Sign of the Times

Donald Trump is our national obsession. Almost six weeks after the election and on the eve of Christmas and Hanukkah he is topic A at every gathering. People have Post Traumatic Trump Disorder and feel compelled to share their thoughts and feelings, their joy — “I can’t stop feeling happy!” said a normally contained editor and intellectual, to his own surprise — and despair. My world is full of Hillary Clinton supporters and intimates. At a Manhattan Christmas party last week a despairing Democrat told me that she had not only wept on election night she had vomited. She was still beside herself.[1]

The truest and most profound revelations are often those advanced by they who do (or seem) not to realize the ramifications of what they are declaring. I encountered such a moment recently from one familiar to me, who is given to victimization, exaggeration, lies, blatant slanders, and lawsuits. She has long accused one of her parents of abuse; the extent of the charge which I have never found particularly credible considering that I have had past dealings with that same person. Admittedly, there are individuals particularly adept in presenting a pleasing, or least innocuous public persona while being gargoyles in private.

However, in recent conversations, she confided that this parent would go into her bedroom every night when she was a child and be a “real and loving mother,” apologizing for any excesses that may have occurred during the daily rants; (rants which I had observed). And it struck me, although I doubt the same insight occurred to my interlocutor, that this daily habit of asking forgiveness and reconciliation is stereotypical of the perpetrators of abuse. I had doubted any wild charges claimed by one prone to mendacity unless I had personally observed them. But this unintended revelation gave some credibility to her story.

Now Peggy Noonan, the author of the quote above, is by no means given to mendacity. She continues to be among the top three of my favorite American journalists/pundits, along with Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept and Conor Federspiel of The Atlantic; diamonds among the dung of advocacy and sycophantic journalism; all with a different basis of appeal, but with a common commitment to the pursuit of intellectual integrity in their scribblings.

Noonan’s particular gift is in absorbing the mood and comprehending the soul of her nation; which some might denigrate as a more primitive form of “intelligence.”[2] Yet, despite all of the political theory written by the self-identifying rationalists of ancient Greece, including that template of all ensuing political dystopias, Plato’s Republic; Hellenist civilization was incapable of establishing enduringly stable and peaceable city states and thereafter kingdoms. Alexander’s Empire took but ten years to disintegrate into quadrants. (It took Imperial Rome about three centuries to accomplish half that feat.) And large reason for that political incompetency was the Hellenists’ denigration of the “lizard brain,” and consequent lack of “emotional intelligence.”

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For years before the present epochal moment, Noonan has registered an unease that there exists an unrest stirring beyond the culturally gated community of the Versaillean elites of the Potomac and Hudson. The natives are restless. But whether Noonan realizes the historical significance of a republic’s obsession with a particular leader of the moment cannot be garnered from the article in which she observes and reports the phenomenon.

The republican ideal not only seeks to disperse socioeconomic and political power between many power bases so as to make the rise of tyrannical rule and oppression that much more difficult. A healthy republic requires a morally and politically competent populace, from within which a good many men of nobler qualities would arise to contemporary notability. Yet none becomes a colossus bestriding the narrow world [under which] “petty men walk under his legs and peep about.”[3] Indeed, Cincinnatus, who was appointed dictator for short durations in 458 and 438 BC in order to deal with immediate national emergencies was the model to which both early Roman[4] and American republicans aspired.[5] Even a major American city is named after him. After doing his tour of duty, the Roman patrician would return to his austere and modest lifestyle as a plougher of fields, to retire into a quiet life on his farm, under his vine and fig tree.[6]

But since JFK, whose hubris, whether in his nation and/or in himself, thought it possible and prudent to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,” there has emerged a fawning adoration for a new class of Caesarians while congressional legislators have in comparison become petty and venal men walking betwixt the columns of the elected demigod.

Indeed, there has likewise emerged a new class of Eusebian apologists singing paeans to these new Constantines.[7]

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.[8]

It is unimaginable that the present occupant of the White House, that initiator of that “moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,”[9] could ever deign to return to the common life, and certainly not to the cotton fields.

When a nation and its populace increasingly place such singular political privilege and regard upon its primus inter pares (“first among equals”), its princeps; it is little wonder that when their champion loses out, some might stress,[10] put on the pounds, lose their libido, and sell all their possessions in preparation for their own personal apocalypse.[11] In an age of mice, actual men appear as giants (nephilim – Numbers 13:33).

Well before the actual demise of a free civic polity and the establishment of a new autocracy, there is required an increasingly fawning and servile mindset in the populace and the laying of the ideological and cultural foundations of a new political paradigm and milieu in order to “prepare ye the way of the lord”, to abuse the Biblical intent of that phrase (Mark 1:3, Isaiah 40:3).

