The Kingdom of Heaven

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson

Whether intentionally, intuitively, or accidentally, I believe that Francis Thompson better understood the notion of "the kingdom of God" than most modern theological commentators, preachers, and sunday school teachers. Particularly in the conservative evangelical community, and moreso even in dispensational and quaisi-dispensational circles, the "Kingdom of God" or "Kingdom of Heaven" is considered to be some sort of distant literal kingdom where Christ reigns in the "millennium" or else it is just heaven itself where God reigns from His throne.

I occaisionally turn Christian radio on to listen, as I find it insightful into the minds of the pop-theologians of the day, and see some of the consequences of their errors borne out in the hearts and minds of the laity that have so ardently trusted them. This week I happened to catch part of a sermon by David Jeremiah, who I find to be an excellent speaker, though I do not consider myself at all sympathetic with his theology. Dr. Jeremiah was preaching about the "kingdom." He referenced it with respect to Christ's coming earthly reign in the millennium, and commented that there is more mention of the millennium than any other event in the prophetic literature. I was instantly struck with the thought that something was amiss, as I could not for the life of me count that many. But as he continued to speak, I realized he was including all of the references to the "kingdom."

It seems that contemporary conservative Christians make the same mistake that the conservative Jews of the First Century made with respect to the nature and purpose of Christ's eternal ministry. The First Century Jews expected the Messiah to come and establish an earthly kingdom a la King David and wrest political control from Rome. St. John's Gospel quotes Christ saying explicitly "My kingdom is not of this world." The 21st Century Christian expects some future return of Christ to establish that earthly kingdom. Dr. Jeremiah said in his sermon that "Christ will return to reign on this earth the second time as he was expected to do the first time." It's not precisely obvious to me from where this expectation is derived.

The Revelation of St. John, Chapter 20, says only this about the "millennium"
"And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years."

There is no mention of rule from earth or heaven or where, it is extraordinarily vague. There are several reasons for this. First, Revelation was written as an account of a dream that St. John experienced. Anybody who thinks that Revelation is written in any way remotely literally completely ignores the context of its writing. It certainly does not detract from its value or validity, but we cannot properly interpret the text if we fail to understand that its very nature is inherently figurative. Conservative commentators obviously recognize this, but their interpretations make it a literally representational writing, meaning that the events in Revelation symbolize literal events that will occur at some point in the future. This to me is still far too literal and causes us to lose much of the meaning of the Revelation as well as of what "the kingdom" is.

Moreover, when we examine the references to the Kingdom in the Synoptic Gospels, as Brad Young points out in his work Jesus the Jewish Theologian, the parables of the Leaven and the Mustard Seed "illustrate the progressive growth of the kingdom...The major theme of both of these illustrations is this miraculous growth. The idea of a sudden, total reversal of the present situation is not congruous with these parables of progressive growth."

Similarly, in the Beatitudes, Christ admonishes thus, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I again quote from Young, "Modern interpreters have somtimes missed the message of the kingdom of heaven. It is not about the future age. The kingdom is not heaven in the sense that someone dies to inter in. It is neither the church nor a denomination. It is not given over to human leaders for their custodial care. Jesus did not view the kingdom as a political ideology or program. The kingdom is a process which cannot be imposed upon others through political activism. The kingdom comes by God alone. It is a divine force in the world that brings healing to suffering humanity."

Many people probably wonder why the interpretation of the kingdom passages of Scripture is important. I would argue that it has tremendous implications for the way we interpret many of the ethics passages in the Pauline Epistles. For example, in Paul's Epistle to the Galatian church, he says "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Knowing what "the kingdom of God" means is incredibly important to the understanding of Paul's admonition. Does he mean that people who are envious or jealous or ambitious are not going to have eternal life? No, I would argue that this is directly contradictory with the words of Christ when he says "Whosoever believes...shall not perish but have everlasting life." Indeed, the kingdom of heaven, when properly understood, sheds immense light on New Testament ethics. The punishment, if we even ought to use that term, for those things Paul lists above, is not damnation to hell--but a lack of the realization of the kingdom of heaven in the present age. The leavening process is slowed or stopped in the presence of such vices and sins. If the kingdom of heaven represents the peacemaking or whole-making process that we understand in the context of Jewish teachings is what Christ was speaking of in the Beatitudes, for example, then we see the sin is not punished with some slap on the wrist or electrical shock, but that sin is its own consequence for it prevents us from the realization of peace and wholeness.

In my view, this gives me a far greater incentive to maintain New Testament ethical standards, as the consequences of a breach of those standards is much more tangible than the far-off threat of some ethereal hell. Similarly, the wonder of wholeness and fulfillment here on earth is an enticing prospect compared with the again intangible reward of heaven. This does not mean that I do not believe in heaven or hell, but I would argue that if we understand New Testament ethics solely in the context of eternal reward or everlasting punishment then we completely disregard the importance of our earthly existence. It is quite heretical, in my view, when Evangelicals use phrases like "this life doesn't matter" and "it's only the next life that counts." That is directly contraposed to the teachings of the New Testament, and the Incarnation itself. This life matters quite a lot, and the physical existence we have on earth is extremely important to the New Testament writers, on par I would argue with our spiritual existence. Though the duality therein I believe to be disputable.

Francis Thompson's poem captures the spirit of the Kingdom better than any other writing, and not because it explicitly describes what the Kingdom is or where it is like Young does in his work of theology, but because Thompson's poem exposes to us the practical implications of the Kingdom in this life. His point is quite clear: we try to see the world when we cannot; we try to know the world when we cannot; we try to understand the world when we cannot, and it is foolish. That is the point of his next line "Does the fish soar to find the ocean? The eagle plunge to find the air?" He notices so clearly that we look for things in far off places that are right in front of us. "Not where the wheeling systems darken and our benumbed conceiving soars"--no, if we would recognize it, the meaning of life and the truth of life is directly in front of us. And this is his ultimate conclusion "Lo! Christ walking on the water, not of Genesareth, but Thames."

And therein is the inheritance of the Kingdom of God, for the life of Christ typified love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And it is through those virtues that we are fulfilled and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.

Dealing with Subjective Interpretations of Reality

"The essential matter of history is not what happened but what people thought or said about it." --Frederic William Maitland

"History is but a set of lies agreed upon." --Napoleon

The philosophical discussion about the nature of reality, perception, and experience is not one that I can add much novel thought or creative understanding to; the philosophers and thinkers of the annals of history have beaten that proverbial horse to death. Yet, I would like to perhaps discuss the impact of what I think is a necessarily subjective interpretation of reality.

I myself am not a subjectivist, whether in the field of ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics. There does seem to be a philosophically inconsistent case for a truly subjective reality. However, we each perceive that objective reality differently as a result of our nature as finite beings. Absent omniscience, each of us falls prey to the restrictions of our own senses, which often deceive us.

As I observe the interactions I experience each day, and the interactions of others, I find increasingly that there are tremendous disconnects in the human experience. Just this morning, I awoke to 21 emails at work about a relatively obscure contention over business cards. Five people were communicating with each other over email and had six quite distinct interpretations of what was actually going on with the issue. In my relationships with friends and family, I have begun to notice that the same event is not only interpreted in divergent manners, but even perceived extremely differently. Certainly I am not the only person to notice this, but I find it curious that although it is a widespread phenomenon, we do very little to remedy it.

People's temperament causes them to approach such different interpretations of the world in different ways, too. I am naturally prone to "correct" others' views of situations, but because I know this about myself I attempt to be more sympathetic. But that alone does not ameliorate the impact of the dichotomy.

It does not seem that there is an adequate linguistic solution to the problem, and that the solution lies deeper beneath the surface. I am never going to be able to explain my particular interpretation of reality in a manner sufficient to cause somebody else to suddenly understand my perspective since that person is even going to be interpreting the input of my words in a way other than my precise intention when I spoke them.

Upon recognizing this utterly disagreeable situation, it behooves us to come up with some sort of solution, albeit imperfect and perhaps piecemeal. I propose a movement toward genuine community. In order to understand, we must first know that we do not understand. For it is in the comprehension of our own finitude that we are humbled, and in that humility we can begin the healing process with our fellow humans.

Community is an environment that is safe. Community is a place where people can express their deepest emotions, most ardent dreams, greatest desires, and sincere worries without fear of judgment. It is a place where people need not fear making a mistake, or the reprisal that comes from a slight misstep. The rules in community are merely that people be loving and kind.

This genuine community should exist everywhere: in the workplace, amongst friends, in romantic relationships, families, and everywhere people interact. It is in community where healing can and will occur, and it is my hope that we can all find this healing in our lifetimes.

Action and Contemplation: Finding Balance in Vocation

Little boys make heroes out of men of great action: the General, the Politician, the Revolutionary, the Inventor, the Explorer, the Astronaut, the Firefighter. For it seems that in childhood we have a great need to do and to try. What little boy did not at some point in his life want to go to the moon? Or fight in a war? It is not merely that we desire to mimic those who we have made into heroes, but because we want to be the hero. We want to become somebody else's hero. Even people whose temperament or personality would never permit them to actually act on those desires nevertheless seem to have them to some degree or another.

I do not even begin to question the popularity of the concept of Superman or Spiderman--normaly, socially unadjusted men who accomplish great things and win the heart of a maiden in the process. The Superman of the American pop culture is the embodiment of the introvert's daydream.

