Entries Tagged 'Politics' ↓

I don’t know if this has already been derived by another social commentator and it may be the incorrect ratio, but I propose the following:

“As the size of total government increases, the likelihood that any given action will be simultaneously mandated and prohibited increases exponentially.”

This includes not only laws passed by a legislative body but also all of the regulations that government departments make up on their own, and the capricious coercions that petty bureaucrats and police officers enforce which aren’t written down anywhere.

With the sheer word count of laws and within the United States federal laws and departmental regulations, I highly doubt that any single person has read all of the laws currently on the books, and that’s just one level of government.  As this trend increases, it benefits the government, as they are able to arbitrarily harass anybody who they don’t like and bring them up on charges under some obscure statute.  Local petty tyrants (police and “customer” facing employees of government agencies) are able to demand bribes as they see fit because you’re always out of compliance with some law or regulation.

Of course the only solution to this madness is repentance.  Revolts and revolutions often cast out one demon and create a vacuum that replaces the one demon with seven.  Those who will not kiss the Son will look to the state as savior.  No matter how many volumes of laws you write, no matter how much you multiply them, they will be just as impotent to save as Baal was on Mt. Carmel.

In contrast, the Mosaic law code is something that you could read in one sitting.  It provides general precepts and specific case laws with enough detail that the wise can determine what the just course of action is for any given situation.  If only the Christians in this nation could say with the psalmist:

Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.

I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil.

I hate and abhor lying: but thy law do I love.

Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.

Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.

LORD, I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy commandments.

My soul hath kept thy testimonies; and I love them exceedingly.

I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies: for all my ways are before thee. (Psalm 119:161-168)

If we trusted God and delighted in His law as we ought to, then Duchemin’s Law of Bureaucracy would be moot.

“No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession, I’m a capitalist.”

-Miss Scarlet, Clue (1986)

If something is inherently capitalistic in nature does that make it inherently good?

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in characterizing Walter Block as a very persuasive debater in my introductory post about Defending the Undefendable.  Block’s first chapter “The Prostitute” was underwhelming at its best and highly offensive at its worst.  I do not believe that prostitution should be illegal.  I believe that good arguments can be made against outlawing prostitution.  I just don’t think Block made any of them.  Instead of attempting to show that prostitution should not be subject to criminal sanction, Block tries to show that this is a legitimate good and somehow beneficial to society.

Block’s first argument attempts to compare prostitution to a Norman Rockwell painting where a milkman and a pieman trade wares.  Both people have made the transaction voluntarily, without force or fraud, so this is in essence the same type of situation.  Here Block makes the same mistake that many Christians do in failing to distinguish between sins and crimes.  It’s almost a “libertarian positivist” type of thinking.  If no coercion or fraud is involved it must be good.  By what standard?  Good for whom?  Block also advances an essentially utopian view of prostitution where abusive pimps are the exception rather than the rule and the prostitute can voluntarily leave the trade at any time.  He implies that any correlation between abuse and prostitution is merely coincidental.

My disagreement with Block here is metaphysical.  He must believe that sex is somehow a neutral action just as the market is amoral.  Neither of these can be supported by Block’s arbitrary worldview.  The Bible tells another story.  Sex outside of marriage is inherently sinful.  It always leads to degradation rather than glorification in all circumstances.  Block fails to prove that if a trade is not coerced, it is necessarily a good thing.  Why can’t you have a situation where a trade takes place and yet both parties end up worse off than before?

Although no Christian should ever participate in prostitution as a buyer or a seller, the solution is not to make it illegal.  The women who brought the baby before Solomon to judge between them in the famous case (I Kings 3:16-28) were both prostitutes.  In this passage where Solomon is portrayed as the wisest of kings, he did not punish them criminally for being prostitutes.  He also did not remove the child from the custody of its mother because she was a harlot (much to the chagrin of contemporary social service types).  As is readily apparent, perverted people will still engage in prostitution regardless of whether it is legal or not.  Scripture should be our standard of whether prostitution ought to be criminal or not.  The prohibitionist is trying to be wiser than God.  As the gospel permeates the world and the nations are discipled, prostitution will pretty much disappear due to decline of both supply and demand.  This will be accomplished by the church and not the civil magistrate.

Block tries to show that not only should we not make prostitution illegal, but we should not criticize it either.  That’s kind of preachy for what I thought would be a defense of the “amoral” market, and he bites off more than he can chew.  Block presses his error of conflating sins and crimes by implying that because this “trade” shouldn’t be prohibited, it shouldn’t be considered wrong either.  This is well beyond the scope of the philosophy he presented in the introduction, but he doesn’t seem to care.  He argues that many dating patterns resemble prostitution.  Here I’d tend to agree with him, but as an argument against the dating patterns rather than for prostitution.

Then Block trashes marriage by trying to use the same argument.  All relationships are trades; therefore marriage is morally little different than prostitution.  “The marriages in which the husband provides the financial elements, and the wife the sexual and housekeeping functions, also conforms clearly enough to the model.  In fact, all voluntary human relationships, from love relationships to intellectual relationships, are trades. In the case of romantic love and marriage, the trade is in terms of affection, consideration, kindness, etc. The trade may be a happy one, and the partners may find joy in the giving. But it is still a trade. It is clear that unless affection, kindness, etc., or something is given, it will not be reciprocated (Block, 6).”  Block’s reductionism here is repugnant.  I did not vow to marry my wife only if affection and kindness were reciprocated.  I vowed to unite my life with hers in sickness and health, richness and poverty, for better or for worse.  I vowed to enter into a relationship that mysteriously images the relationship between Christ and the Church.  Even if (for the sake of argument which in no way corresponds to the most joyous reality of my actual marriage) my wife never reciprocated anything, I would still be compelled to love, protect, and cherish her.  My duty to be a faithful husband is in no way impacted by what I receive in return.

