Parental Advice for OWS Protesters (by Marybeth Hicks, Washington Times)

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"


As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything for everybody.


Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on "transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed along.


Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:


• Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.


 • Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.


 • Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.


 • A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.


 • There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.

Big Government vs. Big Business

From some quarters, you hear a lot about the evils of big business.  You hear a lot about the evils of big government from others.  While the two sides might not sound like it, they’re complaining about the same thing:  human nature.  In their myopia, the two competing sides focus merely on different manifestations of the same problem, not on different problems.

That’s why it’s hopelessly naïve to think that giving more power to government to control big business can work.  If big business requires oversight, regulation, and restraint, so does big government, and for the same reason:  Human nature cannot be trusted and everyone has it, whether they work for big business, big government, both, or neither.

We all are what C. S. Lewis called "the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve," which means we come from a long line of inveterate sinners.  It’s a deep-seated moral defect we pick up from our parents and pass on to our children.  Look in the mirror, friend, and see what’s wrong with big business and big government.

We all are morally debilitated, and the worse we are the less we know it.  We all are driven by fallen appetites, and those appetites are wickedly self-seeking and predictably self-aggrandizing.  While we might be capable of reason, because of our wayward appetites and our natural acquisitiveness, we are rarely ever reasonable.  No, you are not an exception.

Human nature doesn’t magically transform into something virtuous when it gains financial or political power.  Neither financial success nor elective office turns us into saints.  We are still ourselves.  We can’t be trusted to do what’s right just because we won the game of business or the game of government.  Rather, winning those games gives our sin freer reign to acquire its wicked desires.  Winning neither creates nor cures those desires.  Greed, for example, is not a motivation merely for those in the marketplace; it’s also a motivation for those in government, who lust after power, notoriety, fame, sex, and, of course, money.  Nevertheless, the champions of the free market and the champions of big government continue to see their side as the solution rather than seeing the common human nature lurking behind both sides as the problem.

Human nature is a fallen force, a force that requires constraint by another force.  But if the force you employ to check human nature is human nature as well, you have not solved the problem.  You merely transferred it.  You press down on the pillow in one place, business, and it bulges up in another, government -- because it’s the same pillow.

But, sadly, it’s our only option:  a fallen force fighting itself.  We have but one pillow, one nature.  Therefore, the solution, if that word is not too wildly optimistic, is always going to be imperfect.  But it’s the best we can do.  We can’t succeed by backing one team or the other; we must cheer both, which means that no matter what happens, we win and we lose.

First, cheer for this:  Cheer for greater competition in the marketplace, which is always the consumer’s best friend.  Competition leads to better products, better service, better selection, and better prices because those who don’t compete go out of business.  They must compete for your dollars or fail.

In other words, human nature in government can best check human nature in the marketplace not by regulation but by maintaining a free and open entry into the market and, with it, greater competition.  Government’s task is to keep open the doors of marketplace entry, and to keep shut the doors of fraud, deceit, and theft.  Government’s task is not to pick winners and losers, and not to bail out some or to relegate others to financial oblivion.  The human nature at work in government does best to check the human nature in the marketplace (1) by keeping open the entry gates that existing businesses want closed, (2) by thwarting crooks, and (3) by maintaining sound currency -- none of which is the same as either ganging up on the winners or taking sides with them. 

Second, cheer also for this:  Cheer for a government that is not a marketplace commodity, paid for by the highest bidder.  Ironically, perhaps, that’s done best by letting money flow freely.  Just as we check the excesses of human nature in the market by keeping the doors of entry open, we check the excesses of human nature in government by keeping the doors of political donation open for all contributors to all candidates.  Because it is literally impossible to regulate and to calculate all political donations effectively, and because trying to do so will serve only to discourage the honest donor and reward the insidious, the very best we can do is to open wide the doors of political contribution and to work for the fullest possible disclosure of those contributions.  Let folks give whatever they wish to whomever they wish.  Just let them do it in daylight, which, as we know, is a disinfectant.

Daylight lets you see.  You can see what others are doing.  They can see you.  When everyone knows what everyone else is doing, everyone can act in ways they perceive to be the best possible, always under the scrutiny of others.  For example, when Acme Corporation sees that Bravo Corporation gave X dollars to candidate Smith, Acme can respond accordingly by giving money to candidate Smith too, or by giving money to candidate Jones, which ever serves Acme's purposes best.  Either way, the intended effect of Bravo’s money is softened and shrunk.  Other money has done it.