This desire to be a hero is born out of our desire to escape mortality. Mortality is, ipso facto a death sentence. So from the time we are children we long to accomplish that which will make us remembered. And often, remembrance is found more in infamy than in fame. This explains why the Superman of Krypton can quickly become the Superman of Nietzche, that is, the transformation of Marcus Aurelius to Hitler. Some little boys never pass this phase of their fixation, though others do.

The little boys who begin to mature turn their admiration to another sort, I think. The maturing lad who has discovered the world of altruism comes to admire the Poet, the Philosopher, the Novelist, and the Scientist. It is no longer the creative process that captures the mind, but the observation process. The child no longer wants to be Patton, but Plato. Contemplation becomes paramount--a life of solitude and thought is idealized. Whether it is Thomas Merton and St. John of the Cross or the Buddha and Shankara, the Thinker supplants the Soldier.

While this transition is an improvement and a maturation, I do not believe it is the mature view. I think it is merely a decrease in immaturity, for as great as the Thinker may be or as high as his Thoughts might reach, there is a sort of emptiness in the purely Contemplative, a void. For the transition from Action to Thought is an overraction, it shows an exaggerated sensibility to the errors of the former by rejecting it entirely in favor of the latter. I believe there is a balance that inheres in a person's true vocation (which I do not mean in the occupational sense but in the understanding of one's "life calling").

This balance is found in people like Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Susan B. Anthony. These are people who were both Thinkers and Actors. Some were known more for their thinking (Burke) and others for their action (Churchill), but a careful study of the lives of these people indicate an intimate relationship between the two aspects of life. For I think that the union of contemplation and action requires a maturity absent the Austere Philosopher and the Bold Doer. Churchill's political philosophy is not as thorough as Locke's, and it can be quite easily assumed that Jefferson's metaphysics would not stand the test of a Wittgensteinian analysis, but Locke did not save England from the Nazis, and Wittgenstein did not grant freedom to the Americas.

If I am the kind of person whose propensity is toward action, I must make room in my life for contemplation in order that my action be tempered with wisdom and humility. If I am the kind of person whose propensity is toward contemplation, I must make the effort to turn those thoughts into action--to make them real.

My closing thought is thus: Action without thought is brute--Thought without action is empty.

The Brutal Friend

by Skinner Layne

The Mirror is a vile glass
Who mocks us day to day,
He doesn't try to give a pass
When we want to see our way.

He points out our imperfections,
He laughs at us to our face,
And knifes us with rejection,
When we enter his vaunted space.

He tickles us with an angled view
That seems to us appealing
But then throws our witness askew
Those vicious details revealing.

So why do we return each morn
To gaze in his vengeful lens?
To see our outward appearance torn?
Or so we our face can cleanse?

The mirror, you see, is our best friend
And so we visit him week after week.
For he alone the truth won't bend
When his counsel and advice we seek.

To know the mirror, what benefit!
Though our pride he long ago stole--
I truly wish that I could get,
A mirror for my soul.

The Return to Progress

"When suddenly you seem to lose all that you thought you had gained, do not despair. Your healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself, "All is lost. I have to start all over again." This is not true. What you have gained, you have gained. Sometimes little things build up and make you lose ground for a moment. Fatigue, a seemingly cold remark, someone's inability to hear you, someone's innocent forgetfulness, which feels like rejection--when all these come together, they can make you feel as if you are right back where you started. But try to think about it instead as being pulled off the road for a while. When you return to the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you started."

--Henri J.M. Nouwen

Multiple times a day, every single day, I lament that I have lost ground in my struggle for spiritual and emotional growth. It is like when I was losing weight back in high school, and I would stick to my rigid diet for a month, completely faithfully, only to devour a piece of chocolate cake or an oversized bowl of ice cream, giving into ridiculous temptation and then saying to myself "look at all the ground I have lost." But that one piece of cake did not ruin my progress; it did not defeat the previous month's worth of work. It was merely a relapse into old, bad behavior. Kipling reminds us

The dog returns to his vomit
and the sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt fool's bandaged finger
goes wobbling back to the fire.

I can usually feel it coming on, that temptation to pry a little too much into somebody else's life, as the outflow of my own low self esteem and insecurity. Or perhaps it manifests itself in my anxious behavior, seeking immediate reassurance to satisfy my own craving for recognition and affection. What is most difficult about these times when I feel like I have obliterated months worth of work is that it most directly affects the lives of people for whom I care the most. Sometimes it takes an even more insidious pathway, where I will intentionally make negative comments about myself knowing that the other person will respond by praising or complementing me. I feel so guilty that I manipulate people to boost my own self-esteem.

Or perhaps I will make myself better by keeping a record of other people's wrongs or missteps, by thinking to myself when they criticize me "Well I remember this and that time when you did this." But this is not loving behavior either. The Apostle Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Church at Corinth that "love...keeps no record of wrongs." This is a particularly difficult admonition by which to live. We are not naturally prone to forgetful forgiveness.

Yet, even though these things happen on a daily basis, I cannot discount the miles I have traveled. Like Nouwen says, it is not so much that I have to start over, but just return to the road on which I was traveling. It is more a matter of focus and diligence than reconstructing a path.

We all have those things with which we struggle. Perhaps we are trying to get rid of a particular part of our past, but we find ourselves letting it once again rule our lives. We cannot ignore the progress we have made, for perhaps we have kept that out of our lives for quite some time, but it rears its head for a day. That is not regress, it merely shows that there is more progress to be made. Or perhaps our struggle is in being kinder and more longsuffering with our co-workers or family, and we lash out or snap at them reflexively. The list of things we could be working on is endless, but we must not be wearied by the struggle, however wearying it is. For the result, if we persist, will be a peaceful and loving interraction with our fellow man, meaningful, mature relationships with friends, family, and significant other, and a cessation not of conflict or stress, but anger and anxiety.

Conflict and stress are natural parts of every life and every relationship, but when healthfully handled and managed, do not produce anger and anxiety. Let us continue to return to progress toward that end, even if there are setbacks along the way.

Comfortable Not Being in Someone Else's Skin

I am continuing my blog series on Henri Nouwen's book "The Inner Voice of Love" today and will do so for several more entries at least.

We often hear a confident person being described as "comfortable in his own skin." This is considered a mark of genuineness and high emotional aptitude. We also generally hear somebody who pokes around in other people's business as being "nosy" and this is something that is less than a desirable quality or trait. I have come to a new understanding of these two divergent, and in fact directly opposite traits in light of some of my own experiences and this admonition from Nouwen:

"When you find yourself curious about the lives of people you are with or filled with desires to possess them in one way or another, your body has not yet fully come home. As soon as you have come to live in your body as a true expression of who you are, your curiosity will vanish, and you will be present to others free from needs to know, or own."

The realization I came to after reading this quotation was that a person who truly is comfortable is his or her own skin is not going to be the type who is nosy or always feels a need to be in the know about other people's lives. It seems that this applies more heavily to those for whom we care the most. We should live in genuine community with those we love, and in a different sense with all whom we come into contact. But community only exists where there are individuals who can commune with one another. There is no community of one.

I borrow an example from Scott Peck from his book THE DIFFERENT DRUM, though I add my own analysis: In Christian theology, the Doctrine of the Trinity even shows that there had to be a diversity of personality in the singular being of God. God's eternal existence did not deny Him the participation in community because there were three distinct divine personalities in His united being. But if God were the monistic Sovereign of Islam, for example, God would have existed in eternity without the ability to commune with another prior to creation.

Although this is somewhat of a diversion, I use the example to illustrate that genuine community necessitates the existence of individuals and boundaries. I cannot live in community with another person if we are not emotionally separated. If there are no boundaries or borders, then we are essentially a single individual, thus obliterating community. This is why communist societies and the Utopian Ideal is so terribly flawed. It is not so much that Communism disrespects the individual, though it certainly does that. Communism does not claim to respect the individual. Nay, the most grievous error of communism is that it disrespects the community. Community and Individual are merely two different sides of the same unified coin. They are different faces of the same humanity.

Whether it is in our familial relationships, work relationships, platonic relationships, or romantic relationships, in order for true community to be present, the highest respect for individuals must also be present. Herein lies the consistency in the simultaneous existence of Unity and Diversity. Though different people, with different thoughts and feelings, wants and needs, beliefs and desires, dreams and aspirations, we share in pleasure and pain, experience and fulfillment, loss and gain, in the passage of time, the struggles of life, and the joys of it as well. We may not fully understand the other participants in any given community experience, but that is not necessary for community to exist.

Indeed, the only preconditions for community are kindness and respect. I need not understand why my fellow person is struggling in order to care for him. I need not know the details of her struggle in order to have sympathy. I need not know what he did last night in order to enjoy being with him today.

This does not come easily for us, however. True community is a towering peak whose ascent is long and arduous. It is an equilibrium whose balance requires both strength and endurance. It is a goal that necessitates both patience and persistence, suffering and endurance, hardship and resolve. But its reward is a deep fulfillment, an understanding of both self and other, the appreciation of all that is human, and all that is humanity. It surpasses the most exciting momentary thrill, it excels any physical pleasure, and it surmounts the consumption of the most exquisite of goods. And it is for this reason that we should seek it both ardently and urgently, whether it is in our friendships or romantic relationship, interactions with co-workers or strangers, and even with our closest of family.

But it all begins by being comfortable in our own skin, and being comfortable not being in somebody else's.

