The Crisis of our Time

America is on the brink of crisis– a crisis exemplified in a senseless Bill but rooted in a moral and intellectual apathy.

Today Congress votes whether or not to pass the new Cap and Trade bill, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill.  It is a huge tax on American energy that will have devastating effects on our economy at nearly every level.  An economic analysis by the Heritage Foundation concludes that it would cost a family of four $1,870 per year.  By 2035 it will cost the same family an average of $6,690 per year– and that doesn’t count the extra $4,600 that would go into the actual carbon tax!  An opinion piece in the Wallstreet Journal claimed the Cap and Trade tax “is likely to be the biggest tax in American history.”

Is it worth it?  Consider this: global warming is no hard fact and thousands of scientists have signed papers expressing their dismay at the shaky science behind this alarmist theory– but even if global warming was happening and our world was truly in dire jeopardy, analysis shows Cap and Trade’s effect on global temperature would be almost completely negligible.  The Environment Protection Agency reports that reducing carbon emissions 60 percent by 2050 (that would be about the level we had before cars or electricity) would only reduce temperature by 0.1 of a degree celcius by 2095!

This bill is a monstrosity.  It is an unprecedented attack on our economic freedom.  It has almost no global benefits and and will have an unfathomable negative effect on american businesses and jobs.  The passage of this Bill would start a crisis of mass proportion.

Inside this crisis there is another crisis though– or maybe it’s the real crisis: Nobody really cares!

You would think that something so important would be on all our minds.  You would think that we would all be frantically calling our congressional representatives to voice our opposition.  You would think.

The top story yesterday was not Cap and Trade; it was Michael Jackson’s death. Even conservative Fox news spent the bulk of it’s time on this morally confused pop singer and his legacy– or lack there of.

What has happened to America?  Why do we no longer care?  Why are we intellectually dead?  Why do we have more people voting for the next American Idol than their next president? 
We are truly commiting national suicide, charging recklessly toward our own destruction–but at least we’re doing it with good pop music playing.

Pop culture can not be the basis for our society.  It is doubtful we can long survive without a moral foundation or an understanding of what Russel Kirk called the “permanent things” (“norms of courage, duty, justice, integrity, charity, and so on”).  There is no permanence in Michael Jackson, and we are dying just like him.
That’s the real crisis.

President of ISI Publishing T. Kenneth Cribb Jr. writes, “Politics is a surface phenomenon.  Legislation is certainly important, but if you change laws, they can always be changed back.  The more fundamental challenge is to change minds– that’s the change that lasts.  For beyond politics is political philosophy, and beyond politcal philosophy are the perennial questions of the human condition.”

Change tends to work from the grassroots up, not the other way around.  If Cap and Trade doesn’t pass, there is no guarantee it won’t under some different name next year.  So pray that Cap and Trade doesn’t pass– but more importantly pray about the real crisis of our time.  Pray that we will return to our intellectual and moral roots.  Pray that we will care.

WHY Right and Wrong are Real

WHY in my title is capitalized for a reason. WHY is the question that mere facts can not answer, no science can address, and nothing but truth can really explain.

 In America’s public life today truth is under attack, by our mainstream media and our political elite. Conservatives and especially Christian Conservatives are routinely condemned for trying to “legislate” morality through our government, as if morality is something that is relative and completely up to personal choice. Or isn’t it? So we’ve been taught. Our love affair with multiculturalism has led us down the slippery slope to full blown relativism, in which the only truth is that there is no absolute truth. But there are facts of course. Science and so called scientific facts are more real than truth– more real than right and wrong.

 After all, what’s more real than what is observed by our own senses and tested by experimentation? How can we doubt the realness of that?

 Actually, this may come as a shocker to some of you, but you can in fact doubt the realness of scientific “facts.” It’s been done before. The philosopher Renee Descartes did just that, doubting the existence of everything he observed– or almost everything. Even Descartes found there were certain things he could not doubt.. He found that he could not doubt that he was doubting– and if he was doubting that meant there must be a Doubter. If he was thinking then there must be a Thinker. Thus Descartes deduced his own existence: “I think therefore I am.”