Human nature sees to it that competing corporations always work for their own advantage by trying to shape the pillow to their liking, generally intending to set at naught the efforts of their competitors, who do the same.  In the full light of day, both sides see that they are investing mountains of money in order to fund an ongoing standoff.  They might not want to do so, but they must, which is good because it keeps the playing field as even as can be managed.  They will do so because they are human beings, and human beings are self-seekers.  They will find a way to invest their money to fullest effect.  They don’t regulate themselves.  Human nature can’t do that.  They offset themselves.  Given who we human beings are, both in government and in business, it’s the best we can do.

In short, freedom of entry and competition are your friends not only in the marketplace but in the public square too.  Keep it free; keep it open.  Let everybody press on the pillow.

But let's say you still want to regulate political donations.  then think of this:  If you wish to limit or even to ban corporate donations, remember that corporations are comprised of human beings, sometimes very many of them, and all of them like you.  Like you, none of the human beings who run the corporations, or the millions who own stock in them, ought to be deprived of their right to political speech and political action, which is what donating is.  Just like we must not try to regulate the number of words, statements, or actions you invest in political causes, we must not regulate the number of dollars you invest, which are political speech and action too.

And if you think that politicians will effectively work to block donations to politicians, you aren’t paying attention.  Human nature dictates that the selfishness rampant in government will never ban corporate donations to government.  It cannot be done.  Even if it could, it would not be fair or good.

Put it this way:  You need as little government control in the market, and as little market control in the government, as possible.  Domination of either business by government or of government by business is not how you get it.  You get it by freedom.  You get it by letting folks pursue their own best interest in response to other folks doing the same thing in the full light of day.

Human nature won’t let you get any more delicate or precise than that.  

Love by Proxy: What Liberals Do Not Understand

You don’t send a boy to do a man’s job.  If you do, the job won’t be done right.  Not all persons can do all jobs.  Not all jobs, and not all obligations, can be assigned to others.

The job of Christian charity, and with it the obligations of Christian love, are like that.  You must carry out your own obligations.  You can’t pawn them off onto others -- government bureaucrats, for example.  There’s no love by proxy.  You can’t hire someone else to love your wife or your children.  You must do it yourself.  If you don’t, it won’t get done.  Christian virtues don’t work like that.  You can’t assign your faith, hope, and love to others.  Even the mere attempt is a failure.

Love for others, and the moral obligations it entails, looks like the Good Samaritan, not like the government bureaucrat.  The Good Samaritan found a man in a very sorry state, a man from a group who despised Samaritans.  But the Samaritan knew that things like ethnic differences, and the prejudices that often accompany them, are no reason to set aside one’s moral obligations, or to give them over to someone else.  No; you must carry them out yourself.  So the Samaritan provided food, medicine, and shelter out of his own pocket.  He also provided time, effort, and companionship.  He didn’t go to the local, or even the regional, Samaritan authorities to carry out his obligations for him.  He did it himself.

It’s far better to carry out the obligations of Christian love yourself than to slough them off onto the government because, as soon as you inject government bureaucracy into the equations of love, everything changes:  The poor man or woman with whose difficulties you are faced does not stay a man or a woman.  They become cases.  They are no longer persons loved by other persons; they are cases handled by caseworkers.  Caseworkers do not proceed by the dictates of enlightened and redeemed Christian conscience, or by the attachments and obligations of Christian love as explained and exemplified in Scripture.  They go by the manual; they go by approved bureaucratic procedure.

In other words, both the victim and the bureaucrat assigned to handle the victim’s case are dehumanized:  One becomes a case, the other a mere functionary, a faceless and nameless apparatchik. The humanity of the one and the conscience of the other are evacuated.

It’s far wiser and better to deal with a downtrodden person yourself -- to find out personally what went wrong and to decide in conjunction with the victim exactly how to move forward.  Because the circumstances are as different as the persons to whom they pertain, you must do this face to face.  You won’t find the answer in a government publication.  That’s not where Christian love is sussed out for you in all its self-sacrificial detail.  You can’t figure what to do or how to do it best unless you get into the very life, history, motivations, and choices of the persons to whom you owe the obligations of love.  You might find that they are, indeed, simply victims of circumstance, that their current plight is the result of no fault of their own.  If you do, you seek one set of solutions.  But if you find that current challenges are the result of one or more personal failings, then you must look elsewhere for an answer.  The moral, spiritual -- and therefore personal -- failings that caused this human disaster must be effectively addressed, and that prescription will come from the Bible, not the caseworker’s manual.  It inevitably will include repentance and sanctification conducted along explicitly Christian guidelines.  Real answers to this human problem are found nowhere else.  The bureaucracy and its manuals are hopeless on the point, and can serve only to make the problem worse, not better.  That’s why, after nearly 50 years of Great Society-type schemes from Washington, and after pouring more than 17 trillion dollars into poverty relief, poverty has gotten not better but worse.

