Plain Thinking

…a little plain thinking would teach them how harsh and fanciful are the mass of their own ethics…

Heretics, Gilbert K. Chesterton (eBook)

Harsh and fanciful.  A nice description of the “ethics” we are having shoved down our throats.  Nothing of love, nothing of understanding the human condition, nothing or man’s right – true rights of life and property.

…how very civilized and very complicated must be the brain of the Tolstoyan who really believes it to be evil to love one's country and wicked to strike a blow.

To love one’s country.  An interesting phrase.  To understand the phrase, one must understand what is meant by “love” and what is meant by “country.”

Love.  Love is doing; it is action.  Also, we all know 1 Corinthians 13, read at many weddings.  It offers the feel-good part of love.  Just one verse, to not make too long a cite:

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

The entire tone is like this.  It is really…lovely.  Aspirational.  An ideal at which to aim.  But love is so much more:

Proverbs 3: 11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, 12 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.

Hebrews 12 cites these verses from Proverbs, then continues:

7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.

If you are not disciplined, you are not loved.  Love entails disciplining, rebuking.  Love holds to account.  To love one’s country is not “my country, right or wrong.”  There is no disciplining here, no rebuke.

What of country?

A country is a political state, nation, or controlled territory. It is often referred to as the land of an individual's birth, residence, or citizenship. 

A country may be an independent sovereign state or part of a larger state….

The word originates from the French:

mid-13c., "(one's) native land;" c. 1300, "any geographic area," sometimes with implications of political organization, from Old French contree, cuntrede "region, district, country,"

While today it is generally assumed to be synonymous with a political entity (a state), this has not always been true – and is not even true today.  Examples today include:

The Kingdom of the Netherlands includes four separate countries: Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten.

The United Kingdom includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Crown Dependencies, which are not part of the UK itself, are also sometimes referred to as countries.

The Kingdom of Denmark includes three separate countries: Denmark, Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

There are others.  “Country” holds a much more cultural and regional connotation than it does a political connotation. Country does not mean government; it does not mean state.  I may love my country and feel animosity toward the institutions that have formal governance responsibility over it.  Sounds about right.

A Fine Conversation

This is a conversation among three people: Benjamin Boice, an atheist (I gather), Paul VanderKlay, a CRC pastor, and Jonathan Pageau, an orthodox icon carver and one who looks at symbols.

There are many great insights.  I will not detail these, but offer a roadmap.  If you find several of these topics of interest, just watch the entire video.  It’s about 90 minutes.

The introduction is a discussion of the current mess.

6:22, PVK: we have lost the structures that held the West together for centuries.  “Modernity said, we don’t believe in those structures.  We only believe in competence and pragmatism, and that will be sufficient.  What we are seeing now is, no, it isn’t.”

8:03, a great discussion on the futility of inclusion and equality as these terms are currently understood.

17:34, a problem of modernity and post-modernity, there is no “glue” between multiple different narratives.  Is there one narrative that can facilitate the conflict and resolution of all of these different ideas?  (Guess the answer!)  They transition into a discussion of the Apostle Paul and the timing of his transition from Saul – and what may or may not be applicable from this to our time.

25:26, we are looking today at a broken Christianity – including using government, instead of the church, to help the poor.  The money really goes to government employees and contractors – they are referred to as Judas!

36:56, the protestant PVK offers his view of one of the sins of the Protestant church.

43:09, why is it problematic that white people are being asked to assume guilt?

49:17, is racism a big enough sin to contain all the other sins?  Comments about inclusivity and borders follow.

58:48, where do we go from here?  Great comments about the disconnection of the elite toward the people.  Also, this pendulum will not swing just one way.

1:05:56, Pageau: I have to admit, I am sort of a royalist!  A discussion of story and narrative as opposed to ideas.

1:13:07, we transitioned easily from this invisible virus that will destroy us to this invisible systemic racism that is destroying us.

1:17:41, will a new story emerge?  There is no better story than the one presented by Christianity.  This is why it keeps coming back, has staying power.  PVK offers possibilities of hope in outcomes to the current events; Pageau is not so optimistic; it will get ugly.  “Build an ark!”

An America Worth Saving

Goldman Sachs reported second-quarter earnings Wednesday morning that beat analyst estimates for revenue and profit.

Quarterly revenue posted its second-highest reading ever as trading businesses surged on heightened market volatility.

"Our strong financial performance across our client franchises demonstrates the inherent benefits of our diversified business model," CEO David Solomon said.

Goldman shares gained as much as 4.1% in early trading.

And:

U.S. stock indexes finished higher on Tuesday, capping the best quarter for Wall Street in around 20 years…

And then there’s this:

…roughly 50 million Americans have made initial jobless benefits claims in 16 weeks.

Record revenue for banks; record quarter for the stock market; by far, record unemployment.  These points got me to think about what became the title of this post.  This is not an America worth saving.

There is so much that I agree with the left on…in terms of complaints.  By left, I don’t mean what passes as democrats.  I mean a principled left.  I use different language than does the left, but at its root the list is similar: central banking, criminal justice, government capture, crony capitalism, militarism.  Yes, my “cure” is different than theirs, but what we are complaining about is similar.

An America NOT Worth Saving

·       Central Banking

·       Captured Bureaucracy – including every single intersection of government and big business.  Every single one.

·       Virtually every single politician in both major parties

·       Imperialism

·       The Military

·       Spying

·       Torture

·       The (so-called) justice system

·       The IRS

·       The major media

·       The entertainment industry (other than Dream Theater…and Rush, but they’re Canadian, so I guess I don’t have to make this exclusion for them)

·       Most sports personalities

·       Public schools

·       Many private schools

·       The universities

·       A good portion of Christian leaders

·       The Constitution

An America Worth Saving

·       The pleasant interactions I have every single day with the vast majority of people with whom I come in contact

·       The Articles of Confederation, married to the Bill of Rights (although such concepts are better kept unwritten vs. written).  And I would modify the Second Amendment, as follows: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.  We don’t need any of that confusing “militia” language.

·       The history, properly revealed.  Without a history – with all of its warts – there is nothing to save.

 

Conclusion

Look at the list.  I am left with an interesting implication.  also, a terrible dilemma.  In every revolution, the revolutionaries can agree on what they are against.  The unfortunate part: they never agree on what they are for – which is why the revolution always eats its young.  This current one will as well.

Another thought: there is virtually no constituency that would support the second list while abandoning most of what is on the first.

Scary.

Is This Why Trump Won?

There was no reason he should have won.  Had the democrats nominated anyone but Clinton (e.g. Bernie), the democrats would have won.  Never before had any candidate from a major party said so many politically incorrect things in such vulgar and crude ways…and not only survived, but won.

No more foreign wars, the Fed is bad, build a wall, etc., etc., etc.  of course, he did little or nothing on any such things, but how could such a platform win?

Fuel on the fire.  Is this why Trump was allowed to win?  Stoke the culture war, exaggerate the divide?  Ensure the extremes?

Just wondering.