Liberalism. Inconceivable! (original post 2/27/09)

Today I attended my first protest rally and it got me thinking. Conservatives—Patriots—have once again become the revolutionaries challenging the ruling class. What were we protesting? In the words of Rush Limbaugh, “The porkulus plan.”
So, I thought, if this is what Conservatives do, what about the other side of the equation? I decided it’s inconceivable!

Liberalism.

Liberalism protests for peace (think about that for even just a minute). Who does it protest against? Those willing to sacrifice everything to defeat tyranny.

Liberalism is "anti-establishment". What does it seek? A governmental nanny state.

Liberalism avows separation of church and state. Where does it turn for aid? To a state that has usurped the gifts of the church.

Liberalism demands tolerance (again, Selah (Hebrew word for, “Pause. And calmly think of that)). When is tolerance applied? Only when people with whom liberalism agrees are speaking.

Liberalism celebrates diversity. What does diversity create? A world where everyone is different making unity impossible.

Peace borrowed from a willful ignorance of an enemy of liberty's actions is false peace and will soon enough demand payment in full with interest. Pretending that a tyrant is not so is like pretending a tiger is a house cat.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." —Gerald R. Ford. The irony of the anti-establishment crowd seeking to create the largest apparatus of establishment in American history is rich...and very, very impoverished indeed.

Taxes are for infrastructure. For things like roads, schools, parks, law enforcement, and a ready defense. Taxes are not for things like medical care, retirement, after school programs, and food. Those gifts are the church's to give precisely because they are impotent in transforming the life of the recipient without the power of receiving such gifts in the name of Jesus Christ. The government has no moral authority to demand accountability, has no hope of better things (save the assurance that one may stay in his or her condition of need indefinitely), and has no community to offer guidance, correction, and love.

Tolerance defined is essentially agreeing to disagree. But, as revisionist
re-definers are wont to do, the word has been re-tooled to mean, "I will tolerate (agree with) all who do not directly challenge (disagree with) me." All challengers are subject to slander, abuse, and final judgment. By the way, "Judge not lest ye be judged"? Seriously? Right back atchya. And, by the way, love is not a synonym for tolerance. Tolerance perceives error and says "ah well, live and let live." Love sees error and says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Real love is ready, willing, and able to do the difficult things. Love never turns a bind eye in favor of comfort, but even so, love “is patient and kind...does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“Love never fails.” Read that description of love in full in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, then read John 3:16-17. Don’t accept mere tolerance, receive grace.

Diversity is akin to tolerance. Recognizing differences is one thing. Recognizing differences and not having prejudice against someone who is different is still another. But focusing solely on a difference and demanding primary allegiance to that difference—a difference that necessarily makes one group exclusive to another—is something else. And that brand of diversity is at the heart of the disunity and us/them culture we find ourselves in. Only in Christ can all of mankind be united. We may be many things individually, but collectively we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Christ is the only solution to the universal need for redemption and grace. Christ alone has the ability to unify us as He is reconciling all believers to Himself.

Liberalism. Supposedly the bastion of total freedom, love, and acceptance. But, in the words of The Princess Bride’s Inigo Montoya, "I do no think that word mean what you think it mean." It’s inconceivable...if you think about it.

Wash, Rinse, Spin, Repeat (original post 10/8/09)

First called a “bailout”, then (presumably because it sounds more heroic) a “rescue”, the 700 Billion spent from the taxpayers’ account today is supposed to save paradise. If that’s the case, one wonders if it’s big enough.




I spent $700 BILLION today. What’s new with you?

As October surprises go, this one surely will go down as the most expensive in history. But, as October surprises go, this one will surely go down as the least surprising.

The stunning lack of
A) response to the warnings of many (Conservative/Republican) voices for at least the past four years;
B) accountability of the many (Democrat) perpetrators that caused the crisis and;
C) media interest in reporting on the leftist leadership and interest groups that were the holes of this boat
is nothing short of, well, TWELVE digits.

The feeling of lament I have for my country at this moment brings to mind the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1:8-10:
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

Closed ears to ample warning? Check. (see Noah/Ark)
Leadership casting blame and condescending any accusers, all the while pocketing ill-got gain? Check. (see Pharisees)
Greedy philistines doing whatever does themselves good without regard to society? Check and check. (see Merriam-Webster definition: “a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values” supported by any number of Biblical Philistine encounters)
So, with a heavy sigh, the agonizingly perennial truth comes to bear again today. “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). I have a feeling we are only beginning to see how deeply and broadly this root has taken hold in America.
Lest we simply move on from here only to pass “Go” and collect $700,000,000,000 again—and just in case someone not already in the choir is reading—make note of this , “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).
It’s a mad, mad world because its destiny is repetition. The good news is, in Christ, we are washed, rinsed and released from the cycles of spin and repeat. “Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:16).

Words mean things. BUT, you complete me.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin…" - Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963

I have heard MLK’s quote many times and each time have been inspired by the ideal of humans not being judged by the color of their skin. However, as I sat in the coffee shop with friends this morning talking politics and looking at our favorite blogs, I read The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell which included portions of Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. As I reread the familiar lines, I noticed something. We’ve been led to believe the thesis of King’s statement is that judgment should cease. But that’s because we’ve been fed an incomplete sentence. Dr. King, as a Christian, as a human, as a thinking man, knew that judgement between right and wrong is a necessity of life. If we can’t judge something, what are we dreaming about? That is to say, how would it be possible to judge and condemn those who refused the full rights of United States citizenship to some Americans if judgment itself were in error?

It seems the dreams of some include a total elimination of judgment. That’s in sync with the idea of tolerance I suppose. But, if you think about it, tolerance is a decision to “put up with” any idea or action of another that you judge to be incorrect or in conflict with your own. Tolerance itself requires being judgmental. A beef I’ve had with tolerance ever since it came into vogue during the Clinton-era’s age of political correctness was that it, usually awkwardly, forces a focus on what makes us different as opposed to what makes us the most remarkable “e pluribus unum” history has ever known.

BUT, I digress. My main thought today is emphasizing King’s completion of his. That day in August, 1963 Dr. King's full statement was, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin BUT by the content of their character." (all caps, mine.) King knew his children would be judged—and I suspect he taught them to make wise judgements as well. He would not, otherwise, so willingly put the “content of their character” on the table.
This is the soaring ideal that King dreamed of realizing for the generations to come. As the writer of this morning’s Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell put it,

“Dr. King did not think that the principle of equality meant that everyone should be treated the same. He sought equality of rights and equality before the law, not equality of outcomes or equality as a result. For Dr. King, justice was when a person is judged ‘by the content of their character’ rather than by arbitrary considerations such as skin color.  Dr. King did not mean that we should treat people of good character and bad character the same. Actual equality is achieved when arbitrary standards are replaced by meaningful criteria such as talent and virtue. A just country, in Dr. King’s vision, is one in which people are rewarded for acting well.”

We celebrate today a man who was brave enough to stand against those who wanted to alter the vision of our Founding Fathers and the First Principles they established. How fitting, then, in today’s climate of bailouts, handouts, and our massive lurch to the left that Dr. King again reminds us, “the content of [a person’s] character” is the thing to rightly judge.

BUT, all I can hope is that these the words of Dr. King will, once again, ring loud and clear today.