Why The Old Labels No Longer Work (And Probably Never Did)

America is deeply divided along political lines. That is no surprise to anyone. While that has always been true in our two party, winner-takes-all system, it certainly has grown sharper and nastier over the last few decades. Old fashioned opposition has turned somehow more ugly, more personal. I usually point to the ridiculous "borking" of the late Robert Bork as the turning point but there is no credible doubt that we are a nation that is at war with itself, for now limited to rhetoric but I fear that in the future it may morph into something else.

I have started to see this dichotomy, once a critical part of my life, as entirely unhelpful both politically and doctrinally. I blame some of this on the two party, win take all system we exist in where it is natural and expedient to draw a line in the sand and then start appealing to lowest common denominator positions. What we are left with is a two party system loosely based on two ideologies that have little to do with the original meaning of their labels and I (and many others) find ourselves without a home in either party.

Modern "conservatism" is not terribly conservative at all. Rather than conserving it is about consuming. To protect our consuming, "conservatives" are willing to send young people to kill and die over and over, intervening in wars we have no business in and no real chance of "success", whatever that means. This means that the same people who complain about larger government when it comes in the form of food stamps are the first to freak out if we even suggest cutting back on military spending. Quaint notions like liberty are steamrolled by "security". Shameful though it may be to say it, the Republican party (the "conservative" party) is largely built to appeal to middle and upper class, mostly white, voters who are terrified of minorities and foreigners and angry at the poor.

Modern "liberalism"? Please. Unlike early liberalism what we call modern liberalism is simply replacing a hereditary elite ruling class with a bureaucratic elite ruling class. While homosexuals can "marry" and women can kill their unborn children, by virtually any other measure modern liberalism seeks to reduce liberty and make people less free. That is not liberalism, it is servitude and enslavement.  The Democrats take a different approach from their opposites in the GOP, rather than appealing to fear they appeal to envy, painting everyone who has more than you as your enemy, an enemy that needs to be punished. Dress it up all you like in the language of "fairness", what it really comes down to is stealing from some people to bribe others for their votes.

While the modern conservative movement is deeply, perhaps fatally flawed, it is less wrong than what passes for modern liberalism. That is faint praise indeed and intended as such. With these two "choices" that are not really choices at all, it is little wonder I am done with the whole dog-and-pony show that happens on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of November. The American electoral process is a farce and everyone that pays attention knows it but most people keep doing it out of some misguided notion of civic responsibility and virtue. That isn't my primary concern.

As clearly inadequate as the terms liberal and conservative are in a political context, they are both inaccurate and deeply harmful in a church context. I say inaccurate because the things that modern political liberalism and conservatism alike stand for, or at least advocate for, have no bearing on Christian discipleship and Kingdom living. Lower taxes, defending 2nd Amendment rights, a strong "national defense"? Um no. Abortion on demand, forced income redistribution and institutionalized generational poverty. Double no.

What about harmful? Indeed and even more so than inaccurate. When we use these terms within the context of church discussions we invariably divide ourselves into camps that are as much political as they are doctrinal and the differences between the two categories is lost. Just because someone is "conservative" from a theological standpoint it doesn't always follow that they are "conservative" from a political standpoint, especially on an issue by issue basis. For example as someone who fits most possible definitions of "conservative" theologically, I am also someone who is strongly opposed to war in all forms even when it allegedly serves the national interest of America. I oppose war for the same reason I support complementarian gender roles, namely a consistent and "literal" interpretation of Scripture.

A perfect case in point was an older article someone linked to that purported to prove that reading your Bible more makes you more "liberal": Survey: Frequent Bible Reading Can Turn You Liberal . Granted it in Christianity Today and as such was immediately suspect but as I read through the article what kept jumping out to me is that the way the article defined "liberal" didn't seem so much theological as it did political. For example one statement said: But the more someone reads the Bible, the more likely he or she is to believe science and religion are compatible. Well I am pretty conservative by any measure and I think they are compatible and would affirm that statement. Now if you start getting into the particulars we would find some major points of difference on issues like evolution and "climate change". Other examples included questions about the Patriot Act and social justice issues: Some of the most interesting findings relate to moral attitudes. "How important is it," the survey asked, "to actively seek social and economic justice in order to be a good person?" Who is against social justice? Now again when you start to define "social justice" in political terms it can become code for "forced income redistribution", something the Bible never supports. I am all for social and economic justice but I also don't think that a welfare state and a permanent dependency class does anything to alleviate injustice. So the flaw here is in methodology but the message is that reading the Bible more leads to voting for Democrats.

