On the Edge of the Abyss?

Pat Buchanan makes you wonder:

Irish rage at having to suffer to save Europe’s bondholders of Irish banks, the anarchy in England, riots in France to protest a rise in the retirement age to 62, the violence that wracked Greece, the precarious condition of Portugal and Spain, the anger of Germans at having to bail out their profligate EU partners — raise the question:

Can Europe’s welfare states be downsized without violence surging, governments falling and populists coming to power who will default on debts rather than force the masses that elected them to suffer to save the bank investors?

Can European democracy deal with the gathering storm?

Is not a national default and a collapse of banks across Europe inevitable? And could such a collapse be contained in Europe when America’s big banks are all transnational institutions?

No doubt about it, rough seas are ahead. America still has a lot going for it--I may go into detail sometime, but not today, I should be getting ready for work--that will enable it to come through the crisis in better shape than Europe, I think,though that may not be saying much.

Crap. All this pain and crisis because people wanted to live way beyond their means and wanted government to make it possible.

Michael Bates Quotes Sproul about Schaeffer, Christianity, and Statism

Couldn't resist quoting this. I know not all of my readers are familiar with the inimitable Michael Bates and might have otherwise missed this gem:

R. C. Sproul, writing in 2008, recalled asking Francis Schaeffer what was the greatest threat to the church in America. Schaeffer's one word answer: "Statism."

Schaeffer's biggest concern at that point in his life was that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state.

In statism, we see the suffix "ism," which indicates a philosophy or worldview. A decline from statehood to statism happens when the government is perceived as or claims to be the ultimate reality. This reality then replaces God as the supreme entity upon which human existence depends....

Throughout the history of the Christian church, Christianity has always stood over against all forms of statism. Statism is the natural and ultimate enemy to Christianity because it involves a usurpation of the reign of God. If Francis Schaeffer was right -- and each year that passes makes his prognosis seem all the more accurate -- it means that the church and the nation face a serious crisis in our day. In the final analysis, if statism prevails in America, it will mean not only the death of our religious freedom, but also the death of the state itself. We face perilous times where Christians and all people need to be vigilant about the rapidly
encroaching elevation of the state to supremacy.

From A Letter to America

From the letter, emphasis in the original:

Below are words of David Kaiser, a known and well respected historian. Whom do you think he was writing those words about: “How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country… and across the world. He did it with a compliant media… And he did this all in the name of justice and change. And the people surely got what they voted for.” Did you guess already? No, no, he wasn’t talking about Obama. He was talking about Adolf Hitler, the leader of The National Socialist German Workers' Party, a party of national unity and change! Change! Change! Change!

Hat tip to Cao.

Jonah Goldberg Puts It Well

It's been a while since I've heard this political division described so well and succinctly. Enjoy:

What we have here is a fundamental conflict of visions, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. One side believes that people are born into their station in life and it is the government's job to make their miserable lives a little better. Indeed, it is the natural order of things for the government to provide jobs, health care, homes to the people. If you object to this concept of government, it must be because you want to "punish" the downtrodden and discriminated. You must be animated by racism, sexism, greed, "fascism!"

The other side says that our rights come from God, not from government. That while the government has an obligation to promote the general welfare, it doesn't have a holy writ to design the nation as it sees fit. The Constitution is not a coupon insert in your local paper, brimming with all sorts of giveaways and two-for-one deals. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights delineate what the government cannot do, not what it can. What was so fantastic and revolutionary about that is that for the first time in history, a nation was founded on the proposition that the government should mind its own business. Believing that doesn't make you a fascist, it makes you a patriot.

But the leaders of one America don't see it that way, and probably never will. Which is why, whatever happens in Congress in the coming days and weeks, it will be "two Americas" for a very long time.

The Forever War

Well, it's not really forever. That's a title I swiped from a science-fiction author, Joe Haldeman, I think, who wrote a book by that title. Never read the book, but the title sure sticks with you.