Block concludes “Several social commentators have correctly [sic] likened marriage to prostitution.  But all relationships where trade takes place, those which include sex as well as those which do not, are a form of prostitution.  Instead of condemning all such relationships because of their similarity to prostitution, prostitution should be viewed as just one kind of interaction in which all human beings participate. Objections should not be raised to any of them—not to marriage, not to friendship, not to prostitution (Block 6-7).”  This is as preachy as an Al Gore documentary.  How anything like “should” exists within Block’s worldview is still beyond me.  This first chapter was truly disappointing.  I expected better.

I first heard of the book Defending the Undefendable by Dr. Walter Block in late 2007.  The book certainly piqued my curiosity, and I have wanted to read it for a while.  It turns out that this book is available online from the Mises Institute.  I imagine that my interaction with the book will be slower than my handful of readers might like, but I think an interaction with the work will prove profitable.

In DtU, Walter Block attempts to show that all non-coercive elements of a market economy have an economic value and benefit society.  He looks at the most extreme cases: the pimp, the drug addict, the blackmailer, the denier of academic freedom, the person who yells “fire” in a crowded theater, the (non-government) counterfeiter, the slumlord, and the stripminer among others.  These extreme cases can be used to make an a fortiori argument for the free market.  If even these “economic scapegoats” are beneficial to a free market economy, then less controversial professions would also be beneficial.  As Dr. Block states in the introduction, “This book is a defense of the marketplace. It singles out for special praise those participants in the free enterprise system who are the most reviled by its critics. It does so because if the price system can be shown to be mutually beneficial and productive in these extreme examples, then the case for markets in general is strengthened even the more [Block: xv].”

I read the foreword by Murray Rothbard, the commentary by F.A. Hayek, and Block’s own introduction to the book.  I can already see that this will be a thought-provoking and entertaining read, but I can also anticipate where I’m likely to disagree with Professor Block.

First, Block contends that the free enterprise system must be seen as amoral–neither moral nor immoral.  As a Van Tillian Calvinist, I cannot let this slide.  Block argues that the free market is an amoral tool just like a gun or a typewriter.  Even those instruments are only neutral until a man lays hold of them and uses them (either in obedience to God toward the end of glorification or in disobedience toward the end of degradation).  In the nature of the case, every action executed within a market has human involvement and consequent ethical ramifications.  If every particular action within an economic system is either moral or immoral, how can the system as a whole (which is the set of all these particulars) suddenly become amoral?  If Block wants to look at these things hypothetically, then my critique would be that his approach ends up becoming Utopian rather than grounded in reality.  Ironically, this critique of Utopianism can also be levied against Marx’s “scientific socialism” which is on the opposite extreme ideologically.

You will not have a free enterprise system if every action or person is immoral. What is going to stop immoral people from using coercion?  Isn’t the non-coercion principle arbitrary?  Why shouldn’t you use coercion [if there's no God who will judge all men at the last day]?  The fact of the matter is that you will only have anything resembling a free enterprise system if you have a foundation built upon the Triune God who revealed himself in the scriptures.  If we do not let the Word of God depart from our mouths and we are careful to obey it, then we will have the prosperity and success of what is essentially the free market economy which I anticipate Block will ably defend.  If we build our foundation upon a would-be autonomous system like libertarianism, then we’ll get something that essentially resembles what we see around us today.  The only reason why Block can make any of his arguments is because he is borrowing capital from the Christian worldview.

That being said, I think that mature Christians will benefit greatly from reading this book.  In many cases the things that Block defends here are sins (no associated penal sanction with the commandment) in the Bible rather than crimes (which have an associated penal sanction).  When we attempt to make things like prostitution and drugs illegal (in our own attempts to be autonomous), we almost always do more harm than good.  Many of these issues truly are problems, but the only true solution to them is the preaching of the Word, the diaconal ministry, and the faithful administration of the sacraments to convert souls.

In some cases (the inheritor, the advertiser, the denier of academic freedom, the scab, the employer of child labor, and especially the rate buster) there may be no sin at all, and I imagine I’ll agree with just about everything Block says.

If you are not well-grounded in a Scriptural Christian worldview, get well grounded in that worldview before reading this book.  Walter Block is a very intelligent man and a very persuasive debater.  If you aren’t steeped in Scripture, this book may have the same subtle influence (“hath God really said…”) as the serpent in the garden.  Libertarianism, like any philosophy that is explicitly anti-Christian, can only end in weeping and gnashing of teeth if applied consistently in the real world.  I would argue that libertarianism and consistent Christianity look very similar in a lot of the external particulars, but only Christianity can provide an intelligible foundation for them.  In most cases, libertarians want all the benefits they can get from living in a Christian society without actually bending the knee and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

At least that’s my impression from reading the introduction.  I’ll issue any retractions as I am convinced I need to make them.

Chapter reviews:

Chapter 1: The Prostitute

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the births of Abraham Lincoln, and Charles Darwin.  These are two of my least favorite human beings ever, and the fact that they were both born on February 12, 1809 makes that one of my least favorite dates.