 

© Copyright John Hutchinson 2017

 

[1] Peggy Noonan, “The Smartest Thing I Heard in 2016,” The Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-smartest-thing-i-heard-in-2016-1482450561.

[2] Joe Klein, “Donald Trump’s Lizard Brain,” Time, February 18, 2016, http://time.com/4228885/donald-trump-lizard-brain/; John Oliver, “Canadian Election,” Last Week with John Oliver (HBO), October 15, 2015, [YouTube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V5ckcTSYu8.

[3] William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1599, Act 1, Scene 2.

[4] Plutarch, “The Life of Cato the Elder,” ca. 75 AD, translated by Bernadotte Perrin in The Parallel Lives (Vol. 2), Harvard University Press, 1914.

[5] Rob Hardy, “Cincinnatus,” The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, accessed January 2, 2017, http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/cincinnatus/.

[6] Joel Achenbach, “George Washington could have been a strongman, but kept giving power away,” The Washington Post, July 28, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/achenblog/wp/2016/07/28/remembering-the-miracle-in-philadelphia-and-george-washingtons-greatest-acts/?utm_term=.ea5cc3706ed3.

[7] Eusebius, “The Life of Constantine, Oration of Constantine to the Assembly of the Saints, and Oration of Eusebius in Praise of Constantine,” early 4th century AD, in Volume 1, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, translated by Bagsley, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Edinburgh: T & T Clark; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1890, pp. 1040–1544.

[8] David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, New York: Vintage Books, 2010, p. 274.

[9] Senator Barack Obama, Remarks on Final Primary Night, St. Paul, MN: June 3, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/03/obamas-nomination-victory_n_105028.html.

[10] Paul Schwartzman, “Psychologists and massage therapists are reporting ‘Trump anxiety’ among clients,” The Washington Post, March 6, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-do-we-know-america-is-anxious-about-a-president-trump-shrinks-and-massage-therapists/2016/03/03/e5b55a22-e0bb-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html?utm_term=.c2174a3a037c.

[11] Jim Geraghty, “The Season of Liberal Panic,” National Review, December 27, 2016, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443355/donald-trump-liberal-hysteria-unhealthy-politically-counterproductive.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics (Re: Why This Recovery Is So Lousy – WSJ)

“Truth,” it has been said, “is the first casualty of war.” – Philip Snowden[i]

A theme, long sustained within conservative economic circles, is that FDR’s New Deal crippled the recovery and prolonged the Great Depression. Screeds, like the following by Phil Gramm, a not insignificant player in legislative assemblies past, is stereotypical of this meme.

In all recoveries following all 30 economic contractions since 1870, only two have failed to have strong rebounds after deep recessions. Only two are now labeled “Great” because of the long periods of suffering they caused. And in only two recoveries did government impose economic policies radically different from the policies pursued in all the other recoveries—different than traditional policy but similar to each other— FDR’s Great Depression and Mr. Obama’s Great Recession.

From 1932-36, federal spending skyrocketed 77%, the national debt rose by over 73%, and top tax rates more than tripled, from 25% to 79%. But the tectonic shift brought about by the New Deal was the federal government’s involvement in the economy, as a tidal wave of new laws were enacted and more executive orders were issued than by all subsequent presidents combined through President Clinton . . .

. . . As government assumed greater control, private investment collapsed, averaging only 40% of the 1929 level for nine consecutive years. League of Nations data show that by 1938, in five of the six most-developed countries in the world industrial production was on average 23% above 1929 levels, but in the U.S. it was still down by 10%. Employment in five of the six major developed countries averaged 12% above the pre-Depression levels while U.S. employment was still down by 20%. Before the Great Depression, real per capita GDP in the U.S. was about 25% larger than it was in Britain. By 1938, real per capita GDP in Britain was slightly higher than in the U.S.

Considering that in the four years following FDR’s ascension, the American economy grew at 10.88, 8.88, 13.05, and 5.12 percent respectively, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); or 10.74, 8.92, 12.91, and 5.23 percent respectively, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce; I am not quite sure what would constitute a strong bounce back for these partisans. There certainly has not existed any comparable rebound since.

This revisionist representation of the Great Depression abounds in sophistries and what we, in biblical circles, would call statistical proof-texting. Why, for instance, include years 1929 to 1932/3, a period when private investment totally collapsed, in determining the impact of New Deal policies from 1933 onward? (With inordinate price and asset deflation between late 1930 and mid-1933, investing one’s money in one’s mattress or backyard garden guaranteed that “investor” a 5–10% real return tax free.)

Nor is it fruitful to compare with other industrial nations without also mentioning that except for Germany and Canada, the economic downturn in America from 1929 to 1932/3 was considerably greater. Great Britain is, in particular, an egregious ploy, considering that the Great Depression was for Britain, a Great Recession within a Long Depression which began after WW1.

