Anarchy and Chaos

Why do people use the word anarchy to describe chaos?

They don't similarly misuse related words. Monarchy is always used to describe a structure of authority, as are oligarchy, plutarchy, and whatever other -archy there might be. But anarchy is not only used most often as a synonym for chaos, it is almost never used to specify a structure of authority; even worse, it seems to be the preferred term for chaos. Why is this?

The Progressive Ernest Partridge provides two quotes that are on target. The first is his own:

Language is the constant yet unnoticed current that carries our thoughts. Thus, in the game of politics, the party which controls the language, controls the contest.

We used to see this back when even non-Christians in the US considered themselves Christians. When someone who had come to repentance, pledged his allegiance to Jesus, been baptized, and become a church member would tell someone who had done none of these that the latter was not a Christian, the response would often be anger because the two would be using Christian to mean two different things. The latter would use the word to mean "a good, respectable person," and so when the former would say, "You need to repent and follow Jesus to be a Christian," the latter would say, "But I am a Christian, and I resent you implying that I'm not." So those who used Christian to mean what only that word means were hard pressed to communicate what they meant, and that was before beginning to deal with the natural human resistance to the gospel message as properly understood.

Also, people respond from the heart, not from the brain. Advertisers "don't sell the steak, [they] sell the sizzle." They don't sell the product, they sell the image that the buyer will have in his mind of himself when he buys the product: handsome, masculine, feminine, popular, nonconformist, healthy, or socially responsible. We are emotional beings: emotions are so called because they are what sets us in motion.

If he who controls the language controls the contest, and the way to influence people is through their emotions, I would suggest that those who purposely use anarchy instead of chaos to describe chaos are people with vested interests in maintaining the power structure, either because they are now in power or because they expect to be in power someday, want to give anarchy a bad name. This has two benefits for them: it provokes a knee-jerk reaction against people who call themselves anarchists, and it leaves us without a graceful self-appellation. Reasoned conversation ends before it begins.

Partridge again, quoting George Orwell:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the [Party's] world-view and mental habits ... , but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of [the Party] - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words, and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings... Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought...

(To be fair, another possibility is that someone used the term as metonymy, like saying "the throne" when referring to the king, and it has simply become a cliché.)

If the two words are truly synonymous, wouldn't one be redundant and fall out of favor? Why would the preferred term be the less etymologically defensible? The most logical reason is that someone wants to take away every means we have of expressing ourselves and thus capture the loyalty of those who don't think for themselves without allowing us to put up a serious fight.

Jesus calls his people to become humble and harmless like little children and doves, to serve our neighbors, and to be known for our gentleness. Human nature makes obeying that call difficult enough under any conditions; for those who consider themselves above their neighbors—archons—it is all but impossible. Only anarchy provides natural rewards, and thus incentives, for Christian obedience.

On that basis, I would say that the mind behind the confusion of anarchy with chaos is that of the enemy of our souls.

How the Bible Establishes the Moral Legitimacy of the State

I bugged some friends to respond to my last post and got one more response than I deserved, which I here reproduce in part:

1) I assume moral legitimacy to the state primarily because the Bible does. 2) You are suggesting that if we lived in a state-less society things would be better. Can you give an example of a society larger than hunter gatherers like pygmies and bushmen where there is no state?

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the proper response to the first question takes us a long way down the road to answering the second.

As sure as a hangover is God’s punishment for self-intoxication, as are cirrhosis of the liver, unemployment, divorce, and abandonment by one’s family and friends, the state is, quite simply, God’s way of punishing rebellious society. Thomas Jefferson’s aphorism, “If men were angels, there would be no need for government,” is the view of a Deist Qohelet. Let me suggest that the view from heaven is, “If they refuse to submit to me, let them submit to those who hate me.” And, as Friedrich Hayek noted, It’s always the most ruthless that rise to the top of government; the more more ruthless the government, the more ruthless you need to be to get to the top.

The biblical case for the beneficent state begins with the book of Judges, in which “there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

“See?” the argument goes, “this is why we need government: to keep people from doing right in their own eyes, to avoid chaos.” QED, right? Wrong.

The most easily available torpedo for that argument is the account in which God actually provides a king: God says he is ending the golden age of anarchy because Israel has rejected him as king (1 Sam 8:7). He promises them not order, but chaos:

He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. (1 Sam 8:11-17)

The common people would no longer be free to do “what was right in their own eyes,” true, but the powers that be, ordained of God, would—as we see when Saul takes tax money to pay his soldiers to chase down David, when David has many of his loyal soldiers killed so that he can marry Bathsheba, and when Solomon oppresses the people so that he can marry a thousand women—be freed to do what was right in their eyes. Again, God states the reason he is ending anarchy and bringing in archy: the people have rebelled, and he will ordain powers to bless them, but not in the way they expect.

So yes, the powers that be are ordained of God; they are “God’s servant to do [us] good” (Rom 13:4), specifically, with a few notable exceptions—which are exceptions—by making life miserable for us.

And it is quite likely that anarchy will always remain out of reach: “You will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day” (1 Sam 8:18). If, as Paul writes, “the many died by the trespass of the one man [and] by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man . . . in Adam all die” (Rom 5:15, 18; 1 Cor 15:22), it may be that in those rebellious Israelites we too became condemned to life under government, just as we all face mortality because of Adam’s sin.

The ship of state may be leaning, you say, but she’s still afloat. OK, torpedo number two: the history of the state before Israel transformed himself from an oasis to a cesspool. The Bible speaks evil of all but at most one king before Saul:

Nimrod, the first to have a “kingdom,” was “a mighty hunter before the Lord,” but there is no evidence of godliness in his society; many Bible commentators consider it to be the society cursed by the confusion of tongues at Babel.

The kings of the east who invade the Jordan Valley in Gen 14 are simply thieves and murderers.

The kings of the Jordan Valley are no better, as Abraham’s treatment of the king of Sodom and Lot’s later experience with him attest.

The Pharaoh of Egypt and Abimelech of Gerar abduct Abraham’s wife instead of negotiating a marriage, proof that Abraham was right when he said, “There is no fear of God in this place.”

The evil of the Pharaoh of Moses’ day and the Canaanite kings of Joshua’s day needs no further explanation.

Abimelek, the first to be called king of Israel (Jdg 9) was a thieving murderer.