Yearning and Learning

Henri Nouwen wrote these words in his journal during the deepest depression of his life, "The years that lie behind you, with all their struggles and pains, will in time be remembered only as the way that led to your new life. But as long as the new life is not fully yours, your memories will continue to cause you pain. When you keep reliving painful events of the past, you can feel victimized by them. But there is a way of telling your story that does not create pain. Then, also, the need to tell your story will become less pressing. You will see that you are no longer there: the past is gone, the pain has left you, you no longer have to go back and relive it, you no longer depend on your past to identify yourself...You can tell your story from a place where it no longer dominates you. You can speak about it with a certain distance and see it as the way to your present freedom. The compulsion to tell your story is gone. From the perspective of the life you now live and the distance you now have, your past does not loom over you."

Regardless of who we are, we all have pains and hurts from our past. Everybody has what is commonly termed, in today's vernacular "baggage." But this baggage does not follow us around through some strength of its own, but like real baggage, it is something we carry with us, and many times it can become so heavy that we can no longer walk forward because we are so weighed down. It is when we are in that state of paralysis that we are most awakened to the need to stop carrying that baggage. It hurts our present freedom, it causes us present pain, and is detrimental to our present relationships. We can blame our baggage for our lack of progress and growth; we can blame our baggage for our present actions, but it is merely an excuse, for if we recognize the presence of the baggage, then we have no reason not to deal with the pain and consequences it is causing in our present life.

For the moment we say "oh, it's the fault of my baggage," is the moment we ought to say "I cannot let my past rule my life anymore." The lack of affection I have received in the past from persons I most wanted to receive affection from should not cause me to cling irrationally to those who I want to receive it from today. The excess of affection I received in the past from people who I love and care about, but did not need as much affection from should not cause me to push away completely those who I care about, but do not need that excessive affection from today.

This does not, however, mean that our past does not and will not affect us today, for it always will to some extent, but we cannot be governed by it, and we cannot live in constant fear that the past will be repeated. This difficult realization, as painful as it might be, will free us and allow us to tell our story out of compassion rather than compulsion, such that we may commisserate with those who are experiencing today what we experienced yesterday. Much like the words of Longfellow in his poem "A Psalm of Life," where he says

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

We must shed our baggage and leave it in our past where those events occurred. We must remember it, to be certain, but more so we can empathize with and be more understanding of others than for it to motivate or dictate our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions.

The question, however, is how does one stop carrying his or her baggage? There is no "quite simply" response to the question, I must admit. But I believe the first step lies in recognizing that we are carrying it around with us wherever we go. If we find ourselves preparing to use the phrases "Well in my last relationship..." or "When I was dealing with my father..." if those phrases are to be followed with "So that's why I did what I did." If the answer to the question "Why did I do x?" is "Because of such and such happened to me in the past?" then we are carrying our baggage with us. It does not mean that we do not learn from the past, but we do recognize that in spite of similarities we may see between past circumstances and present circumstances, or between the people who were in our lives previously and the people who are in our lives now, we must always recognize that the circumstances of today are not identical to those of the past and the people we are with today are not identical to the people of the past.

It is in realizing the differences that we are able to best apply the knowledge we gained by our past experiences rather than simply trying to avert the identical consequences out of pure fear, and ending up causing more damage than good.

God's Dwelling Place

by Skinner G. Layne

I sought to find God's dwelling place
Where I could see His eyes
I sought Him in the sanctuaries
And then sought Him in the skies.
I thought I might see Him caught up
In the clouds or in the stars--
Perhaps He lived on Venus,
Or maybe sat on Mars.
I searched a thousand pages
In the libraries of the Earth,
In the Wisdom of the ages
Through sadness and through mirth.
I sought to find God's dwelling place
In the mountains and the hills
Coursing through the rivers
Or trickling in the rills.
The words of men proclaimed to know
The dwelling place of He
Who built all that we know
And made all that we see.
But I was led astray by those
Who claimed to know God's space
Where He reigns and rules the world
In some celestial place.
That esoteric nebulae
That opaque fluffy cloud,
Where I was told God hid His face
Behind some ethereal shroud.
I was told that God was great--
Too great to understand
Yet those preachers claimed they knew
How God counts the sand.
They said I was God's beloved
And He would not let go of me,
Unless I didn't follow
This and that decree.
The more I listened to them,
The less I understood,
About where God dwelt
Or if He was even good.
So I left more disillusioned
About the God I sought
I feared I wouldn't find Him
And therefore was distraught.
So despairing failure there I sat
And loathed the sands of time,
Lamenting my loss of hope
And those deceivers' crime.
But too soon had I surrendered
My life-long dream and quest
And learned that marv'lous secret
That to me was confessed:
God exists eternally
With no nacense and no end
And does not dwell in clouds or mount
For all this He transcends.
But God does have a dwelling place
And one that can be found,
Though not in sea or sky
Or built upon the ground.
Look for Him neither to nor fro,
Nor down and up above,
For God's eternal dwelling place
Is wherever there is Love.

Reflections on Love and Friendship

Blessed are the peacemakers. Matthew 5:9

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of this is love. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13

For those of you who know me well, you know my rough edges. You know my weaknesses, my areas where I need to improve. For those of you who have known me well for a long time, you know that despite much difficulty, I have smoothed a couple of those rough edges in the last couple of years. Many of you have heard the story I am about to tell, but it inspires my sentiments of love and friendship that I want to share momentarily, so I include it for context.

The evening chill had burned off the warmth of the afternoon on July 20, 2005, as Zach Howell and I descended a steep cliff in Unit 13 of Denali National Park. Making our way through the thick brush near the end of the descent, we stepped out onto the gravel bar of the Thorofare River, and the clear blue sky illuminated the grandeur of Mount McKinley. Clusters of bright magenta flowers decorated the moist, silty sections of the mile-wide gravel bar, and we plodded across the well-braided river, enjoying our first day in the wilderness. Isaac Watts's beautiful hymn came into my mind "I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise, that spread the flowing seas abroad and filled the lofty skies. I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day. The moon bows down at His command and all the stars obey."

After a slow crossing of the Thorofare, we looked up to see a male grizzly bear about 150 yards away. He began to walk toward us and we waved our hands in the air, yelling at him to go away. He took a second look, and then nonchalantly altered his course in a completely non-threatening way. After the rapidity of my heartbeat had subsided, and I realized our fortune in avoiding an encounter, I looked to the southeast and noticed a mother grizzly and her cub feeding in the thick blueberry bushes on the hilly tundra.

A significant amount of observation passed and we made our way up the next two hills, about 45 minutes later, and upon bounding over the second of the two hills, we saw the mother and her cub in binocular vision, except we weren't looking through binoculars. There they stood, about 30 feet away, completely displeased by our presence. Total body paralysis set in, and I stood there attempting to re-engage my motor faculties. Finally I was able to move backwards, back down the hill we had just ascended, and out of sight of the bears. My left leg convulsed uncontrollably as we waited for thirty minutes, wondering what to do, and enjoying every precious second that we did not see the bears coming over the hill.

We didn't see the bears again that day, and although my life did not flash before my eyes or anything like that, the episode set in motion a serious reflection upon many facets of my life. It is part of that reflection, which continued for the further three weeks I spent in in the Alaskan wilderness, that I wish to share with you now.

Human beings are all born with needs and desires. Maslow ordered them in a hierarchy from most important to least: Physical survival needs, need for safety & security, need to belong socially, need for self esteem, need for self actualization. I most humbly endeavor to challenge that hierarchy, for it is my contention and firm belief that absent the higher three (social belonging, self esteem, and self actualization), it would be preferable for the lower two never to be met. Instead of viewing these needs as a hierarchy, I submit that they should be viewed as both necessary to and contingent upon one another. It is cliché to say, but true, that no man is an island. The hermetic lifestyle makes it quite difficult for one to obey Christ’s command “Love thy neighbor.” You see, Christ did not command “Love mankind.” He personalized it and made it tangible. It is not enough just to love humankind. We must love the man or woman sitting next to us in a restaurant, or standing next to us on the subway. This is because God does not love us collectively as His “creation,” rather He loves each of us individually as his “creature.” A piece of artwork is a creation—the mountains are God’s creation. But we are not an impersonal object or a hunk of granite. We are active, thinking, beings with creative powers of our own. We can even have interaction with our Creator. This is something the mountains and rivers cannot do. Similarly, then we are to love our neighbors, not as we love the gorgeous sunset, or even views of Mount McKinley at dusk, but as living, thinking beings with feelings and hurts and emotions, and with whom we can, and ought to interact.

We must also recognize our ability to affect those feelings and emotions of others, and that sometimes we affect them without even realizing it. Each of us, within the last week, has probably hurt somebody we know and care about. Most likely, we don’t even know that we did it. But because we were not constantly conscious and aware of ourselves, we still did it. Unless we are constantly checking our thoughts against the command “Love thy neighbor” and the criteria for that command “Love suffers long and is kind...” then we will continue to unwittingly hurt others and act in selfish ways without a second consideration.

Our love must be ACTIVE, not passive. Christ did not tell us in the Beatitudes “Blessed are those who do not stir up conflict,” He said “Blessed are the peacemakers,” the ones who are actively making peace. I do not think He was speaking of Geopolitics or International Relations, though the command applies equally to that context as well, I believe. But He was admonishing us at an individual level—blessed are those of you who make peace with your neighbor, or your brother, or your co-worker, or your nemesis. In the context of Hebrew culture, it is important to recognize that the word peace means more than merely the absence of conflict. It means wholeness and completion. In fact, a common greeting in Christ’s time was “how is your peace?” Thus, if we are to pursue this goal of peacemaking, then we first must root out hostility, for hostility detracts from a person’s wholeness. It also means that we must attend to each other’s needs and desires as a chief priority, for we were created to be social beings, and we cannot be complete or whole without both vertical interaction (individual to God) and horizontal interaction (individual person to individual person).