Abraham Lincoln is the preeminent politician of modernity.  He was such a skillful, slick politician that nearly 150 years after his reign of terror, he still has the majority of the world fooled.  Lincoln wanted a war so he could consolidate power.  Every nefarious, warmongering assault on liberty and justice that the Bush/Cheney regime was guilty of pales in comparison to Lincoln.  Lincoln had a tremendous influence on the bloodthirsty 20th century totalitarian tyrants.  They learned from the master how to implement total war, curtail civil liberties, silence the opposition, maneuver themselves into wars, and increase their political power.  He ranks as my all time least favorite U.S. President.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution provided unbelievers an alternative to the creation account that had a façade of being “scientific.”  The implications of his entirely bogus and completely unscientific assertions led to a devaluation of human life that produced the unprecedented body count of the 20th century.  Darwin’s theories were thoroughly discredited shortly after his publication of On the Origin of Species, etc. but the truth never really mattered.  Evolution has always been about public relations and propaganda.  The evolutionists must run to the State to enforce and mandate the propagation of their theory because they know they can’t win honest debates.  Darwin wouldn’t have attained the fame he did unless T. H. Huxley shamelessly pimped his theory.  To this day the evolutionists use politics and manipulation to maintain their stranglehold on academia.  People who are critical of The Theory (all hail) had better keep their mouths shut or they will be denied teaching jobs, admission to graduate schools, professorships, research grants, and tenure.  The body count continues to rise, and the only reason people hold to The Theory is so they can delude themselves into thinking they have an intellectual reason for not submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Well, I’m back from vacation.

While I was gone, there has been a major coup for those of you who love the State.  I’m not surprised.  President Bush has been so horrible while in office that he guaranteed a big Obama victory.  McCain got Bob-Doled.  Hard.

McCain wouldn’t have been much better than Obama (not at all better on most issues and even worse on a few), but at least with one party having the White House and the other controlling Capitol Hill, there would have been the possibility for gridlock.  The Obama presidency /  Republican congress combination would have yielded the most gridlock unless McCain died in office, but instead there will barely enough people to filibuster and that only if the Republicans grow a collective backbone.  I’m not holding my breath.  Government is a scary thing when it can get things “accomplished” without opposition.

I’m mildly amused about the emails I get from conservative groups about how we need to “resist” the new administration.  Funny that these things didn’t happen when Bush was suspending habeas corpus, say.  I think that an Obamanation can be worse than the Bush administration, but I don’t believe that it necessarily will be worse, especially if the legislature turns Republican in 2010.

Thankfully Hillary wasn’t elected, so the likelihood of homeschoolers being imprisoned forever without a trial during the first 100 days of the Administration is slim.

Sadly, there is little to be excited about in terms of small government people being elected to office.  Ron Paul ran unopposed and was reelected to Congress, but Bob Conley got clobbered by Big State Republican Lindsey Graham, and BJ Lawson lost big to the evil David Price.

For the most part, I will just resign myself to being oppressed by my government like a peasant being burninated as his thatched-roof cottage is set ablaze by Trogdor the Burninator.  It’s not the end of the world, contrary to what the Chicken Little types say.  There have been worse rulers before.  There will be worse rulers again.  Jesus Christ reigns over the world from the right hand of the Father Almighty now as He did before.  His kingdom will know no end.

If Obama starts requiring people to worship him, I might grab a pitchfork (guns likely being outlawed by that time).  God has a sense of humor, especially when it comes to discrediting false messiahs.

I will go over my ballot position by position.  For those of you outside of my district in NC, this may not be all that relevant to you, but it will reveal a little bit about my rationale about whom I vote for and why.

President: (Options are Obama/Biden (D), McCain/Palin (R), Barr/Root (L), and write in)

Obama/Biden isn’t even worth considering.  Pro abortion, functionally Marxist.  I have no faith that he will cease US interventionism abroad.  McCain/Palin are also not worthy of consideration.  McCain is a war monger who is an economic ignoramus.  I have no reason to believe that he will turn things around on abortion.  (That will be one of the first “bi-partisan” compromises he makes when he’s about to nominate a judge.)  Barr is by far the best of the three policy wise, if he can be believed.  Rather than the common “I’m personally against abortion, but..” line it appears that he’s publicly against abortion but his wife had one in 1983.  He went to Washington and was easily corrupted by the small power of being a congressman.  I shudder to think what would happen if he had access to presidential power.  Throw in the fact that he’s former CIA, and it becomes clear that I’m making a write in vote here. Vote: Ron Paul (write in): I know he’s no longer an active candidate for the office, but if you’re voting for a guy who won’t win anyway, I see no sense in voting for the lesser of two goods.  (Honorable mention Chuck Baldwin.)

U.S. Senate: (options are Kay Hagan (D), Elizabeth Dole (R), Christopher Cole (L), and write in)

Another case where the Republican and Democratic candidates are not even worth consideration.  Dole is horrible, and Hagan will be worse.  I spent a long time researching Chris Cole.  I do have some serious reservations about voting for him in that he is openly homosexual and supports gay marriage.  In looking at his positions, he believes that abortion is a state issue and opposes any federal involvement in the issue at all, whether it is funding, promotion, or banning at the federal level.  He does not disclose what he thinks the states ought to do.  As such, I think he would be far more likely to help end federally protected abortion than the “Pro-Life” Republicans in the federal government who want to keep abortion an issue forever by not stopping it.  He is really solid on everything a senator might vote on.  He wants to eliminate the fed, just about every federal department, and the income tax.  He essentially has the same positions as congressman Paul on federal issues with the exception of gay marriage where he believes in a very limited role of the Federal government anyway.  As Luther might say, I’d rather be ruled by a homosexual who rules like a Christian than by a Christian who rules like a homosexual.  Vote: Christopher Cole.