The national debt may have increased 73% in nominal terms from 1932–6. But as a percentage of GDP, it only increased from 32.5% to 40% during very trying times.[ii] Even so, comparing federal revenues and expenditures from (June) 1932 instead of (June) 1933, when Republican President Herbert Hoover governed for 8 of those 12 interim months, is but more statistical gamesmanship. In the final two years of the prior Republican administration, federal spending as a percentage of GDP was 10 (1932) and 13.5 (1933) percent respectively. Prior to WW2, FDR’s administration, except for 1934 (17%), never topped the last year of Hoover’s administration.

Indeed, FDR seemed not to have been particularly sold on Keynesian economics, which dominates the current economic thinking in Obama’s White House. Indeed, while John Maynard Keynes had hitherto expressed some rudimentary musings on his thesis, his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was only published in 1936. Deficit spending during WW2 was mandated far more from existential survival than economic theory.

Did Gramm also fail to mention that Hoover’s administration deemed it necessary to raise top income tax rates to 63% in 1932?

Considering how easily accessible the extant documentation is to refute Gramm’s assertions, articles like these constitute an incompetent form of mendacity. Does The Wall Street Journal seek to vie with Vox for the gold medal in Mendacity in American Journalism.

[i] Philip Snowden, Introduction to Truth and the War, by E. D. Morel, (London: National Labor Press Ltd., 1916), p. vii.

[ii] GDP in 1932 was $60 billion, national debt $19.5. In 1936, the figures are $85B and $33.8B respectively.

Canada and the “America First” Policy

Donald Trump recently declared that he would “put the interests of the American people and American security above all else.” His campaign has already been exemplifying this policy through nativist hostility to foreign journalists. But Trump’s “America First” is merely the explicit expression of a creeping mindset, long in the making; the foreign policy manifestation of the rapid moral decadence in that society, whereby enlightened self-interest, which had undergirded the Pax America, devolves into raw self-interest.

The Significance of Donald Trump

I watch bemused the gladiatorial spectacle of Donald Trump from afar. He is, without doubt, a thuggish buffoon with the subtlety of mind of a solid cube; who pummels through prudence, rationality, empathy, civility, tact and virtue like a rhino in heat. He is the “ugly American”, raised to the third power, whose simpleton appeal to imbecility, confirms democracy’s devolution towards a Confederacy of Dunces.

The meretricious courtesans of political punditry hope that a fickle populace is merely toying with the witless minds and anxious hearts of a neglectful elite. They give the idiocracy too much wit.

Trump is the Rob Ford of the American Whatever. (It becomes practicably difficult to identify a consistent and rationally coherent ideology or feasible strategic policy to his constipated outbursts.) But with Rob Ford; even after a season of Jimmy Kimmel easy-to-make vignettes about our clown naturale; the Bulldozer of City Hall retained a stubborn third of the popular vote in Toronto, indeed of liberal Toronto; before our Ford finally suffered electoral defeat to cancer. I likewise suspect that contrary to “wish-upon-a-star” analysis, the Trump Nation will endure. The ramifications of the long decline of mind and culture of the American Idiocracy is finally coming to roost.

But Trump himself is not the actual threat. He is but a Storm Trooper of political demagogues to come; a barometer to would-be tyrants of the venality and imbecility at the heart of American politics; a harbinger of the effectual end of free civic society, except for its forms, and individual liberty, rule of law and peace.

In early 2009, I concluded that Junior Bush was the worse American president since James Buchanan; and anticipated that Haughty Obama would be worse still. (On this count, Obama has far exceeded even my expectations.) The defining criteria; failure to recognize and address the rapidly widening ideological, sociopolitical and economic schism, which threatens civic, even bloody, strife. But the Versailles by the Potomac remains in oblivious slumber; indeed contributing to the galloping rush to an imploding abyss, through even greater radicalization of both the Right and the Left.

But I didn’t imagine a three-peat. For what have we here? A WWF contest between the champion of mindlessness and the champion of mendacity; the mindlessness of Trump; the mendacity of Clinton. And the decaying hulk of Pax Americana depends upon these overgrown ignoramuses of entitlement.

Strategies against Nuclear Proliferation omitted a potential threat; that of fools and morons occupying the throne with the most guns; that supposed seat of civilizational sanity.

Listen carefully; do you not hear the gods laughing?

George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin in the Backdrop of Deteriorating Race Relations: Foreign Perspective (Part 1)

Some events, like the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in 2011, are catalytic, if unpredictable. The underlying and unnoticed cause of revolutionary sentiment long seethes subterraneously, unnoticed by the cadre of jet-set international news media celebrities, who photo-up at every disaster like politicians. But we know not if, when and from where, a spark will set these combustible social atmospheres. Others are mere sideshows, but expose the current state of affairs within a society and culture to those astute enough to notice. Others are mere sideshows.