The only exception to the rule is Melchizedek, “king of Salem” and “priest of the Most High.” And as the writer to the Hebrews makes plain, he was in a class by himself: “Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God” (Heb 7:3).¹

Note also that whenever the Israelites rebelled against the Lord, he brought against them states, specifically kingdoms, ruled by Balak (Num 22), Cushan-Rishathaim and Eglon (Jdg 3), Jabin (Jdg 4), Zebah and Zalmunna of Midian (Jdg 8), and “the king of the sons of Ammon” (Jdg 11, NASB). And, after the monarchy failed to halt their apostasy, he brought in the superpowers of Assyria and Babylon, the latter specifically designated “my servant” (Jer 25:9; 27:6; 43:10).

Unlike these nations, Israel under Moses, Joshua, and the judges had no king. It was anarchy, designed by God to be so, and under this anarchy “the land had peace” for those decades in which the people kept covenant with the Lord (Jdg 3:11, 30; 5:31).

And Israel was no tribe of “hunter gatherers like pygmies and bushmen.” If we are to take the numbers in the book of Numbers literally, it was a nation of perhaps three million men, women, and children. It was anarchy, but it was far from chaos.

Further, Israel is the only anarchy that I know of to win a military victory over a state.² This tells me that the only way anarchy can become a reality is if it is in covenant with the Lord.

That the state is God’s instrument of blessing through inflicting misery is shown ultimately in the crucifixion of Jesus. Why did God have Jesus killed by Roman soldiers instead of by Jewish priests, the agents he chose from the beginning to offer sacrifices of atonement for sins?

The answer is nowhere stated, but I would suggest that a priest offers sacrifices in the context of a covenant: the sacrifice is an admission by the one offering it that he has sinned, is repentant, and wants to make things right. But when God sends in his servants the heathen soldiers, he is showing that the covenant has been broken and he has no intention of renewing it, as when he told Jeremiah not to pray for the people of Judah (Jer 14).

I take God using soldiers, not priests, to slaughter the Lamb of God as testimony that Jesus took on himself the penalty for sins that separate us from God beyond God’s desire to see covenant established or renewed. Only through soldiers could he inflict on Christ his wrath against our worst sins.

So I am forced to admit, however reluctantly, that the Bible does ascribe moral legitimacy to the state. But that admission comes with a caveat: God’s ordination of the state does not include impunity for wicked deeds. In brief, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38).

This is especially true for those who execute the judgment of the Lord: God calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant, but holds his underlings responsible for the evil they did: “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” (Ps 137:8-9).

A more detailed warning that should hit US citizens close to home comes from the prophet Habakkuk:

He gathers to himself all the nations and takes captive all the peoples. . . . “Woe to him who piles up stolen goods and makes himself wealthy by extortion! . . . Because you have plundered many nations, the peoples who are left will plunder you. For you have shed man’s blood; you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them. . . . Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples, shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. . . . Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime! . . . Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies. . . . You will be filled with shame instead of glory. Now it is your turn! Drink and be exposed! The cup from the LORD’s right hand is coming around to you, and disgrace will cover your glory. . . . For you have shed man’s blood; you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them. (2:7-17)

Whether anarchy can ever be achieved in this life or not, the obedience to God that is prerequisite for anarchy is a worthy goal in and of itself, infinitely more so than the building up of a state that can at best put its agents in line for God’s retributive judgment.

---

 ¹ Some might argue that Joseph’s rule in Egypt was also beneficent. While it is true that he and his family prospered at that time, I think Frank Chodorov has done a good job of describing it as time of loss for the populace as a whole. Certainly the benefits even to Joseph’s family were temporary at best, as shortly after his death (Ex 1:8 KJV, NASB, ESV, contra NIV) his descendants were enslaved by the same system that had benefited Joseph and his brothers at the expense of the Egyptians.

² Actually, there is one other: Abraham’s victory over the allied forces of the kings of the east in Gen 14. However, as his camp numbered only in the hundreds, they can probably be classified as pygmies and bushmen and therefore rate mention only in a footnote.

Open Letter to Other Fathers of Daughters on the Suicide of Tom White

The highlight of my week is my Wednesday morning meeting with a handful of other men, where we discuss what it means to be a Christian man and how we can conform ourselves to the image of Jesus. This letter is to the members of that group.

Dear Brothers,

The suicide of Tom White, the head of Voice of the Martyrs, after he came under investigation for sexual abuse of a ten-year-old girl, has raised two questions for me that I would like to pose to you. Perhaps the answer to the first will obviate the need to answer the second, but I'll pose them both anyway.

Before I do, let me state what I think are our shared presuppositions. First, we are all the fathers of daughters and would want anyone who abused them dealt with, either by ourselves or by someone else. Second, we are all Calvinists who believe in the validity to some extent of the Old Testament law, including the idea that suicide is murder, in capital punishment in some situations, and in predestination.

Let us also assume for the sake of this discussion that Mr. White did indeed have "inappropriate contact with a young girl" of a sort we would strongly object to. Let us further assume that the investigation was prompted by the girl or her family.

My first question is theological. I think the article makes a good case that Tom White was a serious Christian. Yet suicide is perhaps the ultimate statement that God's grace is not sufficient to get the Christian through whatever comes to us in life. Further, unrepentant murder (of which suicide is a form) and adultery are usually taken as prima facie evidence of an unregenerate heart.

So what's your take on this? Was God excreting from his church a covert unregenerate whom he had been using for his own purposes all these years, knowing that he would eventually show his true colors? Or was this a Christian brother "overtaken in a fault," who compounded his fault by committing suicide but will ultimately be forgiven? Or have I missed an alternative? (I realize that, as Aslan says, our stories belong to us alone, so Mr. White's story is his alone, but unless we are to make God a subject about which nothing mundane can be predicated, we need to be able to at least hazard a guess or two, methinks.)

My second is more practical and will require a bit of setup.

You all ascribe moral legitimacy to the state, which I do not. And here we have a reasonable example of the state doing what you say the state is supposed to do, deal with malefactors: Tom White will never molest another young girl, and the girl involved will never have to look at Tom White and relive the hell of sexual abuse. The only fault in the jewel, if I understand your position, would be that Mr. White killed himself instead of allowing a tax-salaried agent to—what, electrocute him? hang him? shoot him? inject him? tie him to a hill of fire ants or a hornet's nest? or put him in jail for years, where he would likely be killed—slowly and painfully, literally or worse—by his fellow inmates, child molesters being the bottom rung of a prison social ladder known for dealing harshly with those at the bottom? I fail to see how any of these courses of action comport with biblical law.