U.S. House District 13: (options are Brad Miller (D) and Hugh Webster (R))

I thought for sure that I was in B.J. Lawson’s district (4), but I found out to my horror when I received my ballot that I’m in district 13, where the candidates are Hugh Webster and Brad Miller.  Miller is horrible.  He voted for the bailout and is about as statist as they come.  Hugh Webster is a typical conservative who believes that liberals are the problem rather than bipartisan statism.  His biggest issue is to stop illegal immigration (presumably by making the state stronger.  His second biggest issue is that “it is imperative that we fight the War on Terror on foreign soil.”  Energy is a “national security” issue, and abortion isn’t even important enough to him to make his issues page.  No thanks, I’ll pass on this one since I do not have the opportunity to write-in.  Vote: Nobody

NC Governor: (options are Bev Purdue (D), Pat McCrory (R), and Michael Munger (L))

All of the negative adds between Purdue and McCrory are right.  They’re both crooks.  Purdue is worse on paper, but McCrory is more corrupt.  Michael Munger is by far the best of the three.  He’s really solid on annexation, eminent domain, and corporate welfare.  He’s good on election reform and victimless crimes.  He’s not great on education, believing that a government controlled system with the appearance of choice but still supported by coercive taxes (also known as “charter schools”) is the answer.  He’s bad on marriage, and horrible on abortion, which is a state issue.  Vote: Nobody

NC Lieutenant Governor: (options are Walter Dalton (D), Robert Pittenger (R), and Phillip Rhodes (L))

This was my hardest decision on the ballot.  I was able to dismiss Dalton after looking at his campaign page for about 30 seconds and Pittenger after 20 seconds.  (Pittenger’s website was easier to navigate.)  Phillip Rhodes has some really good positions—some of the best I’ve seen in a candidate running for office.  He is my favorite candidate whose name is actually on my ballot.  He is in favor of amending the NC constitution to get rid of the reconstruction-imposed stipulations, such as the eternal ban of secession.  He’s great on all the things that Munger is solid and good on, and better on education (believes on working toward a separation of school and state) and marriage (none of the government’s business, period).  However, on the abortion issue, he’s a wuss.  Now, it isn’t likely that Rhodes will win, or that Roe v. Wade will be overturned during his tenure in office if he does win.  However, I can’t bring myself to vote for a pro-choice candidate.  So it is with a heavy heart that I will have to leave this portion of the ballot blank.  Vote: Nobody

NC Attorney General: (options are Roy Cooper (D), and Bob Crumley (R))

Roy Cooper is on a crusade against “price gouging” gas stations.  He also demonstrated just enough backbone to take a stand on the Duke Lacrosse issue once it was absolutely no risk politically for him to do so.  Crumley rides an anti-gang, anti-immigration hobby horse and thinks more laws and law enforcement is the answer.  Vote: Nobody

Auditor: (choices are Beth Wood (D) and Leslie Merritt (R))

Beth Wood has endorsements from the AFL-CIO and the National Organization for Women.  Her auditing “won’t be politically motivated.”  Yeah.  Right.  Merritt was one of only three statewide Republican candidates to receive an endorsement from the NC Republican Liberty Caucus.   Vote: Leslie Merritt

Commissioner of Agriculture: (choices are Ronnie Ansley (D) and Steve Troxler (R))

I spent some time reading these guys’ websites.  They are pretty much indistinguishable.  Both seem to believe that government is the answer, so neither of them get my vote.  Vote: Nobody

Commissioner of Insurance: (choices are Wayne Goodman (D), John Odom (R) and Mark McMains (L))

This is a political office?  Really?  Good grief!  Goodman is Dwight Schrute.  The only way I’d vote for anybody here is if they vowed to abdicate once taking office or to work toward repealing all state regulation of insurance and then abdicate.  Sadly, Mr. McMains must be one of those Big State Libertarians.  The only position of his that is remotely Libertarian is the idea of repealing the workers compensation insurance laws. Vote: Nobody

Commissioner of Labor: (choices are Mary Fant Donnan (D) and Cherie Berry (R))

Anybody who is running on a platform other than elimination of the position will not get my vote.  Vote: Nobody

NC Secretary of State: (choices are Elaine Marshall (D) and Jack Sawyer (R))

Marshall is the incumbent and is endorsed by the AFL-CIO and the North Carolina Association of Educators.  I know whose interests she has in heart.  Oh, and she also posted hundreds of thousands of social security numbers on the NC Secretary of State website.  No thanks.  Jack Sawyer is the first Republican I’ve encountered on my ballot that actually wants to decrease the size of government and remove burdensome regulations.  I will give him my vote, but keep an eye on him if he’s elected.  Vote: Jack Sawyer

Superintendent of Public Instruction: (choices are June St. Clair Atkinson (D) and Richard Morgan (R))

As I have said elsewhere, a government-controlled school system is worse than a government-controlled press.  Both candidates want to increase the role and cost of the government in education rather than reduce it.  Vote: Nobody

NC State Treasurer: (choices are Janet Cowell (D) and Bill Daughtridge (R))

Cowell is endorsed by all the bad guys (AFL-CIO, NARAL, NC Academy of Trial Lawyers, etc.).  Daughtridge is certainly better, but he’s all about corporate welfare subsidies. Vote: Nobody

NC State Senate District 16: (choices are Josh Stein (D) and John M. Alexander Jr. (R))

Stein is a leftist.  Alexander is a “moderate” big-government Republican in the McCain mold.  Very similar to the presidential “choices.”  I’m similarly nonplussed.  Vote: Nobody

NC House of Representatives District 35: (choices are Jennifer Weiss (D) and Eric Weaver (R))