Our insistence on using political labels loaded with cultural baggage to divide from other Christians is enormously unhelpful to our mission and harmful to our witness as the church. It happens on both sides, many "conservatives" use "liberal" as a way to dismiss anything another believer says and likewise there are many "liberals" who sneeringly use terms like "fundie" to mock those who have a more literal view of the Bible. Both groups do it and both claim to be preserving the foundations of the church in doing so but what they are really doing is dividing us up based on our positions on tax policy and national security, issues that have no bearing on our universal call to be ambassadors of a King with no army, no taxes and no borders. Can we declare a moratorium on using this language to bite and devour one another? I will volunteer to try to start with my own writings and would call on anyone reading here to do the same.

A future where liberal and conservative mean nothing in the church

An exchange has taken place that I almost missed between the excellent writer and token, sort of conservative, New York Times Ross Douthat and Diana Butler Bass, writing for the consistently liberal but occasionally accurate Huffington Post religion page. Thankfully I saw the links on the First Things blog Evangel. Douthat started by responding in an essay to the all too predictable but still tragic decision by the Episcopal Church to bless sinful behavior and call it marriage, declaring that which God has declared an abomination to be blessed. In his brilliant, if somewhat off the mark essay, Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?, Douthat rightly diagnoses what ills the religious left and then calls for a return to a Biblically based robust liberalism rather than a somewhat religious but mostly secular liberalism...

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right. 

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.” 

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

Well said by Mr. Douthat, a rising intellectual star in the religious world. Ms. Bass responds in her essay, Can Christianity Be Saved? A Response to Ross Douthat and seems to get the "big picture" but ultimately returns to form and posits a liberal resurgence that is quietly taking hold, something I have not observed. Here is a passage regarding the missing piece from Douthat's essay....

That was 1972. Forty years later, in 2012, liberal churches are not the only ones declining. It is true that progressive religious bodies started to decline in the 1960s. However, conservative denominations are now experiencing the same. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, one of America's most conservative churches, has for a dozen years struggled with membership loss and overall erosion in programming, staffing, and budgets. Many smaller conservative denominations, such as the Missouri Synod Lutherans, are under pressure by loss. The Roman Catholic Church, a body that has moved in markedly conservative directions and of which Mr. Douthat is a member, is straining as members leave in droves. By 2008, one in ten Americans considered him- or herself a former Roman Catholic. On the surface, Catholic membership numbers seem steady. But this is a function of Catholic immigration from Latin America. If one factors out immigrants, American Catholicism matches the membership decline of any liberal Protestant denomination. Decline is not exclusive to the Episcopal Church, nor to liberal denominations--it is a reality facing the whole of American Christianity.

Douthat points out that the Episcopal Church has declined 23% in the last decade, identifying the loss as a sign of its theological infidelity. In the last decade, however, as conservative denominations lost members, their leaders have not equated the loss with unfaithfulness. Instead, they refer to declines as demographic "blips," waning evangelism, or the impact of secular culture. Membership decline has no inherent theological meaning for either liberals or conservatives. Decline only means, as Gallup pointed out in a just-released survey, that Americans have lost confidence in all forms of institutional religion. 

The real question is not "Can liberal Christianity be saved?" The real question is: Can Christianity be saved?

Both essays are worth your time to read. Both make good points and do so eloquently but I think both miss the fundamental issues. Here are my thoughts, posted at the Evangel's article Collapse or vitality: liberal versus conservative Christianity. They are nothing new to anyone who has read here but here they are nevertheless...

Both camps are missing the big picture. It is not that liberals are declining or that conservatives are thriving. What is being missed is that the religious culture of the West where we found room for both liberal and conservatives expressions (a church on every corner) is collapsing all around us. The social cost of not "going to church" has evaporated and many people are simply abandoning organized religion and rightly so. So-called conservative churches may be declining more slowly than liberal groups that seem bent on rushing headlong over the cliff to extinction but they are heading the same direction.

Amidst all the doom and gloom, those who follow Christ should see hope. As cultural Christianity with its religious trappings, rituals, liturgies, clericalism and all the rest is in her death throes, the church can finally start to function as a peculiar, distinct, called out people who break free from the largely empty formalism that has been the hallmark of Western civil religion for centuries. We should certainly expect to see persecution as a result, actual persecution and not the silly fights over Ten Commandments monuments on public land, but that is a sign that the church is finally being who she is called to be, just as the lack of persecution we so often give thanks for is a sign of an utter lack of faithfulness. It is in times like these that we would be wise to look to the Anabaptists to see what life is like when being faithful runs counter to the prevailing culture.

The future of Christianity in the West is not going to marked by fights over "liberal" versus "conservative". Those sort of fights are the marks of a religion that has too much power, too much money, too much prestige and is too comfortable with the world it is supposed to reach. Our future is one where preaching the Gospel is going to happen outside of pulpits and have a real cost, a future where picking up our cross daily actually means something. I am afraid that most of the church has its collective heads in the sand, desperately clinging to the crumbling religious foundations and not preparing to minister in a culture where "Christianity" is no longer the religion of choice. Rather than hand-wringing over declining "membership" we should be preparing and equipping the church right now for the very different landscape we face in the very near future. Alas those with a vested interest in the status quo are more concerned with clinging to the past than preparing for the future which is precisely why very few "leaders" in the church are really leading at all.