No, it's not a "forever" war, but it sure feels like it. I certainly expect it to last until Jesus comes back, and God knows it's been going on all my life, and as far as I can tell, from earliest history.

To what do I refer, you ask?

I refer to the continual conflict between Leviathan and Lex, Rex, to the conflict between those who think--or at least act--as though the state is some sort of god, that it has, by right, all power to anything and everything that it wills, that the only way for men to live in peace is to give up all power to the state, and those who think that man has certain rights (this idea is best founded upon the idea that those rights are God-given) that the state is not only bound to respect, but to defend, the defense of man's rights being its purpose for existence. In this world, there are countless people who don't quite understand the conflict that rages 'round them, who can't quite grasp that there have always been, will always be (until the aforementioned return) people who will connive, steal, lie, cheat, extort, threaten, and murder to control the machinery of the state so as to benefit themselves or to imagine themselves godlike; and people who make it their business to resist that arrogant usurpation of power, who insist that the state is not entitled to the sort of fealty that should be reserved for deity, that it has a limited role. The mass of men don't understand that though both those groups of people claim to be speaking and acting on behalf of "the people," the first group are nothing but predators, lying through their teeth with every word they utter, simply trying to fool enough people to allow them to retain the power they abuse. Because the mass of men do not understand, because they want to believe the high-sounding words by which they are enslaved, or at least that those who utter them really mean them, they are perpetually shocked at the abuses of natural law that are perpetrated against them.

Right now, with the Senate vote for cloture on a "health care" bill--a "health care" bill that is nothing of the kind, a "health care" bill that, given the precedents we have in Medicare and Medicaid, will cost far more than projected and accomplish far less, a "health care" bill the constitutionality of which is highly questionable to say the least, a "health care" bill that is being jammed through in the name of "the American people" despite polling that consistently shows that a substantial and growing majority of Americans do not want it, a "health care" bill that is, in fine, nothing more than a blatant attempt to grab and to consolidate raw power--it seems that those who worship at the altar of Leviathan are in the ascendancy. Maybe they are. But one thing I know: those of us who prefer liberty and justice to plunder and dependency are not going away, and wherever we can, by whatever means we can, we are going to hinder the statists' agenda. We are going to do our best to ensure that more and more men understand that the statists do not give a flying fig about their "general welfare," that they care only about controlling the people in whose name they claim to act. And eventually, I think and I hope, the pendulum of history will swing back our way.

---

And no, for the inevitable leftist blogger who sees things in statements that simply are not there, "by whatever means we can" is not advocating armed revolution.

---

Fifth Quote from Liberty and Tyranny

In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx wrote, "In the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable: a heavy progressive or graduated income tax."

The Communist Manifesto also calls, by the way, for compulsory government education. Why this--and the tax thing--doesn't scare the mess outta people, I'll never know.

Don't you understand that the idea of a progressive income tax is to punish success? To punish people for having a dollar more than what some statist, liberal, leftist, or progressive thinks they ought to have?

Order the book here.

Third Quote from Liberty and Tyranny

The Statist veils his pursuits in moral indignation, intoning in high dudgeon the injustices and inequities of liberty and life itself, for which only he can provide justice and bring a righteous resolution. And when the resolution proves elusive, as it undoubtedly does--whether the Marxist promise of "the workers' paradise" or the Great Society's "war on poverty"--the Statist demands ever more authority to wring out the imperfections of mankind's existence.

You've noticed this, haven't you? People on the Left are perpetually convinced that the solution is more government. They might prefer to call it something else, like a more expanded program or something, but the reality is that if what they've already put in place isn't working, they blame it on someone somehow undermining their splendid plans and demand bigger programs, more spending, and more authority so that they can make things work better--and, of course, they seldom, if ever, actually do work better.

One of the most ironic things is the statist's, or Leftist's, pronounced tendency toward more government whilst claiming to fear right-wing totalitarianism. It's positively weird. Or pathetically blankin' stupid. Take yer pick.

Order the book here.