Weiss is a buddy of former Speaker of the House, felon, and current white-collar inmate Jim Black.  Weaver is worth a look.  I disagree with his positions on education and illegal immigration, but otherwise he’s solid.  I agree with him on enough that he gets my vote. Vote: Eric Weaver

County Commissioner District 4: (choices are Stan Norwalk (D) and Kenn Gardner (R))

Norwalk wants to find even more ways to tax people to “pay for growth”.  Gardner voted to increase property taxes and has some alleged shady conflict of interest issues.  He’s also in favor   Vote: Nobody

County Commissioner District 5: (choices are Harold Webb (D) and Venita Peyton (R))

You know, at first I thought based on the legion of typographical errors that Venita Peyton was going to ask me to wire money offshore in order to get an inheritance for some lesser prince halfway around the world.  But on the issues, she’s better than Kenn Gardner and she realizes that more government isn’t the answer and most of the important work to improve communities is done by private institutions rather than public ones, especially the church.  As you may have noticed, my vote is not easily gained, but I’m giving it to Venita Peyton.  Vote: Venita Peyton

County Commissioner District 6: (choices are Betty Lou Ward (D) and Larry F. Tilley (R))

Pretty bleak here.  Tilley is another pro-public education Republican who wants to raise taxes but spend the tax dollars “efficiently”.  Vote: Nobody

Register of Deeds: (choice is Laura M. Riddick)

One option?  I feel like I’m in the Soviet Union.  I couldn’t find out Riddick’s positions on anything, so I’m not voting for her.  I’m sure she’ll still garner the one vote necessary to win from somebody.  Vote: Nobody

NC Supreme Court Associate Justice: (choices are Robert H. Edmunds, Jr. and Suzanne Reynolds)

A pro-police state Republican versus a Democrat endorsed by the usual suspects.  I don’t buy this “Non-Partisan offices” shtick for a minute.  Vote: Nobody

NC Court of Appeals Judge (Martin Seat): (choice is John C. Martin)

This NC voter guide is lame.  Nothing about the candidates judicial philosophy.  I wish they had debates or something I could find on the Internet.  Martin is running unopposed.  He’ll win without my vote.  Vote: Nobody

NC Court of Appeals Judge (Wynn Seat): (choices are Jewel Ann Farlow and James A. Wynn)

Judge Wynn is endorsed by all the hard-left special interests.  Farlow pledges to be a strict constructionist and follow the law as written.  (I hope she is more of a Thomas Jefferson strict constructionist than a George W. Bush “strict constructionist.”)  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.  She isn’t as overtly Police State as Edmunds.  Vote: Jewel Ann Farlow

NC Court of Appeals Judge (Tyson Seat): (choices are Sam J. Ervin, IV and Kristin Ruth)

Well, things get more and more interesting.  Here we have 2 Democrats running against each other.  Kristin Ruth gets most of the really hard left endorsements, but Ervin gets the NC Trial Lawyers endorsement and the State Troopers association.  Never vote for a judge who has been endorsed by the State Police. Vote: Nobody

NC Court of Appeals Judge (McCullough Seat): (choices are Cheri Beasley and Doug McCullough)

Beasley is endorsed by all the usual suspects on the left.  McCullough is the only candidate in the voter guide who included the word “liberty” in his personal statement, and is also not ashamed of his decisions.  He provided hyperlinks to decisions he has written, so he must not be ashamed of them.  I don’t necessarily agree with him on everything, but he seems to have a high regard for juries and is reluctant to overturn jury decisions.  Vote: Doug McCullough

NC Court of Appeals Judge (Stephens seat): (choices are Dan Barrett and Linda Stephens)

Stephens is endorsed by the teachers’ union and the State Troopers.  Barrett is campaigning on a platform of a conservative judicial philosophy that won’t attempt to legislate from the bench.  Vote: Dan Barrett

NC Court of Appeals Judge (Arrowood seat): (choices are John S. Arrowood and Robert N. Hunter, Jr)

Arrowood has the endorsements of the lefties.  Bob Hunter boldly states on his front page: “It has been my experience that the golden rule is the moral basis of all law.”  Now, I don’t think he’s necessarily a theonomist or anything, but he isn’t ashamed to state that just law has its basis in the Bible.  That’s a move in the right direction, even if he gets some of the particulars wrong.  Vote: Robert N. Hunter, Jr.

NC Superior Court Judge District 10B: (choice is Howard E. Manning, Jr.)

Manning was the presiding judge over Leandro v. North Carolina.  While he ruled that the state public schools were doing a poor job, he only set the stage for a bigger government role in education.  Boo!  Vote: Nobody

District Court Judges:

There are several judges running unopposed.  The NC Democratic Party endorses Monica M. Bousman, Eric Chasse, Lori G. Christian, Jane P. Gray, Robert Rader, and Deborah Sasser.  I won’t vote for them.  I can’t find enough out about Jennifer Miller Green to know whether to vote for her.  I didn’t like anything I found about Jennifer Knox.  With Brewer and Miller, I favor Miller slightly, but it’s really six of one, half a dozen of the other.  I enjoyed reading Walter Rand’s questionnaire for the Independent Weekly.  He appears to be the closest thing to a libertarian judicial candidate.  I’m not really interested or impressed by Jacqueline Brewer or John J. Miller III.  Voting for: Walter Rand

Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor: (choices are Fred W. Burt, William Cole, Robin M. Hammond, and Marcia Lieber)

Last and probably least on my ballot is the position of Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor.  All of the candidates are big on government.  But (cha-ching) there is a write in option on this spot.  Because I wasn’t able to vote for BJ Lawson for Congress (grumble, grumble), I will write him in as Soil and Water Conservation Supervisor.  Lawson’s big on sustainability and small on government, so he’d be perfect for the job.  You may argue technicalities like Lawson not living in the district and thus being ineligible to serve for this position, but it’s my vote and you can cry about it.  It’s a symbolic vote.  Vote: B.J. Lawson (write-in)

And there you have it.  Hopefully I’ve voted for few enough people this time that I won’t regret whom I voted for.  Aside from the judges, Merritt is probably the only one with a likelihood of winning.

