Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Bitten to Death by Ducks

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Yes, Huckabee, your tax plan is brilliant; it’s much more subtle and deadly than our current system… instead of taxing the American people up front with a 20% income tax, just tax 20% of every dollar they spend (and I know this article was written in 2008, btw, but I just ran across it, and I doubt that Huckabee’s ideas about this have changed). It’s the same thing, after all, especially if you encourage people to spend every dollar they earn in this Keynsian economy — why earn it if you’re not going to spend it? This tax plan is just a slower, less obvious form of death. It would feel a little less like a holdup, and more like pickpocketing.

I know that it’s probably too much to ask, but please, please, please don’t let Huckabee be one of the top GOP candidates for 2012, Lord. Christian ketchup and politics = slime.

According to the author of this article, “any conceivable tax system discourages work, which is unfortunate but unavoidable. But the current system also discourages saving, which is avoidable.” And he goes on to explain how great it would be if we were allowed to earn a little interest on our pretax earnings before we withdrew and spent them. Or perhaps a better plan would be if we were allowed to save our money in unlimited IRAs, but coupled that with higher tax rates on the rest of our income. So… if the government let me earn a miniscule amount of interest on every dollar in my bank account before taxing it, or let me save more of it without penalties, but taxed me higher on what I didn’t save, then that would make a difference in how I feel about the government taking that money in the first place? “Yes, this limb is gangrenous, and we’re going to have to cauterize it and cut it off with a saw, but we’ll give you some whiskey to numb the pain slightly,” is what this boils down to. Stealing is stealing is stealing.

As Murray Rothbard insightfully pointed out, “The consumption tax (aka, fair tax), on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life, unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income.”

Yes, I just paid my taxes, and I’m quite disgruntled by doing so. Can you tell?

Coram Deo~

Posted in Links, Money, Politics | 2 Comments »

Peek Behind the Curtain

Friday, March 5th, 2010

If you were to give a cursory glance over news headlines, and if you were to half-listen to the raving and screaming of neo-conservative pundits on talk radio, you might be very, very worried. Scared to death that the Democrats are finally going to carry through their evil plans; that war and terror are going to be unleashed now, and the end is near because a change in administration from a Republican president to a Democratic one *must* mean that the anti-christ is on the horizon. The earthquakes lately have been something awful, too — the most severe earthquakes in the history of the world! Or at least since we started measuring earthquakes on the Richter scale in the 1880s.

Umm, not exactly… read this, and think again. Obama’s approval ratings have dropped like a block of cement to the bottom of the ocean floor. He and his administration are just as dependent on garnering the support of the pro-war, pro-police state masses as Bush was during his administration. Even Nero feared the masses, and tried to secure their votes by giving them bread and circuses. And lately, the Senate and Congress have tied themselves into one messy knot of filibusters, resignations, and super-majorities, oh my!
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Our problems with our economy, our education, and our politics at large, have not simply been caused by shifting political winds. That’s akin to saying “the devil made us do it.” Our political problems are moral and cultural; and at the heart of everything that a truly freedom-loving, paleo-conservative Christian hates is not one big, grinning face running the whole show… If you peek behind the curtain you’ll find millions upon millions of people who have unperturbedly, and willingly, sacrificed their time, children, education, and religion in order to have bread and circuses. And a majority of these people are Christians who have embraced more subtle forms of poison, such as charter schools, soft-style feminism, and military and state glorification.

So, let’s tear down the Federal Reserve, but don’t be surprised if it’s built back up in a generation because we also failed to tear down fallacious philosophies that are deep-rooted in our culture, our churches, and our daily lives.

I do think that our current political overlords will wreak much damage. But, my greatest fear and worry is that our culture will continue its degenerate, unprincipled free-fall all the way to the bottom. Yes, people do perish for a lack of knowledge.

Coram Deo~

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Balancing Act and Lies

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

“It’s an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic, and that is, What’s the right role of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look out for one another? … This is not a new argument, and it always evokes passions.” ~ President B. Hussein Obama

Note what Obama sets off as the opposite of freedom the need to look out for one another. The assumption in Obama’s thinking is that if the government gives too much freedom the result will be that we won’t look out for one another. So, clearly what is implied here is that we must be forced by the government to look after one another. The government must take away our freedom in order to force us to look after one another. Of course all of this presumes that only the Federal government can be the agency through which people look after one another.

The veneer on the lies being offered is wearing thin. Read the rest of Bret’s article here.

Coram Deo~

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Sept. 11, 2009

Friday, September 11th, 2009

This is a good article to read on the 8th anniversary of 9/11.

It is considered crass in some circles to point out all this horror that surrounds the events of 9/11, both before and after. Yet to truly honor those Americans who were peacefully living their lives, working in the great system of global capitalism, only to be slaughtered on that Tuesday morning eight years ago, we must appreciate why it happened, what the full implications of the attack and the U.S. response to it have been, and what will truly keep Americans safer in the future. The answer is not to keep sacrificing the freedoms and values that some Americans believe are the reasons we were attacked. The answer is to abandon the policy of foreign intervention and rely on our liberties — our right to bear arms, for example — to protect us.