 Descartes’ conclusions are valid– but they aren’t “scientific.” They’re logical. Science is inevitably based on logic. It is not it’s own entity, merely a collection of “facts” based on observation. Our acceptance of the veracity of science in the first place must be based on reason– and that’s not observation. Those who claim that our understanding of the world should rest on what is “known” from observation ignore the fact that the validity of their observations rests on truth and not fact.

 Science and logic in fact are inexplicably tied. Every conclusion made by scientists rests on a logical conclusion about general things through observing particulars– and because this is the most tenuous form of logic (inductive reasoning), the science is sometimes shoddy (if I can use that word.)

 For example, Scientists may find several specimens of ancient human skeletons with abnormally small skulls. From these particular samples, they make many general conclusions. They conclude first that these skulls are accurate representations of what the average ancient man looked like (though there are probably many people alive today with abnormally shaped or small heads). They next make the general conclusion that this must mean that ancient man was not a rational being (though scientists also say that modern man uses less than 2 percent of his “big” brain). Again all these are general conclusions from a particular observation.

 This is shoddy logic. In many other cases scientists make conclusions that have a higher chance of being truth because there is less conjecture and the general conclusions are more likely– but regardless Science ALWAYS uses conjecture. Science always argues inductively, from particulars to generalities, so nothing really is a “fact.”

 I do not mean to attack science. Science is a good tool, and often times brings us to conclusions that are so likely to be true that presuming them to be “facts” is acceptable– but then what do we do with the facts? How do we interpret these facts? What do they mean, and more importantly, WHY do they mean at all? This is perhaps the greatest weakness of science: It can not answer the question WHY.

 The other day I was having a discussion on values with a very intelligent atheist. I asked her where humans got the idea of right and wrong? Many paragraphs and quotations later, I understood that right and wrong was a value system that evolved from man’s need to survive and reproduce. While interesting, this so called fact is really nothing more than an observation of a pattern. Survival throughout history for mankind has depended on a recognition of some sort of moral code.

 Well thank you science for illuminating that for me! The question of WHY still hadn’t been answered by pointing to some observable pattern. If I could survive and reproduce as a human and STILL commit outrageous crimes, it would not be wrong? WHY would stealing from my fellow man be wrong if I used that money to buy myself a harem and have hundreds of babies? Is stealing in that case no longer wrong? After all, the whole point of right and wrong and values in general is to live and reproduce.

 Most conscience driven people would say stealing is still wrong– but WHY? What if I didn’t want to live or reproduce in the first place? WHY is that wrong? Would I then be free to commit atrocious crimes because I had no need or desire to live? WHY not?

 So if science and “facts” can not answer WHY, then what can? If observation can not explain truth, then who or what can? Who or what is the “right” source on which we understand right and wrong? This is inevitably an existential question (relating to the existence of truth and reality).

 I asked this same atheist to explain her theory on the existence of truth and reality– which is necessarily tied to the existence of the world itself. She postulated the often stated Big Bang theory. An interesting theory, which may or may not be valid (though it does seem based on rather “shoddy” science), but ultimately this theory doesn’t really explain existence in and of itself. The bang came from where? There was nothing and then all of sudden something? That isn’t even logical– and as we’ve seen science is based on logic. “Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit.” That’s Latin for “Out of nothing, nothing comes.”

 My atheist friend agreed with me then that there had to be something that always was; that is the only logical conclusion. So either there was an eternal substance (some collection of particles for example) or there was an eternal Being. For her the choice was easy; obviously there must have been an eternal substance. How this is an easy choice is unclear to me; it’s honestly not even “scientific.” Newton’s second law of thermodynamics states that a closed system will tend toward disorder, not order. So how could the universe order itself from some eternal substance to the complexities of rational man? But this isn’t even the biggest problem here. Particles can’t answer WHY.

