Politics – Page 6

McAtee Examines George Will’s Conservative Bonafides

“You have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven…”

Daniel 5
Daniel Addressing Belshazzar

“But a free market economic system is a system. It is a public product, a creation of government. Any important structure of freedom is a structure, a complicated institutional and cultural context that government must nurture and sustain. Obviously, free speech is not free in the sense that it is free of prerequisites. It is not free of a complicated institutional frame. Free speech, as much as a highway system is something government must establish and maintain,” and so on and on.

A welfare state is certainly important to and probably indispensable to social cohesion and, hence, to national strength. A welfare state is implied by conservative rhetoric. A welfare state can be an embodiment of a wholesome ethic of common provision.”

George Will
In Defense of the Welfare State — 1983

1.) Note first that Will has always been cast by the Mainstream media as a Conservative. This reveals that 35 years ago Conservatism was a joke. How much more so now? Thoughtful Christians have to realize that in terms of the political spectrum in this country we have no dog in the fight. Our dog died in 1861.

2.) Note also that the free market is not only a creation of the (presumably Federal) Government, per Will, but the free market being the creation of the Government it is up to the Government to nurture and sustain this thing that the Government has created. The whole idea of Creation, Sustaining and Governing used to be ascribed, in systematic theology, to God’s providence. Will has replaced the Christian God with the state as God walking on the earth. The State is the creator, sustainer, and governor. Man is Plato’s political animal.

3.) If a free market economic system is a ‘creation of Government’ then how is it the case that it is ‘Free market?” If it is a creation of the Government then why not refer to it as the “Government market?”

4.) Will is presupposing the old fascist line of ‘everything inside the state, nothing outside the state.’ Will has posited that the State is the overall conditioning environment in which man lives, moves, breathes and has his being. Of course, the fascists got that idea from Hegel who got it from Aristotle and Plato. No Biblical Christian can abide this horse manure thinking from the “conservative” George Will.

Increasingly, one is hearing the modernist clergy bleat about how politics does not belong in the pulpit. This quote proves that the pulpit cannot help but be political. When our wisemen, politicians, talking heads, and cultural gatekeepers arise to denounce God’s sovereignty how can the pulpit not sing out in defiance of all such pagan thinking? For the pulpit to remain mute in light of the claim that the Government is God walking on the earth would be to abandon the calling to be salt and light, it would be to go all treasonous at the very moment when faithfulness is most desperately needed, as done on a large scale it would be the end of Institutional Biblical Christianity. The pulpit must be political because politics is increasingly seeking to muscle in on the bailiwick of the pulpit. Ministers who refuse to thwap pagan thinking upside the head when pagan thinking is seeking to mold the thinking of God’s people are either stupid or cowards.

Modern conservatism is just right-wing Hegelianism.

Marriage … It Either Has A Stable Meaning, or It Means Everything and Nothing

‘Once one says that a homosexual orientation is no more culpable or disordered than a heterosexual orientation, and once one observes that Scripture does not teach that God says that homosexual activity is always wrong, I think we’re left to conclude that justice requires that the church offer the great good of marriage both to heterosexual couples committed to a loving, covenantal relationship, and to homosexual couples so committed’.

Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff
American Philosopher
All One Body Lecture

A pedophile should be held responsible for his conduct — but not for the underlying attraction.

Margo Kaplan
New York Times Article

How long until we hear that the orientation for pedophiles is no more culpable or disordered than a heterosexual orientation? Where in Scripture do we see that bedding children (even of the same sex) is wrong if done in the context of a “loving, covenantal relationship, and to Man-boy love so committed,” as stated by Dr. Wolterstoff in regards to sodomy?

After all, if God is the one who gives the underlying attraction and if God is the one who wired some adults brains differently who are we to deny what God has done? If God has made pedophilia (or Necrophilia, or Beastiality) as merely a creational variance of sexuality who are we to challenge God?

In 1986, a short 31 years ago, SCOTUS Chief Justice Warren Burger considered by many to have been a liberal could write in the Bowers v. Hardwick decision,

“To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

In the same Hardwick decision Burger also cited the “ancient roots” of prohibitions against homosexual sex by quoting William Blackstone’s description of homosexual sex as an “infamous crime against nature”, worse than rape, and “a crime not fit to be named.”

Somehow, in 30 years as a culture, we have gone from a liberal Supreme Court Justice inveighing against sodomy to a well-respected Churchmen and philosopher giving his imprimatur on the same.