We need only look to Europe to see our future. While they are way ahead of us in the collapse of cultural Christianity, we are very close behind and the collapse here might be even more precipitous. These fights over "conservative" versus "liberal" are going to mean less than nothing very, very soon. This is a conversation that needs to happen in the church right now. Rather than preparing the church and our young people to fill in the impending vacancies among the clergy, Sunday school teachers and seminary professors, we need to be preparing them to minister in a world that is going to look very different from the one we grew up in and live in today. Whether one is liberal or conservative, this denomination or that, are going to be irrelevant in the Western culture of the next few decades. What will matter is whether one is a follower of Christ or not and whether we will be willing to suffer for the sake of the Gospel or not. The church of today is utterly failing to prepare us for the world of the future and very few of our leaders are leading us toward the path where we are headed and are instead trying desperately to cling to a past that has already started to fade away. Thankfully I know that God is sovereign over even the religious future of America and I already am seeing signs of a new generation of Christian that He is raising up to lead the church in the years to come, leaders that don't care for the religiously proper way of doing things but care only for the mission of the Kingdom.

Let those in the halls of power and influence cling to the past if that is where they find their reward. Let God call out and raise up others who will be up for the challenges of the future.

Will we step back up?

Back in the day most of the social welfare in this country was handled by the church. I work with a lot of hospitals and it is amazing how many of them are affiliated with a church organization, whether Roman Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, etc. Before the modern welfare state the church was probably the single biggest source of social services. Over the last century, starting in the aftermath of the Great Depression, that role gradually has moved from the church to the government. First with the “New Deal” and later the “Great Society”, the American social contract changed from a private sector focus to a decidedly security based and government focused arrangement. As the social contract has changed, the church has quietly slid into the background and become more inward focused. Whether the church was pushed out or abdicated is a topic for another day but the end result is what I am concerned with.

The results of a century of social welfare spending are stark. The government is broke. There simply is no money and no political appetite for higher taxes. In Michigan the state has announced that cash welfare assistance will be capped at 48 months. For quite a few families this means that they have already exhausted their cash assistance and are being cut off immediately with more to follow each month. Michigan has been one of the hardest hit states and still finds itself in a pretty dire situation. This means that many families are going to be in trouble. Sure you can say they brought it on themselves and only have themselves to blame but will the church look the other way? The major Federal entitlement programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid, are eating up an ever larger portion of the Federal budget and are running toward financial ruin. As a result we find ourselves in a situation unique in my lifetime where there appears to be an appetite for real entitlement change and a potential dramatic reordering of the social contract in America. Political conservatives are giddy with the prospects of the 2012 election.

In 2011 we as the church find ourselves in an odd situation. The church, while still a source for social welfare services has largely been removed from the role of being a primary provider for the needy. Sure there are still lots of groups who have that as a primary mission (the Salvation Army for example) and a lot of organizations like Samaritans Purse focus on disaster relief, often overseas but for the most part mercy ministry is an add on or an afterthought or completely absent. Perhaps a church might sponsor a food pantry or a denomination may have a relief group like the Mennonite Central Committee but generally speaking among American churches the primary focus is not on social welfare but is on the internal operations of the church. More specifically on the Sunday morning service and all that goes with that and then also on the other programs of the church (Sunday school, VBS, small group/Bible studies, etc.). This has worked up until recently in our society because for all of the rancor and disdain directed at “the gubmint” the reality on the ground is that the social welfare system has made it much easier for the church to be inward focused and prioritize the sustaining of the local church instead of serving the needs of the poor. For example, in 2009 the Southern Baptist Convention reported total receipts of nearly $12,000,000,000 from its approximately 45,000 churches or about a quarter of a million per church on average (obviously a few really big churches skew that number!). The vast majority of that giving stays within the church. Christians bring their “tithe” to the “storehouse” and that is where the church “stores” those offerings, in salaries, in buildings and in bank accounts.

We have been comfortable with this set up for decades, even if we didn’t admit it. Much as we love to hate the government, we also love being able to spend money on ourselves. We comfort ourselves with verses like these:

For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. (Mark 14:17)

For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

We provide ourselves theological cover and likewise view any sort of call to social justice as skirting the line between justification by faith alone and a “works righteousness”. We are told the church should be about the business of preaching (i.e. sermons to believers) and worship (i.e. singing songs on Sunday morning) and the occasional fellowship meal. Never mind that in the very earliest days of the church, when it faced the daunting combination of a brand new religion that was exploding in size and being persecuted, it was also taking the time to feed people in need (Acts 6:1-6) and ensure that Christians had their material needs met (Acts 2:44-45). Also never mind that Jesus placed an enormous emphasis on how we treat “the least of these’ (Matthew 25:40 and the converse Matthew 25:45). In spite of this the overwhelming majority of evangelical Christians are also the most energized and reliable conservative voting block. I am starting to wonder if we are prepared for the results of what many of us are working toward.

