Details are just beginning to emerge about some American atrocities in Afghanistan. Some of the individuals accused are already on trial, which is at it should be. The presenting problem for the politicos and spin doctors in this situation appears to be the fact that there are allegedly supposed to be a multitude of photographs …
Like Pirates on the Beach
I received a question from a reader who agreed with my general thinking about government robberies, but wondered if I believed that any taxation whatever amounted to theft. And if I thought that some taxation was, and some was not, then how to tell the difference? Is it simply done on the basis of what …
Fountain Pens and Signing Ceremonies
The basic question in politics is this: what is our warrant for making people do things? George Washington once noted that government rests upon force. In the last analysis, however you want to describe it, government makes some people do what they don’t want to do. The point of traction in government is therefore coercion. …
My Kayak of Consistency
There are two basic streams of conservatism, and I have the misfortunate to belong to both of them. This means that as I am going down this particular river, whenever I get to the rapids, my kayak of consistency gets bounced around a bit. It can be done, but it requires some fancy paddle work, …
With the File Cabinets Still In Them
One of the biggest problems that conservatives have is that of sharing the liberal view of history. They both believe the same thing is inevitable, but one is for it and the other is against it. This makes the conservative (the one against) the one who is always tagging along behind, trying to keep up …
Like Taking a Jackhammer to a Souffle
So when I speak of secularism cratering, I am referring to official, state-sponsored agnosticism cratering. I am not referring to any coming obliteration of the necessary distinctions between the church and the world, between the Church of Christ and the Kingdom of God. So let us begin there. The Church should think of the entire …
Pumping Their Own Gas and Stuff
There are two kinds of secularism. Well, at least two — or at least two that I am willing to talk about this morning. We are more accustomed to one of these, the one that refers to the functional godlessness of our public affairs. The secular state for us is that which has enshrined agnosticism …
The Queen of Sheba and Disheartened Anabaptists
First, before we can do business, we have to set aside a number of popular assumptions garnered from various hymns, sermons, and Far Side cartoons. The New Jerusalem is not a figure of Heaven, the final eternal state, but is rather a glorious image of the Christian Church. This is explicit in a number of …
When God Settles Our Hash
There are many reasons for my behavior on this theme of mere Christedom, but one of them is that the concept provides the only real antidote to American exceptionalism on the one hand and radical Islam on the other. When it comes to American exceptionalism, a couple recent examples are here and here. We are …
Some Turtles Have to Fly With the Shell
One of the foundation stones of a mere Christendom has to be a root and branch rejection of Darwinism. The reason for this is not hard to ascertain — Darwinism is one of the chief cornerstones of the secular state. We are acquainted with the standard liberal metaphor of the Constitution as a “living document,” …