The Divine Mind versus Frankenocracy

Go ahead and read the Bastiat quotes, skip my commentary, and go directly to the Girl from the Eponymous blog, Joan of Argghh for a brush with genius. (As opposed to geniuses with brushes like the Quiptorum and A Work in Progress.)

The Mighty Bastiat speaks across the centuries:

A friend of mine, commissioned to make inquiry into Parisian industry, has assured me that the manufacturers have revealed to him a very striking fact, which proves, better than any reasoning can, how much insecurity and uncertainty injure the formation of capital. It was remarked, that during the most distressing period, the popular expenses of mere fancy had not diminished. The small theatres, the fighting lists, the public-houses, and tobacco depots, were as much frequented as in prosperous times. In the inquiry, the operatives themselves explained this phenomenon thus:--"What is the use of pinching? Who knows what will happen to us? Who knows that interest will not be abolished? Who knows but that the State will become a universal and gratuitous lender, and that it will wish to annihilate all the fruits which we might expect from our savings?" Well! I say, that if such ideas could prevail during two single years, it would be enough to turn our beautiful France into a Turkey--misery would become general and endemic, and, most assuredly, the poor would be the first upon whom it would fall.

-- From Essays on Political Economy

So, what do you suppose will happen when the government’s primary policy for economic growth is to discourage savings (i.e., the increasing of capital) and encourage consumption? Is there any reason to think that might lead to a disastrous economic collapse?

Bastiat continues:

Workmen! they talk to you a great deal upon the _artificial_ organisation of labour;--do you know why they do so? Because they are ignorant of the laws of its _natural_ organisation; that is, of the wonderful organisation which results from liberty. You are told, that liberty gives rise to what is called the radical antagonism of classes; that it creates, and makes to clash, two opposite interests--that of the capitalists and that of the "prolettaires." But we ought to begin by proving that this antagonism exists by a law of nature; and afterwards it would remain to be shown how far the arrangements of restraint are superior to those of liberty, for between liberty and restraint I see no middle path. Again, it would remain to be proved that restraint would always operate to your advantage, and to the prejudice of the rich. But, no; this radical antagonism, this natural opposition of interests, does not exist. It is only an evil dream of perverted and intoxicated imaginations. No; a plan so defective has not proceeded from the Divine Mind. To affirm it, we must begin by denying the existence of God. And see how, by means of social laws, and because men exchange amongst themselves their labours and their productions, see what a harmonious tie attaches the classes one to the other! There are the landowners; what is their interest? That the soil be fertile, and the sun beneficent: and what is the result? That corn abounds, that it falls in price, and the advantage turns to the profit of those who have had no patrimony. There are the manufacturers--what is their constant thought? To perfect their labour, to increase the power of their machines, to procure for themselves, upon the best terms, the raw material. And to what does all this tend? To the abundance and the low price of produce; that is, that all the efforts of the manufacturers, and without their suspecting it, result in a profit to the public consumer, of which each of you is one. It is the same with every profession. Well, the capitalists are not exempt from this law. They are very busy making schemes, economising, and turning them to their advantage. This is all very well; but the more they succeed, the more do they promote the abundance of capital, and, as a necessary consequence, the reduction of interest. Now, who is it that profits by the reduction of interest? Is it not the borrower first, and finally, the consumers of the things which the capitals contribute to produce?

It is therefore certain that the final result of the efforts of each class is the common good of all.

The difference between me and an Obamatron socialist is that I love freedom. I love freedom more than comfort or security. The great sin of socialism, the great crime is that it limits our freedom exactly to the extent that it promises us security. The classical liberal sees through the lie, knowing that security is never really to be held. There are no guarantees in life.

Some socialists claim to base their system on Christianity, as, for example, in the book of Acts where we read about the believers selling possessions and having all things in common. It is all well and good to give to one another, but giving must be of one’s own volition to be pleasing to God. It cannot be done for show (ask Ananias and Sapphira), and it cannot be coerced. Peter made it clear to Ananias that the Church did not compel him to sell his property. It was his and he could have done with it as he pleased.

The Puritans tried an enforced version of this at Plymouth and very nearly starved. Like modern socialists they tried to make a necessity of a virtue. It failed.

As Bastiat says, between liberty and restraint, I see no middle path. The more government regulates and restrains, the more it attempts to control and enforce, the more it will impoverish and enslave – all, it will say, for the common good. Conversely, the classical liberal view is that the common good is best served by liberty, by the give and take of markets, by the wisdom, and indeed by the foolishness of the individual going about pursuing his own best interests in his own limited way.

