November Notes
NQN Wrap-up:
Thanks for a lovely November, you scallywag, you.
Now, can we please be blessed by the following:
NQD
NQJ
NQF
NQM
NQA
NQM
NQJ
NQJ
NQA
NQS, and
NQO?
Much thanks!Malachi
Malachi, not after you called me a scallywag.
Impeaches & Cream
Re: Impeaches & Cream: if there was any capacity for self-awareness among our so-called “betters,” there would be no plague of Trump Derangement Syndrome spreading, ebola-like, far and wide; instead we have a stuffed clown-car of self-righteous, blind and deaf ideologues driving in circles trying to find the reverse gear before the car heads off the cliff.
Sharon
Sharon, or something like that.
This short video ties in well with your Impeaches and Cream blog post.
Linda
Linda, thanks for spreading the love.
“…the corrupt book publishing industry…”
Thank you, sir. You have made my day.
Art
Art, yeah, it’s pretty bad.
This is one of the most unintentionally ironic pieces I have read in a long time.
First, Trump does not, and has never had, the support of the American people. His polling numbers have seldom if ever hit 50%. What he has is a collection of anti-democratic institutions, such as the electoral college, that render public opinion irrelevant. He may even get re-elected, because thanks to the electoral college, he doesn’t have to care if he has public support. So, if you want to crow about how the rules allow conservatives to wield power while losing popular elections, feel free, but don’t mistake that for Trump having public support.
Second, whatever faults the Democrats and the media may have are irrelevant to whether Trump committed an impeachable offense. He did. Calling up the leader of a foreign government and using foreign aid for political advantage (and anyone not blind, deaf and stupid knows that that’s what happened) is an impeachable offense. Nixon was run out of office on far less provocation.
Third, given our political realities, in which gerrymandered House seats and two senators per state regardless of population, plus the electoral college, the Democrats may well suffer politically for doing their duty, but make no mistake: They are doing their duty, in the face of political disadvantage for doing so. Funny, I would have thought that was laudable.
Mike
Mike, things like the electoral college and two senators from every state were designed to keep a bridle on democracy. There was a democratic element in the Founding (e.g. the House), but the Founders crafted a republic, not a democracy. And that is what we need to preserve. Secondly, Nixon would not have needed to resign under the threat of impeachment if his economy had been doing what the economy is doing right now.
RE: Impeaches and Cream
Usually your posts either nail exactly how I feel about an issue or change my mind by pointing out things from a perspective I don’t usually get from my typical media bubble. Unfortunately I keep scratching my head when I read your takes on the politics of Donald Trump.
It seems like your main point is that the Democrats, MSM, Establishment types are all a bunch of big hypocrites so their accusations against Trump aren’t trusted by average joe’s with common sense and balanced family budgets. But can’t the Dems and MSM be hypocrites AND be right about Trump? I mean even if you put aside the contested stuff (Election hacks, Mueller, Ukraine), what about the uncontested stuff? He IS running multiple for profit businesses while in the White House. He DID appoint unqualified family members to positions of power. He HAS been more secretive about his finances than other POTUSs. And multiple court cases HAVE revealed some pretty evil business practices (fake charities, con artist “universities”, soft core porn pageants etc).
The New York Times might be a rag, but isn’t it weird to get mad at them for reporting things that are news. It’s worth pointing out what they didn’t report 5 years ago, but that doesn’t sound like much of an argument to me.
Sincerely,
A Never Trumper
ANT, the issue is not who is more tawdry, or slimy. The issue is who is more of a threat to our way of life. You fight off the bear attack before turning your attention to the yippy dog. I believe that many Christians who voted for Trump would agree with your assessment of his personal character. And though I didn’t vote for him, I certainly would. The issue is whether you would agree with their assessment of how big a threat the deep state is
The Climate Again
Re. “Our Lumpen Intelligentsia”, you speak of
“. . . establishing a statist tyranny because we suddenly got afraid of the weather…”
This is far from any plausible consequence of climate-change mitigation policies. Is the idea here that our opponents are so evil that any smear is justified because it will stir up more anger against them, and they must be stopped by any means possible, truthful or not, because we know that they are so evil because of all the (surely truthful) reasons that we repeat in our circles?
There is no bottom to this spiral. Please opt out.
Anony
Anony, “mitigation policies” are not things that float through the atmosphere, removing carbon. They are taxes, policies and regulations that throttle business.