I have found that if I am sufficiently attending to the needs of my friends and family, I have no time to attend to my own. And as I reread that sentence, I can hear the Apostle Paul, or Christ Himself saying “Exactly!” It is that sacrifice of the self, the elimination of the ego, the total focus upon the Grace gifts of God rather than the Acquired Gifts of the World, it is precisely that foundation that leads us to a meaningful and fulfilling existence on this earth. It is not what will end all of our sorrows or pains—no, those will persist so long as we occupy this fallen world. But it infuses meaning into those sorrows and pains.

The Apostle James clarifies this all the more clearly in his epistle. “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meakness of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

That’s heady stuff. It’s kind of depressing to me, because as I read it, I recognize my total inadequacy. Re-read that verse again, maybe three or four times. It starts to sink in after several reviews.

We all need other people; we all need friends. Ecclesiastes reminds us of the glory of friendship (two are better than one). But friends are not inexpensive, and they definitely aren’t cheap, at least not real friends. So as we spend time this season with family and friends, let us remember the value of friendship, but also count the cost. We cannot and should not claim somebody as a friend if we are not willing to sacrifice self-seeking and envy. Remember that the fruit of the spirit are “Love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.”

As we go forth into 2006, let’s all be of this mind: to love one another and live out these precepts in every moment of our lives. It will not go unrewarded, and then we will truly know that peace inside which truly passes all understanding.

FTAA and a Challenge to the EU

Although the European Union has faced numerous obstacles in recent months to further integration, it still poses a potential economic and political threat to American global hegemony. It is imperative that the United States and the rest of North and South America rise to meet this challenge. The European Union has sought supranaionalistic political integration as well as economic integration. This led to substantial protests from far left and far right political constituencies on the European continent, while England still even holds out against full economic integration. The pursuit of this Customs Union-style integration should be a lesson to those of us in the United States and elsewhere in North and South America, as we examine the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. FTAA is a trade union, in contrast to the customs union of the EU. Trade unions maintain national political sovereignty as well as sovereignty over monetary policy, while having a unified position on trade barriers and subsidies.

The elimination of trade barriers and subsidies in all countries, coupled with each country being able to maintain its own monetary policy and political autonomy gains all of the benefits of EU brand customs unions without nearly as much of the domestic political backlash and integration woes. By not adopting a common currency, and rather continuing to allow flexible exchange rates between the member countries of the trade union, North and South America will not have to deal with the dilemma of maintaining a singular monetary policy for economies at quite different levels of development. The EU, for example, needs to maintain growth-oriented interest rates for the sluggish economies of Western Europe (Germany, France, Italy), while simultaneously needing to curb inflation in the booming economies of Eastern Europe. These sorts of inequity problems will not plague the FTAA, by contrast, for reasons mentioned above.

The greatest challenges to the FTAA are the US government's unwillingness to end agricultural subsidies and the presence of radical left-wing communist/socialist protests in countries like Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uraguay. The United States, Canada, and Mexico can attest to the vast successes of NAFTA, and should push forward with other freedom-oriented countries in North and South America to ratify an agreement that will benefit everybody, and if the hold-out countries want to limit their economic growth potential, we should let them alone; they will be coming back in a few years when they have witnessed the effects of free trade in their neighboring countries.

Partisanship on Parade

Maybe it was the time change throwing me off, but it seemed like Chuck Schumer had begun his press conference to denounce Judge Alito before the President had finished his own announcement. I am honestly perplexed at how Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer can possibly believe that their rhetoric is not overheated. It seems that the Left (and, no doubt, the Right sometimes too) thinks that the hotter the rhetoric, the more likely they are to be believed. I imagine quite the opposite is true, or is at least coming to be true. The sky hasn't fallen. It's not likely to fall. Sure, we have some serious problems in this country (and globally) that we need to address, but the doomsayers of history generally end up being proven wrong, because right-minded people take action. This isn't to say that doomsayers have no place in the public discourse, because they do. The problem is when legitimate doomsaying cannot be distinguished from the boy who cried wolf. Schumer, for example, said that Alito is somebody who will divide the country, and that the President is being divisive by naming him to the court. Alito was confirmed 100-0 to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals; hardly seems divisive to me. Granted, Schumer wasn't in the Senate then, but Ted Kennedy was. How will Ted Kennedy answer for his vote in 1990? It seems hard to say that Alito is less qualified for the bench now than he was 15 years ago. Essentially Kennedy's position is untenable (not that such things have ever stopped him before) because at the foundation, his reasoning must be something like this: "Qualification for the bench is sufficient for confirmation when it is the Court of Appeals, but being qualified alone is not sufficient for confirmation to the Supreme Court." If the Supreme Court is to be truly independent, then it seems that qualifications are solely the factor in determining whether or not to confirm a nominee. I am not the first to remind people that Ginsburg and Breyer were both confirmed almost unanimously, in spite of their strong ideological differences with Republicans in the Senate at the time. Elections have consequences. I earnestly hope that Alito will be a measured jurist and not a Conservative activist. Activism of any flavor is antithetical to proper constitutional jurisprudence. However, undoing previous acts of activism does not itself constitute activism. I pray that Judge Alito, along with the rest of the court, can properly distinguish those two concepts.

Learning His Lesson

President Bush, like a repentant schoolboy allowed to retake his failed final exam, has aced the re-do by appointing Samuel Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court. Alito fulfills President Bush's promise to appoint a Scalia-like jurist to the Supreme Court, and in spite of the calls for a diversity pick, the President appointed somebody who truly could be considered the most qualified person for the job. A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, an attorney in the Solicitor General's office, a former prosecutor, and federal appellate judge with a 15 year tenure on the bench, Alito stands out as exemplary of the brilliant men and women who have become the mainstay of the conservative legal movement over the last 30 years.

The coming battle in the Senate will be more brutal than the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas or Robert Bork. This appointment truly tips the scales of the Court, and moves strongly toward establishing a solid conservative majority on the court, with four true conservatives occupying the bench: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. Kennedy will remain a swing voter, and hold the keys to many important landmark cases. It will be interesting to see how he rises to the occasion. Be ready, though, Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Ralph Neas are in complete terror at this nomination, and we will almost assuredly see a filibuster of the Alito nomination. Be forewarned: Democratic Senators in Red States. If you try to "Bork" Alito, we will most certainly "Daschle" you. Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Robert Byrd, Kent Conrad, are all supposedly popular democrats in their home states, but Daschle was too. Judicial obstructionism ended Daschle's career, and right now, those four democrats are without serious challengers (except Bill Nelson). Filibustering Alito will not only draw a challenger, but a likely defeat.

This is my new verb for the day: to Daschle "The act of defeating a Red State Democrat Senator for obstructing the confirmation of conservative judicial nominees."

The line in the sand is drawn.

Iranian Diplomacy

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has proven himself a capable instigator and a pretty poor diplomat. His call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" surely sends chills up the spine of anybody who abhors bloodshed. Even Palestinian and Egyptian diplomats rebuked Ahmadinejad for his radicalism. The incident, however, crystalizes the total failure of the Europeans to contain the Iranian situation. For the last five years, the Europeans have insisted that diplomacy must rule the day in dealing with Iran, and that they, as extraordinary diplomatists, are capable of remedying the problems in Tehran. Although it is humorous to laugh at the overstated braggadocio of the French and Germans, the situation is dire. Far from advocating a full-scale military operation, I think it is time to re-evaluate the current strategy for handling Iran. Although we have had stellar success in Iraq, despite many missteps (it wouldn't be a war without them), Iran is overwhelmingly a different level of threat, with conventional military capabilities far exceeding those of Iraq's. Remember, Iran has been funding its nuclear and conventional military capacity with legal oil money over the years, when Saddam was forced to accept mostly French, German, and Russian money only (as an aside, three cheers for Paul Volcker standing up to the corrupt entrenched bureaucracy of the sham that is the United Nations). It is time for this administration to quit outsourcing our Iranian policy to Paris and Berlin, and do something before there are 7 million dead Israelis and a nuclear cloud lingering over Jerusalem.

Bush's Opportunity

Harriet Miers's withdrawl from the confirmation process for the Supreme Court was welcomed news today for me and millions of other people across the country who were concerned about her ability to go straight to the nation's highest court for a lifetime appointment without so much as fifteen minutes practicing constitutional law. Had she been a state judge, a federal appellate judge, solicitor general, or anybody else whose job involves constitutional law, her appointment would not have been such an utter and total failure for President Bush. This, of course, is not Miers's fault, it is the President's. If he really thought Miers would make a Supreme Court Justice, why not have named her to the federal bench a couple of years ago, like he did John Roberts; or why not make her Solicitor General or Deputy Attorney General? Well, all of that is past now, but he is back to square one, and he has a tremendous opportunity to completely undo all of the damage that has been done to his administration this year by Katrina, Miers, the failure of Social Security reform, the Rove/Libby/DeLay legal investigations, and the fact that he has not pushed any number of other reform agendas promised during the 2004 campaign.

Bush must do several things to rebound from the last 10 months of political hell.

