Rebuked by My Guru

Christians cannot legitimately adopt the libertarian quest to establish a world devoid of civil government. Sin mandates civil government and civil sanctions. The right of civil rulers to impose physical punishments is affirmed clearly by Paul in Acts 25. He affirms in Romans 13 the legitimacy of civil government among other legitimate governments. He says that rulers are ordained by God as His ministers. This is powerful language. It invokes the authority of God on behalf of the State. If Paul is correct, then anarcho-capitalism is incorrect. There is no way around this.

— Gary North, Cooperation and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Romans

Dr. Gary North more than any living mortal has influenced my moral character. Before reading David Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators, a refutation of the take-away of Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, I was happy to be a Yankee socialist—middle-class, Progressive, happy to let the government solve social ills, meanwhile warming the pew on Sunday (though preparing to translate the Bible overseas) and waiting for the Tribulation period to begin so human history could end with the Rapture and the Millennium and the real action could begin.

Dr. North’s publications, whether written by him or by others, gave me a vision of a world in which the church of Jesus Christ, through lives joyfully subject to the whole of Scripture, fulfilled the Great Commission and made disciples of the nations, with the result that in some sense never seen since Eden, godly people lived moral, just lives as individuals, giving birth to peaceful and prosperous societies that made the gospel attractive to those yet unreached. In short, individual ethics matter, the moral compass for society is the same as the moral compass for individuals, and God’s plan for victory is people loving God with all their beings and their neighbors as themselves.

What really got my attention was when Chilton pointed out that everything I considered essential for a just, peaceful, and prosperous society could only be brought about through weapons, uniforms, badges, lawyers, judges, trials, commissions, elections, and hearings—all of which I as a good leftist wannabe was suspicious of. But a world where the incentives built into the structure of society mitigate people’s natural selfishness? Bring it on!

Two passages that seemed relevant to the issue soon became my favorites:

Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ Not so with you; instead the one who is greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the one who serves. (Luke 22:25-26)

When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,” … he must make a copy of this law … he must read it as long as he lives. ...  Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel. (Deut 17:14, 20)

That is, one law for king and commoner alike. This makes the perfect bed for such visions of the stateless society as this model of private dispute resolution organizations by Stefan Molyneux (or my pale imitation) to lie in.

Such a vision, however, flies in the face of Romans 13. Every state since Nimrod has based its legitimacy on the idea that social order is impossible unless some people are above the laws everyone else has to obey: “Taxation as such is not theft,” as Dr. North says. He adds, “Most forms of taxation are theft, and all levels above the tithe surely are (I Sam. 8:15, 17), but not all. Lawful authorities are entitled to economic support. Taxation supports the State.” But if Romans 13 mandates that “the State” is allowed to extract wealth under (the implied ultimate) penalty of death, one must conclude that some people make their livings breaking laws their subjects are forced to live under.

Dr. North offers a defense of the morality of Scripture—tries, as it were, to create a market for it:

The threat of crime forces men to allocate scarce economic resources to the defense against criminals. The State is the primary institutional means of crime prevention. The State imposes negative sanctions on convicted criminals. The goal is to uphold justice by means of fear. … Fear adds to the cost to criminal behavior. As the economist says, when the cost of anything increases, other things remaining equal, less of it is demanded. This is the goal of negative civil sanctions: less crime.

To the anarcho-capitalist proposition of free-market insurance agencies, he replies,

The biblical answer is government, including civil government. In an anarcho-capitalist world of profit-seeking private armies, the result is the warlord society. Militarily successful private armies will always seek to establish their monopolistic rule by killing the competition, literally. Civil governments always reappear.

My question for Dr. North is this: What is the difference between a civil government and a warlord? This question goes back as far as the fourth century:

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.” (Augustine, City of God IV:4)

Let us take the example of Castro’s Cuba. The government of Fulgencio Batista had uniformed armed forces, a delegation at the United Nations, and every other accoutrement needed to legitimize itself as a “civil government.” It was also enough of a kleptocracy that a significant portion of the population was in the mood for a change. Fidel Castro and his band of (un-uniformed?) insurgents began an armed struggle. Batista sent his uniformed agents out to stop them. At this point we would have to say that Romans 13 was on Batista’s side.