Asking for a Friend
This isn’t directly related to any particular post, but it was influenced or inspired by a question asked of you regarding divorce. What if one of your Lead Pastors commits adultery with the wife of the Music Pastor. The Lead Pastor is removed from his office and placed on church discipline. The adultery doesn’t require the offended party (his wife) to divorce her husband, it just permits it, correct? Does the adultery require the church to excommunicate the ex-lead pastor, or does the ex-communication only occur if reconciliation, healing, and whatever else needs to occur in the life of the offending ex-pastor, but none of that occurs? Also, in the same scenario, there are two offending parties. The pastor and the wife of the Music Pastor. But the wife of the Music Pastor does not get placed on church discipline, even though she’s equally guilty of adultery as the Lead Pastor (now ex-Lead Pastor). And the Music Pastor and his wife opt for counseling outside the local church where the offense took place. And all of the parties remove themselves and their families from Membership in that local church. How does a parishioner in the pews of that local church and who serves as an usher in that local church “respond,” for lack of a better word, to a situation like this? Thank you.
Trey
Trey, church discipline should only be applied to the stubborn and unrepentant. Those holding office in the church should be removed from office because their personal lives (or households) are not in order. The church should provide pastoral counsel for them, and only agree to transfer them to another church if that church is willing to pick up the responsibility for their pastoral care
Firedrake Fan
Thank you for your blog and your ministry, and especially today for Andrew and the Fire Drake. My seven year old got hooked, read the whole thing in two days and loved it.
Nathan
Nathan, give my greetings to your son, and thank him for me.
Rules
I recently finished the audio book of “Rules for Reformers.” Well done. Your statement about the POINT being to draw some fire was a slap-your-forehead moment for me (Duh! I’ve been focusing on the shovel too long.)
Craig
Craig, thanks much.
I Just Kant
I was wondering if you could explain the issues with Kant’s Moral Philosophy. I got into a discussion about morality with an atheist friend and he brought up Kant and the whole “using reason to decide how we ought to act.” I also heard Ben Shapiro say that it is the closest anyone has ever been able to get to objective moral law with out appealing to God. I’m not even sure I fully understand Kant’s argument, or at least I don’t have it all straightened out in my head, but I think that it would be helpful to hear an explanation as to why reason/categorical imperatives can’t get us past subjective morality. I hope you understand what I am trying to ask. Thanks.
William
William, the issue is authority. Act in such a manner as that you would be willing for your behavior to become a universal law. Why? Who says? What will happen if I don’t? Who died and left the categorical imperative king? To say that this gets “closest” might be technically true, but it is comparable to a world-class swimmer in a contest with a terrible swimmer, where they are told to swim from Malibu to Hawaii. Great — the world class swimmer drowns a few miles out instead of 100 yards out.
A Race Question
I’ve finished your book ‘Black and Tan.’ You are quite precise as a wordsmith. so I am surprised you use the race to describe different people groups; black race, white race, etc. There is only one race, the human race, all being made after the image and likeness of God.
Knowing that you must have thought about this I’d like to hear your comments.
Jeff
Jeff, I take your point and agree with it. When I wrote that, I was just using the terms as they were in common use. I now believe that we should try to be more precise.
Godawa Question
General Question: Have you read, and do you have an opinion on, Brian Godawa? Chronicles of the Nephilim, etc. Is he a crackpot, or worth reading? Or somewhere in between? Thank you,
ks
ks, I have not read any of his fiction, but I have read some of his other stuff. I don’t know of any reason to dismiss him as a crank. What I read was good and solid.
A Question on Prayer
Should we pray for events that have already happened?
Two points from CS Lewis as a basis:
God is not in time, and a prayer once prayed by us is a prayer always heard by him (Letters to Malcolm)
Nonsense doesn’t cease to be nonsense because it is preceded by “But God.” i.e. you can attribute miracles to him, but not nonsense (Problem of Pain)
Since God is not in time, Lewis goes on to say that every answer to prayer is rooted in the foundation of the world. Which implies a linear timeline (for man) even though prayers are supernaturally answered (by God) since the beginning of time.
However, the miracles Jesus performs show that prayers can be answered in a non-linear concept on time. For example, at the wedding in Cana, the water was not wine from the foundation of the world. When Jesus lifted up to the Father for the water to be transformed, it became something different, not a progression of answered prayer as we might say “from the foundations of the world.”