Yesterday on lewrockwell.com, G.C. Dilsaver wrote a very good piece titled Christians and the Pro-Life Ploy about how the pro-life Christians have been duped into supporting myriad evils based upon the illusionary hope of destroying the evil of abortion.  He argues rather persuasively that the Republican and Democratic parties are merely two sides of the same coin.  He refers to the current set-up as “The Two Party Axis of Evil.”  Definitely worth reading.

I don’t think it would be a controversial statement to say that about 99% of Americans believe in freedom of the press, in the sense that they don’t believe that having the newspapers and other mass media controlled directly by the federal government would be a good idea.  They see the danger of having newspapers acting as overt propaganda tools for the government.  While I will be the first to criticize how much the various media organizations voluntarily shill for the federal government, it’s certainly not as bad as it would be if the government actively filtered everything that was presented on telecasts, radio broadcasts, newspapers, and the internet.  (For example, Ron Paul to the best of my knowledge, was interviewed by every cable news network during his presidential campaign and had the opportunity to present a non-statist point of view to a sizable television audience.)  To the extent to which we still enjoy freedom of the press, it is a blessing, even when viewpoints that you disagree with are presented without a rebuttal from your “side”.

Because the freedom of the press is so widely accepted by Americans, I find it amazing that out of those 99% who believe in the freedom of the press, 80% or more of them believe that the government should directly control the education of children.  If it is a danger to a free society to have adults subjected to propaganda, how much more of a danger is it to have impressionable children subjected to a government-controlled curriculum for six hours a day for a minimum of ten years?  This is exactly what is happening.  Children in the public schools are provided with textbooks that are of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats, and for the bureaucrats.  The curricula are designed and supervised by educational bureaucrats (“educrats”).  In my home state of North Carolina, there are almost as many educrats in the public school systems as there are teachers, and they earn far more than the teachers. From the days of Horace Mann, the public education movement has been one of attempted social engineering.  Mann prophesied that public schools would eradicate crime (how’s that one working out) and poverty.  The government school movement has a distinctively messianic character, and like all false messiahs, it disappoints.  Although, I don’t think that public schools are failing in their actual intended purpose.

The purpose of the government school is not to produce a population that is highly literate, capable of critical thinking, or logical.  The purpose of the government school is to have each generation more supportive of an ever larger and more intrusive government.  Now, they still do let good teachers teach here and there (I’ve had several of them), but these teachers are becoming fewer and further between.  Logic and rhetoric are nowhere to be found in the average government school.  Once I started studying economics on my own, I became convinced that public schools try to make the subject as dull and brutally boring as humanly possible so that students have no desire to understand economics.  I don’t know what else you’d expect from a government institution, but with the exception of the homeschooling and Christian schooling movements, nobody seems to have a problem with the idea of public schools.

The different political parties argue about how government-controlled education should be implemented, but almost nobody argues about whether the government should be involved in education in the first place.  It is precisely because education is so important that the government should keep its grubby mitts out of the whole business.

The primary argument advanced by the guilt manipulators in favor of government education is that without it the poor would not be educated.  Well, before the public school movement there were several private, charitable Christian schools that did just that.  Rather than simply being recruiting grounds for gangs, these schools were able to educate poor immigrants into literate, productive members of society.  What is going on with the poor cannot fairly be called education, and the level of literacy seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of money that the government throws at it.  I can’t conceive of a better way to express your contempt for the poor than to compell their children to attend government schools.  Again, you see the schools achieving their intended (but not publicly stated) purpose of keeping generations of people dependent upon the government for just about everything.

I haven’t even mentioned the tax burden of this mess yet.  The government points a gun at your belly and forces you to financially support these schools whether you believe in them or not, whether they are turning out literate or illiterate people.  Who cares whether you’re devouring widows’ houses; it’s for the educra…I mean children.  In a situation where educational liberty thrived and schools were only supported by donations and tuition, the bad schools would go out of business while the good schools opened up a new branch in the next town.  As things currently stand, the bad schools get their budgets tripled for failing to educate their students.  Now tell me what incentive there is to produce reasonably informed, literate, logical people in a system like that.  When business fails, it gets smaller; when government fails, it gets bigger.

Government control of the schools is far worse than government control of the press, because within 2 or 3 generations, public schools accomplish a functional control of the press that the American people never would have otherwise consented to—or at least it would if there wasn’t a sovereign God controlling all of history for the good of his saints.  This will not succeed because the public schools are merely idols for destruction in the long run.  They cannot save any more than a block of wood can.  The educrats can moan and cut themselves with knives and lancets, but in the end there will no voice; there will be no one to answer; no one will save them.

I once had an evolutionist state that she was puzzled that many Christians perceive evolution as an attack on the religion of Christianity and didn’t understand how there could be so much conflict between a religion and a particular scientific theory.  My answer was and remains that Darwinism isn’t science—it’s a religion.