Now if we assume that Mr. White is a damned excretum, none of this matters: he's simply an enemy of the Lord who took a shortcut to hell, which will be that much hotter for him for his having done so, so God is good all the time and that's that.

The question is thornier, though, if he's a brother overtaken in a fault (which is what I certainly hope is the case and expect that you do also). Given the nature of the state, how could things have turned out better?

Let's begin with the most important participant in the tragedy: the girl. I have never heard or heard of any victim of sexual assault say that they were treated well by the government. Why should they be? Every rape complaint means more work for government agents.

Let me digress. Since you believe that a government's primary function is to protect its subjects from attack, I assume you consider soldiers exemplary government agents. When I asked a certain soldier on the day of his commissioning why his comrades wanted to go overseas to fight, he replied that the main prize they sought was the extra combat pay. This was the same soldier who told me, "I don't make the policies. My job is to carry them out." So it doesn't matter what the policy is, they take pay to carry it out. Hence I conclude that the government agents in charge of investigating sexual assault are less interested in the welfare of the victim than in doing their job, being paid, enforcing whatever law—in short, "whatever." The welfare of the victim is secondary at best.

Back on track, once the case comes to trial, as Chuck Colson says, "[victims feel like they are] simply used as the tool of the prosecutors for the state" (Justice that Restores, p. 138), since the prosecutor, another government agent, is not likely to be as concerned with the victim's welfare as with advancing the interests of the state or his own career. (Remember, he is not being paid directly by the girl's family; he isn't being paid to serve them. People are not by nature servants, at least not of others.) The defense attorney, of course, is paid to defend his client at all costs, including truth, so he has every incentive to use any tactic that won't hurt his case to try to break the victim. So it's just as well for her that no trial took place.

Also in this case, the victim knows that her going public has resulted in a man's death. If he forced himself on her, she may think that's just as well. But if not, is it not reasonable to think that to the degree she was OK with what he did (if, for example, this was a case of horseplay run amok) she will consider herself culpable in his death? Of what benefit to her is this? If, God forbid, she were victim of further low-level malfeasance, how willing would she be to confide in anyone who could possibly take the matter to the state?

Absent the state, this matter would have been taken care of by discussion between the girl's family and Mr. White, perhaps adjudicated by the Voice of the Martyrs executive board, the elders of the two family's churches, or three homeless men off the street. Certainly unless Mr. White were executed (by those whose testimony convicted him and the members of that community), I would never have known about the matter, and since it's none of my business, I'd have been no worse off.

How is this a worse situation than what actually happened (or would have had Mr. White taken his medicine like a man)? And, again, given the nature of the state, how could things have turned out differently?

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of this matter.

Your brother,

Henry

Remembering the Titans

Papua New Guinea, 1982. I'm in a training camp with my wife and toddler. Among the other campers is a single German woman, very plain, half a head taller than I am, not the stuff of daydreams. Perhaps twice during the two months of the course, we're within conversational distance, but both times she makes it surprisingly and memorably plain that she's not interested in conversing.

Eugene, Oregon, 1987. I see the same woman at a bulletin board in the dormitory we're living in during the summer. She sees me, lights up, introduces me to her husband, asks all sorts of questions about the intervening five years, and generally treats me like a long-lost friend.

In my grammar class that same summer is a single German woman who owns what looks to me like a really nifty computer. She answers my questions about it with as few words as possible and makes it plain that she's not interested in conversing.

Papua New Guinea, 1990-something. The woman from the grammar class sees me at the market, lights up, introduces me to her husband, asks all sorts of questions . . . .

My conclusion: while respectable single US women can be freindly (as defined by a US man) with married men, respectable German women can't, but they can once they are married.

People are different, and not all of their differences sit well with their neighbors.

One of the subplots of the movie Remember the Titans involves a white high school football player who takes his two friends, one white and one black, into a restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, circa 1970. The owner firmly, though civilly, informs the white boys that the black boy is not welcome in the restaurant and tells them to leave. The boys do leave, but at the end of the movie they return; when the restaurant owner again tells them to leave, the white boy says that his father works for the feds and can sue the owner for a daunting list of civil rights violations. The restauranteur backs down, the black high schoolers get to sit in the restaurant, and everything is hunky-dory.

The message is clear: the restauranteur was a bad guy, and the kids were made heroes by the government. Government good: entrepreneurship bad.

I'd like to play devil's advocate here and take the side of the restaurant owner in the movie because I think he was acting rationally and within his rights even though I would have wanted to see the black boy seated. Furthermore, he was not nearly as evil as those the movie portrays as heroes.

So here I am. I've worked at jobs I don't particularly like for years, saving my money instead of spending it on things I would like to have, like nice clothes, a nice car, season tickets for the Senators or Redskins, whatever. Maybe I've taken out a sizable loan to buy the stoves, refrigerators, freezers, flatware, plates, etc., I need to run my restaurant. I've rented or taken out a mortgage on the building and paid for the structural changes and signage. I've advertised in the Yellow Pages, in the newspaper, maybe even on the radio and TV.

All this before the first customer walks through the door.

When I open the door, I have no guarantee that customers will come in. I probably had a grand opening discount deal for the first week, but there was no guarantee those who took advantage of the low prices then will come back and pay full fare. But let's assume I got over the hump and have been in business for a few years.

Who are my customers? They are the people of Alexandria. I grew up with them. I know their names, where they live, and how they think.

Tillamook, Oregon, August, 1972. I'm riding my bicycle up the Oregon coast. I pull into Tillamook at sunset with no idea where I'll be sleeping, and it looks like it might rain. I ride around the town a bit and don't see anyplace tolerable. So I stop at a low-end Mom and Pop motel and ask if they've got a bit of floor I can sleep on.

They reply that they have a room that has just been painted and they'll let me have it for half price. Oh, joy!

It even has a bed in it!

A few minutes later Mom and Pop surprise me by inviting me to dinner: fried chicken, potatoes, and I can't remember what else, but I was hungry and probably ate like a bear. And we get to talking. They ask about me and really seem interested in my world, which at that point was leftist politics. Eventually—I don't remember when, but it makes the story better if I say it was after thirds on fried chicken and halfway through dessert—I ask about them. They tell me they're from Louisiana.