My father never read Bastiat or Hayek or Friedman, but he was a farmer who tried to be diverse. He raised grain at times. He always had a few cows and dabbled in dairy. We had a few chickens and sometimes raised a few hogs, though we often had only one or two which we would butcher ourselves. When the government began to offer price supports to local milk producers, Dad was smart enough to see that the dairy business was going to take off, and he bought Jerseys and built a new barn. The idea the Department of Agriculture had was to provide fresh milk and other dairy products to local markets from local producers. In some ways it wasn’t a bad idea, but the supports should have been dropped as soon as there were producers and processors in various regions. The continuation of artificially high milk prices for producers led to overproduction in the mid-1960’s. Processors began to cut their rates to the dairy farmers.

Farmers even tried to unionize at one point with the National Farmers Organization (NFO), and we, along with many others, opened the valves on our bulk tanks and dumped raw milk down the barn gutters.

As Dad often noted, more poetically than I can render it, if the government tries to help the grain farmers, they hurt the dairymen, the feedlot operators and the consumers. If it tries to help the livestock, milk, and pork producers, they create overproduction and ultimately suppress prices paid by the processors and packing houses. Government is a very poor farmer, and, I suspect, a worse banker or automobile manufacturer.

Whether government is attempting to help preserve family farms, regulate consumer prices, protect the environment, provide people with home ownership, or mandate mileage standards for American motor vehicles, the result is inevitably FUBAR. I am not sure there is anything the government does -- apart from national defense and the military -- that could not be done cheaper and better with less pain by the free market. Health care is a primary example as we have discussed before.

The only thing government can really do is redistribute capital. (Let's use the word capital instead of wealth because the IRS does not give a hoot if you are "wealthy". It pulls what it considers excess capital from my paycheck and yours every cycle, regardless of our actual efforts or needs.) Interestingly, the capitalist free market can and does redistribute capital as well. One of the differences is that government requires an increasingly gluttonous bureaucracy which absorbs ever more of the money that passes through it to create an ever-decreasing effect. Free markets distribute the benefits of capital naturally and effortlessly. Is there lag and dearth in the free market at times? Inevitably! But the market is self-correcting as opposed to bureaucracies which are self-perpetuating.

Liberty is precious, on a level with life itself as the Founding Fathers knew. Bureaus and ministries, secretaries and czars are enemies of freedom, though their intentions may be of the best. Even with high ideals and motives, their choices, decisions, edicts and actions will of necessity favor one over another. They will ask, is it fair for Paul to go hungry while Peter dines sumptuously, and they will rob Peter to pay Paul. But, we ask is it fair to take hardworking Peter’s capital by threat of violence to subsidize the wastrel dreams of Paul? I will say it again: let Peter give of his own free will to support his brothers, cultivating the virtue and grace of giving before his God. Socialism is a crime, and government is the criminal.

Running up the score

I have seen some boys high school JV games almost this bad. I'm glad to see that somebody called them on it. Covenant should, at the very least, have a long talk with the coach for continuing to run a press unnecessarily. The 3-pointers don't bother me so much.

Rocky Top

LORD, You are my portion and my cup of blessing; You hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. – Psalm 16:5,6

On the television show Bonanza, the Cartwrights often traveled to California from their home in Nevada, but their trips were almost always to San Francisco. I do not remember the episode or the context, but Hoss once traveled down to southern California. He remarked on the barrenness of it, and someone asked if he had ever seen California. He replied that he had been to California many times, but he doubted that anyone would ever want to live in such an ugly place as Los Angeles. I remember the first time I left the Spring green hills of the Ozarks driving to LA. My thoughts were much like those Hoss expressed. Yet some people love the high desert or the coasts, the plains or the mountains, or even the cold, frozen north lands. I have heard people call swamp land in central Wisconsin “God’s Country”. I have heard others say the same thing about desolate plains around Midland and Odessa, Texas or places along the Gulf Coast where the mosquitoes could be mistaken for buzzards if they flew a little higher. I think they’re all crazy. Everybody knows God lives just a little northeast of Cedar Gap, Missouri. Even the devil keeps a weekend place over the border in Arkansas.

When it comes to landscapes and vistas, “home” makes up for a lot of deficiencies. In that sense, we can all understand the psalmist when he says, “I have a beautiful inheritance.”