Because Christianity and Darwinism are competing religions or worldviews, there can be no harmony between the two of them. The Bible teaches rather plainly that God created the heavens and the earth over the course of about six days, approximately six thousand years ago. (There are many Christians who will dispute this, but I think they aren’t reading the text of Scripture honestly and are self-consciously capitulating to Darwinism at the outset.)

More importantly than the age of the earth is the fact that the Bible teaches that there was no death before the sin of Adam and Eve. This is not a passing detail but one that is absolutely essential to Christian doctrine.  You could not have had billions or even millions of years of natural selection where the preferred races are preserved in the struggle for life.   In principle there can be no harmony between the Bible’s theory of origins and Darwin’s.  If Darwin is true, then the Bible is not and vice versa.  This does not mean that every particular bit of scientific reasoning performed by Darwinists is false or that all of the scientific reasoning of the Creationists is correct.  However, it does mean that every bit of true scientific knowledge tangled within the mess of the evolutionary framork supports Creation by the Triune God according to the scriptures.

The job of the Christian in these debates is to remain faithful to the teaching of scripture and then to perform an internal critique of Darwinism that shows that if it were true it would undermine the possibility of gaining scientific knowledge.

We have nothing to fear from actual experiments in the natural sciences.  These experiments must be within the limits of the scientific method by being repeatable, with measurable data.  Anything that cannot be tested by experiments using this method is beyond the bounds of natural science.  It is precisely because of these restrictions that Darwinism is not science but religion.

Darwinism is afraid of the evidence.  Darwinism attempts to build immunity to evidence into its theory structure.  (For an example of this, look at the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium as advanced by Stephen Jay Gould.)

Darwinism uses the coercive arm of the state in order to suppress opposition to its theories.  If you don’t think this is the case, then you’re still living in 1925.  Evolutionists essentially have a monopoly over academia. Non-evolutionist scientists are ostracized by this establishment. They are denied admission to graduate school.  Professors who oppose evolution are not granted tenure. Their papers are neither peer reviewed nor published.  There is a large political party (the U.S. Democratic Party) that has maintaining the mandated, exclusive teaching of evolution in government schools with compulsory attendence laws as one of the main tenets of their political platform.  What we have today is the Scopes trial in reverse.  Darwinism doesn’t just act like any religion; it acts like a very insecure religion that must suppress any oppositon to it by force.  To phrase the question in Yoda’s syntax: If so confident you are in your theory, why hide behind the government instead of defending it?

I plan on building upon my critique of Darwinism in the coming days.  If you would like to learn more about this debate, I recommend the following resources: Answers in Genesis, Michael Dention’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, and two lectures by Greg Bahnsen titled “Is Evolution Scientific?“  I’d go with Bahnsen first.

If you are not familiar with Harry Nilsson, I cannot recommend him highly enough as a singer/songwriter within the classic rock genre.  One of the tracks from his brilliant album Nilsson Schmilsson (1971) is called “Coconut.”  In this song a woman gets a bellyache from putting the lime in the coconut and drinking them both up.  She calls the doctor (probably a witch doctor) and he prescribes she should take the lime in the coconut and drink them both together in order to  order to cure the bellyache caused by taking the lime and the coconut and drinking them both up.

This is clearly insanity.

Nilsson’s song humorously reveals and illustrates an interesting aspect of human nature that is widely applicable.  When you misdiagnose a problem, and you treat the symptoms rather than the cause, you may believe that the solution is more of what actually caused the problem.

With regard to the current financial turmoil, all of the government monetary policy witch doctors are prescribing more artificial liquidity injected by the Federal Reserve.  The present bust was caused by Greenspan’s insane expansion of the money supply starting in 2001 in an attempt to artificially create a boom (which in itself was to try to fix a bust caused by a previous artificial boom to fix a previous bust, and so on back to the artificial boom created by the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913).  Note in these cycles that the booms are artificially created by monetary policy fiat and the busts are market’s natural corrections to the bad economic decisions that were made during these booms by those who didn’t know what was going on.  The busts bring you back to reality.  In all of these cases, the expansionary monetary policy causes the boom-bust cycle.  When a bust happens, politicians try to fix the problem by printing more money and throwing it at the problem.  (Of course, they don’t make it look that simple or people might realize that’s what they’re doing and ask questions.  There’s a very intricate sleight of hand procedure involving the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, and the banks to print this money.)  This idea that you can save the economy by using the same procedures that destroyed the economy is what I will henceforth call “Lime-in-the-Coconut Economics.”  Maybe it will become as famous as “Reaganomics” or “trickle-down economics.”  A competent medical doctor like Ron Paul knows that this diagnosis of our present economic crisis is hogwash.

Those involved in this process are either woefully ignorant of economics, blinded by ideology, or diabolically evil.

Most people fall into the first category.  This would include President Bush, most members of the House and Senate, petty bureaucrats, and just about any voter who has received no economic education outside of a government school.

The second category is comprised of devout adherents to that flat earth society known as the Keynesian school of economics.  This would include most government school economics teachers, college economics professors, and monetary policy makers.  They believe that if we can only engineer the right balance between growth and inflation, and regulate things enough we will enter into a utopian Golden Age.  One comfort that you can take away from this crash and burn of the economy, it is that the Triune God is not mocked and he has a way for dealing with false messiahs, by demonstrating the futility of their idols.  Get your popcorn ready!

The final category is a small group of elite, brilliant, unspeakably evil people.  These are the people who know exactly what is going on and advocate these policies anyway for their own benefit.  I could only speculate as to who is actually in this group today, so it would be irresponsible to name names without hard evidence.  For a thorough examination of the history of some of the people in this third group from the beginning of the previous century, I highly recommend The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin.  It should be noted that the members of this group are only human.  They aren’t seven feet tall with the ability to consume us with fireballs from their eyes and bolts of lightning from their…  Well, you get the picture.  God is sovereign and they are not.  Some of them will be brought to ruin in this life, the rest on the day of judgment.