Also, we have to note the linguistic play that is found in describing marriage as something two people of the same biological sex can enter. Scripturally, as well as historically, marriage, by definition, is an institution that only can be occupied by males and females. In the 1888 California court case, “Sharon vs. Sharon,” we find marriage defined,

“Marriage is the civil status of one man and one woman united in law for life, for the discharge to each other and to the community of the duties legally incumbent on those whose association is founded on the distinction of sex. “

In Scripture Jesus defines Marriage as being composed of males and females,

Matthew 19:4 – Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ 5and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

So, when people begin to talk about the “church offering the great good of marriage … to homosexual couples so committed.” we should recognize that linguistic deception has just been leveraged, even if unwittingly done. Because of the definition of marriage, we can no more offer the great good of marriage to sodomite couples then we can legitimately offer the great good of the US Presidency to someone born in Kenya. Neither of the Institutions, by definition, are allowed legal occupancy by those who don’t adhere to the definition.

And while we are at it, we might as well note the same is true for the word “sex.” Given definitional realities, it is not possible for sodomites or lesbians to engage in “sex,” whatever it is they may be doing to and with one another with their reproductive organs.

When we get sloppy with our language we begin to lose what the reality that the language is supposed to represent.

President Trump’s 2017 Address to Congress … An Analysis (Or Trump Channels FDR)

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #1

“… We have formed a Council with our neighbors in Canada to help ensure that women entrepreneurs have access to the networks, markets and capital they need to start a business and live out their financial dreams.”

________

Bret notes,

Keep in mind that making sure women have access to the networks means they are prioritized over men who may be more qualified. This is a form of affirmative action for feminists.

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #2

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #2

“I have further ordered (my agencies) … to coordinate an aggressive strategy to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread across our Nation.”

Bret observes,

This is not so much Liberal as it is naive. The largest criminal cartel in America that needs to be dismantled is the Federal Government in its Corporatist expression.

The cynic would hear this quote and say, “Yeah, the FEDS want to dismantle the criminal cartels because they don’t want any competition.”

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #3

“I will be asking the Congress to approve legislation that produces a $1 trillion investment in the infrastructure of the United States — financed through both public and private capital — creating millions of new jobs.”

Bret observes,

Legion are the books from Conservatives blasting FDR for Government make-work infrastructure projects during the New-Deal era. Yet many conservatives today are cheering this President and this speech as if we have found the second coming of John Calvin Coolidge. Trump is proposing Keynesian economics. To spend a Trillion dollars on infrastructure means either printing more money (can you say inflation?) and / or increased taxation. This is pure Liberalism.

Also there is no draining the swamp as long as the swamp is flooded with money. More Government spending means more Government.

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #4

“Tonight, I am also calling on this Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare with reforms that expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and at the same time, provide better Healthcare.”

Bret observes,

This is infantile. This is a “Chicken in every pot” type of promise. It is simply not possible to do all this and at the same time to make sure every American is covered by health insurance, as Trump promised in a statement in January,

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

President

Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #5

“My administration wants to work with members in both parties to make childcare accessible and affordable, to help ensure new parents have paid family leave … “

Bret responds,

Paid family leave means those not being on paid family leave are paying for it. Redistribution of wealth program. Pure Keynesianism again.

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #6

President Trump talked about the need to introduce efficiency by rolling back regulations at the Food & Drug Administration and at the Education Department. A Conservative President would have instead called for the elimination of these Agencies since they are not Constitutional. It is progressive politics to desire that these unconstitutional agencies have any role at all in prescription drugs developed or in setting policy for Education from Washington.

President Trump’s Address to Congress,

Liberal proposal #7

“I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the Defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”

Bret observes,

Trump is going to,

1.) Cut Corporate Taxes

2.) Cut Middle-Class Taxes

3.) Spend a Trillion dollars on domestic an infrastructure project.

4.) Reform Healthcare so that it covers all Americans.

5.) Provide one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.

6.) Increase funding for Veterans

7.) And all this while being fiscally responsible.

Only 5-year-olds believe in the tooth fairy.

In the end, Trump revealed last night, with his address to Congress, that he remains an FDR Democrat. Principled people continue to have next to zero representation in Washington.

Obama’s Misreading of History

“We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism, or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around “an us and a them,” and I will never apologize for saying that the future of humanity and the future of the world is going to be defined by what we have in common, as opposed to those things that separate us and ultimately lead us into conflict. Take Europe, We know what happens when Europeans start dividing themselves up and emphasizing their differences and seeing a competition between various countries in a zero-sum way. The 20th century was a bloodbath.”