Yet after the defeat of Batista, Castro’s government became the powers that be, ordained of God. Was Castro not a warlord before he became the civil government? Did he cease to be a warlord once he had defeated Batista?

For that matter, what was the difference between George Washington and George III in 1777? The Tories and Loyalists of the day would have seen little. Or the difference between the USSR puppet Mao Zedong and the USA puppet Chaing Kai-Shek? Or the difference between Ngo Ding Diem and Ho Chi Minh? Or the difference between the armies of countless African kleptocrats and the armies rebelling against them? Isn’t the scene in Ukraine and Iraq and Afghanistan and half of Africa simply the warlord-ravaged Mogadishu of popular lore writ large?

If “the State” is often, if not always, simply the winner of a power struggle, how does God’s way of ordaining the powers that be differ from “might makes right”? And if there is no legitimate competition to “the State,” what is there to stop it from descending into tyranny?

By contrast, then, in a decentralized, anarchist setting, where competition is considered legitimate, is it unreasonable to expect a Christian “profit-seeking private army” to be unable to carve out a niche that reaches critical mass, defend its subscribers (customers, clients, call them what you will) against those who would “establish their monopolistic rule by killing the competition, literally,” establish a code of conduct that comports with the moral demands of Scripture, and build a lasting society of justice, peace, and prosperity? Would financial support of churches and parachurch ministries from the profits of such an organization – think of Chick-Fil-A’s sponsorship of worthy nonprofit ventures, some of which are explicitly Christian – not be a fulfillment of the prophecy that “the kings of the earth will bring their treasures” into the New Jerusalem? (Remember that when European nations tried to fulfill that prophecy by sponsoring state churches with tax revenues, the result was power struggles and apostasy.)

In short, what is inherently immoral about Molyneux’s idea of private dispute resolution organizations? Can a government fulfill Romans 13 only if it taxes, issues uniforms, and is in covenant with the United Nations?

Any replies to this post brought to my attention will be publicized as best I know how.

Conservatism, Liberalism, Islam, and the Gospel

When my conservative Christian friends justify their support for Uncle Sam’s wars in the Muslim world, they don’t say much before they note that Muslims want to take over the world for Islam. And, of course, they’re right. Islam has always had aspirations of taking over the world.

They also fear that liberals are out to take over the world. And they’re right again: the United Nations is already no less than a force for imposing the liberal versions of multiculturalism, “tolerance,” and “compassion” everywhere.

What my conservative Christian friends need to be reminded of is that Christianity also has aspirations of taking over the world: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:4). “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have become your Father. Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, the ends of the earth as your possession. You will break them with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots’” (Ps 2:7-9). What Muslim or Marxist can miss that message? Why would they want to have next-door neighbors who believe that?

And, of course, as conservatives, they also have a worldwide vision. They support the CIA’s work wherever it takes place (e.g., overthrowing the elected president of Iran and installing a royal police state in 1953 and installing strongmen in Latin America and the Middle East for decades), to say nothing of the current military’s attempt at “full spectrum dominance” worldwide. Barring a fundamental change of heart (or, more likely, the economic ruin of the US), the conservative vision of “Christian morals”—criminalization of the use of some substances, to say nothing of prostitution and homosexuality—will become the law of the land all over the world, enforced at gunpoint.

And it is at gunpoint enforcement that I get off at least three of those buses.

When any of the three are making the rules, whether the issue is property or liberty, there is never a point when a dissenter can say, “This is mine. You can’t take it.”

While the visions pursued by Islam, liberalism, and conservatism differ radically, they have the same modus operandi. Muslims, liberals, and conservatives are all basically peace-loving people. They would prefer to convince those who disagree with them to change their thinking and so cease offensive private behaviors.

For example, all three (currently) find the use of cocaine offensive. (Cocaine use here is misconduct representative of all private behavior, including sexual and religious, found offensive by my opponents.) Given a choice, all would prefer to tell current users, “Don’t,” be obeyed, and get on with life.

However, all three, if the behavior persists, even if only in the privacy of the users’ homes, consider themselves justified to invade the homes and imprison or otherwise punish the users.

In all three cases, what those who do not use coke think is unimportant. Only what they do counts. All three would consider a world in which no one uses coke (or engages in any of the behaviors it represents here) complete in that sense no matter what the now non-users think.