The U.S. has been an interventionist empire under both parties for the better part of a century. September 11 occurred after years of such interventions. The current administration is virtually identical to the last administration in clinging to this counterproductive and unconstitutional foreign policy. At the core of this continuity is a philosophical problem, a dedication to intervention in our national culture that must be questioned and confronted. Our true hope for security and freedom lies in restoring the constitutional limits on presidential power, bringing the troops home from around the world, and restoring the republic.

Coram Deo~

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The Fallacy of Equal Pay for (Un)equal Work

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

Many of the economic realities written about in this article can’t be comprehended until they are stuck under the magnification of a small business microscope. Embracing an economic truth or economic lie in a small business is the difference between surviving, or not. Just ask my dad who has been and is a small business owner. That’s why mammoth corporations and big government bureaucracies cannot grasp intelligible concepts like:

  • The job is not the property of the employee, it is the property of the employer. If an employee worked for a single individual and that individual died, would that employee still be entitled to remuneration and his job? Of course not.
  • Laws against discriminatory pay are an infringement on private contracts between two individuals. The employer is employing that particular individual for his ability to carry out that job. Impersonal, overarching laws made by some bureaucratic dictator in a land far, far away from the real world cannot possibly comprehend the millions upon millions of individual decisions that are daily made for the better in businesses. An owner of a grocery store, for instance, might choose a 5′9″ girl to stock the shelves of his store over a 5′2″ girl who couldn’t reach as high. Sounds discriminatory to me. I guess that law against discriminatory pay wasn’t discriminating enough.
  • Our economy would fall apart within a month if the government really made an impersonal decision in every single job. A free market economy is elastic and fluid and reshapes itself to the needs of the consumer — emphasis on needs. What a consumer pays for and needs in one month/year/decade and what the producer produces to meet his demands will be radically different needs in the next month/year/decade — a free market economy realizes and reshapes itself to that.
  • The employer is buying the employee’s ability to work. Therefore, an employer is far more likely to hire a man who has the capacity for working long hours on a demanding job than a mother of five young children who cannot devote as much time or productivity to the job because of her children. We may sympathize with that mother who needs the job to feed her children, but it’s not the duty of the employer to provide her with a job that would create a deficit in his capital and resources by hiring an unproductive employee. Rather, it’s the duty of families and churches to see that the mother is provided for.

Besides, if a woman’s labor was really worth as much as a man’s in any given job, then why do we have to mandate laws about equal pay for equal work? In reality, if a woman’s work was equal to (or better than) a man’s in every field of expertise, there would be no stopping employers from hiring women employees. But the truth is, men and women were created by a loving Designer with different talents, abilities, and affinities for people and things, that influence how they work. Men offer better productive abilities in many areas of the work force than women do because God created them with the different capacities for carrying out unique roles in the work force and at home. This is not to undermine or devalue women’s intelligence or ability to comprehend the knowledge necessary for certain jobs (though, one wonders why there aren’t as many female programmers or mathematicians), but when the rubber meets the road, it’s often the woman who is incapable of carrying out that job to its full extent because she has a unique role at home. Either she has to coldly abandon that role or not perform as well at her job.

The unintended consequence of the laws prohibiting discriminatory pay is that they, like minimum-wage laws, will harm the people that they are intended to help. In a free society, individuals enter into contracts of their own accord with the assumption that the contract will benefit them. Government interference in private contracts prevents this process from taking place, hindering the individual’s ability to improve his standard of living and usurping control over his life.

By mandating equal pay, the government erases the competitive advantage of those people who are willing to take less pay. In addition, employers are less willing to hire employees who they believe could subject them to increased liability. Thus, instead of equalizing pay between men and women, the Ledbetter Act will lead to higher unemployment rates among women.

The Ledbetter Act is aimed at equality. But individuals are not equal. We all have different talents, resources, interests, abilities, educations, and backgrounds. In a free market, individual persons can find the niche in which they can exploit their talents to mold their lives in the way that they wish. Far from encouraging discrimination, the free market leads to social harmony as people view each other not as members of disparate groups with hostile intentions, but instead as individuals providing products and services that improve one another’s lives.

Coram Deo!

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Enough is Enough

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Enough is Enough.

We have over 2 million people incarcerated in this country; maybe it’s time to rethink our prison system from a biblical perspective as a form of punishment for criminals. Biblically, should we even leave the form of punishment for crimes up to the discretion of a judge? God’s word not only proscribes crimes, but also gives us the correct form of punishment for these crimes. Restitution was required from a thief. And capital punishment (not simply prison time) was stipulated for only a handful of crimes which were: murder, kidnapping, rape, sodomy, blaspheming God and parents, and adultery, in some cases. Whether CP is still required for adultery, sodomy, and blasphemy is a different (though, not unrelated) discussion for another time.