1. The President absolutely has to appoint somebody like Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, J. Michael Luttig, or Michael McConnell to the court. If he does, regardless of the reaction from the left, every single rank and file conservative/republican in the country will instantly rally to his cause. Let us remember that Tom Daschle was defeated in 2004, if for no other reason than that he was an obstructionist on judicial nominations. Conservatives will in fact fight, and they will, based on history, win. If the President bunts again, and gives us Alberto Gonzales, then the President might as well begin tenuring his resignation, because everything he has done for the last 5 years will instantly fall apart, because everybody who worked hard for him in 2000 and 2004 will desert him without hesitation.

2. The President needs to formulate an actual plan for Social Security Reform, and send it to Congress before Christmas. Obviously, Congress will not have time to act on it, but at least then, the President can begin re-selling the idea of reform. Only this time, he needs to talk about the ownership society, and the benefits of real investment rather than blabbering on about hypothetical benefit cuts.

3. Bush should fire Andrew Card yesterday. Card, according to most news reports, was behind the Miers nomination. That is reason enough. But beyond that, it is just time for some new blood at the top levels of leadership in this White House. Things are getting too sloppy, and this is from an administration that for the first few years ran one of the tightest ships in recent memory.

4. Bush should further rally his base by moving on extending the 2003 tax cuts, as well as formulating an actual plan for genuine tax reform, taking into account all of the work that Connie Mack's Presidential Commission has done recently.

5. The President must point out all of the good that is occurring in Iraq, and he's simply not doing it. The passage of the new constitution, coupled with extraordinary turnout in the referendum is more than satisfactory performance for a country that has never known anything but harsh dictatorial governments throughout their entire multi-thousand year existence.

Hopefully we will see all 5 of these things occur, and in short order. He might turn a beleaguered 5th year into an oustandingly unprecedented second term.

America, 2005

America, 2005
(by Skinner Layne)

Thomas Jefferson! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:
America hath need of thee, for she is trudging down that road
To utter ruin; Bring us thy wisdom, which once hath flowed
In pen and deed; O bravest man who from tyrants didst not cower,
We have replaced thy Republic with a Kingly power,
The likes of which thou couldnst n’er envision,
Whose Senators and Viceroys rule with Roman precision.
Brings us back to independence shining from freedom’s tower!
Thy mind was like a Flame, and gave us lofty aspirations;
Thy words motivated the generations to fight for liberty,
With the ardor of your kinsmen, to preserve our great country.
So didst thou travel a treasonous pathway,
To bring hope for freer future generations,
O Jefferson, come back to us and save us this day!

Soured Howard

"Never ascribe to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence."
-Napoleon Bonaparte

Screamin'Howard Dean is back at it again. On THIS WEEK today, he declared that the Bush Administration is the most corrupt since Warren G. Harding. Maybe that point is debatable. It seems that Napoleon's maxim would ring quite true, however, since we are talking about the Bush administration. But his subsequent comments are simply hysterical. While talking of the Democrats' imminent return to power, he declared the following: "The first thing we're going to do is we're going to have ethics come back to Washington." [Pause while I pick myself up off the floor from laughing so hard]. Ahem. Well, I wonder if he is reminiscing about the days of Bill Clinton's ethics--you remember Clinton, he's the disbarred attorney who was found in contempt of court for misleading a grand jury and was impeached by the House of Representatives. Yes, yes...Democrat Ethics. They are a special class of ethics, whose status is not yet recognized by most philosophers. Someday. Although, let's be honest. Were there really ever ethics in Washington...ever? Dean makes it sound like once upon a time Washington was made up of upstanding, honest folks. All I have to say is: name one. Since the time that the left wing revisionist historians have sullied the names and repuations of our founding fathers, we have nothing left to which we can point and say with confidence "there is a good model." And so, people behave as they will. It's called human nature. It is not so much that people's behavior is corrupt (even though that is true as well), but that their very nature is corrupt. That is precisely why we are supposed to have separation of powers, and limited government. Limited government means there are certain things that government simply does not have the power to do. Good luck finding examples of that in today's political milieu. O Jefferson! where art thou at this hour? America hath need of thee!

Lady in Waiting

Dick Cheney had better be getting somebody warmed up in the bullpen, because it is about time for Harriet Miers to be taken out of the game. This was just another embarrassment the President didn't need. It was humorous that he called all of the criticisms of his administration in recent months "background noise." Perhaps. That is, if you would be willing to stand at Cape Canaveral and call the takeoff of Discovery "background noise." This is what happens when the President's Brain is under investigation and his Administrator sick. You know, there's a rumor going around DC that Dick Cheney is going to resign and Condi is going to be appointed Vice President. I have a better idea: President Bush can resign and Dick Cheney can appoint Coindi to be Vice President. Dick Morris could become the new White House Chief of Staff, and we could turn the second term of this administration around, albeit without a principal player or two. Even better, Lynn Cheney, a true intellect in her own right, might give the President some decent advice on who to pick for the Supreme Court...what an improvement that would be over the "Hillary Lite" we have been subjected to as of late. Maybe Laura is gearing up for her own US Senate run in 2008--unfortunately there's not a seat up for grabs in New York until 2010. She could move to Massachussetts and run against John Kerry, though. Now that's an idea. Somebody pinch me; none of this is going to happen, and we will have to endure 3 more years of George W. Bush, and not much will be left of the progress the GOP has made in the last 15 years. Bill Clinton was much better for our party--maybe Newt will come back and rescue us.

Kangaroo Courts and Kangaroo Justices

With Tom DeLay's mugshot in competition against the media's favorite "Guilty Karl" shot of Rove in the race to be the DNC's Goldstein in the upcoming infomercial on CBS called "The Two Weeks Hate," we should all be concerned, Right and Left, about the state of the justice system in this country. [As an aside, that previous sentence will not be at all funny if you haven't read George Orwell's 1984] You know, it used to be that politicians in America were decent, genuine, honest, upstanding folks who abided by the law, did what was right, and made their mothers' proud. We should all remember such righteous politicians as New York county Democrat Party Chairman William March "Boss" Tweed, who embezzled from the City what would be, in today's Greenspan era no-inflation inflated money, around 2.9 billion dollars. Or what about the days when President Harding appointed the angelic Albert Fall to be Secretary of the Interior, and Fall proceeded to lease protected oil reserves to major oil magnates in exchange for incentive bonuses (I'm trying to be politically correct...I wanted to say "bribes" but it just came out kinda harsh). For those of you whose American history training is limited to public high school or university courses, what I just mentioned is known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. Anyway, history is replete with harrowing tales of political chivalry that cause the crimes of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove to whimper in their presence, but all of that is beside the point. DeLay is being prosecuted by a corrupt partisan. At the same time, DeLay no longer deserves to be Majority Leader of the House. The GOP is starting to act too much like the Democrats of old. It's time for some new blood. As for the Rove issue, according to the Washington Post, he has gotten a tongue lashing from President Bush--surely that's punishment enough.

Since the title of this post is "Kangaroo Courts and Kangaroo Justices" I guess I am obligated to say something about the abysmal nominee Harriet Miers and her latest travails in the most concocted effort of cronyism since, as Steve Chapman noted earlier this week, Harry Truman appointed his poker buddies to the court. The Bush administration has even resorted to releasing a document from 1989 when Miers publicly supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Somebody isn't thinking. Granted, President Bush has to get Conservatives back on his side, but he will not succeed in convincing all of them. At the same time, these sorts of stunts will only make Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy fired up to oppose Miers--I only hope they do.

Harriet Miers 2.0, The Re-Release

According to Mike Allen's column this week in TIME, President Bush and his aides are planning to "re-launch" the Harriet Miers nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court after two completely disastrous weeks. The President's cronies have been sqawking this weekend that "few Republicans have attacked this President so frontally and lived to tell about it." Interesting threat coming from a virtual lame duck administration whose poll numbers are flirting with the 30s depending on the day. The White House should learn its lesson from the Democrats' stunning defeats in the 2004 elections: substance matters more than style. The Democrats thought if they just phrased their arguments better that they would win, because their message was right-on, they thought. Wrong. Poll after poll, and Democrat strategist after Democrat strategist confirmed that the Left-wing message of the Democrat Party was what led to their failure in the '04 races.

Why does President Bush think he is any different? For the last five years (yes, since Bush started running for President in 1999) we have been promised and assured that it was always his hope and intention to appoint justices in the model of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. At best, Miers has only the potential to be like Thomas and Scalia. Thomas and Scalia were both appellate court judges with conservative records on their jurisprudential resume. It has obviously not gone without notice that Ms. Miers has no such resume. Instead, the President has demanded (he has certainly not asked nicely) that conservatives trust him. Indeed, trust him like we trusted his Father (Remember David Souter), Ronald Reagan (Anthony Kennedy), Gerald Ford (John Paul Stevens), Richard Nixon (Harry Blackmun), and Dwight Eisenhower (Earl Warren). The Republicans' history of "trust me" nominees is nothing short of catastrophic. George Will , Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, and Robert Bork, have all publicly opposed the Miers nomination, along with countless other conservative leaders. The criticism is the same: Miers isn't qualified and she isn't proven. And as Judge Bork points out, the only people (other than the President's cronies) who are saying anything nice about Miers are Democrats; that should tell the President something.

