Tis the Season to Be Partisan
November 4, 2018 Leave a comment
Despite the fact that Macy’s has their enormous Christmas tree lit up right now, signifying the coming season of glad tidings and of peace and of unbridled consumerism, the TV reminds us that it is knock-down-drag-out Partisan Season as candidates throw punches at their labeled-as-a-Grinch opponents. Democracy gives one the impression that with your vote, and with other’s who vote like you, that you can create a government in your image. Therein lies the boxing match. Campaign ads require a different metaphor.
As witnessed firsthand, the almost endless torrent of unbridled derogatory and prejudiced campaign ads spews like raw sewage from the digital spout. Based on the ads, hatred for the opposing candidate appears to be the biggest lure to pull voting fish out of the drainage.
I’ve come across those on Twitter who will vote for a Democrat because the other candidate is a Republican and therefore, based on the media narrative, is a tainted Trumpist. The Twitterer’s animosity towards Trump is stoked by a fight manager – the Leftist media. The combined one-two punch of hate and vote is meant to KO anyone on the Right.
“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Neediness for government to make their lives better (basically, government taking responsibility for their lives) feeds many folk’s compulsion to vote for the unctuous Democrat who is often Trumpian unctuous but vies for the anti-Trump vote amongst the media-fed lions as the “right thing to do” pol. Their candidate freely offers healthcare and untethered no-cost sanctimony regarding giving illegal aliens a pass on our laws. A free lunch is offered to all at no cost to the candidate.
One such candidate is a local Democrat. She is running against an incumbent Republican for a U.S. representative seat. She is an Africa-American female so she is definitely an unTrump figure. But like Trump her presence is ubiquitous. Her yard signs are everywhere. Her campaign volunteers wave her sign as they stand along the bridge I cross on my way home from work.
She is a healthcare candidate. This means she wants to give everyone government run healthcare. But like Obama’s ACA con game and Ocasio-Cortez’s socialism con game in New York, she has not provided the details of how to pay for the enormous bureaucracy to run your life and your healthcare. She does not talk about unintended consequences such as the lack of competition in the medical industry creating higher costs or the loss of incentive for doctors to practice because they become wards of the state or for the lack of desire for new doctors to enter the medical field. The consumer loses out when government chooses your options for you. Unlike the toothy candidate with the hope and change grin, government is impersonal. It is not altruistic.
Her campaign, her partisanship, is that she is not like the cold-hearted other guy who is hands-off in his approach to government and our lives. Her campaign, her partisanship, is that she wants your vote for government to be the cold-hearted hands-on entity to care for you.
So, in the spirit of the Season of Partisanship, I offer my own partisan views.
I am a conservative libertarian. That combination may sound like two terms which negate each other but I assure you it doesn’t. As a follower of the Way who walks on resurrection ground, I seek heaven on earth just as Jesus taught us to pray. That kingdom of God venture is not something I want to impose on my fellow citizens. Rather, I want them to have freedom to do as they please within the law and to receive the reward of their behavior. This, in essence, means that I do not want government to be a lifestyle safety net nor the means to bail you out if you decide to live your life with drugs or in sexual encounters or as parachute jumper. I want gravity and not government to be the force in our lives.
I am conservative with regard to social issues. And, again, I do not want to impose my kingdom view on others. I can impose that on myself and be the salt and light that the rest of the world will need when trouble comes knocking.
I am a small government fiscal conservative. Government has no business running my life or healthcare or bailing me or any industry or bank out. Taxpayer money could instead be used by the taxpayer to help his own neighbors and to pay for their medical care. The thinking that government has deep pockets if everyone was made to pay in denies the reality of escalating costs based on that assumption and the monopoly of government control you’ve created when vote that assumption.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Our government, as I define it, is a secular entity that provides protection from enemies foreign and domestic (including illegal aliens), provides transportation infrastructure and which enforces the Constitution and the laws of the land. Government is also to enforce contracts. The government is not to be a church dispensing Good Sarmatianism.
The Constitution is the cornerstone of our republic. It aligns the foundation our nation is built on it. It should not be chiseled away by “living Constitution” jurists who put their finger in the wind for their opinions and judgments.