Barack Obama

If you ever wanted to have a more egregious misreading of History you would have to look long and hard to find one more errant than this one.

It was not Nationalism that created WW II. In point of fact, it was letting loose Bolshevik Internationalism that created WW II.

Woodrow Wilson, the Internationalist, by his boneheaded actions in WW I paved the way for the Bolshevik Internationalists to come to power. Without Wilson’s meddling in Europe, the nations in Europe would have settled their war just as the Nations had been settling wars for centuries in Europe, by negotiated peace.

However, Wilson had to stick his creepy Internationalist nose into Europe. Then he had to use US Troops to protect the Soviet Reds railroad in Russia, freeing up Red Troops to polish off the Christian White and Green Russian armies. Wilson’s actions in World War I bathed Europe in blood because those actions empowered the blood letters of the next 70 years.

Then FDR, the next Internationalist, overturned the protocol of the 4 prior US Presidents and gave diplomatic recognition to the Internationalists in Russia, thus giving them International credibility.

It was the Bolshevik Internationalists who had created a Comintern to spread Bolshevik Internationalism across the globe with the same intent as Obama … to create a New World Order as run by the International Bolsheviks in both New York and Moscow.

It wasn’t Nationalism that bloodied the 20th century. It was the damn pestilent Internationalism that let loose oceans of blood. The same Internationalism that Obama has been a creature of.

Obama’s whole presidency can be described as being built around “an us vs. them,” mentality. It is the height of hypocrisy for him to lecture anybody about that particular danger.

Finally, Obama insists that humanity needs to build on what they have in common. This is the old “Brotherhood of all men” chestnut that has been debunked a million times. All men are not Brothers, if only because of their differing faiths. Those who believe in ordered liberty have nothing in common with the International Marxists with their New World Order agenda.

On Voting Third Party During Presidential Election Cycles

Yesterday I was having a conversation with folks counted as good friends. We were sitting underneath the shade of our beautiful maple trees at Church during our fellowship meal. Some were insisting that my intention to vote for Darrell Castle for President is a wasted vote. Of course, I politely demurred.

In this short piece, I want to pursue the reasoning as to why voting third party in Presidential cycles is not only not a wasted vote but a positive good.

The reason voting for Darrell Castle in 2016 is not a wasted vote is the long term vision. When third party candidates receive votes the effect is that in later election cycles the major party candidates look at those voters who voted third party previously and ask themselves, “How can I secure those voters for myself who voted for that third party candidate in the previous election cycle.” As a result, the parties begin to shift in order to capture voters who previously voted third party in previous election cycles.

If people, with contrary interests to the candidates they are voting for, continue to vote for major party candidates, like Trump and / or Clinton, that they only barely agree with the result is that the major parties will conclude that they really do not need to shift in order to gain what might have been a well placed third party vote. HOWEVER, if people refuse to vote for the major party candidates in any given election cycle then in the next election cycle Presidential candidates will begin to ask themselves, “what must I do to secure those third party voters,” and will shift accordingly in those voters direction.

1968 is a classic example of this. In 1968 the Democrats lost the deep South to the third party candidacy of Geroge Wallace. In 1972, instead of taking those Wallace voters seriously the Democrats tacked harder to the left with McGovern. However, Nixon went after those “68” Wallace votes and captured them giving Nixon a HUGE landslide while at the same time turning the deep South Republican for two generations now.

Voting third party for George Wallace in 1968 was definitely not a wasted vote.

Something similar happened with all the third party votes cast for the Socialist Presidential candidacies of Eugene Debs, and later Norman Thomas over several election cycles in the early 20th century. Eventually, Democrats decided to go after those Socialist votes and with the candidacy of FDR those third party votes found a major party candidate who appealed to them. All those third party votes over the years had not been wasted as the Democratic party became the party of Debs / Thomas Socialism though retaining the name “Democrat.”

Norman Thomas is even reputed to have said

“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.”

The effect of the Republicans embracing the independent voters of Wallace’s 1968 campaign pushed the Republican party further to the right. The effect of the Democrats embracing the independent voters of the Debs – Thomas campaigns was to push the Democratic party further to the left.

The point for our purposes is that those Independent votes of previous election cycles were not wasted votes. History teaches that they had an impact on later election cycles. If those Independent voters had not voted Independent and said to themselves instead, “I have to vote for one of the major parties if I want my vote to count,” neither of the parties would have had the later incentive to move in the direction of those third party voters in order to capture that vote.

So, we see that voting Independent is not a wasted vote.