Please do not miss my point:  We have given America’s poor a million dollars more than 17 million times -- and all the while poverty got worse.  Poverty is not a money problem.  It’s the result of another, prior, problem, one you cannot discover or address without personal involvement and the self-sacrificial commitments of Christian love.

If, in pursuit of that Christian personal involvement, you discover that this struggling person, or this struggling person’s family, cannot be aided effectively by your own private means, then you must go to your church.  You pool your resources, whether for Christian counseling, or for food, clothing, and shelter.  When you do, you’ll discover that the real solution is almost never money.  While the government might determine poverty by dollar figures, by financial averages, and by impersonal calculations -- and then hand out checks as a solution -- you’ll quickly see that money is neither the problem nor the answer.  Apart from bad luck, lack of money is normally the consequence of the problem, not the problem itself.  You must ask yourself, “Why doesn’t this person have the money to obtain food, clothing, and shelter?”  Until you discover the real problem, you cannot fix it.  Discovering the real problem is going to take a lot more time, effort, personal knowledge, and therefore personal involvement, than the caseworker and the caseworker’s manual can permit.  Solving the problem is going to take more Biblical wisdom and authentically Christian counseling than the government could ever offer at any level.
Just as in the story of Cyrano de Bergerac, if you make government the proxy for Christian love, the proxy, not the real suitor, wins the love and allegiance of the lady.   If you make government the proxy for Christian love, the result will not be love for God or dependency on God, but on government.  Dependency on government produces a permanent underclass, not free and fulfilled men and women.   

As good stewards of the gifts and resources God has provided, we must never squander them in hopeless and ill-considered remedies.  To avoid that squandering, we must tie our charity closely to the character, actions, and obligations of the downtrodden themselves, without which no solution for their challenges is possible, and without which their human dignity is withered and undermined.

It makes about as much sense to assign the obligations of Christian love to the government as it does to assign national defense to the Baptists or the Episcopalians.  You give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s, not what God’s and, through Him, yours.

Do remember that in the 2Oth century alone, an allegedly civilized century, governments directly caused the death of more than 167 million of their own citizens.  Governments are good at death.  They are not good at Christian charity.  If you think that governments are an agency of Christian love, you are not paying attention.  There’s no love by government proxy.  Your tax bill is not your tithe.
When Christian conservatives say they oppose the government welfare system, it's not because they lack compassion.  It's because they think we can do better.  

"Reformation Day: Why We Don't Owe the Bible to the Church"

         Because "Bible" equals "whatever book or books God inspired," and not "whatever book or books one church or another church recognizes as Scripture," no church is above the Bible.  Nor is the Bible dependent upon the church, any church, for its existence.  No church produced the Bible or brought the Bible to us.  What makes the Bible the Word of God (and therefore authoritative) is divine inspiration, not ecclesiastical recognition.

The various books of the Bible are divinely inspired and authoritative even if no church ever recognized that fact -- or even if all churches recognized that fact.  Ecclesiastical recognition is not what makes the Bible the Bible. The Bible is what it is because God inspired it, not because we did or did not recognize His work.  In other words, if any books are inspired, they are inspired not because a church affirms it but because they come from the Holy Spirit Himself.  If they come from the Holy Spirit, they are inspired, authoritative, and canonical.  Their authenticity and authority come from the Holy Spirit, not from a church.  We do not owe divinely inspired books to a church, but to God. 

         To put a point on it, some of the books recognized by the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) as canonical are not inspired and are therefore not properly part of the Bible, and here I refer specifically to the Apocrypha.  That is, when it comes to recognizing the proper canon, not only is the RCC not necessary, but the RCC got it wrong.  Neither the books of the Old nor of the New Testament depend for their existence, for their inspiration, or therefore for their canonicity and authority, upon the RCC.

         To be specific, the Old Testament canon does not depend for its existence or its authority upon the RCC.  Jesus Himself, and ancient Jews all the way back to well before the time of David, had a recognizable and authoritative Hebrew canon.  For example, David loved to meditate on God's word and law so intensely that he wrote a long and impressive song of praise in honor of the practice in Psalm 119.  In that psalm, David clearly has in mind an inspired and authoritative Hebrew canon, which he called the word of God and the law of God.  He wrote his psalm many centuries before there ever was a Roman Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox) church in existence to claim credit for it.  Judging from the content of David's psalm, he obviously expected his readers to understand what he meant by his many references to God's word and to God's law, and he expected them to agree with him about it.