In other realms, we may not be so inclined to think well of the heritage bequeathed to us. Many of us look back on regrettable scenes that closed doors or burned bridges. We may have reason to wish that we could live some pivotal moment again, making a different decision in a second pass. Our boundary lines may seem a little restrictive, and the ground we are left to till may seem rocky and hard.

Still, we are here. Here. And the opportunity to experience joy and peace is ours at this moment precisely because the lines are drawn as they are.

If I have regrets, sitting where I am today, they are not for me, but for the trouble and pain I may have caused someone else. Every hurt and failure that I suffered I now see as a stone of remembrance, a landmark establishing the lines of my inheritance, bringing me to this place which the Lord has given me. There are others, no doubt, with more spacious abodes where the soil is deeper and richer and better watered. Still, I have my little place with its small, but inexhaustible spring of living water, and it will produce all that I need, in abundance.

Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid, Tastes Great ...

Congratulations to Mr. Obama on his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States.

The general feeling seems to be that America is in crisis, and we need solutions. We need to be willing to try things and be patient with less than perfect attempts. We need to be willing to give Obama and his team a chance.

Really? You mean the economic crisis, brought on in large part because of the leftists’ insistence that we make loans to people who can’t afford them, is such an overwhelming threat to our way of life that we should support our government’s efforts even if we disagree with the policies?

Where I'm from we have a technical term for that: bullshit.

Think of me as Code Red.

Don’t question my patriotism.

And remember that protest is, after all, the highest form of patriotism.

I was against the bailout of Wall Street and the automakers because I am a free market capitalist. It doesn’t matter if it is under a Republican administration with a Democrat-controlled Congress or under a Democrat administration. Government intervention in the private sector is bad for everyone. Make-work projects prolong and deepen recessions. We don’t have to go back to 1936 and the WPA. Jimmy Carter tried things like CETA and PSE back in the late ‘70’s. Those were disastrous wastes of tax dollars.

Expect Chicago street crews to expand, such that, instead of five guys – ethnically and gender diverse, of course – leaning on shovels watching one guy work, there will be eight guys leaning on shovels watching one work.

I do not want to live in a European-style social democracy, and I will do whatever tiny thing I can to prevent America going further down that road. America has already embraced too much socialism; government meddling is the primary problem we have now with healthcare and the financial sector. Our income tax system punishes achievement, our courts allow people to play lawsuit lottery, and we allow people on the government dole to vote. To the extent that Obama and his leftist, collectivist buddies want to push America on down the road to socialism, I am not “on board” with them, and I sincerely hope their efforts are monumental and catastrophic failures.

The majority of Democrats, in the face of a vicious common enemy – radical Islam, thought nothing of attempting to thwart the military, destroy morale, and play politics with the blood of American servicemen. They were more concerned about destroying George Bush and regaining political power than defeating a threat to Western Civilization. They succeeded. We can thank God that our military has succeeded as well, despite the increased cost in casualties resulting from an enemy emboldened by Democrat opposition.

In light of that, all efforts by the right to oppose Obama and his desire to destroy the Constitution and our economy are to be considered highly patriotic.

Fixing to have faith

Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God.” – Mark 11:22

For the last couple of weeks I have been meaning to get around to thinking about having faith, but other stuff keeps coming up. I don’t have any theological axes to grind because I use a chainsaw which will stay sharp for quite a while if you don’t run it in the ground. I will point out that if you don’t have a real job, any integrity, or any fear of God, there is good money to be made in the various repackaged models of good old “mind science”. From Deepak to Dyer to Jesse Duplantis, thinking good thoughts and speaking faith obviously works because all these guys are millionaires.

If you don’t know Jesse Duplantis, he is a Charismatic preacher from New Orleans – he used to be strictly an evangelist, but I think he pastors his own church down there now as well. He’s a funny guy, tells lots of jokes and funny stories, and, as far as I know he is a decent and moral man. He is a “faith preacher” in the tradition of Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and many others. A few years ago, Brother Duplantis decided he needed his own plane to fly around and preach the prosperity gospel. It was a jet, and I think the price tag was around $8 million.

Brother Jesse has a half-hour program that he airs on the Christian networks as well as local stations around the country. He has a substantial audience in addition to all of his preaching in large churches, campmeetings, and other venues. The man is gifted, and he has worked for years to achieve the success he has. I have no quarrel with him at any level except to point out that what works for Reverend Duplantis may not be the norm.

