Cicero

This has floated around the interwebs for a while, but I thought it apropros considering our modern American experience:

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome fall. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

                                           -   Cicero  – 55 BC

As has been aptly noted elsewhere: looks like the old proverb is true, that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

Sigh.

 

How Not To Help The Poor

Interesting response to the religious left here.

Liberals like Colmes believe that redistributing wealth by taking it from the rich and giving it to the poor will create an equitable society. This is the great liberal myth. Taxing policies designed to create social programs inhibit economic expansion in the business sector. Without an expanding economy, businesses can’t grow. If businesses can’t grow, they cannot hire new workers.

Liberals believe that the remedy for economically displaced workers, a condition their policies often create, is to raise more taxes and subsidize the unemployed. This is state-sponsored slavery under the guise of compassion. It has the effect of squelching the incentive to work and creates a perpetual underclass that is constantly appealed to by liberals so they can stay in power. Those dependent on the State most often vote to increase the power of the State out of self-interest.

DeMar argues that, laying aside the issue of whether or not Jesus’ teachings demand an all-powerful, confiscatory central government in order to “help the poor” via wealth redistribution and magisterial enforcement of whatever “social justice” cause du jour happens to be currently popular, such things as wage and price controls and overregulation wind up hurting the very people that those who champion them say they’re trying to help – so from a purely practical point of view, the kind of liberal utopia that the Religious Left is trying to build is the very last thing you’d actually want to establish if you really wanted to help those who are struggling.

Not that those who’ve imbibed the Left’s Kool-Aid will be swayed; they have hitched their wagon to Obama’s train and, unlike the majority of the Religious Right (and in what can only be considered the very height of irony), who unhesitatingly light into the GOP they are often (and inaccurately) lumped in with, they seem unwilling and/or unable to critically examine their presuppositions or to honestly appraise their Messiah’s positions and records.

Ah, well.

Good article, nonetheless.  Not bad for a Calvinist preterist postmiller.

 

However…

Let me be very clear: I am a Zionist. Absolutely, unrepentantly, completely behind Israel and the Jewish people. Not only for theological reasons (though those of course are paramount) but for political reasons as well; Israel is the only nation in a very strategic, very volatile region which doesn’t hate our guts and consider us the “Great Satan.” 

So, I am a Christian Zionist. Deal with it.

That being said, as with most things, it’s important to strike a balance between extremes.  I am a strong supporter of Israel, but like any nation, it is not perfect and its government does sometimes do very bone-headed things. (No, defending herself against the attacks of her enemies does not qualify as being “bone-headed.” Duh.) Therefore, Israel (whether the government or her citizens) does not get a pass when they are wrong.

One of the things which is an ongoing point of contention, and can indeed produce an interesting tension in the heart of a Christian Zionist like myself, is stuff like this:

When the congregation at St. Nicolay church in this northern Israeli town gathered on that quiet Friday morning of May 29, they never expected to be showered with stones. The Russian Orthodox worshipers, including many women, children and the elderly, had filled the small building to overflow with several outside when they were stunned by the rain of stones. Some were injured and received medical care.

It seems some yeshiva students (you know, the ones who don’t sully themselves by joining the IDF to defend their homeland and people – those obviously courageous guys…) bravely attacked children and old men and women on their way to worship.

Those intrepid young men should be richly rewarded – for instance, by being lined up and jack-slapped by some of the very IDF soldiers they think they’re too good to join, and who understand the concept of freedom (which is why they fight and die – not only for the Jewish Israelis, but for their non-Jewish co-nationalists as well).

Thankfully, and very much unlike the Muslim nations surrounding her, Israel neither officially persecutes her Christians nor tacitly approves of it, either.  It’s a very touchy situation in Israel, with the yeshivas existing essentially outside the direct jurisdiction of the government and agencies of government.  Unlike the “Palestinian” Authority, for instance, or Egypt, where persecution of the rapidly dwindling Christian populations in their midst is at least tacitly approved and assisted by the government.

However, unofficial and unapproved as it is, it is things like this which emphasize that even though Israel has an unquestionable right to the land God gave her, even though we as Christians are compelled by that same God to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and to bless the Jewish people, and even though we solidly support Israel, the nation is quite far from being perfect and (again) does not get a free pass.

 

Unbelievable.

Get this: not only does the Iranian government crack down on pro-Democracy demonstrators by shooting into the crowd, but they now say that the family of an innocent bystander murdered by Iranian police must pay the government for the privilege of retrieving his body, so that the government’s cost for the bullet which took their son’s life can be recouped.

When Mr. Alipour didn’t return home that night, his parents began to worry. All day, they had heard gunshots ringing in the distance. His father, Yousef, first called his fiancée and friends. No one had heard from him.

At the crack of dawn, his father began searching at police stations, then hospitals and then the morgue.

Upon learning of his son’s death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a "bullet fee"—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said.

And still utter, absolute silence from the Obama administration.