         Even though the Hebrew canon was still in a state of partial flux in his day, Jesus, in particular, and the ancient Jews, in general, recognized a pre-existing canon, a canon that antedates the RCC by many centuries.  That is, Jesus of Nazareth was born into a religion that already had a Bible when He arrived.  He Himself recognized and accepted that Hebrew Bible.  He lived according to it; He preached from it; He faced down Satan by it; and He refuted his Jewish opponents with it.  He also uttered statements that delineate which books He considered canonical (and therefore also those that He did not).  Indeed, even Satan seems to have recognized that pre-existing canon because he quotes from it as well.

         If we consider Jesus a reliable teacher of doctrine -- and I do -- then we ought to accept as ours the Hebrew canon He accepted.  In Matthew 23: 35, for example, Jesus refers to the persecution of holy persons, beginning with Abel (Gen 4:8) and ending with Zacharias (2 Chron. 24: 20 ff.).  His recounting follows the ordering and historical limits of the Hebrew canon, which did not include the Apocrypha.  In Luke 24: 44, He re-states his view of the canon, and to the same effect.  In that passage, He again delineates what He considers Scripture:  the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (namely, the books of Moses, the books of the prophets, and the wisdom literature).  By so speaking, Jesus employed a common three-fold delineation of Scripture, one that did not include the Apocryphal books within its three over-arching categories.

         Perhaps Jesus and the Jews of his day were wrong about the canon, but I will not argue against Him or them.  If they were right, then I do not see how it follows that we need the RCC in order to have a recognizable and authoritative Hebrew canon.  Jesus and the Jews had one without it, and therefore so do we.  Apparently we do not need the RCC, or any church, to have or to recognize a divinely inspired Hebrew text.  We need a historically active and text-inspiring God, one whose actions and intentions are recognized and authenticated for us by Christ.

         The Hebrew Bible antedates the church.  The earliest generation of Christians had a Bible.  It was the Bible Jesus Himself had.

         The Hebrew Bible did not come to the world via the RCC or the EOC.  It came to the world via the inspiration and guidance of God.  Therefore, our task is to identify, always in light of Christ, which books bear the marks of inspiration and which do not.  Whether we do a good job of it or a bad one, the books God inspired are the Bible, the authoritative Word of God.  We ought not try to determine which books do or do not bear the marks of inspiration simply by taking recourse to this or that church's conclusions on the matter unless we have something like a message from God that told us we ought to do so.  That message would have to come from God Himself, it seems to me, and not from the church in question.  If it came from the church in question, then the church in question would have to verify its authority by asserting its authority, which is both circular and unconvincing.  I, for one, will not suspect, much less accuse, God of that kind of circular reasoning or irrational pedagogy.  We cannot know if God has designated any church to establish the canon unless we have a way of establishing His authoritative pronouncement on the point without begging the question by appealing to that church's self-promoting assertions or to its version of the canon, and thereby assuming its authority -- which is the very thing we were trying to ascertain in the first place.

         By arguing in this way, I am not making an argument from my own alleged authority -- I claim none -- but an argument from history.  Historically, the ancient Jews already had an inspired canon, one that was in place for many centuries before the RCC, the EOC, or any other allegedly canon-making Christian church, existed.  We have abundant historical documentation by which to determine what books were and were not normally considered Scripture by Jewish believers of Jesus' day and before, in general, and by Jesus Himself, in particular, which militates strongly against the Apocrypha, and therefore against the RCC and its alleged canon-making authority.  When Jesus explicitly identifies which books do or do not belong to the canon, He carefully excludes some that Rome leaves in.  Between those two options, I go with Christ.

Every believer makes his or her own choice regarding the Bible, whether they elect to go along with the canon of the RCC or not.  If they consent to let the RCC choose for them, it still is they who make the fundamental choice.  They consent, or not, to the canon recognized by that church. They subject the church's canon making results to their own scrutiny.  Choosing to go along with the church on the issue of canon is, obviously, a choice, as is choosing to reject it.  We all must choose; we all must consent to the RCC's canon or not.  Catholics do; Protestants do not.  Either way, we all choose for ourselves.  When Catholics choose a church, they choose a canon.  For Catholics to criticize Protestants for choosing a canon without any ecclesiastical authority for doing so is self-refuting because that is precisely how they choose the church that chose their canon.  The various churches stand before them for approval or rejection, and then they themselves make the choice of which one, if any, to follow.  When they do, they make a canon choice as well.  We all must choose one canon or another.  We all must recognize our own canon, even if we accept a canon accepted first by someone else.  We all are canon recognizers, even if we do it thoughtlessly, as so many do.  Because we must do it, we ought do it well, which means following the lead of Christ.