"Oh. So why did you move up here?"

"Too many niggers down there."

Generous, loving people can be racist.

I know that my people don't choose to have anything to do with blacks. But they're not bad people.

Like my aunt who gave me my first bicycle, my neighbor who taught me to repair lawn mowers, or my father who worked two jobs and paid for the sign on my restaurant. But these are the people in my world, Alexandria, Virginia, circa 1970.

Maybe I'd like to leave someday, maybe not, but I can't yet, so I do the best with what I've got. But leaving my people I love so that I can spend more time with black people isn't a high priority for me now.

Meantime, the success of my restaurant, and my ability to earn a living, depends on the good will of white people who, whether I like it or not, choose not to associate with black people.

So now a black boy comes into my restaurant with his two white friends. Most of my clientele is adults, so they're already somewhat out of place, but if kids that age behave themselves properly, they're welcome.

But what do I do about that black boy?

If I choose to open my main dining room to him, the whites now here will leave, never to return, and tell their friends not to patronize me. So almost overnight my entire clientele will be black. There are [I'm having to guess here—QP] only half as many blacks as whites in Alexandria, and their earning power is also about half that of whites. So we're looking at a reduction in my gross revenue somewhere near 75% if I seat this fellow.

I could open a separate dining room for blacks, but it wouldn't be as nice as the white dining room for the same reason Chock Full o' Nuts isn't as nice as the Waldorf: the offering has to be tailored to the prospective buyers. And if the blacks are going to be offended that their room isn't as nice as the whites' room [I'm probably bringing in an anachronistic bit of twenty-first-century entitlement mentality—QP]; I also, not being black and not usually associating with them, run the risk of making mistakes based on my unfamiliarity with black culture. So why should I risk the resources to open a separate dining room? Why not save my money and do my best to serve the people I can serve best and leave the opportunity open for a black entrepreneur to better his lot by opening a restaurant that blacks will enjoy going to?

It's my property. It's my capital and living on the line. "I'm sorry, boys, but you can't eat here."

The "good news" we all heard about is that before long all restauranteurs had to open their doors to black and white, so now blacks and whites eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same motels, go to the same schools, ride in the same airplanes, and so on. As my Yankee upbringing (since repudiated) would have me expect, I've never heard of any white folks getting cooties from the experience.

But has getting what we wanted gotten us where we wanted to go?

Years ago I read (in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, but I don't remember which one) a lament that in racially integrated schools the black kids sit on one side of the lunchroom and the white kids on the other. And why not? If Germans and Yankees have different expectations and customs and preferences, we would expect the same of black and white kids thrown together by government decree, ¿nó?

What do the closing of beaches in Milwaukee and Chicago because of interracial violence, and the rancor over the killing of Trayvon Martin, tell us, if not that government can put black and white in the same room but can't make them like each other?

More importantly, we should also remember that those Titans are my contemporaries, who voted for the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, and so share the guilt for depradations of those monsters. Compared to the mega death dealt by those "heroes," a restauranteur defending his livelihood seems like pretty small potatoes.

I would even go so far as to say that someone whose response was less civil than that of the restauranteur in the movie is small potatoes. Consider Lester Maddox, who famously ran an erstwhile black customer off his property with a gun and a club.

Photo source

Compare that with this achievement of the Titans, a scene from Afghanistan that is matched by many in Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, and now Yemen and Pakistan.

Photo source

Loving, generous people can be racist. They can also be litterbugs and road hogs. In the case of Bush Republicans and Obama Democrats, they can be proponents of mass murder.

Yankees celebrated the desegregation of restaurants and put their (I should say our, since I did at the time) trust in government to do what was right and make the world a better place, morally as well as economically. Today little protest is raised against government attempts to stamp out every evil from racism to distracted driving to substance abuse to to prostitution to terrorism, even where it involves invasions into what any reasonable person would consider one's private life (like the bathroom and bedroom). Even when it involves the mass killing of innocent people.

But I would suggest that where government has failed to stamp out these vices, accepting its right to do so has involved us in much greater evil.

Jesus nowhere tells us to regulate others' views on race. We are to pursue justice for all, the safety of all people and their property from violence and fraud, and we are to be hospitable, a city on a hill that welcomes those outside the main stream. I can castigate Lester Maddox and try to change the thinking of his society all I want, but if I'm not willing to say, "Mr. Negro [That was the polite term in those days—QP], you don't need Lester Maddox's restaurant. Come to my house for a barbecue," I'm not doing my job, plain and simple. And, as is most likely the case, if Mr. Negro says no, he'd prefer to be with his people, he's within his rights as well.

Christian Nudists? (Part 3)

— How goes it?

— Well, I will admit that I wasn't looking forward to seing you here today.

— Thanks a lot! How so?

— I found out that my son has been looking at pornography on the Internet.

— And you expected me to what, be glad about it?

— Well, you're such a fan of nudism . . .

— Wait. I said that every argument that can be advanced against nudism can be applied to the wars overseas, and I said that every argument in support of what the TSA does at airports can be applied to nudism, but if you remember, that was my way of saying that the wars and the TSA are immoral, not that nudism is moral. If either of us was saying that nudism is a good thing, it was you, by rejecting my argument.

— Well whatver, I don't think looking at pornography is good.

— I might surprise you and think it's not good too. But is there anything to be thankful for here?

— What?

— We're supposed to rejoice evermore and in everything give thanks. So what's there to rejoice and give thanks about?

— Help me here.

— No, seriously. Could he have been looking at anything worse than what you think he was looking at, or doing something even worse?

— Oh, yeah. I'm sure there's worse out there.

— Can you tell what his favorite stuff is?

— Yeah, he'd fit in with you. He says he doesn't want to see sex. Just nudity.

— Be careful what you accuse me of. So he's into chicks, but nothing kinky.

— Right.

— Well, see there's something to be thankful for. He could be looking at baseball.

— I wish he had been looking at baseball.

— What I meant was it would be worse if he were looking at baseball.

— Looking at baseball is worse than looking at naked women? You're out of your mind. Wait. Don't tell me. Let's see if I remember. Doctors and TSA agents look at naked women all the time, so they're inured to it, so it's not a sin, and if my son looks at enough naked women he'll get inured and everything will be hunky-dory. I'm supposed to believe that?