Condemn Israel when she tries to defend herself, all the while bending over backwards to limit civilian casualties to the absolute minimum…but zip the lip in condemning a government run by followers of the Religion of Peace.

Bush Part 2 was not a good president; under his watch, all the good done by the Reagan revolution was cheerfully dismantled, and we inherited an even more massive expansion of government than FDR ever could hope to achieve in his wildest dreams.  Even still, I’m quite certain that Bush wouldn’t be sitting very, very still over this, hoping the American public either ignored this whole ugly mess or ignored his utter inaction over it.  He at least had the guts to stand up to the Ayatollah and his guy Ahmadinejad.

What the Iranian government is doing is despicable. What our own government is doing (or, more to the point, very studiously not doing) is utterly unconscionable.

 

Excellent point…

From the article “Why Condemn Israel But Not Iranian Government Brutality?”

The European Left, the Democrats, the Liberals, the leaders of the West, all go rampant when Israel attacks the Gaza Strip. Where are they now? Why Obama, Blair, Sarkozy keep on sitting on the fence at the time that Iranian Regime is slaughtering protestors and crushing their basic right to be able to protest?

Tell me, where is everyone? To where have they vanished, all those who protested against Israel’s violence during Operation Cast, Lead or the Second Lebanon War, or Defense Shield or even the Hague when we were dragged there by our hair when we dared to try build a separation barrier between us and the suicide bomber? Here and there we see protests but they are mainly Iranian immigrants. In principle, Europe is calm and relaxed. Likewise, the USA. Here few dozens, there few thousands. What, they have vanished because it is Teheran, and not here?

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UPDATE: It is truly mystifying to me that the same press and über-liberal religious leaders which condemned Israel for defending her civilians against the genocidal attacks of her sworn enemy are utterly – utterly silent unless forced to say something (though as little as they can get away with and hope that it all goes away eventually) when things like this happen.

And another thing: Keep in mind, these people (the Iranian regime which is putting down these pro-Democracy demonstrations so brutally) are the very people that Obama wants to make nice with.

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UPDATE: Get this: not only does the Iranian government crack down on pro-Democracy demonstrators by shooting into the crowd, but they now say that the family of an innocent bystander murdered by Iranian police must pay the government for the privilege of retrieving his body, so that the government’s cost for the bullet which took their son’s life can be recouped.

Again: never forget, these people are the very ones Obama wants to sit down to tea and play footsie under the table with.

 

Define “Irony…”

Perez Hilton, who came down on Carrie Prejean for her answer during the recent Miss Amerca pageant, apparently came unglued when someone else he’d…ah…commented on didn’t take kindly to it.  Per Hilton, no human being should ever be physically assaulted…but apparently verbal and emotional assault is quite copasetic-kosher-keen.

Hilton has – until this incident – been the voice for the “gay” community.  It is therefore the very height of irony that:

After Perez Hilton’s slur-laden reaction to an alleged assault by the manager of the Black Eyed Peas, even former allies of the celebrity blogger have turned against him.

Officials at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) have called on Hilton to apologize for the "vulgar anti-gay slurs" he made in a video following a confrontation with manager Liborio Molina.

If this situation doesn’t perfectly exemplify “irony,” I really don’t know what does…

 

The One

This is a great parable-ish undoubtedly prophetic comedy-but-not-really-all-that-funny-given-how-pathetically-true-it-actually-is blogpost by my friend and fellow pastor Tom Spithaler.

You must go read it.  Now.

 

Anglicanism: A New Hope

I was raised Episcopalian, so I consider this to be good news, indeed.  After the Phantom Menace of gross theological liberalism began growing in the Episcopal Church, and after the Attack of the (Liberal) Clones gained steam, it looked to all the world as if the Revenge of the (Social Gospel) Sith would finally overwhelm and destroy an historically solid and proud church.  But now, with this news American Anglicans have A New Hope.

Leaders who defected from the Episcopal Church completed the formation of a conservative branch of Anglicanism in North America Monday by ratifying the constitution of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

The document was signed during the ACNA Inaugural Provincial Assembly, which drew some 800 participants to Bedford, Texas, this week. Pittsburg Bishop Robert Duncan, who on Wednesday will be installed as the group’s first archbishop, said the formation of ACNA is part of a "reformation" marked by a return to orthodox Christianity within the 77 million-member Anglican Communion and beyond.

I’m waiting for the (Liberal) Empire to Strike Back any time now; Archbishop Rowan “Emperor Palpatine” Williams is no friend of theological conservatives.  Recognition of the new church within the worldwide Anglican Communion will likely be a long struggle in itself, but for now, things are certainly looking up for Americans who still love the Anglican Communion, who still hold to the via media theology, and who yet want to be faithful to the Biblical witness.  God bless Archbishop Duncan and the courageous few churches and dioceses who refused to yield for the sake of “unity at all costs” in the face of creeping compromise.

Read the full article here.

 

SUPER BARRY…!!!

 

Do ya think…?

Ministry Today’s article, Is Our Gospel Becoming Too Social.