         Here is the fundamental principle:  Proper canon recognition is Christo-centric, not ecclesio-centric -- Christ centered, not church centered.  We want the Old Testament Christ accepted, and (because He Himself did not directly write a book), we want the books that come from those whom He taught or from their extended circle.  We do not need a church to figure out which books that might be.  Indeed, we might entertain legitimate doubt about some of the books so recognized by one church or another church, like Hebrews, 2 Peter, Jude, James, or Revelation -- generally the same books some of the ancients held in question for so long, a group of books some of them called the antilougomena, or the "spoken against" texts.  We might also consider including one or two books, perhaps the letter of Clement to the church in Corinth, primarily because he seems to have been a companion of Paul (Phil. 4: 3) and because to some (me included) he seems to be the author of Hebrews, a book that was eventually accepted.  Some portions of the early church accepted and read Clement's letter to Corinth as Scripture.  Others did not.  I would not.  But whichever choices we make regarding inclusion and exclusion, or whichever choices we permit others to make for us, the proper measure of canonicity is not a church, but Christ, and through Him the apostles and their extended circle.  If we must choose -- and we must -- we do best to center our choices as closely around Him as we can, which is not the same as centering our choices around the RCC and the allegedly Biblical basis it claims for itself.  Canon recognition (not canon making, which God Himself performed) is a task best pursued by accepting the Old Testament that it seems Christ accepted, and the New Testament that came from those whom He taught and from the extended apostolic circle.

         In other words, what brought about the Old Testament also brought about the New, namely the work of the Holy Spirit, which we recognize best by deferring to Jesus.

         In short, the church is neither logically nor chronologically prior to the Bible. 

An Aside:  Thumpers

         Bible thumpers are often roundly criticized by Catholics, and sometimes justly so, though not always.  The Bible-thumpers' well-intentioned but under-informed quotation of Bible verses sometimes does not accomplish what they hope and think it does.  Quoting the Bible verbatim is not the same as properly understanding it or as forming a telling theological argument.  Verbatim quotation is not the same as either correct exegesis or true theology.

         But thumping a creed or a catechism is not any better.  Being a creed or catechism thumper simply makes you a fundamentalist of a different sort.  If proof-texting from an inspired and infallible Bible is not a convincing tactic, then proof-texting from creeds and catechisms is no better.  Just as those who quote from the Bible sometimes misunderstand the Bible and disagree among themselves as to what the Bible means, so those who quote from creeds and catechisms sometimes misunderstand the creeds and catechism, and they disagree among themselves as to what those creeds and catechisms mean and how they properly apply to the situation at hand -- a confusion and chaos I have heard frequently with my own ears and seen frequently with my own eyes.  Of course, the presence of such disagreements does not prove that the texts in question (whether Bible, creed, or catechism) are false, or that they have no relevant or discernible meaning, or that they cannot be trusted.  But it does show that merely quoting a text often gets us precisely nowhere.  Verbatim quotation is almost never enough.  Taken together, careful exegesis, sound synthesis, and prudent application, is the only place to begin; not superficial recitation, whether of Scripture or of creeds and catechisms.

         Of course, Catholics thump their Bibles too, and I contend that their understanding of many of the Biblical texts they thump is unsound. 

“Taxing the Rich and Other Forms of the Robin Hood Delusion”

Taxing the Rich

According to the prevailing leftist worldview, in order to cure the nation’s debilitating debt disease, and in order to aid the nation’s poor, we ought to raise taxes on the rich so that they begin to pay their “fair share.”

It’s a futile remedy.

If you took every penny from every person in America who made a million dollars or more last year, you could run the government for only a few weeks.  Taxing millionaires, even at 100%, won’t fix the problem.  Our problem is that we spend many hundreds of billions of dollars each year that we simply do not have.

But when conservatives try to keep an out-of-control government from driving the entire nation over a cliff into the gaping maw of economic destruction, liberals claim conservatives lack compassion.  They do not.  They are trying to avoid scuttling the ship of state.  Avoiding a shipwreck is not lack of compassion because, when the ship sinks, all who are aboard -- the poor and the wealthy alike -- are set adrift in the open sea, a result that benefits no one except the Marxist sharks patrolling the waters of international dissolution.

The problem in America is not that taxes for some folks are too low, but that spending by government is suicidally high. That’s why, if you want to tax the rich at a higher rate in order to cure American ills, you are looking in the wrong direction.  The solution cannot possibly be found in higher taxes, no matter how high you make them, and no matter what percentage you think is "fair."