When he decided he needed a new plane, he addressed it on his program. He explained that he needed eight thousand viewers – certainly a minority of his audience – to send $1000 each to buy his jet. He said he was using his faith and believing for this to be done. Now anyone who listens to and enjoys Reverend Duplantis or benefits from his teaching and ministry is free to support him financially. I’d much rather see money go to Brother Jesse than to Uncle Sam. I wondered, though, if Jesse is “believing God” for his $8 million why he bothered to mention the specifics on his television program. I don’t have a television program or a radio program, and my blog is pretty secretive, too. If you or I need to “believe God” for a new jet or even a new Corvette, our options are a little more limited. We’re pretty much stuck “believing God for” whatever and taking care of it ourselves.

Again, I have no quarrel with Jesse Duplantis or any of the rest I mentioned. I almost always listen to Joel Osteen when I run across his program on TV, just because he’s positive and uplifting. My quarrel is with the concept expressed by the phrase “believing for”, or “have faith that” as prosperity preachers use it.

The Biblical concept of faith is never separated from the object. When the Disciples wondered at the cursing of the fig tree in Mark 11, Jesus begins His explanation by saying, “Have faith IN God.” One of the most egregious wrongs done by the Word of Faith movement was that for many years they took a marginal reading of the Lord’s words, which could be read as “have faith of God”-- and turned it into “have the God-kind of faith”. As I have to repeat often, I am no Greek scholar, but I know there is no accepted translation of the New Testament that renders that statement in that way.

When Jesus did the miraculous for people, He sometimes questioned them in this manner: Do you believe I can do this? Notice, He is asking them, in essence, if they believe in Him. I do not recall a single instance in the New Testament where anyone was asked to “have faith for” or “believe for” anything. When Peter and John healed a crippled man in the Gate Beautiful of the temple, Peter declared, “By faith in His name, His name has made this man strong …”.

Not faith for; faith IN.

I mentioned this somewhere the other day, that I believe everybody has faith. Everybody believes in some stuff. The critical thing is not the fact that we have faith but what we have faith in. For example, at the moment, a certain percentage of the population has faith in the government. I, too, have faith in government, but my faith is mainly that government will take my money, waste 70% of it and use the other 30% to collect more money from me. Outside of that, I’ve never seen government do much worthwhile.

Some folks believe in themselves. Their theme song is, “It’s a small world after all.”

The virtue, I repeat, is in the object of faith rather than the faith itself. Faith in God will get you through the times when you can’t always get what you want. I don’t just “believe God” to pull me out of the ditch. I believe in the goodness of God which may leave me in the ditch long enough for me not to get hit by a freight train.

Whether my need is forgiveness, or the power to forgive, grace or mercy, light, strength, wisdom, patience (which I need right now), holiness, or just plain help, I will put my faith in the God who provides. I put my faith in the Lord, not in positive confessions or a positive mental attitude. I don’t trust in my ability to visualize or the consistency of my affirmations, but I trust in the Lord, the One who knows what I need. He is the One who will never fail me, and all He asks is that I trust Him.

Fedora, Five O'clock Shadows, Tyranny and Slavery

Jesus said, “I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over Me” (John 14:30).

(KJV – “for the prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in me”).

MizzE, the QP, said, “Biggest lesson I learned for myself: Saying ‘NO’ to tyrants in a straight forward manner and walking away, if necessary, in order to preserve your own sanity and soul, is OK.”

A lonely figure wanders homeless and hungry for weeks. By rights he should be back in the city running things, but his father has other plans. The son is on a mission that no one recognizes or understands. The head of the syndicate, Snake, I think they call him, finds the son out in the wasteland. Snake makes the kid a very reasonable offer of some easy dough. The son refuses. Snake smiles. He understands negotiations. The kid isn’t as naïve as he figured, but that’s OK. He ups the ante. How about worldwide fame for very little risk? Again the son refuses. Snake nods, no longer smiling, and then makes the offer he knows the son can’t refuse. “I know why you’re here, kid,” he says. “You’ve come to take over, so let’s do it. I’ll cut you in – give you all my turf. You just give me my due and keep me on as a silent partner.”*

“Get thee behind Me, Satan.”

Jesus says “NO” to the devil, walks away and takes the long, hard path to Golgotha. He embraces the freedom of obedience to the Spirit. As a result, His defeat is eternal victory and His death is life everlasting.

No one knows temptation the way Jesus does because He alone never yielded.