Having said all this, I want to further post my partisanship: I am by no means a Progressive. And you should know that there is no such thing as a Progressive Christian. Progressivism is a belief, not in God and His well-documented narrative, but in an ideology which requires that God’s well-documented narrative be changed for the Progressive to live his narrative. Progressivism negates Christianity.
I am follower of Jesus first and foremost. I vote libertarian-conservative. This means that I want to preserve what is good. I seek a small boring government and allowance for people’s freedom to do as they please within the law. I want people to take responsibility for the outcome of their choices. I also do not want to be forced to have to affirm their choices (the Progressive definition of “rights”).
I voted early. And, I did not vote for the statist or for her healthcare unicorn or for her “do the right thing” campaign. I have never voted for a Democrat. The fact that Democrats promote abortion is beyond the pale and is ironic for a party platform that promotes itself as “for the people” and wants you to “do the right thing” with your vote. Isn’t it telling that a Democrat woman can presuppose and visualize a problem for her future existence if she has a child and so aborts the child. But the same woman can’t presuppose and visualize her unborn child as a human.
Identity politics, created by Democrats, pits male against female and humans against those who choose to dehumanize themselves. There is also class warfare fueled by Democrats Obama, Sanders, Warren and Ocasio-Cortez. But Democrats want you to perceive something else. Democrat candidates would love to have you think they are the saviors from hate and discord (they have stoked) if you just give them control.
Democrats promise all kinds of bennies at the expense of others. So, let it be known that there is a major cost to the U.S. and to its people when illegal aliens enter the country with values that are not shared with Americans. Remember these aliens left countries they trashed with their values and votes. Many are victims of their votes.
In the spirit of the Season of Partisanship I leave you with a well-informed conservative economist – Thomas Sowell – and his three very important questions:
Tis the season to Be a Responsible Voter.
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‘Tis the Season to Rethink Equal Outcomes
November 10, 2018 Leave a comment
The Progressive’s notion of equal outcomes: “income equality” realized through redistribution; test results based on tests revised so that certain people could pass the test; participation-trophy type merit; laws that ‘fix’ opportunity for certain people; verdicts and sentencing of activist judges who rule based on a defendant’s social circumstances rather than by the crime committed upon another; homosexual ‘marriage’ as marriage equality; “equal pay for equal work” which dismisses the resultant quality of what each worker produces; a state in which people have approximately the same material wealth and achieve equal levels of income; equating equal opportunities with equal results…
Economist Thomas Sowell gives us some insight into Progressive thinking:
Equal opportunity does not mean equal results, despite how many laws and policies proceed as if it does, or how much fashionable rhetoric equates the two.
An example of that rhetoric was the title of a recent New York Times column: “A Ticket to Bias.” That column recalled bitterly the experience of a woman in a wheelchair who bought a $300 ticket to a rock concert but was unable to see when other people around her stood up. This was equated with “bias” on the part of those who ran the arena.
The woman in the wheel chair declared, “true equality remains a dream out of reach.” Apparently only equality of results is “true’ equality….
…Confusion between equal opportunity and equal results is a dangerous confusion behind many kinds of spoiled brat politics. -Thomas Sowell from Spoiled Brat Politics, The Thomas Sowell Reader
To put us in the proper reflective mood for the Season to Rethink Equal Outcomes, below are three accounts from Scripture which reveal to us God’s concept of equal outcomes.
But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels of silver for them. 2 Samuel 24:24
The first thing I notice about the above account is that forms of capitalism have been around for a long time. That is, capitalism, simply defined, as an economic and social system in which property, business, and industry are privately owned and directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organizations and people, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
In the above account there was a cooperative exchange of private property between two individuals. Both were satisfied with the outcome. And, apparently God was satisfied with the outcome. David’s desire was to not give God the impression that he was doing something good for God, a.k.a. virtue signal or tokenism, but to pay proper respect and attribute worth to God through his offering.