Think about it:  Even if you tax the wealthy at 100%, not only you will not have enough money to do what liberals want to do via government, but you will have succeeded only in creating many more poor -- those who once were rich but who now have nothing.  And once you have taken all their money, and run the government for only a few weeks with it, from whom will you get money to run the government when that handful of weeks has passed?  You can’t get it from the poor because they don’t have it.  The only option left is the middle class, who then will be destroyed in short order.  Taxing the rich even at 100% will not work.  And if you do not tax the rich at 100%, you will have even less money to do what you think ought to be done via government, and that money will run out even quicker.  Once the money of the rich is gone, and you still wish to do what leftists want government to do, you must take the money of the middle class.  At that point, everyone is poor.   In short, you cannot fix what’s wrong by means of tax increases.  It’s simply impossible. 

Fair Share

A moment ago, I mentioned the liberal meme of making the wealthy pay their “fair share.”   You hear it often.  But if you listen carefully, you’ll notice that while liberals are big on making the wealthy pay their “fair share,” they are not big on telling you by what mysterious calculus they determine exactly what percentage of taxation is “fair,” or even how, in this context, the word “fair” is being defined.  I, for one, would like to know:  Precisely what does the word “fair” mean; what percentage of government confiscation is “fair;” and how do liberals know it?  When it comes to the government targeting a specific group of individuals, I am utterly unwilling to leave it all to unarticulated leftist intuition.  I want numbers, meanings, and facts.

Robin Hood

Another way that liberals talk about making the wealthy among us pay their “fair share” is to talk about “economic inequality” and “social justice,” by which terms they mean government-sponsored redistribution of wealth, a scheme whereby government plays the role of Robin Hood:  It takes from the rich and it gives to the poor.

But, of course, Robin Hood was a thief, even if he meant his thievery to serve a good end.  Good intentions don’t mend the matter at all.   Stealing is wrong even if you do it for what you consider a good reason.  Ends do not justify means.

Here’s the rule: “Thou shalt not steal.”  Stealing is taking someone else’s personal property.  Thieves have no right to seize other folks’ property, even if they want to do allegedly good things with it.  That’s why we ought to fight against the over-weaning evils of confiscatory tax policy which, under threat of government force, takes from those whose possessions the government covets, and gives to others whom the government favors.  This is one of the most blatant and egregious forms of discrimination I have yet seen, and it is advocated without embarrassment -- as if the equal protection clause of the Constitution did not apply to the successful.  This discriminatory policy targets some citizens for extra burden and other citizens for extra benefit.  It is wrong to discriminate via government, even if you think your chosen victims can sustain the attack.  Their ability to be targeted and to survive is no justification for targeting.   This economic targeting is but one dimension, or application, of a widespread discrimination against the wealthy, who are presumed to be evil and oppressive money grubbers intent upon sheering the sheep in the marketplace, rather than being virtuous, hard working persons who made their money by providing, at great risk to themselves and their families, the goods and services that their neighbors needed or wanted at prices those neighbors could afford.

Economic Inequality

Sensible persons don’t really think that our tax dollars have actually reduced the differences in income in America.  That’s not what happens.  Tax dollars go to raise the level of the bureaucrats, the lobbyists, and the politicians, and to create an enormous increase in the financial gap between the rich and the poor in places like Washington, DC.

Although leftists complain about income inequality and insist upon a government-enforced redistribution of wealth, they ignore the staggering inequality of income they have produced in Washington, the very place from where they expect the remedy for economic inequality to come, a place where the richest and poorest rub shoulders every day, an inequality the left has created but neither notices nor decries.

It is no accident that the two richest counties in America happen to be the counties in Maryland and Virginia that border Washington, DC.  Average annual income for Federal employees there is more than $126,000.  By comparison, almost 11 percent of the city’s population qualifies not only as poor, but as “very poor,” meaning they earn at less than half the official poverty rate, or about $11,025 a year for a family of four.  Tax money goes to Washington, but that doesn’t mean it decreases the level of economic disparity. 

It reminds me of the comment made by my old friend Stan Evans, a former Indianapolis newspaper editor who went to Washington to begin The National Journalism Center: “Why did you go to Washington?” he was asked. “I wanted to be near my money.”

Yes, that’s exactly where so much of it ends up, and not in the pockets of the poor.  And if Washington, DC doesn’t convince you that leftist schemes of government-sponsored redistribution of wealth cannot work and have not worked, then take a look at Detroit, which has had an unbroken string of Democratic mayors for more than 50 years, and was chosen to be a “Model City” for government renewal projects, in addition to which it had in its own backyard perhaps the most remarkable industrial powerhouse in history in the “Big Three” Detroit automakers.  Yet, with all that, Detroit now looks like nothing so much as World War II Dresden, block upon block of (literally) burned out houses.

Social Justice (vs. Jesus and the Parable of the Talents)

To many contemporary leftists, the battle cry is “Social Justice!” by which they mean leveling the economic playing field so that the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” is greatly shrunk.  To level that field, they say, means we must take from those who have more and give it to those who have less, as if “equality” and “justice” were synonymous.