Doug Wilson posted a good, quick perspective on economics and how the only thing most of us can do is cultivate a robust sense of humor in this mess.  In the comments section a debate has broken out about regulation.  Since I am limited to 300 words there, I will refute the idea (advanced by The Scylding) that we need “good” economic regulations to control greed and that Canada is an example of good economic regulation.

Is there such a thing as a good economic regulation?  There is, but it’s nothing of the order that The Scylding is advocating.  And those good economic regulations are defined by the word of God.  Here are a couple:

“Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.  Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.” (Deuteronomy 25:13-16)

“Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.” (Deuteronomy 19:14) . . . “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen.” (Deuteronomy 27:17)

These are both commandments against fraud.  These are good commandments, and the civil government ought to uphold such things and punish violators by forcing them to pay restitution.  Modern governments, through their central banks and volumes of arbitrary regulations, are the greatest violators of these two commands from God.

Regulations “against greed” as The Scylding advocates are not only impractical but immoral for several reasons.

1. The Creator-creature distinction: God is God.  His creation is not God.  Only God has the wisdom to manage the economy as a whole, and his primary means for regulating the economy is letting people reap what they sow.  When a speculative bubble bursts, the greedy man is punished and the prudent man is vindicated.  Human regulators are not capable of centrally planning an economy without committing gross injustice against many citizens.  It is precisely because of the extreme interconnectedness of the economy, that these regulations will not be just.  (This first part is not even taking the sinfulness of the regulators into account.  These are just unintended consequences.)  Any attempt to centrally plan an economy must necessarily lead to a messianic view of the state.
2. Moral hazard: Once you have man-made centrally planned regulations in place, especially when they are as bloated and arbitrary as those of the modern messianic state, people will inevitably begin to think that if something is within the bounds of the regulations, it must be a sound investment.  Even worse, if the government subsidizes something it distorts the prices and values of these things.  The government-subsidized artificially low interest rates distorted the value of everything that people might borrow money to buy.  When a government subsidized entity fails, it gets bailed out.  (If a government-subsidized program was to fail, it would look bad.)  This encourages subsidized entities to be as reckless as possible.  The U.S government had been subsidizing crazy risk for years.  Now that it has bailed out this risk, you will get more of it.  This punishes prudent behavior while rewarding recklessness.  Regulations don’t stop greed, they reward it.
3. Regulations benefit the politically-connected (large corporations): The primary reason for a vast majority of regulations is to keep small businesses from being able to compete with large corporations who can afford the quasi-bureaucracy necessary to comply with all the regulations.  The logical ends of these regulations are monopolies and cartels.
4. Political power breeds corruption: The more powerful a government is, the more corruption there will be.  This spirals upon itself.  The type of people who are generally attracted to and succeed in political office are intelligent, manipulative, dishonest men who seek power for its own sake.  As such, politicians are even more disqualified from being able to regulate economics than normal people.

What about deregulation?  There is no such thing as “deregulation” in the U.S. (nor was there in Iceland).  Changing your regulations so they are looser is not deregulation and has the same problems as covered above.  In an unregulated economy (exept for the civil magistrate punishing theft, fraud, and other things the Bible expressly permits the government to act on), you will reap what you sow.  If you deposit your silver in a bad bank, and that bad bank fails because they were irresponsible and make loans based on fractional reserves, then you are receiving the consequences of your actions.  (Note that an unregulated economy, your money would be commodity-based or “hard money” economy.  Paper money and electronic money would need to be backed by some sort of commodity or it would trade at a discounted rate.)  In a regulated economy, you get punished for other people’s actions and failures.  (A tax burden of 35%-50% for said bloated government is an example of being punished for other people’s actions and failures.)

Canada is all about Keynesian central economic planning just as the US is.  The Canadian government is just not destroying its economy as radically or as quickly as the United States is, largely because they don’t have a worldwide empire and enormous standing army to maintain.  (I’m actually commending Canada on these points, by the way.)

…for my utter contempt between McCain and Obama.  I was only able to stomach about 35 minutes of this evening’s presidential debate.

It was a fiercely contested battle as to who is the most economically ignorant candidate, heavily seasoned with cheap shots toward the other candidate (which, incidentally, were the most truthful portions of the debate).

The idea that this kind of economic disaster can be solved by additional money being spent in the public sector is just lunacy.  It’s right out of the Hoover/Roosevelt playbook.  If American ingenuity and creativity is the best in the world, it has been so despite the fact that the parasites within the beltway steal 50% of the private sector’s potential productivity.

Do you want energy independence?  Get the government away from energy.  (This includes doing away with monopolistic government corporatism.)  Do you want affordable health care?  Get the government out of the picture.  All of the regulations passed in Washington are done for the benefit of big business special interests in order to keep small businesses from breaking into the market.  Do you want to make this inevitable correction of the Greenspan/Bernanke bubbles easier on the little guy?  Get rid of minimum wage laws and protectionist tariffs.  There’s nothing patriotic about paying more than a product is worth.

Both of these men voted to fleece the American taxpayers out of $850 billion in the Middle Class Elimination Bailout of ‘08.  I can’t believe that McCain can talk in public about resisting pork laden monstrosities less than a week after voting for that oinkfest.  These men have less than zero credibility.  If you think that either of these men are capable of leading this country, then I have some mortgage-backed securities to sell you.