Not How Much, But How Soon
As the debt ceiling talks continue one thing is becoming clear: conservatives hold all the cards. When you sort through all the rhetoric and posturing, the core of each side comes down to this. Liberals want more spending, a larger government, and the higher taxes to pay for it, as this allows them to help more people. In short, they see government as the solution. Conservatives want less spending, a smaller government, and lower taxes, with ideally a balanced budget, because this would result in more freedom, and greater prosperity for everyone. In short, they see government as the problem.
While I come down solidly on the greater freedom and more prosperity side, that is not my point here. As for those who high mindedly criticize both sides for not just “putting politics aside and doing what is in the best interests of the country,” I would ask just what would be these hypothetical “best interests”? Just where is the middle ground between those who believe that our problems are because government is too small and is not doing enough, on the one hand, and those who believe that our government is so large that it is stifling economic growth and limiting freedom? Where is the middle ground between government is the solution, and government is the problem? Should we just leave everything where it is? If so how does that apply to the debt ceiling?
While politics certainly is playing a huge role, how could it be any different? Yet politics it is not at the core of the problem. At the core are fundamentally different views of our current problems and thus fundamentally different beliefs as to how best solve them. Thus even if asking politicians to put politics aside was not akin to asking for unicorns to pull your carriage, if they did, it still would not get you very far. The same fundamental divisions would still be there.
So the current situation is that Congresses and Presidents have for decades made far more commitments than the government has revenues. This has been easy for politicians. They get the political benefit of “bringing home the bacon,” while the costs are often pushed off into the future. This is not a new problem, but has in fact been the norm since at least WWII. Before now it was much easier to ignore and get around. The Federal government could raise taxes or close loopholes; inflation and prosperity moved people into higher tax brackets; the cost of promises could be pushed off onto the states; and the government could just borrow money. But the resistance to higher taxes and the size of the debt have both grown, and the states are themselves in trouble. With the current economic problems, and the heretofore unprecedented deficits, things have come to a head over the debt ceiling.
This is why conservatives hold all the cards. Ideally conservatives want a smaller government that lives within it means. If no agreement is reached to raise the debt ceiling these goals will be reached as soon as the debt ceiling is reached. The Federal government will not have the money to spend and so would become smaller overnight, and the budget would by default be balanced.
There are in fact many who argue this is the approach that we should take and polls show that a large majority of people oppose raising the debt ceiling. Still even though this would get them where they want to go very quickly, many conservatives believe that this would be needlessly painful. Therefore they would support raising the debt ceiling as long as it clearly and decisively moved the government towards getting spending under control.
Liberals, on the other hand, since they want a larger government that can do even more, seek an increase in the debt ceiling that will allow them to continue to expand government. Their only bargaining chip is that to fail to do raise the debt ceiling would cause the government to default, which would bring economic disaster. While it is true that if the government defaulted it would have severe economic consequences, it is false that failing to raise the debt ceiling would cause the government to default. It wouldn’t.
Federal revenues are more than sufficient to service our debt. The Government would not be able to meet all of its current obligations, but that is different than not servicing the debt. It just means that the government would have to do what an awful lot of Americans have had to do in recent years: prioritize, and get by with a lot less.
This is perhaps why there is such strong opposition to raising the debt ceiling among the public. Since the economic downturn, the Federal government has been living high on the hog. Washington has been awash in money, which is why the deficit is now ten times larger than just a few years ago. So ultimately the liberal position is a very weak one, and in fact untenable.
Conservatives can simply refuse to raise the debt ceiling, and they get what they want. Or they can negotiate real and significant cuts to reduce the size of government in a more controlled fashion. But either way they win. In fact there is only one way that they can lose.
So far I have referred to conservatives and liberals, not Republicans and Democrats. There is a reason for this. While conservatives want a smaller government, not all Republicans do. Some Republicans are just as happy to make unfunded promises and spend tax dollars as any liberal, though they may hide behind the fig leaf that they create slower growth. This is why often in the past the “cuts” in government were at best only reductions in the rate of increase.
This is also the reason for the anger at the Tea Party, for they are a disruptive force. They will not settle for the traditional phony compromises of the past, compromises that looked good on paper by using accounting gimmicks and by promising huge cuts in future years, cuts that never actually materialized and thus were ultimately meaningless.