The hook in a thousand plots is that, for love or loyalty, the hero compromised and now he is an outcast in a shabby office on the seedy side of town doing dirty jobs dirt cheap because that’s the only option left. Somebody has the hooks in him, and the plot turns on his one chance for redemption, though it will cost him everything. The difference between the Gospel and the film noir is that Jesus makes the choice up front and sticks with it all the way through to the tomb.

It’s important to appreciate the subtlety of the devil’s offer in that he seems to say Jesus could save the world without that ugly scene on the cross. Mankind needed Jesus as king. Can you imagine the glorious reign Jesus could have established on earth? He could have called in many promises and prophecies to be fulfilled in the restoration of David’s throne. Further, the Disciples themselves had come to depend on their Lord. They believed, and so stated repeatedly, that they expected Him to restore the kingdom. That was Messiah’s mission. What was the point of all this talk about death and loss?

The devil tempts us to skip the bad parts in God’s path and zoom straight to the end of the road – to what we are (or think we are) supposed to possess anyway. However, as any hardboiled detective can tell you, the mob will only give you what you want so they can have what they want. The devil will demand his due. There will come a day when Faust gets the bill. God’s way, though hidden and hard to understand, is the way of freedom and peace.

We know that being in bondage is a bad thing. It does not matter what my outward status may be, what’s in my bank account, what I drive or with whom I sleep. Forge my chains of gold and wrap them in silk, and I am still in bondage. Freedom and sanity are more important than material wealth and ease, or the transient approval or even adoration of the fickle. It occurs to me, though, that if I am in a relationship with someone who is a tyrant, I may be keeping both of us in bondage.

As the man in Jerry Clowers’ story says, “Just shoot up in here amongst us. One of us got to have some relief.”

Somebody has to come to their senses and put an end to what’s going on. By saying ‘NO’ in the straightforward manner that QP suggests, I can potentially set both of us free. Without an enabling slave, a tyrant is powerless. The tyrant can find freedom if she chooses. As for me, I choose the Lord’s way to peace, sanity and freedom right now.




*Thanks to Ben for his recent noirspirations.

Step 2

As a result of my daughter’s alcohol addiction, I went to my first Al-Anon meeting last night. The focus was on Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Though I have been familiar with Twelve-Step programs for many years, I had never attended a meeting. I suppose I had read the second step but I had never paid much attention to that last phrase -- “restore us to sanity”. I thought the focus was on believing in a Higher Power. When people began to talk about it, though, they all emphasized the fact that they had known they were insane or learned they were insane. Some mentioned the “greater Power” in relation to restoration, but it was clear that sanity was the goal.

It is funny that I never considered myself insane. I knew I was depressed but I thought I had a good reason for it. I could explain why I was depressed, and why any reasonable, sane person in my circumstances would be depressed. I could have explained to anyone who cared to hear it why suicide made perfect sense. I could explain why my irrational outbursts of anger were actually rational, and why I was justified in expressing that anger by smashing and destroying things. In all that, I knew with absolute clarity why everybody around me was insane, or, as my old Trig teacher used to relate, why “the whole world is insane; I’m the only sane one left”. As bizarre as it may sound, I have actually made that statement in the midst of ripping off my shirt in a fit of rage.

Sadly, none of that preceding paragraph is a joke, at least not in the usual sense.

Reason and rationality will not insulate or deliver a person from insanity. Instead reason alone will lock him into the tight circle of logic which keeps him trapped in the repetitive, destructive cycle of activities that perpetuate the insanity. A mind parasite, like a physical parasite, wants to live, sustain itself and reproduce. It wants to spread to the minds around it so that everybody is thinking in the same locked, but predictable pattern.

I was talking to my daughter this morning, and we noted that this is not limited to alcohol and alcoholics. The truth is that probably no one becomes an alcoholic because of alcohol itself but because of our lives in their entirety and how we deal with pain and fear (which is redundant because fear is painful, and we are afraid of pain). Many of us at times in our lives find insanity overtaking us, and we all need help breaking away. In the end, we must find a Power greater than ourselves we can trust to restore us.

It’s my sanity – not the sanity of those around me – that is the issue. Oddly enough this turns out to be a bit of a reprise of what I posted on yesterday, that is, that I am not responsible for what others think or how they view me.

It is wrong for me to ask God to fix somebody else so I can be OK. A couple of the people in last night’s meeting made the point by holding their hand in front of their face almost touching the nose. If we look beyond our hand we are missing the point. While I can pray for others and have faith that God is working in their lives, I can’t believe for them in the necessary, personal sense. I have to be sane myself instead of trying to make others act, think, or speak sanely.