David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the LORD answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped. 2 Samuel 24:25
The second thing I notice is restraint. Though Araunah offered his property freely to king David (2 Sam. 24:23) the king did not accept it without paying Araunah its worth to Araunah and perhaps more. That cost David. The king could have just taken the property to begin with. Beastly kings and rulers throughout history have seized property for themselves and for “the masses”. David was not about to disrespect his neighbor Araunuh or his God by stiffing either. The king did not exploit Araunuh for righteous ends.
Worth had to be accounted for with regard to Araunah’s property and with regard to a show of respect to God. “I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” That is what David said and that is what the widow thought.
Then Jesus sat down opposite the offering box, and watched the crowd putting coins into it. Many rich people were throwing in large amounts. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth less than a penny. He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the offering box than all the others. For they all gave out of their wealth. But she, out of her poverty, put in what she had to live on, everything she had.” Mark 12:41-44
The first thing we notice in this account is the virtue signaling and tokenism of cha-ching-ers who want to appear to profit God while incurring little or no cost to themselves. In kingdom contrast, the unassuming widow, like king David, gave an offering that cost her appreciably and was God’s Temple worthy. The widow gave her financial security. The Lord was pleased to acknowledge her gift acknowledging the God Who is Faithful (Psalm 146: 8). She loved God more than life itself. Now, did you notice in these two stories that taking into account the worth of each party and their property creates equal outcomes – both parties being satisfied and even pleased with what is exchanged? This method of accounting, making sure the ‘other’ is considered and is valued as at least equal with ourselves, can be applied to all interactions.
In a previous post I wrote:
We are told by Jesus to “love your neighbors as yourself”. To do this we must consider our own self-interest and then apply the same measure of self-interest toward our neighbors. This parity of accounting is not unlike the Lord’s accounting of forgiveness: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others their trespasses.” […,] the resentment worldview has a perverted accounting system: the self is to be credited and others must be debited for there to be parity in their world. If the word “fairness” is ever to be applied socially and economically to our culture then these two commands of our Lord define its limited and personal application.
As shown from Scripture, God endorsed equal outcomes are marriages of opportunities with offerings. The outcomes are not forced or determined by a higher power or the state. The individuals involved come to an agreement about the outcome. A marriage of a man and woman is the archetype of this union of opportunity and offering.
The man and woman exchange vows and rings and, over time, their lives. The opportunity: they met and each determined that an exchange of their life for the other would make both happy. The offering: they give themselves which costs everything. They do so freely. The exchange is not coerced as in a shot-gun wedding or when those in power decide to take your property by force. When things are forced and a person is acted upon without it being offered it is called rape. It is called stealing when a person’s property is forcibly taken.
The equal outcome of marriage is that the two become one. The transaction creates a greater good (including little ones) and both parties equally, with God’s help, continue to be satisfied with the outcome.
One more illustration from Scripture regarding the marriage of opportunity and offering. Remember this woman?
While Jesus was at Bethany, in the house of Simon (known as “the Leper’), a woman came to him who had an alabaster vase of extremely valuable ointment. She poured it on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw it, they were furious.
“What’s the point of all this waste?” they said. “This could have been sold for a fortune, and the money could have been given to the poor!”
Jesus knew what they were thinking.
“Why make life difficult for the woman?” he said. “It’s a lovely thing, what she’s done for me. You always have the poor with you, don’t you? But you won’t always have me. When she poured this ointment on my body, you see, she did it to prepare me for burial. “I’m telling you the truth: where this gospel is announced in all the world, what she has done will be told, and people will remember her.”
Matthew 26: 6-13
What do we learn about opportunity and offering from this account of a woman pouring a very expensive offering onto Jesus’ head? We learn that the Progressives around Jesus were highly offended when they couldn’t control the outcome of the “alabaster vase of extremely valuable ointment”. We also learn from Jesus about the opportunity that brought them together: “… you won’t always have me”. The woman’s offering was what she could have lavished on herself. Maybe she applied David’s words to her head: “I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”
The extravagant and expensive offering given freely was freely accepted by Jesus in preparation for his burial. In fact, he tells us that the equally shared outcome of what she had done was worth proclaiming: the marriage of opportunity and sacrificial offering as an act of love.
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