In light of all of this, the President has determined to re-launch the Miers nomination. He plans to parade a list of Texas Supreme Court justices who will attest to Harriet Miers' qualifications. Since when do we determine the fitness of a Supreme Court nominee based on character references? This isn't the Good Neighbor of the Year Award, this is the United States Supreme Court, and if Ms. Miers' resume does not substantiate her readiness to serve on the high court, the President should think again.

This is beginning to look like the 4th re-invention of Al Gore during the 2000 Presidential Campaign. Here are my predictions for the Harriet Miers 2.0 Re-Release:

1) Miers will swing through the Southern states wearing ankle-length dresses and a bonnet to appeal to Chauvinistic White Males.

2) James Dobson and the President will do their secret handshake in public, proving to conservatives that Miers really is pro-life.

3) President Bush will apologize again for betraying his base and then beg its forgiveness by singing a trio with Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il entitled "Give Me One More Chance."

4) Pat Robertson will publicly demand the assassination of any Republican who opposes Miers.

5) Karl Rove will accidentally leak to Robert Novak the name of Harriet Miers' undercover stunt double who will be filling in for her at the Senate Judiciary committee.

6) To appease Conservatives, Miers will give a contribution to Tom DeLay's legal defense fund.

7) Miers will grow a beard and randomly insert the word "originalism" into every sentence.

8) John Kerry and Harriet Miers will do a joint press conference Monday morning talking about how they miraculously lost all of their wrinkles over the weekend.

9) Miers will travel to Houston to train for her new job on NASA's new zero gravity BLACK ROBE simulator.

10) CBS will launch a new reality series "Who Wants to Be a Supreme Court Justice?" where Miers and 6 other average attorneys from across the country will run around New York playing "big city lawyer" and then be interviewed by Donald Trump for the job of a lifetime.

Quartering of Soldiers

The only amendment to the United States Constitution in the Bill of Rights never to be litigated in court is the 3rd Amendment. Most people probably have no idea what the 3rd Amendment even says, much less that it has never had a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. I imagine that is about to change. President Bush is embarking on an initiative that has dire implications for the liberty of ordinary citizens in this country. If his unbridled deficit spending, multiplication of social programs, meager efforts at social security, medicare, and tax reform weren't enough reasons to criticize this administration, the President just gave us another. I am far from being a wild-eyed liberal critic of the war, and I am a staunch supporter of the military. However, one of the hallmarks of the American system of government is the prohibition against using the military on our own citizens. Cindy Sheehan (the clinically insane protester whose son died last year in Iraq) referred to "Occupied New Orleans" with the sights of American military personal mobilizing to assist in the recovery effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sheehan took the criticism too far. Without doubt, the lawlessness that was occurring in New Orleans was shameful, and dispatching armed military personnel was excessive, but it was not "Occupied."

However, it is imperative that we recognize the long-term implications of this new precedent. The President announced this week his desire to utilize the military more often in disaster situations and states of emergency. This has all of the makings of a would-be dictatorship under an administration more Machiavellian than the present one. President Bush, despite being an incapable President on budget matters, and an incompetent president in the year 2005 all around, is not evil. In today's age of media presidential campaigns, soundbites, and cameras, the people of America should be weary of any current attempts to expand the scope and influence of domestic military activity in case we someday get duped by a Hitler or a Mussolini.

Rather than establishing an explicitly governmental program of response to natural disasters, Congress and this administration should take a more creative approach to such situations. FEMA should be reorganized to merely coordinate the tens of thousands of potential volunteers so that the average person who wants to help his neighbor in need can be effective in times of crisis. By bringing together the efforts of the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Southern Baptist Convention (the top three providers of disaster relief assistance in the United States), and the countless other organizations who reach out to people in time of need, FEMA and the Federal Government could save the taxpayers millions of dollars on additional federal personnel who would only be used irregularly, while rebuilding a spirit of community among the citizens of the United States. It is when we get past this failed experiment with rugged individualism that we will truly be able to value the individual and the community, and in the process we might well salvage our liberty too.

Nowhere To Turn

As the already impoverished people of New Orleans attempt to free themselves from the putrid liquid that engulfed them in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the spinmeisters and hucksters of the political realm are attempting to make partisan hay out of this tragedy. While Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus try to paint the federal government's pitiful response to the hurricane as being indicative of George W. Bush's racism, the poor people of New Orleans are still alone. The reality is that this tragedy, like all others, will be remedied by the efforts, not of the Government, but private organizations and individuals acting out of pure compassion. From the Red Cross and Salvation Army to the Southern Baptist Convention, hundreds of private charitable organizations are making a positive impact on the lives of the downtrodden in Louisiana and Mississippi.

My question, however, is: where was all this compassion six months ago, or five years ago when the people of New Orleans were living in their poverty? And across this country, even today, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans living in utterly destitute conditions with no hope of ever coming out of them. The government tried for the last forty years to put an end to such poverty, and has failed miserably. It is time for the Church in this country to stand up with creative solutions to help people in need and glorify God by fulfilling Christ's second great command "Love thy neighbor."

Adventures in the Backcountry

I am sitting on a computer in the little Mercantile of Denali National Park in Alaska as I write this entry. I'm rather out of the loop with respect to news and current events, something that is rather odd for me. But that is because I have spent five days in the backcountry wilderness of one of America's largest national parks.

We departed from the Denali Headquarters on July 20 on a "Camper Bus," which drives across the rough, dirt/gravel road through Denali National Park. Along the road, we saw a number of grizzly bears, golden eagles, caribou, and ptarmigan. Of course, we had to stop for every animal at 1,000 yards so people could take pictures that would most certainly not develop well. I couldn't tell for sure, but I don't think anybody on the bus was in possession of Mini-Hubble to view the animals. Nevertheless, after several hours on the bus, we made our final stop past the Eilson Visitor Center, right above the Thorofare River. We made our way along a game trail (that's a trail carved out by wildlife, for those of you who are unfamiliar with outdoors jargon) for a short ways down the hill from the park road, until we came to some rather thick brush. We had to find a place to descend into the riverbed, but there were really no gentle slopes, so we selected the slope with the most brush. Normally, one would never want to travel in thick brush, but whenever traveling up and down very steep inclines, brush is essential, because it is the only thing that keeps one from losing his footing and plummeting to his certain doom--ok, maybe not that dramatic, but broken bones are pretty bad in the backcountry.

We get down into the riverbed, and spot a moose at about 300 yards, just trapsing across the Thorofare. As we began to cross the classic Alaska stream, with its 25-30 braids, we discovered the water, while cold, was pretty shallow in most places, and not terribly swift. With ease, we finished crossing the Thorofare, and thought we were well on our way, when I looked up and spotted a male grizzly bear (quite large...500 lbs or so) at 150 yards. We stopped, hoping he had not yet seen us, and then noticed that he most certainly had, and was moving directly towards us. We waved our hands and shouted "BEAR! BEAR!" as if that is the thing one ought to say to a bear instead of "GO AWAY GO AWAY" or something else (I figure that talking to bears is like giving political speeches, it's not so much the message, but the delivery that matters). He raised up, gave us a second sturdy look, and then nonchalantly moved in the opposite direction. Danger had been averted.

I will continue this post later, but my time on the computer has run out...

The Dangers of Closure

With the recent, rather brutal, battle in the United States Senate over the ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the people of the United States should be increasingly concerned about the policy direction the United States is taking with respect to trade and international commerce. One of the hallmark events of the pre-World War I era was the movement from free trade and free international economic activity to that of relative economic closure, and high tariffs. We would do well to avoid a repeat of this disastrous epoch in world history, but the rising pressures from China's rapid economic expansion, coupled with the resistance of American Organized Labor community to revisions in America's antiquated labor laws confront us with a severe set of problems. First, we are inefficient at production compared to the rest of the world, and second, we are unwilling to accept large trade deficits (despite the fact that most economists will tell you the trade deficit is not the problem; the budget deficit is, and the trade deficit would be relatively resolved if we did not have the budget deficit issue, but I digress).

Given this, there is increasing pressure in the American political community to oppose further liberalization of American trade, and even to impose tariffs on goods coming from countries like China. This is the worst possible course of action we can take in the face of these problems, and the lessons of history teach us that economic closure leads to economic stagnation and even recessions, and then to war. There is no greater form of war mongering than passing tariffs.

Bush's Supreme Decision

Few issues in the last several years have received public attention as much as the American judiciary. The Right has excoriated it for being too Leftist, and the Left has excoriated it for being too Rightist. The Religious Conservatives have claimed that the Court is anti-religious, and the Radical Left-wingers have claimed that it isn't Anti-Religious enough. Leftists claim they want a judge who sees the constitution as a living document, except when that means giving into a majority view that most liberals reject. Conservatives claim they want a judge who "interprets the law rather than makes law." We shall soon see if the Conservative bloc and the President hold true to this conviction, or if the Conservative bloc cheers when the President appoints an ideologue to the court instead of a strict constructionist. The Constitution is not a living, breathing document. It is a set of rules by which we have determined we will govern ourselves. If we think the rules need to change, we have a method for changing those rules. At the same time, existing rules can be applied incorrectly and the Court can determine when there has been a long-standing misapplication of the rules. Brown v. Board of Education is the quintessential example of the Court correcting such a misapplication. Ultimately the underpinning notions of the Constitution are that individuals have rights that must be upheld, must be applied equitably, and in a judicious manner. This means individual rights for all Americans, and the President needs to choose a Justice who recognizes this, even if it conflicts with his ideological beliefs. Fidelity to the Constitutional text should be the foremost concern of any Justice on the Supreme Court, and sometimes fidelity to the text requires the abandonment of tradition. I sincerely hope that equal rights, including private property rights, free speech rights, the right to freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, privacy rights, equal protection, etc. are the fundamental concern of the new Justic on the Supreme Court. I am sketpical that this will happen in our era of partisanship, for which both sides are to blame, but I hope the confirmation process will bring about this desire end in spite of the partisanship. Conservatives and Liberals ought to be united on this front, but politics seems to always get in the way.