Defeat Obama in 2012! Cut Medicaid and Medicare! Overturn Roe v. Wade! Get rid of welfare! Victory for conservatives!

Um. Then what do we do?

Don’t misconstrue what I am saying. I think that the social welfare state in America is on its face an unconstitutional usurpation and a grotesque overstepping of the powers delegated to the Federal government. I likewise think that the secular social welfare system is dehumanizing, inefficient and has directly led to generational poverty especially among minorities. I have no tolerance for Christians who use the faith as cover for conservative economic policies, even though I support those self-same policies, but I have even less use for starry eyed utopian socialism dressed up in Christianese. I believe abortion to be legalized infanticide that should be outlawed just as we outlaw people shooting one another. My conservative credentials are above reproach. My question has to do with the aftermath. What happens if we “win” and we are faced with the question: “Now what?” Will the same conservative evangelical Christians who consistently vote Republican and rail against the Federal government be ready to step in if the social welfare state is dismantled? Will the poor needing assistance with heating bills, the hungry in need of food, the pregnant teen in need of support find it in the church? Or will the church be to busy playing church and putting on our religious theater to be bothered?

Will we be ready to step back up?

We better be.

Surrendering social justice to the liberals

Pick an issue. Any issue (almost) and conservative Christians will go charging into battle against their liberal foes. Not only will conservatives rise up to defend their position against liberals, often we seek out fights if none are forthcoming. When Rob Bell tries to redefine the concept of hell, Christian conservatives came out of the woodwork to squash him (and probably helped double his book sales). Suggest that maybe gay marriage isn’t something the church needs to concern itself with and plan on getting jumped on with both feet. On virtually every issue there are defenders of the faith and apologists of all stripes willing to stand in the breach….

With one major exception…

When it comes to poverty, to caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the sex slave, the imprisoned? In that fight, an issue with far deeper Biblical basis than squabbling over U.S. politics or Ten Commandments monuments or prayer in secular schools? In that fight, the conservative often goes silent or mumbles angrily about liberalism or shrugs it off with "you will always have the poor with you". Guys who once looked like Richard the Lionhearted turn into Brave Sir Robin. Even in churches where there is some care and concern for the poor, it seems to be an "add on", something else we do when we aren't listening to sermons or having VBS or working on building improvements for "the church". In our quest for doctrinal precision and standing fast for the faith, making sure people understand the eternal nature of hell and justification by faith alone, it often at least appears that we cannot be bothered to worry about issues that fall under the umbrella of “social justice”.

We cannot claim to take the Bible seriously and ignore the places the Bible makes demands on us that make us uncomfortable. It is far more comfortable for me to argue the fine points of theology over coffee (or better yet safely behind my computer keyboard) than it is to get out in the unpredictable world of people, especially people with problems. Fleeing the field when human suffering in this life comes up but rising to the challenge when eternal suffering is the topic is inconsistent and disingenuous.

That isn’t to say that most of the “solutions” put forth by our liberal brothers are rock solid. Income redistribution, government subsidies, etc., the sort of stuff advocated by the Jim Wallis crowd, have done more to create a perpetual dependent class and incentivized behavior that leads to generational poverty than any evil Wall Street tycoons. So I am not advocating for liberal social engineering dressed up in religious language. I am saying that we need to not only win the war of ideas but put action to our words in the lives of real people with real needs. When Biblically orthodox, visible leaders like David Platt start to (very gently) question why we are so unconcerned with human suffering, they get shouted down as promoting a works righteousness. That is not even remotely true but it allows us to brush off calls to look up from our keyboards and books to see the real suffering of people in the world, people who need our love and our help more than we need a new building or more denominational bureaucrats.

Conservative, “Bible believing” Christians should be leading the way when it comes to matters of human suffering, not fleeing the field to hide behind our orthodox creeds and confessions.

Conservative Evangelicals Are In Large Part Responsible For Big Government

How did Evangelical Christians, so proud of our political conservatism, get to the point of effectively abdicating the care of the poor to the political left and surrendering the cause of mercy to the government that we then rail against for trying to do what we should be doing?

We have turned over care of the fatherless to the child welfare system. Widows are relegated to being cared for the Federal government for income, health care and food. The homeless, the drug users, the prostitutes are all problems for the police to handle. Keep them out of our way and more importantly keep them out of our sight. The last thing we want our kids to see on our way to church wearing our Sunday best is some bum or a hooker. We need to focus on worshipping Jesus, not on the downtrodden that probably deserve to be on the streets anyway.