Christ said in Matthew 5:17-20, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Now, are Christ’s words here set against the Covenant of Grace? Is our self-righteousness really to exceed that of the Pharisees whom Christ spoke so harshly against? Maybe it’s time to reevaluate the popular Evangelical idea that the OT is a Covenant of Works and the NT is a Covenant of Grace. The Pharisees were wrong because they were the ones who were calling God’s covenant a covenant of works, instead of living it out for what it really was, a Covenant of Grace. Our righteousness can only exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees because it is Christ’s righteousness in us. No one was saved or can be saved by a so-called “Covenant of Works;” not Adam and Eve, or Abraham, or Moses, or David, or any Jews today. When God gave the Israelites the law and the prophets, He wasn’t expecting them to make it to Heaven all by their little lonesome. The shedding of blood and the keeping of the dietary laws were outward signs and seals that they were saved only by the outpouring and inward working of God’s Holy Spirit. Jesus brought a better and perfected form and dispensation of that covenant which no longer requires strict dietary laws and animal sacrifice. Instead, we have Baptism and the taking of the Sacraments as the signs and seals of the covenant, and a more encompassing, perfected outworking of that covenant which affects every area of our lives, families, society, and government. Christ the King is head of that Covenant, and all ruling authorities are subject to Him.

So, when we mete out the correct punishment prescribed by God’s Law for certain crimes we need to remember a few things:

1. We cannot gain one ounce of merit in God’s eyes by being more pharisaical than the Pharisees. — Going above and beyond God’s Law will not gain us God’s approval but God’s wrath.

2. We are unworthy sinners who stand in adoring wonder that God has accepted us only through the righteousness of Christ. That grace is extended even to the worst of sinners– murderers, adulterers, and fornicators for: “such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” — We need to have mercy just as Christ had mercy for us when were unsaved. Yet, God requires that sinners surrender to Him all that they are, all that they think, and all that they have.

3. We know that redemption in Christ redeems the whole man: heart, mind and soul (individual, family, society, and government). We believe in God without reserve and are determined that God shall be God to us, in all our thinking, feeling, willing – in the entire compass of our life activities: intellectual, moral, spiritual – throughout all our individual, social, religious relations. A society which recognizes Christ as King in every area, including law and justice, will always be far freer than humanistic societies which have no transcendent or ultimate standards for their laws and punishments. There is no capital punishment in God’s law for stealing a loaf of bread (restitution, yes); but there was in England in the 1800s, because it was a harsh law not based on God’s merciful law which only requires a punishment fitting to the crime.

Coram Deo!

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Parallel Policies

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Read the following great article from the Lew Rockwell team explaining why things won’t change from the draconian policies we had under Bush of preventive war, expansive national power on the home-front, prying into citizens privacy, and economic intervention. Bush was a good old-fashioned Statist through and through, and so is Obama, just like Lincoln was, and Woodrow Wilson, too. They all come from a long line of Statists who cannot keep their hands off private citizens lives and feel the necessity to spread wars all across this terrestrial globe.

We need to show the public that, given the stark similarities between both political parties, at least in their leadership, as well as the nature of government itself, it will not do for folks to condemn Obama as Big Brother and a would-be dictator while simultaneously defending torture, more war, and the Bush administration; nor does it make sense to oppose Bush and all he stood for while virulently backing Obama, who’s brandishing Bush’s executive power grabs, continuing his foreign policy, bailing out the same financial interests and seeking to control more areas of our lives. Can a reorientation of the American public, along more coherent ideological lines, be achieved? If ever there was a time for us to make our case, now is it.

Here’s the article: Obama, Bush, and the Limits of Power — by Anthony Gregory

Coram Deo!

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The God of Equality

Friday, October 31st, 2008

“The middle class is the economic engine. It’s fair. They deserve the tax breaks, not the super wealthy who are doing pretty well. They don’t need any more tax breaks.”–Joe Biden

I’m working the same number of hours and earning less than a business owner because the demands on his skills are higher than the demands on mine, so that means, according to the laws of “fairness,” that his wealth should be redistributed to me. I have less than he does, therefore, I need what he has. My rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness need to be upheld even at the expense of his own. Economic equality must be achieved among the masses.

Unfortunately, though, this is far from being a watertight plan, as Bret points out, since all wealth will eventually dry up when you continue to spread it around by giving tax breaks to those who have less, and taxing those who have more. The incentive to work has been removed by the equalization imposed by the government on those who have more capital.

Ludwig Von Mises points out that, “Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what the thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing; it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created… each step leading toward Socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what really exists.” (quote taken from David Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulation, p. 174)

God has lovingly designed this earth so that we reap what we sow, physically and metaphysically. Yes, God blesses us with gifts in abundance, but the gifts that He bestows on a lazy man and a diligent man, a wise man and a fool, differ radically. Yet socialists and Christians alike ignore the fact that “God makes both poor and rich.” (1 Samuel 2:7) If men desire to improve their economic conditions they must “submit themselves to Him, work hard, and call upon Him for blessing.” (David Chilton’s Productive Christians, p. 173)

“Thou shalt not steal,” and “Thou shalt not covet” apply to the collective will of individuals called government, too. Federal government is not above God’s law, God’s law is above it.

Anna

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