A Series of Rants

There is just too much going on in the news as of late, so I will try to comment on several of the major recent news items.

The Supreme Court and Private Property- In one of the most repugnant decisions in American history, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday that municpalities can seize private property with almost no limitations, as long as it "serves the public interest." This is a perversion of the already perverse doctrine of eminent domain. The Supreme Court, rather than serving as the restraining mechanism of the U.S. government, it has become the great enabler of statists who do not believe the Constitution actually limits government power (except when it comes to regulating war protests and burning the American flag...then it's hands off!). No greater blow has been dealt to individual rights in this country since the wave of gun control policies passed during Clinton administration.

George Voinovich and John Bolton- despite his tears on the Senate floor, the George Voinovich failed to make a compelling case that John Bolton is unfit to be Ambassador to the United Nations. That the Democrats are holding up an appointee to a diplomatic post purely on ideological grounds (don't let Barbara Boxer's smokescreen fool you) is anathema to tradition. Whether Bolton is the "best" man for the job is not the question--that is never the question on appointments. "Best man for the job" is a nebulous description, and if that were our criteria, we would likely never find a person to fill the post. The Democrats are constantly complaining that they never get to talk about what really matters to the American people (what that is, I'm not really sure), so rather than talking about those things, they are holding up appointments to the Bench, to Diplomatic posts, and whining about turning off the Air Conditioning at Gitmo.

Hillary- the new "gotcha" book about Hillary Clinton is yet another example of the media's blatant bias. They have created backlash against the book by the way they have reported it. I have not read the book, and so make no claims either way about it, but the media's behavior has been wholly reprehensible. Meanwhile, Hillary is gearing up for what is likely to be the most vicious, brutal presidential campaign in American history. I do not know if our Republic can survive 2008.

China- The greatest threat to American national security, and moreover, to the very existence of American hegemony is China. China is taking a mixed approach to achieving hegemony in the world: improve the economy and build big guns. China's bids for Unocal and Maytag should cause significant worry in the White House, the halls of Congress, and in the offices on Wall Street. The question, unfortunately, is no longer whether or not China should be contained, but rather are we ready to deal with the uncontainable China that has emerged in the last ten years. Do we have the economic vitality, scientific advantage, and popular will to stand up to the world's most populous country? I fear we do not. American optimism is about to be shattered when the Eagle and the Dragon face off, and the Eagle loses.

Europe's Misfit and America's Ally

The Washington Times today reports on Turkey's clouded future with regard to its EU membership, particularly given the abject failure of the new EU constitution in Holland and France (the only two countries, it is worth noting, to hold a popular referendum to determine whether or not to ratify the constitution) and the troubled Western European leaders who had previously been ardent supporters of Turkey's EU membership. As the Washington Times reports, Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the opposition party in Germany, is likely to be the next Chancellor when Germans reject the failed economic and social-experimental policies of the Socialist Schroeder government. Merkel would become the first woman ever to lead a unified Germany, and while she is not a conservative from the American perspective on social issues, she is a staunch economic conservative favoring lower taxes, reduced governmental regulation, and fiscal discipline.

The CDU also is far more hawkish on immigration than Schroeder's Socialists. Due to the immigration policies of the EU for its member countries, Germany is extraordinarily concerned about a massive influx of Turkish immigrants if Turkey gains EU membership. They already consider the Turkish immigration issue one of the most serious of all national issues. All of this, together with Turkey's growing alienation from the Europe it thought was its friend (we can empathize), especially on cultural/linguistic/historical matters exhibits a unique opportunity for the United States to improve its relations with the Islamic world.

Because of America's cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity (particularly in contrast with Europe's lack thereof), we are well-positioned to create a primarily diplomatic "empire" that would put the Europeans to shame. The question of course is whether or not we are willing to swallow our pride and embrace countries and the leaders of countries who do not look like us, talk like us, or think necessarily like us. Through the positive diplomatic interaction, however, we can spread the ideas of liberty and republicanism to the rest of the world without the loss of American or foreign civilian lives. For a country whose leaders are at least nominally Christian, we should attempt, as best we can, to apply the teachings of Christ and the whole of Scripture to all areas of life, and that includes foreign policy. And as Solomon tells us in the Proverbs "A harsh word stirs up anger, but a gentle word breaks a bone."

There is one additional factor that is important to this discussion of diplomatic relations, and courting Turkey (among other non-Arab, Islamic states, like Pakistan and those in Central and Southeast Asia), and that is the remarkable diplomatic abilities of the Chinese. The Chinese were, in their golden age, the greatest of the world's diplomats. This has been culturally preserved, and we see that the Chinese are opening embassies in obscure countries around the world where China has little or no economic interests. This is not the behavior of a minor, regional power, but of a would-be superpower. If we allow China to win in the world of diplomacy, I fear the battle is all but lost when they determine to assert their status as one of the world's new superpowers.

Dean, Guerrillas, and Christians

Howard Dean is a tragi-comic character in American politics these days. His inflammatory rhetoric is often so ridiculous that it pokes at even the most serious politico's funny bone. Calling the Republicans the "White Christian Party" was not so off-base in matter of fact, but patently false in the context. The Republican Party is the Party of White Christians. It is the Party of White Christians because the Democrats want little or nothing to do with White Christians.

Dean's pejorative use of the phrase "White Christian" is in fact quite revealing of this reality. The Republican Party, though, is more than just the Party of White Christians. It is also the Party of Black Christians and Hispanic Christians who have more than just a slight problem with the Secularist mindset that has overcome the entirety of the Democrat Party.

The GOP is also the Party of young Hispanic and Black Americans who want the chance to be entrepreneurs, to make something of their lives without the government riding in their backs the entire way. The GOP, at its core (though unfortunately not in its current manifestation of the Bush White House and the Frist/Hastert Congress) is the Party of Fiscal Responsibility, Governmental Restraint, and true, Constitutional rule. The fact that this is no longer the perception in America indicates the dire need for Republicans to examine themselves institutionally and get back on message.

The Republican Party, in contrast to the Democrat Party, believes that individuals, not the government, should control their own future. Republicans believe that individuals, not groups, have rights, and the sooner we start treating and loving people, rather than giving special priveleges and faux rights to groups, the sooner we will ameliorate the malaise of racism, classism, and sexism. The policies currently being propagated by the Democrat Party only further entrench these heinous evils by creating reasons for resentment and anger.

This is what Howard Dean just does not understand. As Howard Fineman wrote today, Howard Dean's problem isn't his mouth, it's mindset. He cannot understand how the word "Christian" could be a good thing, and just assumes that the standard, 60-year old line of the Democrats that Republicans are a bunch of "evil, rich, white men" is true.

Dean has another problem. He thinks that raising money and running a party is sort of like commanding a Guerrilla war. Snipe somebody here, (character) assassinate a leader there, do outrageous things to distract people from other targets while sending a few henchmen to take care of those targets. The trouble of course is that Guerrilla warriors can cause the ruling army a lot of headache and trouble, but Guerrillas are no good at occupying and governing. Their success depends wholly on hiding in the shadows and causing the other side so much pain that it retreats and leaves. This is what is going on with the "insurgency" in Iraq. It is a test of wills and endurance. Although the Republicans under George W. Bush have given in to many Democrat demands in the face of similar Guerrilla tactics, by and large, even this administration has shown a pretty genuine resolve on the things that mattered: tax cuts, judicial nominees, and tort reform. Perhaps the Democrats and Dean will wake up and realize they need to have a plan to govern. That is, unless they like being Guerrillas forever resigned to be in the minority. I'd be fine with that, too.

The Greatest of These Is Love

Christian Evangelist and Apologist Ravi Zacharias has said, I think quite correctly, "A conviction, ungirded by love, will make the possessor of it obnoxious and the dogma he possesses repulsive." The Scriptures tell us "Now abideth faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love," and that "He who loves another has fulfilled the law." With all that is going on in the so-called "culture war," it is time for those of us who are conservative and more important, Christian, to do a gut check and re-examine our approach. Is our political philosophy and is our political advocacy undergirded by love or ungirded by it? Are we reaching out to the people who have fallen victim to the destructive Existentialist philosophy that plagues our nation, or are we standing up like Pharisees and prounouncing judgment and casting the first stone? Jesus did not tell the adulteress "Thou art damned," he said "Go and sin no more." He showed loving compassion to those in spiritual need. It was the Pharisees pronouncing judgment. Christ was the only one who had a right to judge, and yet He did not. Does this mean we should approve of sin? No. But "love the sinner, hate the sin" is not manifested with hateful speech and vitriolic rhetoric. It was Ghandi who said when asked what he thought of Christianity: "I like their Christ, but I don't like their Christian. When I think of a Christian, I see him with a mug of beer in his right hand and a slab of beef in his left." Nietzche, the famed Athetist philosopher, said "I will start beliving in the Redeemer when the Christian looks a little more redeemed." You see, Postmodern Christianity in the Conservative churches teach abstention from alcohol and sex, and if you can do those two things, then you're in good shape. Sad to say, this is far from the truth. The message of the Gospel is far-reaching and radical, and it should infiltrate our every motive, thought, belief, and action. If we are to win this generation to Christ, it will be through showing His love to them through ourselves. We should live each day in the shadow of the Cross, and by doing so will be forced to live humbly, loving one another, and showing mercy to one another. Soli Deo Gloria, that is, To God Alone Be The Glory.