— If he were inured to it, he wouldn't do it for fun, would he?

— No, he'd move on to other things. But those other things might be worse. Like kinky sex. Like sadomasochsim. Like mass murder, the way Ted Bundy went. Bundy said he started out with pornography and went on to mass murder. I don't want my son to go that way.

— I don't want your son to end up a mass murderer either. That's why I say you don't want him watching baseball.

— The blogger from hell won't have a post until you tell my why, so I'll be a good straight man here. How is it that baseball leads to mass murder?

— It does perhaps more often than pornography, but not always.

— And the connection is . . .

— It's right here. The San Diego Padres' Sunday home uniforms. That is a stylized combat outfit, right?

— It is. So what?

— Professional baseball players are glorifying people who go off and murder innocent people.

— You're assuming what you need to prove, that the US Army is guilty of murder.

— Ever heard of My Lai? Or Najibian? And if Eisenhower and MacArthur were right, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mass murder on a scale Ted Bundy wouldn't have undertaken if you'd offered it to him. Do you think Jesus is a hundred percent OK with how the west was won, or Sherman's march through Georgia, or the killing of a quarter million Filipinos after the Spanish left?

— Those were exceptions.

— So was Ted Bundy. The number of people looking at naked women is greater than the grains of sand on the seashore, but we can pretty much count the people who have gone from there to becoming mass murderers. The number of people involved in those wholesale slaughters runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

— Sheesh. Even if you're right, that still doesn't involve baseball.

— So you don't think that the Padres and Major League Baseball are at all complicit in the "collateral damage" our military is creating overseas.

— It's up to you to prove that they are.

— How about if I show you that baseball is an arm of the government? Would that help make my point?

— Yeah. Like drinking extract of peach pits "helps support" good health.

— So what would convince you?

— I don't know what would, but I can't seem to shut you up. How is baseball an arm of the government?

— Of the thirty stadiums in the major leagues, twenty-nine were built with government money. Every Little League I know of plays on government property, either a government school yard or a park. Almost every baseball program between Little League and the major leagues is played on government property, the exceptions being private schools that have baseball programs. How'm I doin'?

— So the government generously provides these things. So what?

— The government generously takes my money against my will and provides these things.

— That's just "sour grapes." Besides, that's local government, not the feds.

— Taking my money to build baseball stadiums is of a piece with taking my money to kill innocent people.

— Says you.

— Why do you think Congress has held hearings to prodsecute the likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for steroid use?

— Because those men are in a position of influence, and what they do to their bodies can influence children, and protecting children is the government's business.

— So the government needs to control them.

— Right.

— Who controls this arm?

— Oh, so because the government controls it, it's an arm of the government.

— Who else's arm would it be?

— I'm still not convinced. And I still would rather have my son watching baseball than looking at pornography.

— Depending on your definition of pornography, I would too. If pornography is the graphic representation of extramarital sexual activity, I certainly would say he's better off with baseball. But you said that's not where he's at.

— Do you really think it's better for him to be looking at naked women than watching a baseball game?

— I've never heard of nudists blowing up innocent people and then being proud of it the way the people who unfurl the flag, sing the national anthem, and salute the military flyovers at baseball games are proud of those who kill thousands of people overseas and then deny their victims' humanity by calling them collateral damage. There's something to be said for having the goal of living in peace and asking only to be left alone.

— But—good grief!—they run around naked!

— But—good grief!—baseball players steal other people's money to build their stadiums! I don't know how accomplished you are at taking other people's property, but I suspect you've been naked with no one objecting. You might even have been naked in the presence of other people who didn't object. When was the last time you heard of someone taking other people's property against their will without those people being unhappy about it, let alone bombing their houses or killing their family members?

— These are just the tragedies of war. They can't be helped.

— Who would you rather have fora neighbot? Someone who runs around naked, or someone who would blow up your house and kill your family with no regrets if he thought it were the best way to protect his interests?

— Nudism is just wrong. And besides, these people get kids hooked into that system.

— Collateral damage includes children dead and maimed. Do you think flyovers and honor guards and other connections of baseball with the military, and government in general, has no influence on getting kids to join the military, let alone to accept government programs like schools and parks that are financed by theft?

— Come on, those stadiums were built with bond issues, or through the decisions of elected officials. That's not stealing!

— So if five people decide to take what belongs to one other person, or four other people, it's not stealing?

— Not if it's government.

— So if a government agency were to open a nudist resort, it would be OK for them to tax you to support it?

— No, it wouldn't. Nudist resorts are inherently immoral. Schools and hospitals and baseball stadiums aren't inherently immoral.

— And neither is killing innocent people?

— Not if we aren't targeting them. Bad things happen in war. That's why it's so important to fight them over there: so we don't have to fight them over here.

— Is there any limit to the number of innocent people you can collaterally damage before it becomes immoral?

— Not if the alternative is that we lose the war.

— And it's also OK to tax people to build baseball stadiums, but not nudist resorts.

— Right.

— And there's no moral limit to the amount of taxation as long as people benefit from what the government does with the revenue.

— Right.

— If the end of a nudist resort can disqualify taxation as a means for acquiring revenue, doesn't that mean the the end of a baseball stadium, or even a school or hospital, justifies that same means of taxation? Aren't you giving me an end-justifies-the-means argument for all taxation?

— No.

— So when does the end justify the means and when does it not?

— The end never justifies the means, but it can disqualify it.

— So if the end is good, taxation is OK, but if the end is bad, it's not.

— Right.

— But that doesn't mean that the end justifies the means.

— Right. Look, this hasn't been any help at all. I think there are better things my son can be doing with his time than looking at naked women.

— Really? Like what?

— Like reading the Bible, or the classics, or praying, or meditating on Scripture, or getting in touch with people who need company, or volunteering somewhere. Or learning a musical instrument or a foreign language, or woodworking, or painting, or writing poetry or hymns.

— I notice that . . .

— Or watching baseball. You can look at naked women all you want, but I don't want him doing that.

— I don't want me doing that either. Everything on your list is better.

— Even the baseball?

— No, but since I still watch it occasionally, I guess I'd better shut up.

— It's about time.