Put another way, persuasion is fine for these three ideologies, but if it doesn’t work, they pull out the guns. It is thus ultimately the gun, not persuasion, that will bring about their kingdoms.

By contrast, my understanding of the Kingdom of Jesus is that unless the heart is changed, nothing else matters. While it is possible to force a person to act the way conservatism or liberalism says he should act, and it is possible to force a person to convert to Islam, it is absolutely impossible to force a person to submit to Jesus. Once the heart is changed the conduct will change (Rom 12:2), but no conformity to external standards will bring about the needed heart change (Matt 23:15).

So true Christians eschew the world’s weapons of intimidation and coercion for the weapons of the Spirit: the Bible and lives of loving service (2 Cor 6:4).

Marxists, Muslims, and statists of right and (especially) left need not fear that we will force them to go against what they think is right. But they universally fear and persecute us anyway because we know their ultimate weapon is not persuasion but violence. No peace-loving person wants to be exposed as violent—not to himself, and especially to others on whom he depends. So they need to shut us up—using violence.

As Uncle Sam’s current wars have been shown to be failures by any standard (except profitability for the politically connected), his puppets have been shown to be buffoons at best, and the revolutions mounted to topple those buffoons have become bloody squabbles between rival warlords, it is time for true Christians to seize the moment.

We have something radically different to offer: a God who knows and hates our sins more than we ever could, yet forgives us and gives us his Word and his very Spirit to change our hearts. And for icing on the cake, the Bible gives us the vision of a society where what our neighbor does in the privacy of his own home is between him and God, a subject for persuasion if we can earn the right to persuade, but otherwise none of our concern. We don’t want to take away their money or their liberty. We have a message to tell them, and until they accept the message, nothing else need be on the table.

I would like to live next door to people who believe that, and I think my Muslim, conservative, and liberal neighbors would also. My job now is to earn the right to persuade them that they want to become those people.

On Desecrating Memorial Day

My Memorial Day post was pretty incoherent (I blame a late start and technical difficulties), but a friend was kind enough to slog through it and get at least the gist of my intended meaning. His response (lightly edited):

To judge history you have to try to live in that moment. The decision to fight in Vietnam was in large part noble, and the military and all the veterans that served there served a good cause, though I can understand how some believe that we should not have gone in and supported the French. [The military] actually won the war, but the [politicians] handed the country over to a totalitarian government during the days after the war was won.

I agree that our government is too big and taking away our freedoms, but I do not believe that Bruce died in vain; rather, he died for his country.

I disagree strongly with most of the people you quote. I signed up for service at the end of the Vietnam conflict.

I also believe that some of the brightest and most intellectually open people I have known were military men. I have had prolonged discussions with enlisted and officers, from seamen and privates, ensigns and second lieutenants to vice admirals. Your characterization of our military is unfair and incorrect. The reason our military is successful is that we encourage our non-coms and junior officers to exercise independent judgment and consider the situation they are in. We have our My Lais and other atrocities, but we strive for better. I spent years carpooling with a Pennsylvania National Guard captain who served in Fallujah in Iraq and have a pretty good feel for what happened in that war. Good men are leaving the military in large numbers as they cannot live with the political mandates that are being forced on them—these men are not ignorant vassals.

Our troops are still the finest in the world, and our goal is to promote freedom. We are not perfect, but I cannot support the comments that you made being broadcast on Memorial Day – a day to honor those who paid the ultimate earthly price. For me this like debating our theological differences during the middle of the Easter service.

If you believe that our freedoms are being threatened—and I do—have you gotten involved in supporting political candidates and helping to turn the ship around?

Maybe I should have waited a day before posting. By posting on Memorial Day I may have broken the resolution I made that if I were a missionary to a pagan people I would not go into their temples and smash their idols.[i]

On the other hand, it isn’t like there’s only one time a year when the troops are honored: every other highway in this country is named after veterans. Every significant athletic event begins with a giant flag held by soldiers, a moment of silence, and maybe a flyover. Veterans Day and the Fourth of July always include a salute to the troops. If every overpass in the South isn’t named after a “fallen hero,” it’s only because they haven’t found enough soldiers (or state troopers) to name them after.[ii]

But maybe that’s like we go to church every Sunday. We’ve got fifty-one other Sundays to debate theological differences. Let’s put them down at Easter, especially if (as is the case here, to follow the analogy) we’re going to deny the resurrection. I hereby confess that my shock and awe this week was no more effective than Bush’s was in Afghanistan and Iraq: it provoked a reaction, but not the one intended.