 I believe there was and is an eternal Being, an eternal God. You know what’s great about a God? An eternal Being can address that nagging question that science can not answer: WHY? I have never found a group of particles, some amazing substance, that can answer the question WHY. WHY do we have a conscience and WHY is there right and wrong? How do we understand and interpret the various “facts” that science throws at us? WHY is there truth and how do we understand it?

 There is but one sane answer: through the One who is Truth itself. Now that’s logical.

 A nation without God is a nation without truth. We can make no logical inferences that are fool proof unless we acknowledge Him who is truth. We can not understand and enforce right without acknowledging Him who is the epitome of right– who is indeed right itself. We can not understand nature through science without acknowledging Him who made nature and the laws that govern nature. We can not understand the place of government and the rules by which man should live without acknowledging Him who made all laws. We can not understand man and the rights of man without acknowledging Him who made man.

 Even the atheist Thomas Jefferson seemed to understand that you can not make an absolute claim to truth without acknowledging God. An absolute claim without God is far from fool proof. In the declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote, “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Look at what he wrote here. It is “self-evident” that men have been “created equal,” and “endowed by their Creator.”

 How can we understand self-evident truths– or indeed the existence of right and wrong and any truth at all? Through our Creator. Right and Wrong are Real because God is Real. That’s WHY.

That’s Not Logical

Today in his press conference President Obama was asked: “Wouldn’t it (a public health insurance option) drive private insurers out of business?”

Here was our President’s response: 

“Why would it drive private insurers out of business?

“If private — if private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best-quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business?

“That’s not logical.

“Now, the — I think that there’s going to be some healthy debates in Congress about the shape that this takes. I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly, that over time they can’t compete with the government just printing money. So there are going to be some, I think, legitimate debates to be had about how this private plan takes shape. But just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they’re giving consumers the best possible deal, that they can’t compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what’s the best deal– that defies logic.”

Wait?  How does that make sense? 

He said that a public plan subsidized by taxpayers and backed by a government that continually prints money MIGHT in fact put the private companies out of business.  On the other hand, he reminds us that private insurance companies already say they’re offering a good deal– thus their inability to compete with an impossibly low government plan.  That makes sense. 

Was that an argument for your plan Mr. President?– because it sounded like an argument against it.  Without meaning to, you were arguing FOR the insurance companies, but then simultaneously saying their position “defies logic?”

Mr. President, with all due respect, the only thing that “defies logic” is what you just said.  And don’t hate me for posting this.  I’m just trying to promote a “healthy debate.”

More than a Sensibility

I recently saw a video of a conservative scholar on NRO (national review on-line) arguing against gay marriage. I was appalled– not because the man was against gay marriage– but because his argument was embarrassingly weak.  All he could point to was a “sensibility” that conservatives must take– a sensibility that leads one to distrust new and sudden change.

 Now I do appreciate this sentiment. It is wise to distrust sudden change and radical shifts from longstanding cultural mores, but what if this “sensibility” keeps us from doing the right thing? Our sensibility might have told us emancipating slaves in the 19th century was wrong; it was after all an extreme break from the cultural norm. One can not make a stand on a “sensibility” alone.

 So then what exactly is so wrong with gay marriage? Why not? Are we just being stingy and old by refusing marriage to gays? On the other hand, is gay marriage really the issue? We speak out against gay marriage– but what exactly are we for? Have we forgotten?

Why is marriage a civil institution recognized by law in the first place?

 We seem to have forgotten that marriage– and the family– are crucial to the survival of a people.  Study after study has demonstrated the importance of a stable family nucleus to cultural stability; so why should we not protect something so foundational to the health of our society?  Commonsense tells us that marriage is important because the family is important.  The government does not exist to redefine the character of marriage, but it is responsible to protect the family and allow it to prosper.

 Now I am not married and never have been. I really have no first hand knowledge of married life– but this much I do know: marriage is very tough.  So since it’s hard, what incentives are in place to protect marriage and the family? Have we created an environment where marriage can thrive?