Five Reasons Barack Obama Is Bad News for Black People

The Trayvon Martin case has sparked a loud response from "the black community" (as though blacks are so many chocolate bunnies out of the same mold), one of the loudest of which belongs to President Barack Obama. While I don't know what transpired before the shooting of Mr. Martin, that Mr. Obama would speak so loudly tells me that things are not as he would like me to believe them. Despite his rhetoric, Mr. Obama is no friend of black people, and if he says one thing, people should consider the possibility that its opposite is actually true. This is especially true for blacks, who arguably comprise the most vulnerable ethnic group in our country.

Why should no self-respecting black person trust Barack Obama?

Inflation

Mr. Obama has presided over a huge increase in the supply of digital dollars, "money" backed by nothing but "the full faith and credit of the United States government." Why does this hurt blacks?

Whenever anyone creates "money" out of thin air, either by counterfeiting paper bills, clipping or debasing the metal in coins, or declaring the money into existence using a computer keyboard, the effect is the same: those with immediate access to the new "money" have increased buying power: they can buy goods and services at the old prices. But the more money there is in circulation, the more those at the front of the line can bid prices up, and those at the end of the line, who have to wait for the "money" to trickle down pay higher prices, as do those who do not have access to it at all. Those in the inner circle benefit; everyone else suffers.

Blacks as a group are underrepresented in the inner circle and overrepresented at the end of the line, so they are more likely than whites to face the higher prices caused by inflation with little or no additional new "money" to pay them. Think gasoline: how many blacks are earning today three times what they were earning ten years ago? Yet the price of gasoline has more than tripled, as have the prices of such things as groceries, clothing, and highway tolls.

Cronyism

Much of the money that Mr. Obama has allowed to be created has gone directly into the coffers of the elite bankers, the richest people the world has ever seen. As I've just explained, this money has esentially been taken out of the pockets of blacks and given to whites.

While this is the most blatant example of cronyism, innumerable other examples abound, such as defense contractors and educational institutions. As with everything else government does, whatever the wording of the policies, what actually comes to pass is a product not of justice but of expediency: the powerful will do whatever they consider most beneficial. And while the powerful are not black, those who pay for cronyism are.

Unionization and the Minimum Wage

The banksters aren't the only privileged whites to benefit at the expense of blacks under Mr. Obamma's rule. While walking to work shortly after the election, I saw a headline on the Public Record, a union tabloid: "Obama Owes Unions Bigtime." Barry, Barry, he's their man.

While union rhetoric is intended to portray unions as the friends of the poor, the opposite is true, unless "friends don't let friends take low-paying jobs." The first law of the marketplace is that the higher the price for a good or service, the less of it will be demanded. An employer willing to hire X number of employees at five dollars per hour will hire fewer if forced to pay ten dollars per hour. This is good for those who get hired, of course, but not for those who can find no work.

Similarly, a worker might be willing to shuffle papers for five dollars an hour in a comfortable, friendly environment, but refuse to engage in heavy lifting in the cold and damp or scorching heat for the same wage. If it's fair for workers to refuse to work too long or too hard for low pay, it's fair for employers to refuse to hire at high mandated wages.

Like it or not, blacks are less likely to be hired than whites, and they have the same right to refuse work that demands too much for too little pay. The result is a higher unemployment rate for blacks.

The second law (or is it really the first?) is that only the worker can decide whether he is better off giving his time and effort for the money or looking for a more favorable exchange, and only the employer can decide whether to risk his capital on a given worker. Government-mandated wage scales, which includes both unions and minimum wages, take that choice from the workers and employers. Since lack of freedom to choose is the common definition of slavery, it is fair to say that Mr. Obama prefers a slave system to a free market. Given that whites disproportionately occupy positions of power relative to blacks, who is more likely to be the slave?

While it is true that some union members and minimum wage workers who are employed receive higher wages than they otherwise would, these benefit at the expense not only of workers whose skills will not attract a buyer at the minimum wage rate, but also those whose labor is worth more than the mandated union rate. The former, as I have said, are disproportionately black.

However, one would expect that the latter are also, since blacks generally have to be better workers than their white counterparts to overcome prejudice and be hired for the same job; also, employers have incentive to lower the wages of newer and better workers when they are forced to hire less-profitable workers. This is especially true when older workers, who would be disproportionately white, cannot be fired because of union tenure laws.

So privileged groups benefit from unionization and the minimum wage by pricing under-privileged workers, disproportionately blacks, out of the market and penalizing the hard workers who do break into the better jobs.

The War on Drugs

Candidate Obama dared his detractors to use his past marijuana use against him by looking them in the eye and saying, "Of course I inhaled. That's the whole point." He might as well have added, "What are you going to do about it?"

Though he was trying to appear sincere by distancing himself from Bill Clinton's and George W. Bush's dissembling about their drug use, he thereby proved himself a breathtaking hypocrite: he admits to having used marijuana himself and has paid no penalty for it, but he has no compunction about jailing others who do so. Similarly, he is willing to play the race card in the Trayvon Martin case but shows no remorse over murdering Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, who was guilty of no crime, nor of presiding over a system in which the majority of violators of drug laws are white but the majority of those in jail for violating drug laws are black; furthermore, they serve longer sentences than whites.

Drug-law conviction bars these "criminals" from good jobs, making them vulnerable to the hardships of unionization and the minimum wage. And again, as a group, this hurts blacks more than whites.

The Wars Overseas

The military, like the rest of society, is disproportionately white at the top and black at the bottom. Those who direct the war from their air-conditioned quarters are white; those out in the battle fields getting killed and maimed are black. These "volunteers" come from outside the inner circle and are driven into the killing business by the unemployment that follows unionization and the minimum wage, to say nothing of schools that do not teach and a welfare system that encourages single motherhood. These are the "heroes" honored by flyovers at football games and "Veterans Memorial Highway" signs. Maybe they think these honors make the risk and trauma worthwhile—as I say, only they can decide—but I suspect most don't. I wouldn't.

So there you have it.

Many blacks trust Mr. Obama because he has dark skin and frizzy hair, and their hearts are in it because he is the "President of the United States of America." With the office comes trust. But is he, as president, worthy of that trust? Should blacks want their president to be that man, or someone else?

If I were black, I would want a president who promotes honest money and the rights of prospective employers and employees to interact, and who will end cronyism, the war on drugs and the wars overseas. There is someone in the political arena who has been working hard to do do all that for thirty years, and it's not Barack Obama. If you don't know who it is, you need to find out.

How Can Three Hundred Million People Be One Community?