But my correspondent raises some good questions.

Are “our troops … the finest in the world,” whose “goal is freedom”?

I would suggest that people are people: we’re all made in the image of God, and we are all hopelessly twisted by sin and in need of the blood of Christ if we are to be reconciled to our creator. We all know of men who have lived sacrificially to build churches and other ministries only to throw it all away for illicit sex. If men of that caliber fail, how exceptional can the rest of us be? If people “sold out to Jesus” sin grievously, what of US soldiers with no commitment to Jesus?

People who otherwise seek to be good neighbors can come to believe horrible things. From my own camp Ludwig von Mises, Stefan Molyneux, and Darren Wolfe have devoted great parts of their lives to speaking out against the evils done against innocent people and for a neighborliness that comports with any reasonable reading of the last five commandments, yet they believe there is no God. Is it unreasonable to ask whether sincere evangelicals—yes, me included—can be deceived?

I consider what is called American exceptionalism one of the deadliest spiritual plagues ever to hit the Christian church, cousin if not brother to Hitler’s doctrine of Aryan supremacy, and certainly an essential ingredient in the current US imperialism. It’s why killing innocent people overseas is considered “collateral damage” and not murder.

If “the finest in the world” drop napalm and depleted uranium and white phosphorus on women and children, what should we say about the men who, even though they are hopelessly outgunned, try to defend their homes and families against “our troops”? Is a man piloting a drone from Arizona really more noble than the guy on the ground trying to shoot it down? or, for that matter, a kamikaze pilot?

How can anyone who can see, as my correspondent does, that our government threatens our freedoms say that the goal of our current wars is to protect freedom? Of course the politicians will say they’re all about freedom, but does that make it true? The German populace was convinced they were free people trying to maintain their freedom, and many of the troops who fought for Hitler were good neighbors, otherwise well intentioned, and all of them who faced death were brave. They all had “GOD IS WITH US” on their tax-financed, government-issue belt buckles, but how true was that? How can “some of the brightest and most intellectually open people” not make the connection between the anti-freedom leanings of a Wilson, a Roosevelt, a Johnson, or an Obama—or the ominous support of the Bushes for the New World Order—and their eagerness to send people to kill and die in wars that are of no concern to us?

But maybe I’m not intellectual enough. If the military actually won the war in Vietnam[iii] and then the politicians gave the country away, would it not be true that the politicians’ actions made all the destruction of life and property have gone for nothing? Of what benefit was all the carnage if the result was the same as (or worse than) it would have been had Bruce Gustafson and the others not gone over there? And if there was no benefit, isn’t no benefit synonymous with nothing, and dying for nothing the same as dying in vain? What am I missing?

And what “his country” did Bruce die for? If the Vietnamese ultimately got no benefit from his death, then I certainly got no benefit from his death, so he didn’t die for me—I must not be part of his country. As Smedley Butler said so presciently, he died for the armament makers and the politicians. Some of those “Masters of War” may end up in heaven, so I need to be careful here, but in earthly terms they are not my country any more than the Wehrmacht troops were Belgian after the Blitzkrieg or the US military was Iraqi in 2004.

In a word, to assume, as today’s US evangelicals do, that “our troops” are truly defending our freedoms, “a force for good,” or anything close to the good neighbors God calls us to be and to commend, is to assume what needs to be proven.

I don’t know when the proper time is for the question of the moral worth of US wars to be raised, but it seems like every day is the right day for it to be ignored.

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[i] I made an exception to that in the days following 9/11: I desperately wanted to see a bomb dropped on the Kaaba big enough to break the rock under the shroud into a zillion pieces.

[ii] South Caroline is going one better. They even have an interchange named after Ben “Bankster Bailout” Bernancke.

[iii] I have never heard this argument before. I’ve heard many times that the military could have won the war if the politicians hadn’t bound their hands, but that’s not what my correspondent says. Nor does he say the US won the war (i.e., beat the enemy’s uniformed military) but failed to win the peace (i.e., control the underground and criminal elements). We used to joke that the army should just declare victory and come home, but that’s not what he says either. His claim is that the US military won the war, period.