Jesus seems not to agree.  You might recall his parable of the talents in Matt. 25: 14-30.  (To avoid confusion, a talent is not, as it is in modern English usage, an ability or skill, but a unit of money worth about 3 or 4 weeks wages.)  In that parable, Jesus mentions three workers, or stewards, to whom their master gave five, two, and one talent respectively.  The first two, those with five and two talents, invested the money he gave them so wisely and well that they each produced a 100% profit.  The third, however, was afraid that he might lose the money in a faulty investment, so he simply buried it in order to keep it safe.  He produced no profit at all.

When the master asked for an accounting, the third steward simply gave him back all he had -- one talent.  Deeply displeased with this worker’s production, the master decided to  “take from him who has one and give it to him who has ten" (v. 28).

Although modern leftists might think Jesus’ procedure unjust, perhaps even completely backward and evil, because it takes from those with little and gives to those with much, Jesus does not.  That procedure is Jesus' way of saying that what goes by the name of "social justice" is not actually justice at all, social or otherwise.  While justice is getting whatever you deserve, “social justice" is getting the same as everybody else, whether you earned it or not, and whether you deserve it or not.  If justice is getting what you deserve, then, except in circumstances where two or all persons deserve exactly the same, justice is not getting the same as everyone else.  That's not justice, that's equality.   Justice and equality are very different concepts -- concepts the left, with its confused and conflated political and economic notions, frequently gets wrong.

If “justice” and “equality” really were the same thing, then by saying what He said in Matt 25, Jesus was unjust.  He didn't take from the one with ten and give to the one with less, as the "social justice" crowd would demand.  He took from the unfaithful steward with the least and gave it to the wise steward with the most.  It was Jesus’ way of teaching the importance of faithful and productive service, which he rewarded (vv. 21, 23).  Egalitarians, those who advocate redistribution under the false name of "social justice," don't understand that equalizing outcomes is often the very embodiment of injustice itself.  Because it is, we must not to do what the advocates of so-called “social justice” demand because we oppose injustice, even when some call it by its opposite name.  We must not perpetrate injustice; we must give to others what they deserve, which is neither oppression nor lack of mercy.  Here’s Paul’s way of saying it:  “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10).

Nobody, especially Jesus, is talking here about kissing up to the rich.  Nobody is saying that this parable justifies rich people (or poor) when they do evil.  Nobody is defending predatory practices.  We are saying that justice is not the same as government-coerced redistribution of wealth by means of the tax code irrespective of one’s deserving or one’s contribution.  This parable is not about loving money.  The man with little was unfaithful and full of fear, and because he was unfaithful and full of fear, what little he had was given to the man who did the best and had the most.  This parable is about deserving and undeserving workers, which is a point lost on the so-called "social justice" crowd.

2012 Oxford Summer School on CS Lewis and the Inklings

I am pleased to announce that we now are taking applications for the 2012 Oxford summer school on CS Lewis and the Inklings.

The course runs from May 29-June 24 and is worth five college credit hours.  Those hours normally transfer as either an English or a Religion/Theology course, whichever you select.  In some cases, I have seen colleges divide the credit as 3 hours English and 2 hours Religion — or vice versa. The credit hours come from Oxford.  But if for some reason you need American accreditation, they come from University of the Pacific.  The same holds true for your tutorial, if you elect to take one, except that it is 2 hours and reflects the nature of the course you select -- politics, history, sociology, etc.

Because the summer school organizers want to you have the experience of living in Oxford itself, and not in a dorm room, they put you in apartments around the city centre.  For example, students often are located in apartments on a street called Venneit Close, which is right along the Thames walkway.  Or you might be in beautiful multi-story brick homes in old North Oxford, or in apartments in the trendy Jericho area.

         Your classes are normally held either in the OSAP offices, in the St. Mary the Virgin church library, in New College, or in Trinity College.  The location varies day by day so that you can get inside more Oxford buildings.  Your formal meal, with academic gowns, is in New College.  You can see some earlier students in gowns in the pictures provided on the poster.  In addition to the lectures by me and by my wife, we will have guest lecturers from Oxford itself, like Rev. Walter Hooper, Lewis’s personal secretary, and Rev. Michael Ward, who has written the fine book Planet Narnia.

The costs cover 5 hours tuition, lodging for three weeks (plus a free fourth week in your rooms after the course is over, if you’d like to stay on), all the field trips, and the formal dinner in New College.  It does not cover your meals or your travel.  If you want to take an additional tutorial course, it will cost $300 for the two hours of college credit.  In other words, you get half a semester’s credit, four weeks in Oxford, several field trips, and membership in New College and the Bodleian library for about $6200, tutorial included.