 Judging by the divorce rate alone, the answer would have to be no.  Sadly, our government now offers far more incentives to avoid family responsibilities than to actually own up to them. This is the real crime against marriage. The whole gay issue is a side note, a periphery manifestation of a society that has long held the family in contempt. This isn’t the work of gays or sexual deviants. This is our work. As self-proclaimed Christians (or even just conservatives) we have sat idly by while our homes and families were split apart with ease.

 Interesting note: the first no-fault divorce law was signed into existence by Ronald Reagan (then governor of California).  Yes Reagan.  This model conservative giant signed the new law for Californians in 1969, and other states soon followed suit. I do not mean to condemn a great man (he later lived to regret this decision), but instead to show the culpability we all share in the destruction of the family. We have watched apathetically– or even rejoiced in– laws that have increasingly stripped away the protection surrounding marriage. Why stay together when the going gets tough if it’s so easy to just quit?

 In his book “The Marketing of Evil” David Kepelian notes how no-fault divorce laws have torn apart the American family: “Ninety days. A couple hundred bucks. No reason required– other than ‘the marriage is irretrievably broken down.’ Breaking a marriage contract today is easier than firing an employee hired last week or getting out of a cell-phone contract. .. How can two parties enter into a contract, and yet either party has the power to end that contract at any time, for any reason, whether or not the other party agrees?…Yet the binding, extremely-hard-to-break nature of the marriage contract is essential to marriage itself. Marriage is difficult, and there comes a time in many, if not most, marriages when conflicts and suffering cause one or the other spouse to contemplate ending the marriage. The marriage contract is meant to protect both spouses– and their children– against such a period of weakness. No-fault divorce destroys that protection.”

 As if destroying that protection was not enough, the government has used divorce and family devision as a means to enlarge itself. Kupelian again, quoting Stephen Baskervill: “’The Result of three decades of unrestrained divorce is that huge numbers of people– many of them government officials– now have a vested professional and financial interest in encouraging it. Divorce today is not simply a phenomenon; it is a regime– a vast bureaucratic empire that permeates national and local governments, with hangers-on in the private sector. In the United States, divorce and custody comprise over half of civil litigation, constituting the cash cow of the judiciary and bringing employment and earnings to a host of public and private officials, including judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, mediators, counselors, social workers, child support enforcement agents and others.”

 Instead of protecting marriage, our gluttonous government has grown fat by promoting the destruction of our family. Now our government is under pressure to redefine the essence of marriage itself, and destroy its character as a holy contract between one man and woman– but why not? We have already destroyed marriage by destroying its indissoluble nature (barring extreme situations.)

 I am sometimes surprised by all the hate leveled against “those gays” who want to “destroy marriage”– as if we had not already destroyed it. Perhaps this is why we can only hate: we don’t know what to say against gay marriage because we no longer know how to stand for the family. After all, if Brittney Spears can get married and divorced again in a day, why can’t gays marry as well?  How could they possibly devalue this sacred institution more?

 Gay marriage is not where we should have made our stand. We should have made our stand when the family was under attack– not just by the media– but by anti-marriage laws that we were so ready to embrace. Instead of being against gay marriage, why not be FOR marriage– and FOR the family? Instead of protesting at gay pride parades, why not organize events  and communites that build up the family? Instead of writing hate speeches, why not work harder to demonstrate the importance our families play in societal health?– and you don’t do that with shows like “jon and kate plus hate.”  Instead of trying to elect representatives against gay marriage, why not work to elect those willing to protect the family across the board– rather than on one issue only? .

 We are losing the gay marriage war because we do not know what we are fighting for. It is impossible to be against something without also being FOR something else. It is impossible to declare something to be wrong without having an inkling of what’s actually right– and good. Otherwise all you have is a “sensibility.”

 

 

 

Conservatism and Christianity

We live in a confused age today, full of vague rhetoric and political ambiguities. Across the wide scope of political views and competing ideologies, all sides profess to be working for the good of mankind– to have the interests of humanity at heart.