Where did we lose our way?

This is by no means a call for larger government. Quite the opposite. The net result of the Federal government’s “war on poverty” has been generationalized poverty and an enormous welfare state that has done nothing to alleviate poverty. Disincentivizing work and achievement and subsidizing poverty has led to an entitlement nation. Bigger government doesn’t lead to more income equity, it just leads to more misery equity for everyone.

Conversely, free markets are clearly the better choice for the greatest number of people. Creating incentive to work hard, to save and invest leads to greater prosperity for more people. As an economic policy, I see no contradiction whatsoever between Christianity and free market capitalism. The other option, a social welfare state, replaces the church with Caesar in the care of the poor and downtrodden and is inherently inefficient and proven to worsen poverty over the long term, not help it.

But being in favor of free markets is not enough. Voting Republican does not get us off the hook. There will always be those who are not able to thrive or even survive in a free market environment and saying "tough luck" to them is not an option. In trading away the mutual misery of a welfare state, free markets inherently will have people falling through the cracks. In a competitive marketplace, some people win, some people lose. Some catch all the breaks or make breaks for themselves but some people don’t. I am the most conservative person I know, a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of guy but I fully recognize that a child born to a single teenage mother in the inner city of Detroit is going to have a much harder time being successful than the child born to an intact upper class family. How much more so for the orphan in the Sudan or the child sold into prostitution in Thailand. What to do about those that are unable to succeed is the elephant in the room for evangelicals.

While we are smug about our superior political position and cast aspersions on political liberals, conservative Christians have effectively abdicated our responsibility to the poor, widows and orphans to the very government we love to hate and complain about (thanks to Jason Anspach for this insight). Why are we surprised and outraged that the inherently inefficient government is inefficient at caring for the poor and orphans that we are not caring for? More importantly, why have the redeemed people of Christ left this important task by and large up to the very government we despise? At least liberals in their misguided way and with their solutions that make things worse are at least concerned about the poor. Granted, many churches do a lot for the poor as do many individual Christians but I think by and large if you look at where the focus of the Christian church is, it is more often than not on sustaining church organizations, whether that is local churches (programs, staff, buildings, etc.) or parachurch ministries.

When Paul was commended to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, he was encouraged to remember the poor: “Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. (Galatians 2:10). The distribution of care to the widows in the church was such a big deal that when it became contentious, the church called seven men with good reputations who were “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” to care for the widows (Acts 6:3), including Stephen “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 6:5). This was not the creation of the “office” of deacon, it was reflective of how important this whole topic is, caring for those who are most in need and most vulnerable. The focus of the early church was on the proclaiming of the Gospel to the lost and the care for the needy. The focus of the church today is the church.

Some may reply (as I would have) that we show mercy by preaching the Gospel to the lost. I say amen to that but there is far more to the justice and mercy ministry of the church than people who already Christians are listening to the Word and being content with that. Polls consistently show that many, if not most, people who claim to be evangelical Christians rarely or never share their faith with others. So if you are not preaching the Word and you are not caring for the poor, explain to me how exactly you are following Jesus? By dressing up and going to church? By listening to sermons? By grudgingly putting a couple of bucks in the plate when it is handed to you? I will be the first to admit that I haven’t been terribly faithful here. I used to content myself with teaching in the church and homeschooling our kids and thinking that was being a faithful servant of Jesus but now when I see the pictures of children without much hope around the world and look at what I have done to help them, it is like a punch in the stomach. I can no longer hide behind God’s sovereignty as a cover for my inaction.

The words of James are a searing indictment of the church and the general apathy of many of us who claim the name of Christ but reject any claim He has on our lives.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1: 22-27)

Anyone who thinks he has the promise of life everlasting in the future and no calling to be a follower of Christ in deed as well as word in the present doesn’t really understand what the Bible is saying to us in the first place. “Hey thanks for heaven Jesus, I will check back in with you when I die” is not the mantra of a faithful, born-again follower of Jesus. Take up your cross daily does not equate to show up at church once a week.

I have been guilty of storing up treasure on earth for too long and I am fixing to do something about it, not because I think it will make me more righteous but because the One who is righteous, the One who paid for my sin and redeemed me from an eternal hell and imputed His righteousness to me has commanded me to store up treasure in heaven. Jesus didn’t spend His time hanging around in the religious establishments talking about theology and planning out budgets, He was out among those that society rejected: the lepers, the poor, the lost. We who claim to follow Him ought to be doing the same instead of hiding in our sanitary church buildings.

Government logic

Remember last year? It has been a couple of days already, so I can understand if you have forgotten. Many people apparently already have. Remember when prices for gasoline in most places were well over $4/gallon and in places like the People's Republic of California prices were over $5? I recall filling my truck when it was empty would be $85-90 and our monster 15 passenger van would be over $100. But that has been months ago, so it is ancient history now. I can fill my Silverado for under $40, so out of sight is out of mind. Our driving habits have changed as a nation though, people bought a bunch of fuel efficient cars and have curtailed driving as much as possible.