As things look now, the Republican leadership is acting like conservatives. Unless they blink, they will either achieve their goals in August, or they will negotiate a more orderly transition to their goals at a later date. So really, they are, or at least should be, negotiating how soon they reach their goal of a smaller government that lives within it means; that is really what is under discussion.
Aliens for President!
Senator Durbin’s statement saying that an illegal alien could be our president is more than just a slip of the tongue, particularly given that he appeared to be reading from prepared remarks. One would think that a senator would at least be familiar with the constitutional requirement that the President be “a natural born Citizen,” especially given all the needless controversy that surrounded the President’s place of birth’s until he finally released his birth certificate.
Durbin’s statement is really just another indication that for him, like so many on the left, the Constitution is just not all that important. Oh, they will pay lip-service to it when the occasion requires it, but it is really not all that important. They are akin to the Sunday Christian, the one who normally shows up on Sunday, but never actually reads the Bible, and thus it has very little impact on what they think, say and do.
In fact for many on the left, the Constitution is more of a bother than anything else, something that just gets in the way of the important work they are doing. Case in point: The Obamacare requirement to purchase health insurance. Now under the commerce clause the federal government can regulate interstate commerce. But how can not buying health insurance be considered an act of interstate commerce? This is especially true when you consider that one cannot purchase health insurance from other states to begin with. Thus it really was no surprise when a court ruled this law unconstitutional. It was also not a big surprise when the administration basically ignored their ruling and waited until they could get some judges with a more flexible view of the constitution.
In fact the Constitution has been one of the biggest barriers to the left, going back to FDR, who tried to pack the court to avoid its limitations. He failed in packing the court, but eventually got the court, and thus the ruling, he wanted. The left has followed his blueprint ever since. When faced with a clause that they don’t like, they just reinterpret it to conform to their desires.
Take the Bill of Rights, for example. The left’s effort to change the meanings of these amendments has been so successful that many now think that the first amendment actually says separation of church and state. Free speech, put in place to protect political speech has been so turned on its head that political speech is now the most regulated. The second amendment which specifically mentions “the right of the people” is seen as referring to the right of state governments. The fourth and fifth and sixth amendments has been extended to enemy combatants, while the fifth amendment protection of private property have been weakened such that the government does not really need to take your property, they can just control what you do as if it were theirs. As for the tenth amendment, that, of course, is meaningless. Then of course there are the new “rights” that have been found lurking around in the emanation of various penumbras.
In short, the Bill of Rights does not mean what it says, it only means what the liberals tell us it means, and any attempt to restore it back to its original meaning is loudly decried as “Trying to change the Bill of Rights for the first time in our history.”
Thus Durbin’s statement is really not all that surprising. After all, why should he see the Constitution as a hindrance? This also goes a long way towards explaining why so many on the left fear the Tea-Party movement. These people not only read the constitution, they actually want to follow it! Can you get more unreasonable than that?
The 72%-90%
I have been reading a new book that I find both challenging and exciting. No, it is not the latest spy thriller, and in fact is not even a novel. It is non-fiction and on a subject matter that has been dealt with many times in the past. Yet it does so by challenging cultural norms that most have simply taken for granted, and probably have not even thought much about. What is exciting is the potential it has to impact the church and thereby the world at large, which is huge.
The book is Rite of Passage for the Home and Church: Raising Christ-Centered Young Adults, by D. Kevin Brown (Energion Publications, 2011), and from its title one might question my claims of a huge impact. A huge impact can only come in the face of a huge problem. A book on study habits for those who are B+ or A- students only has a limited room for improvement. A book aimed at failing students that can transform them into A students would be huge, not only for their grades, but on what that would mean for their lives as well.
The problem addressed in Rite of Passage is larger than just grades. To put it bluntly, the church in America, as a whole, is failing its young people. This is a tough message and one that meets with tremendous resistance. I know because I have been talking in my speaking and teaching for nearly twenty years and have met with everything from skepticism and denial to, in few cases, hostility. People point to their youth programs and how many children are being reached, and how many accepted the Lord at their last vacation Bible school as evidence that I am wrong.