Why are so many Christian’s conservative then? Why do so many followers of Christ espouse the principles of “right wingers?” What tenants of Christianity would lend themselves toward a conservative political persuasion?

Christianity in fact not only “agrees” with conservatism, but also has beget the key elements of it. Christianity is the only religion on this earth that teaches both the depravity of man (completely fallen outside of Christ) and yet the dignity of man (created in God’s image). These tenants are foundational to conservatism– and to this Republic we call America.

The very principle of the freedom and rights of man proceeds from the principle of the dignity of man under God– as creatures made in His image. Perhaps nobody expressed this better than Thomas Jefferson in the declaration of independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”

Yet Christianity also teaches that man has fallen, and apart from God’s grace is completely depraved. Thus no government, no system, can be perfect because man is not perfect; we continue to war against our fallen natures.

In the Federalist paper 51, John Adams aptly expressed why a limited representative government (Republic) is necessary by appealing to this depravity of man.

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”
Also: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”

Thus the founders alighted upon the republican form of government as the best way to ensure the freedom of man while still accounting for the depravity of man. Conservatism is in essence an espousal of this republican form of government– a government limited in scope and representative in nature. Yet no system is perfect; no system can survive in a world with no religious convictions and a rootless morality.

George Washington warned of exactly this in his first inaugural address: “The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting an inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchm[en]t can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.”

It should not surprise us then that in a culture steering away from Christ, that our government is steering away from freedom. We live in a time where the very idea of God has come under constant attack. What does a world without God look like?

The 20th century has seen a prevalence of radical ideologies: Marxism, Nazism, Fascism, and Communism– to name a few. All these radical ideologies have certain things in common. They deny the fallibility and depravity of man– and in some cases also the dignity of man under God. In America we are seeing the rise of Socialism. What’s dangerous about socialism in America is it’s benign and healthy appearance. In America, we have a strong emphasis and understanding of the dignity of man– but we’ve lost sight of man’s fallen nature. We have truly put our faith in princes under the notion that some men are in fact angels. The obsession with President Obama proves this phenomena– our most socialist president in the history of this nation without a doubt. We want him to “fix” our problems– for the good of mankind of course. We have forgotten that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This is not Christian, and should be condemned. The idea of Socialism is antithetical to the idea of man’s depravity– to the idea that man has dignity only because of our sovereign God. We have made man god, and we now trust in man’s institutions to make a utopia– a heaven on earth.

We have surrendered our freedoms to the powers that be in the name of some collective good. Yes we can still vote, but our vote is counting for less and less as we elect a government ever larger. How long till we have what James Madison called an “elective despotism?” Are we there already?

So how do we fight what’s happening in our great country? What’s the right way to resist? I honestly am not learned enough to spell it out completely– nor am I perfect in my own approach on this matter. This much I do know: there is a wrong way to resist.

It seems so easy to get caught up in elections, in a “good guy vs. bad guy” mentality. Not that elections aren’t important because they are– but as we have seen there is no “good guy,” only less bad perhaps. Those who claim that getting so and so into office will fix our problems espouse the same principles that lead toward socialism in the first place– a denial of the fallen state of man. There will never be a perfect government, no perfect leader.

Thus we must revive our nation’s morals by returning to our Christian foundations. Politically, we must elect those men eager to limit the size and scope of our government– out of an understanding of their own fallibility and fallen state. This is a very difficult balance to maintain, one that I personally struggle with everyday. How do we do all this without getting caught up in a fanatical “my way will save the earth” mentality?

Richard John Neuhaus wrote of this dilemma in his book “The Naked Public Square:” “The mastery of critical engagement is forever eluding us. Just when we think we have gotten the hang of it in one situation, the situation changes and we have to start all over again. This is not only true of Christianity and politics in America; it has been true everywhere for two millennia now.”

Yet we must resist, in our own stumbling way. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” We may not have tyrants yet (this point is debatable), but we are undoubtedly moving in that direction.

At the end of the day we must pray. There is but one perfect Being, and He will provide for His people.