TAFTA

After my last post, I began thinking seriously about the possibility of a NAFTA-like agreement with the free market countries of Europe. I think we should call it the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, or TAFTA, and invite Great Britain, Estonia, and all of the other countries who believe that free markets are superior to socialism when it comes to growing an economy. Perhaps the faltering economies of Western Europe, like Italy, will recognize the extreme value of openness and will decide to accede to the agreement themselves. This idea makes sense not only from an economic perspective with economic benefits in mind, but it is imperative that the United States attempt such a project for reasons of political stability. The impending collapse and failure of the EU experiment will leave a vacuum that must be filled, lest the economies of the world slip into autarky again. A period of closure such as that would lead to the same economic decline and thus political nightmare scenarios like those of the Interwar period: Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito.

A Grand Opportunity

The United States should recognize the unique opportunity it has right now to step in and fill the gap that is being gradually created by the incompetent leaders of the European Union. With European government officials publicly speculating about the collapse of the Euro, it seems that the 50 year old dream of the European Utopianists is about to come to an abrupt and bitter end. The United States should sieze this opportunity to reclaim its leadership as the world's maintainer of the liberal international economic order and promote increased trade to head off any moves toward economic closure that might ensue. We should announce our intentions to create a NAFTA-like agreement with Great Britain and the marketizing nations of Eastern Europe like Estonia, whose political economy is much closer to ours (or at least is on a trajectory to be closer to ours) than it is to their Western European counterparts. This sort of economic integration will have tremendous benefits for both sides, as well as further improving political relations between the countries. Western Europe will continue to decline until it realizes that Socicalism is a completely unworkable pipe dream that ignores the realities of economics and human nature. Ironically, Karl Marx was right about one thing. He said history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. The Soviet Union was the tragedy, the European Union is the farce.

Why the French Rejection of the EU Treaty is both Good and Bad

The French people soundly rejected a proposed new constitution for the European Union, which would have further integrated the western part of the Eurasian subcontinent (it is rightly noted by geographers that Europe is not a continent in and of itself, and if history had not developed as it had, Europe would never have been classified as a continent, but I digress).

Europe's bloody thousand-year history was to come to an end after the denoument of the Second World War. So far, it has succeeded. But it is hardly time to make any sort of bold statements about peace in Europe with only sixty intervening years. The French rejection of the new EU constitution, and the impending defeat of the same by the Dutch exposes the deep-rooted, centuries old nationalism and cultural differences that have divided Europe throughout the ages. Without doubt, economic concerns are the overriding reason for the rejection, at least outwardly. But the reality is that the economic sovereignty issues are merely the manifestation of uneasiness the French have in signing over their national autonomy to German bureaucrats in Brussels.

When examining the economic problems of the Eurozone, it is important to recognize that the European economies, particularly in Western Europe, are stagnating rather miserably. They are experiencing little, if any economic growth, and massive unemployment. The situation is so wretched in Italy, that it would not be out of the realm of possibility if the Italians withdrew from the Euro altogether in the next few years. The integration of different economies with different fundamental infrastructures has proved to be a more difficult task in reality than it was in theory. With the widespread inequities in GDP, economic institutions, etc. that separate the countries of East and West Europe, there should be no wonder about why countries are weary of further economic and political integration.

For the United States, this development could be extremely positive, particularly in the short term. Leaders across Europe will now have to turn their attention and focus inward to deal with this major setback, and they will have to engage in serious gut-checking in order to determine the best future course of action in Europe. This strengthens the United States' hand in world affairs, and also puts to rest, at least temporarily, further talk of Europe as a "counter-weight" to U.S. global influence. T.R. Reid and the handful of other American Europhiles who released a flurry of books a few months ago declaring the dawn of a new age with Europe at the helm should now be hanging their heads in shame. The superficial success of Europe has now been proven to be just that, and the picture will begin to dim even further in the coming months.

However, there is a distinct danger in the French rejection of the EU treaty this week. As the Turks continue to overwhelm Germany through immigration, and the Algerians France, and various Arab sects the Netherlands, the possibility of a new bloody Europe emerges. With ethnic conflict continuing to rise in the Netherlands and parts of France, and the inevitable rise of radical elements among the indigenous population in response, the Turk will become to the 21st Century German what the Jew was to the early 20th Century German. The dangerous reality for Europe is that the Jew was not a threat in the 20th Century, but the Muslim is. As immigration control policies increase in Europe, so will Islamic violence and terrorism. A fractured European continent enhances the ability of Islamic factions to take control of smaller political units on the continent through strategic immigration.

Europe is in turmoil. Let us see what comes of it.

The Bankruptcy of Secularism

This is really more the title of a book than a blog post, but I hope the reader will indulge my overly-ambitious title for the thoughts in my post today.

I have not posted in almost a month, as life sometimes catches up with us and we get sidetracked. But today's post will make up for it, as this has been one of the chief topics on my mind in the last few weeks.

Life is filled with little observations, little occurrences, mishaps, coincidences, and contradictions. Much of our experiential knowledge of the world is garnered from these blips in our existence, as they seem to be of no consequence at the moment they happen, but later are often instructive if we take the time to reflect. All around me in the last several weeks I have witnessed these small blips in my existence, and in those near me, and I have come to a firm conclusion that not only is Secularism less than ideal, that is, that it is one system among many which is merely inferior, but that it is utterly bankrupt in every regard.

The world cries out in agony today. It occupies itself with distractions, while convincing itself that these distractions are the goals. Distractions have captured the fortress, and we seem not to know how expel them from our midst, since in their capture of the fortress, they have made us worse than servants to their designs, they have made us their prisoners. And though we may violently shake our prison gates, we call out to the night "Oh darkness where is thy deliverance?" Yet the reply is an eerie, deathly silence.

Our jailors do not feed us, and we shriek with hunger pangs. But the night does not feed us either. Our jailors do not give us water, and we groan in the misery of thirst. But the night does not supply us with drink either. When the morning dawns, we think we have a reprieve, and we play merrily with our jailors, who sport smiles during the daylight hours. They give us chocolates and sodas, and we for a time our lot improves.

We think we have no need to call to the Sun for help when he is breaking on the horizon. But as he flees from the clutches of the twilight, our captors' smiles fade and our shackles are put on us again. The temporality of the chocolates and sodas disappears in an instant, and we are suddenly strapped by our lack of sustenance and nutrition. But the night does not respond to our calls.

This is the likeness of America today. We consort with our captors and we call out to the night. Drunkenness, sex, money, drugs, entertainment, popularity have all become our captors. We think they will provide us happiness, and then they do not. But like the burnt fool's bandaged finger from Kipling's great poem, we go wobbling back to the fire. We are the dog returning to his vomit. We know they do not fulfill, yet we return to check again. "It will be different this time," we tell ourselves. But it is never different this time, and while the moment seems pleasurable, the aftermath is disastrous. Our souls mourn over the pain. Then we go back for another round.

Secular Humanism is the manifestation of true Existentialist philosophy. We are here for but a moment, our lives are meaningless, so we must maximize the pleasures and minimize the pains. Instead, we maximize the pains and minimize the pleasures, and lie to ourselves about the state of affairrs. Each moment in the Existentialist life is infused with anxious anticipation for the next moment. For if the next moment is not more pleasurable than this moment, then what will we have gained? And this moment-to-moment living produces despair. We have no hope for future joy, apart from that we obtain on our own (which we never seem to obtain). The reason Existentialism manifests itself as Secular Humanism is that only in the Secular Humanistic conception are we free from all moral constraints, all impediments to our temporal pleasure.

But Secular Humanism is an unstable philosophy. To the question "Where did we come from?" they say "an accident." To the question "Why are we here?" they say "to enjoy ourselves." To the question "What are the rules?" They say "There are none--but there are--but there aren't." And to the question "Where are we going?" they say "to the grave, and nothing more."

The entire system is Secular Humanism was conceived to annihilate moral restraint. But to the question of objective morality, they insist first of all that there is no objective morality, but the nihilism of this response is unpalatable even to the existentialist, for it would instantly justify rape, murder, and genocide. There can be no response to this problem from the humanist. He may attempt a response, but it will not stand up to scrutiny. If there is some objective moral standard, even as simple as "Murder is wrong," then it had to come from some objective moral law-giver. There can be no other way out.

But even if we make an unnecessary concession to the Secular Humanist and say that "there is no morality or immorality, there is only the pleasure of the self wherein it does not infringe upon others' pleasure" (again this is inconsistent with their philosophy, but I must use it to illustrate a point), we are left with an extraordinarily difficult problem. That is, if this life and its enjoyment is all that there is, how absurd is our meager existence? And since life has more pains than pleasures, how can even the physical fulfillments (which do not fulfill at all) make life less absurd, except by way of distraction?

In God, however, the personal creator of all of the universe, we find meaning. As William Lane Craig has said "God infuses every moment of our existence with his eternal meaning." Only through God does life lose its absurdity. More on this in the coming days...