Yet the statistics I have been following for quite some time, and which Brown points to in his book tell a different story. As Brown points out, while attendance at youth programs may be strong, numerous studies reveal a problem. “These studies … show that between 70%-92% of ‘Christian’ teens were dropping out of church and abandoning their faith, most by their 20th birthday.” (pg. 12)
What is really exciting is that Brown solution is both revolutionary, and yet not. It is revolutionary because it runs so counter to our cultural norms. In fact, many will find it just too radical and different. On the other hand, it is not revolutionary in that Brown is really doing nothing more than returning to scripture, and asking the question “What do the scriptures say about adolescents?” (pg. 21)
Considering all the books that discuss the scriptural approach to raising teens, the surprising answer is that the Bible is completely silent on the topic. The Biblical perspective is that you have two groups, children and adults, “with no stopovers at a place called ‘adolescence.’” (pg. 22)
Thus Brown argues for a revolutionary course of action, but one that should be music to every believer’s ears: That we treat our teenagers following the biblical pattern. Most of the book is aimed at defending this view and then laying out its implications which are many. This is revolutionary when compared to the culture at large, a culture that allows young adults to drift through their teen years with few expectations and no clear line of adulthood. The current view is neither biblical, nor even very old, only a 100 years or so. As you read through Brown’s book, the individual parts are not really very new or very revolutionary, except that they are rarely pulled together and applied to, or expected of, teens.
Another thing that is clear is that Brown is not proposing yet another youth program. In fact if applied in that fashion, it would probably fail. What Brown is proposing is a vast and long term change in perspective. Given the reluctance to even face the problem, Brown will certainly face opposition from some. That is just not the way we do it. That just will not work with today’s teens. The reasons will be many, but the conclusion will be the same. It just will not work.
To those who are concerned with the current 70%-92% loss among 18-20 year olds, Brown’s book will at a minimum be a welcome point of view and a must read. To those who are skeptical I would make the same challenge that I do in all my teaching on the Bible. You don’t have to believe me, or in this case Brown. Look at that biblical evidence he puts forth. Pray about the examples he cites. Look at how teens are treated in the Bible and what is expected of them. And reach your own conclusions as to what does the Bible say. Ask yourself, if your church’s youth program is patterned after the culture, or if it is patterned after the Bible?
In the end, agree or not with Brown, this is a book that should be read by anyone concerned with the church, and in particular with those in the teen years.
Note: Energion Publications is also the publisher of my books.
Fear vs. Reality
There is no question that the country is in a mess. The first rule of holes states that when you are in one stop digging, but this is a lesson that many on the left, particular the more radical environmentalists, have failed to learn. Granted, radical environmentalists did not get us into this current mess. That was other leftist polices, most notably the forcing of banks, through laws such as the Community Redevelopment Act, regulations from numerous government agencies, and demands from quasi-government organizations such as Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, to lower loan standards and to give loans to those that in the past would not have qualified.
While radical environmentalists did not cause our current problems, their pedal to the metal approach or increasing regulation is certainly contributing to keeping us in the hole. This can be seen in Mondays (June 13, 2011) Wall Street Journal in three separate editorials. The first, “The EPA’s War on Jobs”, deals with the EPA’s campaign against coal-fired power. As the Journal points out, “according to the EPA’s own numbers, every dollar in direct benefits costs $1,847.” This seems more aimed at shutting down “fossil fuel electric power in the name of climate change.” It has been predicted that this and other EPA actions will force the closure of 60 power plants, costing tens of thousands of jobs, in addition to the higher energy costs resulting from the loss of supply.
Another editorial, “America Needs the Shale Revolution”, mentions the EPA attempt to limit or ban the process of hydraulic fracturing, which, while new to many people, “has been used more than 1 million times in the last 60 years.” If it is successful, it would kill the shale oil drilling boom that is now underway. Shale oil production has grown so rapidly that, despite the Obama Administration’s permitorium in the gulf, domestic oil production is still at its highest level since 2003. The EPA’s action again puts fear over reality, threatens tens of thousands of jobs, and s even higher energy costs.
While jobs are key, the higher energy costs should not just be ignored, or even accepted, for they also affect jobs and our quality of life. As for jobs, lower energy costs translates into lower costs of production. This makes it much easier for companies to grow and thus hire. On the other side of the spectrum lower energy costs translate into not only reduced costs of production, but reduced cost of transportation and reduced cost for the stores; in short everything costs less. Not only that, but with the reduced costs of gas for your car, natural gas to heat your home, and electricity, you have more money to spend on all those cheaper goods. If the EPA gets its way, you can simply reverse all this. Higher costs, less jobs.