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? (2 Cor 6:14-15)

Christians in the US assume that they are citizens of "one nation under God," applying "red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight" to Uncle Sam as much as to Jesus—provided the people referred to are US citizens. Oh, we have our disagreements, of course. Most of those who voted for president in 2008 voted for Barack Obama, who was, if one was to believe the e-mails evangelicals were forwarding in October of 2008, a precursor of the antichrist, but now that he's shown himself to be as much a part of the establishment as his predecessor and his closest rival . . . hey, there's nothing to worry about.

Of course, the evangelical call now is for "anybody but Obama" to take the oath in 2013, but if Obama wins in November, evangelicals will still sing hymns in teary-eyed joy come May and June when their children go off to join his military.

You've noticed that I don't like Barack Obama. I also don't like John McCain. Or Mitt Romney. Or Hillary Clinton. I don't want them running my life. Not only that, I don't like people who want to run my life by proxy and so vote such monsters into office. I especially don't like people who vote them into office so they will take my money and use it to kill obviously innocent people and jail sinners the Bible calls God's people to persuade (2 Cor 5:11, 20), never to molest. And if that's not enough, if Jesus is the one telling them to do this, then I don't like Jesus either.

If that sounds nasty, think of the anti-Obama (or anti-Bush, or anti-Sarah Palin, or anti-Louis Farrakhan or Rush Limbaugh or whoever) e-mail forwards you've gotten. The names are different, but the attitude is the same, isn't it? Or how about the term "culture war"—does it seem too far fetched? It doesn't to me.

So I ask, How can people who disagree so violently (sometimes in the literal sense) about fundamental moral issues be considered one nation, let alone one community? "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall" (Luke 11:17). By that definition we are at best one nation, but a nation doomed to fall. The liberals hate the conservatives, the free-marketers hate the bleeding hearts, and the crony capitalists hate the tree huggers. And we call ourselves one nation?

What is it that makes you part of a nation? Is it something outside you, like the flag flown and the uniforms worn by the thugs who take your money and use it to spread misery? Or is it what's inside you, what you love, your goals in life?

Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I like to think my citizenship is in heaven, that the world belongs to a God who loves me despite my spectacular failures and who designed his love shown on Calvary to lead me to forsake my sins and live for his glory. My true countrymen are those who love God, which they prove in part by treating their neighbors as they themselves want to be treated. As for those who spurn God's love, and thus his ways, I am to relate to them as much as possible as an ambassador, not an assailant. I see no other nation, nor can I imagine one, worth being part of, and certainly not a nation headed by the likes of Barack Obama that worships such idols as prime-time television and reveres athletes and entertainers, not to mention members of the armed forces, be they "military" or "police."

"But we have to protect ourselves from terrorists [or economic disaster or the flu or pornography or drugs or . . .]!"

Who is this "we"? There's you, who want to take my money and use it in ways I abhor. And there's me. If there's a "we," it's the "we" who will suffer blowback at the hands of survivors of your aggression, or it's the "we" who will be impoverished by your "compassion."

Dear friend, if your compassion depends on weapons, badges, and uniforms to succeed, I don't want to benefit from it, and I certainly don't want to be exploited by it. Go away.

That said, I do know a way three hundred million people can be one community: we stop aspiring to be one great nation and start being faithful in the little things. We clean the Philistines out of our own bean fields—the idols from our hearts and lives and homes (2 Sam 23:11-12). We erect our own private temples, no matter how unimpressive, by discipling our families and keeping our churches focused on the Bible, justice, compassion, and mercy (Zech 4:10). And we trust that the God who sees us faithful in the small things will reward us with greater things (Luke 19:16-19).

I join with people who don't allow abortion, but maybe the next guy's friends do, or my health care plan covers chiropractors but the next guy's doesn't. What they do over there isn't my concern, and more than the carnage in China during the 1960s was my concern (when I was in my early teens). Instead of "Everything you do is my business," we take the tack, "What's yours is yours, what's mine is mine, I'll do it my way, you do it yours." In case of foreign attack, it would be to both sides' advantage to preserve the status quo rather than falling under a more centralized system that chips away at both systems, but beyond that we try to let each polity experiment, and may the best system convince the others to imitate it and be allied with it.

But of course, that's a pipe dream. Politicians and their minions are not interested in the advantage of their subjects; having power over others is the final goal as well as the means of achieving it. And no polity, no matter how small, would be free of those who would enslave their neighbors "for the common good," or in the name of "justice" (which is always in reality "just us"). The best we can pray for is that the large units will collapse before they can do too much damage and that we can find small units of like-minded people to hang with and ward off the looters.

God commands us to be examples of personal integrity and neighborliness (Matt 5:14; 1 Cor 10:31). Whatever effect that has on convincing people to abandon politics and embrace voluntary servanthood, I know of no other way to get them to leave the kingdom of darkness and follow the Light of the World. We may not get three hundred million people to join us, but perhaps God will grant us a polity large enough that we spend most of our days serving people who expect to benefit from serving us. That wouldn't be the world, or even "from sea to shining sea," but do we really need anything more?

What's In a Name?

My editing business has some interesting prospective clients, two writers with Arabic names reviewing books by Palestinian authors about the situation in Palestine (or the Palestinian territories, or whatever you want to call the area). So far they have both treated me as I would like to be treated, so to the degree that it is possible to make one’s customers one’s friends, I have two new friends.

Now the Great Commission tells me that these are two potential disciples, that I am to preach the Gospel to them. How simple it would be to tell them, after an exchange in which they praise my work (and earning that praise is, of course, another matter), that I am an evangelical Christian. How wonderful it would be if they would take that to mean that I make it my goal to love God more than anything and with all I am and have, that the first indicator of that love is my love for all my neighbors as proven by my efforts to do for them what I would have others do for me, that I acknowledge my failures in that regard, and that I know of only one way to escape God’s righteous wrath for my sins, the blood Jesus Christ shed on the cross!

Instead, I would expect them to see “evangelical Christian” and think that I consider Muslims (especially Palestinians) Untermensch and Israelis entitled to impunity.

If God indeed rules the State of Israel, then we should petition Tel Aviv to make us citizens. (After all, God certainly doesn’t rule the US, at least not so’s you’d notice it.) But if he doesn’t–and he doesn’t—then we must conclude that the State of Israel is in rebellion against God the same as any other political entity, including (or perhaps especially) the US, and judge its deeds by the same objective standard we use to judge those of any other individual or group.

