti-inflationary components. This is unlikely to happen.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild said "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws." And so the mega-banks and Academic Economists have wrested control of our nation's money from our nation's lawmakers. As I previously intimated, this is a double edged sword. Given the incompetence of Congress, we might rejoice that anybody other than they are in control. Yet the mega banks and their wealthy mega bankers certainly benefit the most from the Federal Reserve system. After all, nobody rushes to the aid of the small business in middle America when it is about to go belly up. But you can rest assured that CitiGroup will never seriously have to worry about bankruptcy. They will always have the golden, or at least green, ripcord of the Fed to parachute them safely to the ground.
It is a parachute we all pay for, though. We pay for it with $100+ oil and $3.25 at the pump. We pay for it with $5 gallons of milk and $1,000 gold. The piper always gets paid--the question is just about who does the paying. In America, it's the average guy on the street, not the politicians who gave us a faulty system and not the mega bankers who abused that system for fraudulent profits.
There is a silver lining. But only a lining. Unlike most people throughout history, America's people are not powerless against such forces. The Constitution of the United States gives us a mechanism for changing and fixing broken policies. It doesn't happen on its own, though, and we have to do our part. We can start by rejecting more bad policy. That means saying "We can't afford..." to all of the proposed entitlement programs that we will be promised in 2008. That means saying "we know we have to have a recession. Bring it on."
It is a true saying that "all is not gold that glitters," and even the glitter is starting to wear off of the fool's gold these days. That's why the price of real gold keeps going up, up, up. And where it stops--nobody knows. Especially not the Fed.
And this is where the dirty little secret about oil prices begins to expose itself. This week we have heard President Bush calling for OPEC to boost oil production because prices are putting a squeeze on Americans and "causing" inflation. As if we needed any further proof that President Bush doesn't have an understanding of economics, he keeps bringing it our way.
First, we might need to play Myth Busters: The Economy Edition. There is a pervasive notion that a rise in energy prices causes inflation. Even the President of the United States seems to believe this. This concept, known as "cost plus" inflation, posits that whenever the price of an essential input into a good goes up, then it drives up the cost of the good and if it is something like oil, which is an input into almost everything, then it drives up the cost of everything else. This is pure fantasy. In an economic setting where there is no monetary inflation--that is, there is a perfectly stable money supply, prices do not rise, but rather demand for certain things fall, some goods are no longer profitable produce and their production ceases, and everything goes back into equilibrium. We do not live in that world, however, because we do have monetary inflation. And it is monetary inflation that is the cause of price inflation, not oil.
To illustrate this point, I found three important historical charts that I am reprinting below for your convenience. The first chart is a five year historical chart of the US Dollar's exchange rate with the Euro. For those of you who might not be familiar with the way exchange rates are quoted, the graph you are seeing immediately below shows the value of the Dollar relative to the value of the Euro. You will notice that the Dollar has more or less steadily fallen against the Euro since January 2004, with the total depreciation reaching 28%.
Similarly, we find that Oil prices have risen, meaning that the dollar has lost value relative to oil, over the same period. The graph below illustrates this, showing the price of oil in Dollars from 1999 to present:
Notice especially that the price of oil in 2004 was approximately $30 per barrel. Today it is $105 per barrel. If we invert the comparison, and price the dollar in terms of barrels of oil, what we find is that in 2004, 300/1,000 of a barrel of oil would get you $1. Today, it only takes 9/1,000 of a barrel of oil to get a dollar. That is a 97% decline in the value of the dollar in terms of oil.
Finally, we must look at Gold, the hard currency that everybody reverts to when inflation seems to be on the rise:
Finally, we must look at Gold, the hard currency that everybody reverts to when inflation seems to be on the rise:
As you can see, in January 2004, the price of Gold was hovering just above $400 an ounce. Today, however, at the moment I am writing this blog, Gold is trading at $976 an ounce in the spot market. To make the comparisons equal, let's look at gold in terms of the dollar. In 2004 an you could get a dollar for 0.0025 ounces of gold. Today it only takes 0.001 ounces of gold to get the same dollar. That's a 60% decline in the value of the dollar in terms of gold.
Before we get to the analysis of all of this, let's summarize what we see in these graphs one more time...
Since 2004, the value of the dollar has declined 28% against the Euro, 97% against oil, and 60% against gold.
Before we get to the analysis of all of this, let's summarize what we see in these graphs one more time...
Since 2004, the value of the dollar has declined 28% against the Euro, 97% against oil, and 60% against gold.
The twin culprits for this massive atrocity are U.S. Fiscal Policy (Thank you Congress & President Bush) and U.S. Monetary Policy (Thank you Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke). Let's start by looking at why Fiscal Policy is responsible for the situation.