I think the same could be said for the healing of the blind man in John 9. On one hand, this man’s prayer (if he prayed in his life) to have sight would be a prayer to reconcile the past, as losing your sight is a one way street. In a sense, to undo something. On the other hand, Jesus’ prayer that he would be healed could be considered from the foundation of the world because all creation lead to this moment, so the glory of God may be revealed.
As a hypothetical, if a Christian man were at an airport waiting for his family to land on flight 121:
A. The man is sitting in the waiting area and an announcement comes on saying “There has been an accident with flight 121 and emergency crews are responding.” It would be natural (and encouraged) for that man to pray for the safety and survival of his family with full and absolute conviction as a Christian should.
B. The man is staring out the window of the airport waiting for his family to land on flight 121, and he seeing it plow directly into the ground, straight down, reducing everything and everyone to dust. He then hears the announcement “There has been an accident with flight 121 and emergency crews are responding.” I don’t believe it would be anyone’s first response to pray for the safety and survival of their family in the face of complete desolation. That would be, in a word, nonsense. He may pray for something else, but not safety and survival.
My understanding stopped many sentences ago, but this is where I really have no idea.
Is it right and proper to pray with conviction in situation A for one thing, but not in B, because of man’s knowledge of something in the past?
Would it not be high arrogance on my part to think that my knowledge can hamstring God’s omnipotence?
If it was nonsense to pray for impossible things, why does the Bible tell us to do it so often? Luke 1:37, Matthew 19:26, Matthew 17:20, etc.
So, should we pray for things that have already happened in the past?
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Kindest Regards,
Harry
Harry, my approach to such things may be simplistic, but I believe it is psychologically impossible for a sober Christian to pray that God would undo the past. But I believe that before we know for sure what that past contains, it is more than natural, it is right and proper, to pray about it. In your scenario, the man might pray, for example, that his family will have missed the flight. Now they either did or didn’t, and they are either already dead or they are not, but until he knows, he can pray. He should pray.
Mike, next time, try not to fall asleep during Civics class.
Mike is also forgetting that Nixon was not “booted out of office.” He was impeached, but he resigned before the Senate had an opportunity to remove him. Furthermore, Nixon was impeached for wire-tapping his political opponents. Now Trump is the TARGET of wire-tapping…so all I can see here is weird irony in Mike’s appeal to Nixon. It is also clear that Mike does not understand our country, that it is a Federal Republic, and that the Electoral College is a product by which the STATES, not the people, vote for the President. All we do is cast votes in our… Read more »
Nixon was not impeached for wiretapping his opppenents, he was impeached for obstructing justice. The Nixon tapes, which recorded him and his advisors, mattered as proof of this.
I don’t think there has been any proof of wiretapping of Trump. One of campaign officials were put under FISA surveillance, which seems to have been totally legal (whether the laws that make it legal is good laws is a different matter).
“All we do is cast votes in our own State to tell our State electors how to vote.”
Which is really not different than the people voting for the President…unless the electors may and do elect to ignore how the people told them to vote.
The thing about the electoral college is that it really is not a simple system, it wasn’t intended to be, and yet it does not work the way it was supposed to. Not only did the Founders not intend a pure democracy, they did not expect the degree of democracy we actually have.
Mike seems horrified about the fact that Trump may get re-elected. I guess he and “Never Trumper” (who’s list of lies and inaccuracies is too long to list) would rather have a socialist who cheers his two favorite national sacraments (abortion and sodomy) at every opportunity.
Maybe this will make Mike happy. The actual video is very disturbing:
https://nationalistreview.net/2019/12/12/video-school-kid-hospitalized-after-being-assaulted-on-a-bus-for-wearing-a-trump-hat/
Related to the question of how big a threat the deep state is, I am skeptical about how much Trump is affecting them.
This. I think this may be yet another case of people imputing to Trump what they’d like to see happen, and because he’s a contrarian, believing that it’s actually happening. Just because you’re loud about things opposed to the deep state, doesn’t actually mean you’re doing much about it.
I’m skeptical on both counts, and Jane’s point below applies to more than just the question of the deep state.
“Is the idea here that our opponents are so evil that any smear is justified because it will stir up more anger against them, and they must be stopped by any means possible, truthful or not, because we know that they are so evil because of all the (surely truthful) reasons that we repeat in our circles?”
This has always been and will always be the idea. The only reason to read this website is entertainment; you must go elsewhere for serious engagement with arguments about things like climate change.
” you must go elsewhere for serious engagement with arguments about things like climate change.” Is Mattsechochamber.com up and running yet?