The current environmental premium we pay for energy is both huge and mostly unnecessary. With sensible environmental policies we could cut our energy costs in half, if not more, with no noticeable impact on the environment, but a massive impact on our quality of life for the better. “The average household spent more than $5,100 on all energy costs in 2007 (includes home energy bills and gasoline).” How would your life be affected if you had an extra $100 per week?
The third article, “Europe’s Organic Food Scare”, dealt with food instead of energy, and thus might at first seem unrelated. The current outbreak has killed at least 35 people, and predictably has resulted in calls for even more government regulation. How this ties in with the other two editorials is in the fact that this outbreak, and most of the others in recent memory, could have been easily prevented by a safe and simple process that would kill 99.999% of the harmful bacteria. Simply irradiating food, with low levels of radiation kills the bacteria without harming the food. Despite numerous studies showing its safety, and the fact that 10% of the world’s food supply is irradiated with no harmful effects, radical environmentalists have spread so much fear that more widespread use has been effectively blocked.
This is the theme that ties these three articles together, fear of what might be, as opposed to reality of what is. Fear of possible harmful effects of a warming climate, are used to justify the EPA inflicting very real harmful effects today. Fear of possible problems with hydraulic fracturing override the 60 years/one millions use experience that we have, in the drive to shut it down. Fear of what might happen with irradiated food overrides numerous studies to the contrary and 50+ years of actual use.
In each of these cases there is the fear, questionable and often little more than speculation, and then there is reality, experience, and often solid evidence that the fears are groundless. But often it is the fear that wins out, for fear is not only an emotion, but a base emotion that is largely immune to reason and evidence.
But the fear also has its consequences. 35 people in Europe are dead, along with countless others in previous outbreaks. Tens of thousands of people are out of work, and millions of others have a lower quality of life because of the EPA, and the problems mentioned in the editorials above hardly even scratch the surface of the harmful effects of hyper-active government regulation. A big reason we are losing jobs overseas is not because of lower wages in other countries, but higher regulation here.
Still fear will often win out over reason. DDT is another of the fear vs. reality issues, and a particularly nasty one. Decades ago, because of the fear that it might be weakening the shells of birds (turns out it didn’t) and fear of possible harmful effects on people (it has since been shown to be harmless), DDT was banned in many places. We now know that, not only is it harmless for people, it is harmless to most animals, including birds, though a few amphibians have shown a higher rate of birth defects. Opponents of the ban pointed at the time to the evidence that DDT was safe. They pointed to the fact that because of its use diseases like malaria had been virtually wiped out in many places, and warned of the consequences of a ban. 40 years later we can look back and see who was correct. Malaria and other insect borne diseases returned. Diseases like West-Nile Virus have even spread to the United States. In the face of the fear of possible side effects, the reality that continues to be ignored is that over 40 million people have died, most of them children, as a result of the ban and another 1-2 million die each year.
I once had a discussion on DDT, with a liberal friend of mine. We went over all these facts and more. But in the end it did not matter. For her, there was always the fear that DDT, despite all the evidence to the contrary, might have some side effect that we do not know about, and the results of that unknown side effect might be even worse. Fear over reality – that is the problem we face.
Immune to Evidence
Recently I finished teaching a study of the Gospel of John. This class took two year (with summers off) so we spent considerable time in John. The class elected to study the letters of John next and so in preparation I have once again been reviewing the preliminary question of authorship, which for the letters is strongly intertwined with the Gospel.
Usually I deal with such questions at the start of a study, but coming back to them having just finished the Gospel really drove home how utterly basis were the claims that the apostle John was not the author. The problems here are an example of what is wrong with so much of academia.
Without going into too much detail, there are several things one can look at when trying to determine authorship. One is external evidence, which in the case of the Gospel of John is very clear and strong, linking back to those who personally knew and worked with the apostle. Then there are several types of internal evidence. The first is what the Gospel claims for itself. The Gospel of John says it was written by “disciple whom Jesus kept loving” (John 21:20-24 ISV) and when the statements about this disciple are examined, it turns out to be John.