Fiscal policy refers to taxing and spending, the powers of which are delegated to Congress by Article I of the US Constitution. Due to the ascension of the Imperial Presidency since The New Deal, the President now plays a pivotal role in fiscal policy, certainly not one envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, who saw the president as purely a referee, stopping bad fiscal legislation, rather than being responsible for proposing the government's budget each year. But these days, Congress serves more of a consultative role in the budget process. Nevertheless, Congress has as much blood on their hands as the President has on his, since budgets can't gain adoption without Congress's approval.
And Congress and the President have been on a spending orgy for the last 8 years. Balanced budgets and fiscal discipline are nothing more than the rally cry of the opposition--whoever it is. It reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton once wrote "When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it." Nowhere has this been more true than on the subject of balanced budgets.
The only two times since the Eisenhower Administration that the U.S. has run a balanced budget have been under the two most scandal-ridden Presidents (Nixon and Clinton) when Congress was controlled by the opposite party of the President. Should it really require complete gridlock to achieve responsible spending policies?
Our other culprit is of course the much venerated Federal Reserve. If consumerism were a religion, the Fed Chairman would be its Pope. Everybody waits to hear the edict from on high that "everything will be ok. God is taking care of it." In this case, The Fed thinks itself both Pope and God. And just like the Old Testament manna from heaven, the Fed has promised more liquidity than we could ever ask for. The only problem is that unlike manna, Greenbacks aren't edible. Especially electronic ones.
Everybody is looking to Ben Bernanke to save the economy. Congress brings him in to testify and assure them that the economy will get better so that they can keep doing nothing and still keep their jobs. Yet Mr. Bernanke could not offer them much hope. In his recent testimony before the House committee charged with overseeing the Fed, he offered up what the Fed is doing at present to help remedy the situation:
The Federal Reserve continues to work with financial institutions, public officials, and community groups around the country to help homeowners avoid foreclosures. We have called on mortgage lenders and servicers to pursue prudent loan workouts and have supported the development of streamlined, systematic approaches to expedite the loan modification process. We also have been providing community groups, counseling agencies, regulators, and others with detailed analyses to help identify neighborhoods at high risk from foreclosures so that local outreach efforts to help troubled borrowers can be as focused and effective as possible. We are actively pursuing other ways to leverage the Federal Reserve's analytical resources, regional presence, and community connections to address this critical issue.
Like the spoofed George W. Bush from Saturday Night Live's 2000 Election Debate special, we hear Mr. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve giving us a blank stare and shouting "PASS." But they can't pass. When it comes to monetary policy, the buck stops with the Fed. Or does it?
The Federal Reserve Act was passed on December 23, 1913, in a late-night session that threatened to prevent members from being home to their families on Christmas. As an attempt to prevent future bank runs and shore up the stability and credibility of the American currency, the Federal Reserve was created to oversee America's money. Its legacy is not so grand. Within the first two decades of the Fed's existence, America endured its most memorable and lasting depression, the legacy of which remains with us today in the form of crippling entitlement programs and worse, an entitlement culture that threatens the solvency of the Republic.
Congress created the Federal Reserve, and Congress can constrain it, criticize it, and even eliminate it. The Constitution envisioned Congress with the authority to control the monetary policy of the country--which was surely less complicated in 1787 than it is today. I certainly would shudder at the thought of Congress manipulating the money supply in the way the Federal Reserve does, but if we lived in a fantasy world where members of Congress were responsible, then one could theorize that we could have a stable monetary policy based on a hard-money standard with strong anti-inflationary components. This is unlikely to happen.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild said "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws." And so the mega-banks and Academic Economists have wrested control of our nation's money from our nation's lawmakers. As I previously intimated, this is a double edged sword. Given the incompetence of Congress, we might rejoice that anybody other than they are in control. Yet the mega banks and their wealthy mega bankers certainly benefit the most from the Federal Reserve system. After all, nobody rushes to the aid of the small business in middle America when it is about to go belly up. But you can rest assured that CitiGroup will never seriously have to worry about bankruptcy. They will always have the golden, or at least green, ripcord of the Fed to parachute them safely to the ground.
It is a parachute we all pay for, though. We pay for it with $100+ oil and $3.25 at the pump. We pay for it with $5 gallons of milk and $1,000 gold. The piper always gets paid--the question is just about who does the paying. In America, it's the average guy on the street, not the politicians who gave us a faulty system and not the mega bankers who abused that system for fraudulent profits.
There is a silver lining. But only a lining. Unlike most people throughout history, America's people are not powerless against such forces. The Constitution of the United States gives us a mechanism for changing and fixing broken policies. It doesn't happen on its own, though, and we have to do our part. We can start by rejecting more bad policy. That means saying "We can't afford..." to all of the proposed entitlement programs that we will be promised in 2008. That means saying "we know we have to have a recession. Bring it on."
It is a true saying that "all is not gold that glitters," and even the glitter is starting to wear off of the fool's gold these days. That's why the price of real gold keeps going up, up, up. And where it stops--nobody knows. Especially not the Fed.
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