Well since people are driving less and buying less gas, guess what? That means that Uncle Sam is sucking up less of our money in gasoline taxes. I guess the Federal Government will just have to spend less money...uh, no. If consumption goes down on something we get tax revenue from, the solution must be to raise taxes on that commodity (which drives down consumption, which requires higher taxes, and so on and so on...). From the Associated Press...

Motorists' habits spur call for tax increases

WASHINGTON – Motorists are driving less and buying less gasoline, which means fuel taxes aren't raising enough money to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs.

That has the federal commission that oversees financing for transportation talking about increasing the federal fuel tax.

A 50 percent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes is being urged by the commission to finance highway construction and repair until the government devises another way for motorists to pay for using public roads.

The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress, is the second group in a year to call for increasing the current 18.4 cents a gallon federal tax on gasoline and the 24.4 cents a gallon tax on diesel. State fuel taxes vary from state to state.

In a report expected in late January, members of the infrastructure financing commission say they will urge Congress to raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel tax by 12 cents to 15 cents a gallon. At the same time, the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation.

The commission will also recommend that states raise their fuel taxes and make greater use of toll roads and fees for rush-hour driving.

Ladies and gentlemen, your federal government at work!

Isn't driving less and consuming less fossil fuels supposed to be the goal, isn't it supposed to be a good thing? You know, global warming and all. Ooops. When people drive less and use less fuel, the government has lower revenue and people keep that money in their pockets. We can't have that, how can we expect people to make sound decision with their own money? The fact that we are even having this conversation six months removed from crippling gas prices exposes just how myopic we are. If it doesn't hit my wallet in a way I can feel right now, it doesn't matter to me.

Once again, when the government tinkers in the free market it always spirals out of control because when an organization that is inherently inefficient is injected it a market that thrives on efficiency, something is going to break. What is really troubling is that so many people have completely forgotten the higher gas prices. Few people are calling for increased domestic exploration, drilling and refining. We are vulnerable to the same extreme price swings in gasoline but because today I don't pay as much for gas, yesterday is irrelevant to me. We should be drilling NOW, exploring NOW, building new refineries NOW, building more nuclear plant NOW while prices are low. If Obama is bound and determined to spend upwards of a trillion dollars of money we don't have for "stimulus", at least spend it on domestic energy production, something that will create tons of real jobs now and in the future, and will go a long way toward energy independence. Instead we will wait until the next spike in gas prices and people will cry and our benevolent government will step in with price controls and the march to socialism will continue unabated. It is a short walk from price controls to wage controls.

Rest assured if they get their way and bump gas taxes up by 50%, no one will be calling to repeal that increase when gas prices go back up, which they certainly will do. Once that increase is in place and those expected revenues are budgeted for spending, it will be impossible to reverse that increase. Gas prices are a ticking time bomb. The damage done to the economy with prices where they were is enormous. Let's hope that this insane idea of increasing gas taxes fades away like one of it's old school proponents, Paul Tsongas aka Paul "Taxongas".

A fighting retreat

Conservatism, which as recently as the early 1990’s was ascendant, is clearly in full scale retreat. We are mere weeks away from a Barack Obama landslide victory and very likely a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Reliably conservative Kentucky has polls showing that Mitch McConnell is tied in his race for re-election, something unthinkable a few years ago. The older liberal Supreme Court justices will likely retire shortly after Obama takes office confident that he will replace them with other far left, pro-abortion justices who are younger, packing the court for decades to come and eliminating the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade. Given a sufficient majority in the Senate, Obama will be able to breeze through sweeping new legislation that will reorient the private-public spheres in a way we haven’t seen since FDR and Lyndon Johnson. Once people get a taste of “free” government health insurance and unlimited access to doctors for every sniffle, it will be nigh impossible to wean them back off. Future Republican candidates will have to cede the huge new government programs lest they be accused of trying to take away health care from kiddies. Once the camel gets it’s nose under that tent, it is all over but the triumphal Rose Garden signing by Obama.