If you wish to apply, simply let me know your intentions, and have your official transcripts sent to me at:

Dr. Michael Bauman

Hillsdale College

Hillsdale, MI 49242

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Understanding Eschatology (2)

        I have taken a lesson from the emphases of economists like Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek and applied it to the study of eschatology.  I have deliberately chosen to focus my attention on the individual rather than on the collective.  I have turned from macro-eschatology (God's plan for the nations and the world) to micro-eschatology (God's plan for individual people), not only because it is, in my view, a more profitable study, one more suitable for a theological pilgrimage, but because it is a subject upon which Scripture is more clear and accessible.  Young theologians, I am convinced, would be better served if they sought to master the Bible's teachings on personal destiny rather than global destiny.  And, with regard to micro-eschatology, nature is a far better model than is a bus schedule.

     When Paul, for example, explains the coming resurrection to the Corinthians, he resorts to agricultural imagery, to seeds planted in the ground now and to the coming harvest.  What is planted (or buried) a material body is harvested (or resurrected) a spiritual one.  Jesus does the same.  When He teaches micro-eschatology, He also employs natural, or agricultural, images, such as farmers at work separating sheep from goats and wheat from chaff.  Even when He addresses Himself to macro-eschatology, nature images predominate, as when He introduces lessons drawn from fig trees or from the atmospheric conditions that precede a storm.

     In that sense, because nature is a fertile source of images and analogies, it can be a useful means of prophetic pedagogy.  It also can help to decipher some of the more puzzling micro-eschatological phenomena in Scripture.  One such puzzling detail concerning which nature can be an aid actually occurs at least three times in the New Testament:  why Mary could not recognize the resurrected Jesus while standing at His empty tomb; why the disciples, fishing from their boat, could not recognize the resurrected Jesus, beckoning them from the nearby shore; and why the disciples on the road to Emmaus could not recognize the resurrected Jesus, the very man about whom they were speaking and to whom they spoke.

     Imagine, if you will, a caterpillar and a butterfly, one crawling, the other perched, upon the same twig.  Even had he a mind able to do so, the caterpillar would not recognize in his winged companion the same friend with whom he used to share a tasty leaf.  The transformation wrought in the cocoon would have masked his friend's true identity.  Nor would the caterpillar recognize in his companion his own destiny, even though it stood before his very eyes in all its Monarch splendor.  But something in the way that butterfly moved, or something in the way it nibbled at its food in the bright sunlight would stir the caterpillar deeply, would make his heart burn within him.  It would awaken the memory of twigs he'd travelled and leaves he'd tasted in the past, and of those with whom he'd shared summer days.  The welcome and revered image of his old friend's homely, wormlike countenance would cross his mind, and for an instant, for one brief but electric moment, charged with expectation and softened by nostalgia, he would catch a glimpse of both past and future, and he would understand.

     But moments of such transcending significance and insight are rare.  Only the keen-sighted or the visionary among us can see the seed that once was in the rose that now is.  In the oak trees towering above them they can see the destiny of humble acorns lying in the dirt.  They see in the green stalks of corn that sway in the breezes of a warm August morning, while they stand in an Indiana cornfield that fills their vision on every side all the way to the horizon, the very same kernels they buried in the earth just months before.  And if, like the caterpillar, they are blessed with a moment of insight, they will see their own destiny.  They will learn what graveyards really are:  not long lines of weathered headstones standing as silent testimonials to broken dreams or to separation without remedy, but  rows and rows of planted seeds, await­ing the harvest of the last day.  They will understand that what is harvested far ex­ceeds that which they laid in the ground.  They will see that caterpillar and butterfly, acorn and oak, kernel and stalk, bulb and tulip, and egg and rooster, are merely two stages in the development of the same life.  They will see that the transformation wrought in the unseen darkness behind the veil of death is so magnificent that what they themselves will become is hardly recognizable in what they now are.

     But they have a clue:  they know that they shall be like Christ.  And they know that some have actually seen the resurrected Jesus and have left behind an account of that amazing sight.  Then, the next time they read the inspired description of the awesome Christ in John's vision, they will understand why even Jesus' best friends did not recognize Him at first.  And they will catch a glimpse, at the same time, of their own Monarch destiny.

     And what will that world be like?                                 

     I don't know.  But I imagine it will be as startlingly and breathtakingly different from the one we now enjoy as the one we now enjoy is from the dark wetness of the womb we once inhabited, or as the brilliant blue skies and fresh warm breezes in which the violets now bloom are different from the dirt and darkness of the flower bed from which they arose.