More importantly, we need to consider what’s at stake in the words “God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom 2:24). If the choice is either to “stand by our ally Israel” or to preach the gospel to the Palestinians, which way do we go? Can we assume that we will never be confronted with that choice?

“Joel of Jerusalem” used to write in the magazine Israel My Glory of the trouble the Israeli government gave him for preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem. That is enough evidence for me that we are more likely to preserve God’s good name by saying, “Let me die with the Philistines” than by confusing God’s glory with the State of Israel.

Reaping What We Sow

"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." — Luke 6:38

During my formative years we were proud to be citizens of the nation that had conquered Germany, ending the slaughter of innocent people and saving the world from a fascist state notable for imperialism abroad and deadly secret police in the homeland. Movies like The Great Escape, TV shows like Combat and Twelve O'Clock High, and the miniseries Holocaust reminded us constantly of the evils of the Nazis. We were also reminded of Nazi Germany as we read George Orwell's masterful Nineteen Eighty-Four. We knew that what it described was possible because we already had the telecommunications technology, though it wasn't being used by the government to spy on us. But whenever anyone in authority used power for evil purposes, we would respond as on cue, "Hey, man, is this 1984?"

(Those really in the know knew that the Soviet Union was almost a literal fulfillment of Orwell's "prophecy," but most of the media and education establishment were socialists of one stripe or another, so it wasn't polite to point that out. I was totally fooled myself, even though I read a few books by Christians who had been persecuted by the Communists.)

Add Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth into the mix, and we considered ourselves on our guard against the rise of any totalitarian police state in the good old USA.

Unfortunately, Wile E. Coyote had already run past the edge of the cliff. He just hadn't looked down yet.

In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalized Iran's oil industry, and replaced him with Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had fled for his life for fear of the supporters of nationalization. One reinstalled, the Shah was friendly to US interests, so for twenty-six years, the US overlooked his autocracy, specifically the use of his secret police force, SAVAK, to arrest, detain, torture, and kill his opponents.¹

Consider for a moment what a secret police force is. By secret is meant that no one knows the identity of the agents; no one can say, "My neighbor is a member of the secret police," because no one, not even their spouses, knows who they are.

Targets are chosen in secret, so no one knows who the next target is. And as time goes on, targets can be chosen at the whim not only of the chief of state, but also by those in the secret police apparatus. At first targets might be only those who pose a threat to the regime, but eventually they include those against whom those sufficiently powerful have personal vendettas.

In a police state, once a victim has been detained, he has no recourse to courts (not that having such would do him any good), and his friends and family have no way of knowing what has happened to him, where he is, or when or if he will be released. To top it off, the longer he is detained and the more he learns about the system that has detained him, the less likely he is to be released, because he now knows the secrets of the system, which depends most of all on secrecy.

During those days I was never taught to question the legitimacy of supporting the Shah, not even by my fellow evangelicals. It was only when an article in Sojourners, a left-wing magazine whose view of Scripture I soon found suspect, described the situation that I even knew it existed, so secret were the Shah's secret police. I had heard much about the persecution of Christians in Communist countries, but, child of the media that I was, I had never realized that the taxes I sent to Uncle Sam went to preserving governments we would never tolerate in the US.

Make that past tense. We would never have tolerated them in the days between the Holocaust and 1984, but the evangelical church is celebrating the creation of one in our day.

The presidency of George W. Bush was supported by no one more than the evangelical community. I remember receiving e-mail forwards celebrating that man's godliness. Now there was reason to be glad his Democratic opponents, Al Gore and John Kerry, were not president, but there's a difference between being grateful for the absence of a greater evil and celebrating a positive good, and these were celebrations, not expressions of relief.

During the Bush presidency, one of his functionaries, John Yoo, became notorious in constitutionalist circles because of his work to establish the legitimacy (i.e., lawfulness) of what he termed "the unitary executive": he believed that because the nation was at war (the War on Terror), the president needed to be essentially a king, with powers to declare war, and to detain, torture, and execute "enemies of the nation" at will.

That the next president might be a Democrat fazed evangelical Bush supporters not at all, and indeed they cheered when Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan. They cheered louder when he killed Osama bin Laden instead of capturing him and plying him for information about the terrorists who supposedly threaten our existence, and they cheered even louder when he killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without establishing his guilt of any crime.

So in the US we now are ruled by an autocrat with life-or-death powers over US citizens, just like the Shah of Iran.

Except the Shah didn't have a practically unlimited budget. He was the autocrat of a third-rate country, and though he had resources enough to gain international notoriety for his oppression of his enemies, he was nowhere near omnipotent, as his dethronement proves.

Uncle Sam, in contrast, is nearly omnipotent, the embodiment of the Yuletide hymn, "He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, . . . ."

Our electronic communications are now all monitored. Soon we will have spy drones in the sky able to track all our movements. Every motor vehicle will be required to carry a GPS that will allow the authorities to track position, speed, and seatbelt usage. As people lose their jobs and homes, revenue from conventional taxes and even from "sin taxes" on such things as tobacco and alcohol will fall, to be replaced by "taxation by citation": if "sinners" are fair game but unable to provide the desired revenue, certainly "lawbreakers"—e.g., speeders and those who don't buckle their seat belts—can expect to be forced to shoulder the load to relieve the tax burden on the law abiding.

The doctrine of American Exceptionalism teaches that the US is the one nation in the world that can be trusted with a totalitarian government; the US government would never become like Nazi Germany, the Shah's Iran, or the Oceania of Nineteen Eighty-Four. But the Bible says that all have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God, all have hearts that are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked beyond comprehension. There is every biblical reason to believe that the tyranny of Nazi Germany and the Shah's regime awaits us, as does their ignominious end.

Worse, the disdain we used to heap on German Christians for going along with Hitler will be aimed at us by those who watch us fall. And don't think there won't be many who will work with holy—perhaps even "Christian"—zeal to help us fall the way our "greatest generation" helped Nazi Germany fall about the ears of the Evangelicals who helped build it.

-----

¹ Nothing in this post should be construed as support for Mosaddegh. Suffice it to say he was a politician, and I have every reason to believe that as such he extorted money and other concessions from productive people and used them for the benefit of those connected to him. My focus is the system that we assented to and supported with our tax money.