Jeff and Doug,
Are you going to tell a black person that he’s wrong to have warm feelings of solidarity toward other blacks, especially in light of all they’ve suffered, because “there’s only one race the human race”?
Answering for myself, not Jeff and Doug, he wouldn’t be wrong to have those feelings. But he would be wrong not to have those feelings to the same degree for people of other races who have also suffered, and most especially fellow Christians, with whom the commonality is far deeper than genetics or experience. The problem with thinking racially is not who you feel positively about, it’s who you feel entitled not to feel positively about.
Jane, you said, “…people of other races who have also suffered…” So you acknowledge race is real. You must also acknowledge, in order to be consistent, that I as a white man am not morally wrong for having warm feelings toward my own race, at least in regards to how we’ve suffered. Let’s take it a step further and take out the suffering element. What if a black person said, “I feel solidarity toward other blacks, I feel more ‘at home’ and more understood around fellow blacks, and I would prefer, all other things being equal, to carry on my… Read more »
Probably nothing, up to the point that he thinks it entitles him to do anything that does not entail considering his non-black brothers better than himself, or meddle in aspects of their business where he has no place, or use the power of the state to restrict their activities or place obligations upon them, in order to maintain that comfort level.
Right. Thus, “thinking racially” does not necessarily entail thinking negatively about or inflicting harm upon other groups. The problem with “there’s only one race the human race” is that, far from acknowledging and respecting the natural tendency to feel positively about one’s own group, it morally impugns and pathologizes it. It disrespects the unique aspects of all people groups and attempts to subjugate them to the modern religion of colorblind liberalism. A true love of diversity means acknowledging that our differences are real and should be considered in how we interact with one other, not pretending they don’t exist, thus… Read more »
You give physical skin characteristics far to much weight. It is natural, all being equal, is to prefer people like yourself. But that would mean that white Americans should prefer black Americans above, for example, the French. It also works in a lot of ways that doesn’t have to do with ethnicity. I would, all being equal, prefer to live with people of any race that likes Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” to living with people of any race that hates it.
The problem with your approach, Armin, is that it sounds all well and good to say that it’s morally neutral to “prefer” people with certain overlapping genetic characteristics to people who lack those characteristics, right up until the preference affects how you treat people who don’t share the characteristics. Unless you live on an isolated island, sooner or later your “preference” is going to be tested against your duty to love your non-shared characteristics neighbor as yourself. And then, the preference loses, unless you rebel against God’s word. In which case, it’s merely a theoretical construct, and worse than useless… Read more »
Jane, I see whites as my extended family. Is it wrong to have preference for your own family? If my brother were applying for a job and I knew someone else (not my family) who would be better for it, would it be wrong to hope my brother got the job anyway? It’s not “oppressive” to prefer my own people, whether that be my family or my race (extended family), over someone else, particularly if the other party is hostile to my own (for example, did you know that 74% of blacks support reparations?). If the other guy gets offered… Read more »
Again, hoping for this over that in your head is all well and good. When you start petitioning employers, business owners, real estate agents, etc. to regard every person with shared characteristics as a better candidate/client than every person who lacks those shared characteristics, you are requesting uncharitable acts on an indefensible basis. The only sin I’m bringing into the picture is a failure to obey the commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself — though that is a major one. Any action that brings harm upon another person that you wouldn’t want brought upon yourself in the same circumstance,… Read more »
So if I believe for a fact that diversity is harmful and therefore try and prevent others from experiencing it (because of course I wouldn’t want to experience it myself), am I not loving my neighbor as myself?
You are also responsible to seek truth. It is a greater sin to act against that which you believe than to act on it, but it could still be a sin to act on it if the belief is in error.
Diversity is not harmful. Sinful humans create harm in every situation they touch. There would be no harm whatsoever in diversity if every man loved every other man as himself, and loved God above all.
You’re simply wrong that diversity is not harmful. I can go into statistics if you want, but suffice it to say that diversity (racial, cultural, religious, linguistic, etc.) leads to lower social trust, lower group cohesion, and a decline in general happiness and quality of life. It’s a cop out to say that this or that situation would be fine if it weren’t for sin. That’s obviously true, but the fact is that we live in a world of sin, and that must always be taken into account when deciding how we’re going to manage society and people (isn’t one… Read more »
“…I would prefer, all other things being equal…”
Is this person elevating their preference above God’s command to make deciples of all nations or above felowship with other christians? Making all other things equal is a huge hypothetical qualifier, there either is or isn’t something wrong with that statement but it doesn’t contain enough information to say which.