Conservatism has by and large, at least to the masses, hitched its star to President George W. Bush, for good or ill. In the weeks following September 11th and even early in the liberation of Iraq, it seemed as if we had backed a winner and thus many conservatives, especially more populist and Christian conservatives, were willing to overlook chinks in the armor: the one-sided coverage of the Iraq war that universally portrayed it as a disaster with daily body counts that gradually turned public opinion sharply against the war; general ineptitude in events like Katrina and now the financial debacle that made Bush look disinterested or incompetent; an abandonment wholesale of conservative small government principles that led to enormous increases in spending and the national debt. Now Reagan is no longer the face of the Republican party, Bush is. Fair or not, that face is one that the media has convinced people (in fairness with some justification) as one of uncertainty, incompetence and general stupidity. John McCain has done little to change that perception. With the exception of the GOP convention introduction of Governor Palin, McCain has been on the defensive and has allowed Obama and his media surrogates to dictate the tone and the topic of the campaign. Right after the convention with interest in Governor Palin at a fever pitch, they hid her away (Put her away privily in King James lingo!) and we didn’t hear from her again until she revealed her daughter was pregnant. This has been a grossly incompetent campaign since McCain sewed up the nomination, with no central message and a seeming defensive posture throughout. Obama is grossly underqualified to be President, and yet the conversations have all focused on whether Governor Palin is qualified to be President in the unlikely event of McCain’s death. She gets grilled on her qualifications while Obama gets a free pass on the same standard, and we hear nary a word from the McCain camp. If they had any honor, the McCain campaign staff would all ceremonially fall on their swords. So in general, as conservatives, we are hosed in November 2008 and we can only hope that the bloodbath isn’t as bad as we fear.

The question becomes what kind of retreat we are in. Is it a drop your rifle and run rout? Or is it a fighting retreat where we shed blood over every inch we give up? Do we flee to the hills, do we start a scorched earth guerrilla war or do we back up fighting until we get to favorable ground from which to launch a counter-offensive? William F. Buckley Jr., to paraphrase, described conservatism as standing in front of progress and shouting “Stop!”. But for conservatism to gain the high ground and go back on the offensive, merely being against progress is inadequate. The movement needs leadership. Not people in leadership positions, but actual leadership. Leadership like Ronald Reagan, someone who articulated clear conservative principles that average voters understood (government is not the solution, strong national defense, etc.). Leadership like Newt Gingrich, who for all of his personal failings and faults was the catalyst behind the Republican party taking control of the House in the 90’s. Just calling Obama a “liberal” isn’t going to cut it unless there is a clear declaration of what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a conservative. If liberals spin the debate as being about them wanting you to have health insurance and those mean Republicans wanting kids to get sick and die for lack of insurance, conservatives lose that debate. If we can frame it in such a way that we show that the enormous inefficiencies of a government single-payer systems means enormous tax increases and worse health for everyone, and that with no cost to consumers every sniffle will lead to the doctor’s office means long waits for health care, that is a debate we can have and we can win. But without leadership to make that clear, it will never happen and without leadership to reign in “conservatives” in Congress who rail against wasteful spending except when it benefits their district, we will look like hypocrites.

There is plenty of high ground to retreat to and make our stand. Liberalism is intellectually bankrupt, the equivalent of policy cotton candy that tastes yummy but gives you a stomach ache. But without a new generation of leaders who can articulate the high ground, in an environment where they will have to cut through the static of a hostile media that still controls the access of many Americans to information, the message will never get out. Now is not the time to drop our rifles and run, nor is it the time to start a scorched earth policy. Now is the time, in the face of almost certain catastrophic defeat, to start planning for the future and finding the hills on which to make our stand.

A victory for common sense

Today the house of Representatives voted by a slim margin to reject the enormous bailout proposed in D.C. The stock market responded kind of poorly, to the tune of a 700+ point drop in the Dow. Bank stocks were especially hammered. My employer had a tough day, but nearly as bad as some others. There is a lot of pain and consolidation to come I am afraid, but long term it beats the alternative. An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today pointed out that any massive bailout of the financial system would have been largely financed by such friends as China and Middle Eastern nations...

The success of the pending rescue of the U.S. financial system probably depends as much on the central banks of China and the Middle East as on Congress and the Federal Reserve.

The U.S. is turning to foreign governments and other overseas investors to buy a good chunk of what could total $700 billion in Treasury debt expected to finance the bailout. Foreign investors also are needed to shore up the depleted capital of the nation's financial institutions, seen in the plan by Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to buy a large stake in Morgan Stanley, which is weighed down by bad debt and market distrust.

This is a bittersweet moment in U.S. economic history. In one sense, the growing importance of foreign cash represents the triumph of a half-century of U.S. proselytizing for a global financial system in which money flows from those who have it to those who need it. But it is also an unmistakable sign of U.S. economic decline. The global financial system the U.S. designed had anticipated that American banks and financial firms would be the world's financial lifeguards; now those institutions are like exhausted swimmers a stroke or two away from drowning.