From all of this it would seem pretty clear that the apostle John was the author. And yet many, if not most, scholars not only reject the authorship of John, but claim instead John was the work of many authors. Now if there were some clear changes in style or language, another type of internal evidence, which pointed to multiple authors, then one could understand such claims. But as D.A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris point out in their “An Introduction to the New Testament”,
The stylistic unity of the book has been demonstrated again and again as concrete evidence against this or that source theory. Even the prologue (1:1-18) and the epilogue (chap 21) exhibit a style remarkably attuned to the rest of the book. (p 152)
Again, having just completed an in depth study of the Gospel, and having just recently looked in detail at all the evidence for chapter 21, it drove home how true this statement is. So why then, given the solid external evidence, the claims of the book itself, and the internal consistency, is the authorship of the apostle John even an open question, but less rejected?
The answer seems to be that before a lot of this evidence was established, scholarly opinion dated this, and the other gospels, well into the second century, some dating it as late as 170, well beyond the lifetime of the apostles. If the apostle did not write it, then someone else did, and this someone must have gotten the material they wrote from somewhere. As a result, scholars spent considerable time trying to determine the sources of the Gospels and multiple sources have frequently been seen as multiple authors. A real problem, however, is that unlike the other evidence, attempts of find sources is much more problematic, subjective, and thus error prone.
As a result, elaborate speculations were developed about a Johannine tradition, community or possibly even a school, which was responsible for the creation of the Gospel of John and the letters. Over time these speculations became theories, which with succeeding generations of scholars came to be seen as established fact, based more on the reputation of the earlier scholars, than any actual evidence. Under close examination they remained little more than speculations, with very little if any actual evidence to support them. The earlier speculations then came to be the foundation for even further speculations by succeeding scholars, until a large and elaborate framework of speculation was developed.
Since then, however, the late dating of the Gospels has run into serious problems, not the least of which have been that a fragment of the Gospel of John have been discovered that dates from around 125, well before the speculations about it authorship had claimed it was even written.
And yet, even though the evidence now show the Gospel was written within the lifetime of the apostle John, many scholars continue to reject his authorship, preferring instead the theories/speculations that it was written by Johannine community. In short, they reject the actual objective evidence that points to the apostle John, and instead support what are really little more than speculations that depend mainly on scholarly inertia and group think.
This problem is not limited to Biblical Scholarship. With the possible exception of the hard sciences, which have the ability/burden to actually objectively test their theories, it is found throughout academia. Once the bastion of the exploration of new ideas grounded in reason and evidence, academia have become increasingly unified and closed mined, wedded to scholarly speculations and immune to the evidence.
As in, biblical scholarship, students in the various disciplines are discouraged from thinking critically about the prevailing views of the disciplines, but instead to accept them, in some cases as dogmatically as any medieval doctrine. Slowly, any existing critical thinking and common sense are drummed out of the student, replaced instead by the new gospel of truth, the study.
There is nothing inherently wrong with studies, and the point here is not to attack them per se. But like everything else, they have their strengths and their weaknesses. Yet, I have actually heard professors claim that they will not believe anything unless there is a study to support it. This is an absurd claim, but the very fact that a supposedly learned person could make such a statement, and make it proudly, shows one of the problems with academia. Pointing to studies is a way to avoid actually thinking. If the study says X, then you don’t have to think about X any longer, you can just accept the study.
One only has to consider the problems of conflicting studies, to realize the problems with such a claim. But the problems are much deeper. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there were no studies that show men and women were different. The common sense view that they were different was rejected as being based on common sense. So men and women were declared the same.
As a result of advances in our knowledge of biochemistry and how the brain works, we now know for a fact that men and women are not only different, but significantly different in the way they think and react. But as with the evidence for the authorship of John, this is largely ignored and the view that men and women are the same continues to shape much of society even today in everything from how we dress, to how the sexes interact, to how we raise our children, to marriage, and same-sex marriage.
Some might ask: So what? Where is the harm? When pressed, such questions usually are little more than a demand for evidence from yet another study. But, it is also a further problem with the group think-study based view of academia. Most studies are so narrow that they only seek to answer the question the scholar asks. If your knowledge is based on studies, then your knowledge will be limited to what is researched. Thus if they don’t look for the problems, the studies will not find them. The group-think that controls so much of scholarship passively, and sometimes even actively, limits what will be researched. Even when studies are done, that show problems, the group think mentality tend to relegate them to obscurity.
In short we live in a world increasingly under the sway of an academia that through the schools and in government are reshaping society to fit theories that are increasingly cut off from reality. This is a prescription for disaster.