The financial crisis makes clear how much the interests of foreign lenders have become a top concern in Washington. A big reason the Fed and Treasury stepped in to rescue mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, say U.S. financial officials, was to reassure foreign leaders including China, which holds roughly $1 trillion in U.S. debt, that U.S. securities were safe. "Superpowers do not normally ask their diplomats to reassure other nations on questions of credit-worthiness," says former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

Just 10 years after the U.S. oversaw the financial rescue of Asian nations, the U.S. now risks becoming the world's largest subprime borrower. This change of fortune has been hard to swallow. In a televised address Thursday, President George W. Bush blamed the current financial crisis on the "massive amount of money [that] flowed into the United States from investors abroad," rather than on greedy decisions by U.S. mortgage lenders and borrowers. In Friday's presidential debate, both candidates railed against U.S. economic dependence on China.

Powerful nations have been humbled before by an overdependence on foreign capital. Council on Foreign Relations economist Brad Setser notes that Britain was forced to end its seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956 because of U.S. opposition. Washington's main weapon: its threat to slash financial support for Britain, whose economy had been battered by World War II.

The U.S. isn't in remotely as bad shape as postwar Britain. It still is the world's sole military superpower, and the U.S. currency is still dominant. The latter is important because even if foreign holdings of U.S. debt grow, as is likely, the U.S. alone prints the dollars needed to pay those debts.

Even so, foreign lenders have a great deal of sway. If they were to dump U.S. government debt -- or be unwilling to buy more -- the interest rates needed to attract buyers of Treasurys would soar. The already fragile U.S. economy would absorb yet another hit.

China, Saudi Arabia and other big foreign holders are unlikely to take antidollar measures precisely because they own so much U.S. debt. To the extent the dollar declines, so does the value of those nations' holdings. Mr. Summers calls this situation "the financial balance of terror."

But it is naive to assume that this so-called balance will protect U.S. interests indefinitely. Senior Chinese economists have voiced growing dismay about the outlook for the dollar, and the introduction of an additional $700 billion in debt might drive the currency's value down further, at least in the short term. "I think foreigners are being taken for a ride by the U.S. government," says Andy Xie, an independent economist in Shanghai.

Sounds less and less appealing doesn't it? Propping up the financial systems to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars of additional debt for our grandkids, owed to Saudi Arabia and China, is not much of a legacy is it?

This whole situation has proven once and for all that President Bush is naive in many ways when it comes to trusting people around him and his idea of "compassionate conservatism" is little different from big government liberalism. President Bush is generally right on issues of life and on the war on terror, but on economics he either is unable to control the urge to spend or he has surrounded himself with poor advisers. In an attempt to "reach across the aisle", he has allowed liberals to spend and spend and spend. While he has stood strong for what is right in the War of Terror, his legacy will in large part be presiding over a ballooning federal debt and a financial crisis in his final year. What seemed like a promising, historical Presidency is rapidly degenerating into a record of mediocrity and failure. Perhaps his most stinging failure may just be setting up the atmosphere where we elect a unqualified, far left liberal as President.

Conservatism, real conservatism, would dictate that we slash spending at the Federal level as well as cutting taxes. What President Bush has allowed to happen is an unholy union of lower taxes and dramatically higher spending. There is a real danger of becoming a third world economic power with a super power military. That is a recipe for totalitarianism and war for resources (not the fake kind liberals claim the liberation of Iraq amounts to, but real conquest of other nations) Shoring up and stabilizing our financial system, without massive amounts of debt, is in many ways as much an issue of national security as a strong military, and there are far too few voices of courage and reason in the halls of power.

A blast from the past

I love this famous line from Barry Goldwater at the 1964 GOP Covention in San Francisco...



I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

The death of a legend

William F. Buckley, founder of National Review magazine, died today at the age of 82. Few people have had a more profound impact on the political environment, while not being a household name, than William F. Buckley. I would hazard a guess that most people who vote Republican in November have no idea who Buckley was or that he was one of the driving forces behind where the GOP is today. Other than Ronald Reagan, no other person has the level of impact on the intellectual underpinnings of American conservatism.

My family has always held Buckley in the highest esteem. The intellectualism, the dry wit, the biting sarcasm and the smarmy mean streak all appeal to us as a family. But American conservatism has moved beyond the elitist, libertarian roots that Buckley represented. The Republican party, the two-party system representative of conservatism in America, looks very different from the Ivy League elite men's club it used to be. Buckley championed Christian virtues in American culture, but it struck me that his idea of Christian virtue was more a philosophical idea than a life-changing reality. Nonetheless, Buckley was one of the great champions of the small government, libertarian, anti-communism that were the hallmarks of the Reagan revolution.

The reliance of Buckley conservatives on the Southern and Midwestern religious conservatives to build a voting coalition, rally the troops and get the grassroots efforts needed to win elections is grating. I have always gotten the sense that ideological purity has trumped political pragmatism. Bully for Buckley and company, but that leads to lots of Democrats in high office. On the other hand, Buckleyites seem to revel in misery and harrumphing about the state of things, so maybe he enjoyed being out of power and complaining about those who are in. He was a funny fellow, in a dry, almost humorless sort of way.

Rest in peace Bill.