The Zimmerman-Martin sideshow is the middle option.

Dwelling in a jurisdiction outside the gates of the American zoo, my perspective could be dismissed as one lacking knowledge and empathy. And on this particular matter, which is more peripheral to my experience than those dwelling in the U.S., this is legitimate comment. My claim to credibility comes from having distance and perhaps therefore greater impartiality and broader perspective.

‘Snowden Broke the Law’

I confess to being somewhat astonished and perturbed, perhaps even contemptuous, by the lack of committed Evangelical comment on the NSA leaks, particularly by its leadership. On the days after the initial leads (June 5/6, 2013), Albert Mohler dutifully reported the incidents with studied neutrality. Etobicoke (Toronto) pastor and Evangelical-approved book reviewer fashions a pietistic homily¹ on the matter; only obliquely giving indication of his sentiments in an emphatic denial of approving NSA actions in his comment section. There is Lutheran theologian of some note on the Patheos Evangelical channel (Gene Edward Veith) and a few bloggers. The only other Evangelical of note with an intelligent and intelligible opinion on the matter is John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute², who is currently representing a Marine, Brandon Baub, who was taken into psychiatric custody without justifiable cause, based on domestic surveillance of his rantings on his Facebook pages.

Otherwise; na-da!

There are many reasons to explain this dearth of publicly expressed concern about the ramifications of Edward Snowden’s revelations. And many of those reasons, I can think of, would appear as quite mean-spirited toward Gospel-of-Niceness-Truth-Be-Damned ‘evangelicals’ in this era of EVANGELICALISM STUPID and EVANGELICALISM IRRELEVANT and EVANGELICALISM TAINTED WITH CO-OPTION and EVANGELICALISM TIMID and EVANGELICALISM TEPID.

It is not as if the Evangelical leadership is averse to voicing specific opinions to highly complicated political issues. I observe that Rev. Franklin Graham is fast off the mark to opine to Obama about his intervention into Syria, having written an open letter on June 14, 2013.³ And Evangelical pastors are roaming the countryside like Constantinian bishops, rustling up support for an Immigration Reform Bill, googling up 40 Scriptural proof-text verses which have nothing to do with this specific policy initiative. ⁴ Political non-involvement and comment is not for most Evangelical theologians, an issue it would seem.

But for those who earnestly seek to avoid needlessly alienating the general public on secondary matters from considering the Christian message, the global omniscient surveillance state poses a threat to the unimpeded promulgation of the Gospel and Full Counsel of God. If religious liberty has now become a chief sociopolitical concern of Evangelicals; how much more so general liberty? Have we forgotten the logic of the altar and the gift on the altar?

You fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Whoever therefore shall swear by the altar, swears by it, and by all things thereon. And whoever shall swear by the temple, swears by it, and by him that dwells therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him that sits thereon.⁵

However, a full discourse on a nuanced approach to Christian involvement with secular society and politics is beyond the scope of this essay (and is a work in progress).

Of the few comments garnered from evangelical sites, there is evident and understandable conflict about the actions of Edward Snowden and its ramifications, which needs to be fairly addressed. And perhaps, it is time for Evangelicals to go back to school with regard to Christian political thought; revisiting the same sort of issues that Reformers, Anabaptists, Puritans etc of the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th Century needed to deal with in order to promote the Gospel and Full Counsel of God in their time. (This is not to suggest that there exists a legitimate, coherent and consistent Christian political theory on this side of Judgment Day. However, there is much counsel to be ascertained and promulgated from the Protestant/Evangelical thinkers of those times; whose ideas were adopted by more secular-minded writers and founded on more naturalist underpinnings.)

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If a man steals an item from the thief, which had stolen that item from the legitimate owner, in order to restore the item to that original owner, is that theft? What if that thief was a government agent, who used the organs of government to expropriate that item? What if that civic expropriation required a secretive contortionism of interpretation of applicable laws in order to utilize the organs of the state to nick that item?

Perhaps, by the standards of legal niceties and procedural rectitude, the man who steals from a thief, is a thief. But is that natural justice? Common folklore celebrates the mythical Robin Hood; less because his roguery appeals to the baser angels of our natures, although that element certainly exists. It is in recognition that criminality remains criminality, even if a civic official or even a President does it. (Do we not remember Nixon’s Napoleonic complex moment⁶: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”⁷ Sorry Mr. President. Even if state depredations do not quite show up in FBI statistics, they nevertheless remain a crime.

If a man violates a law or judicial interpretation of a law, which itself violates the plain (and common) understanding of the articles of a Constitution, via deft judicial sophistry and casuistry, is that man a traitor to the Constitution; to the Higher Law? Are laws and constitutions written in pig Latin, such that only credentialed legal priests have capacity to decipher them? But if the understandings of laws and articles of Constitutions become so contorted and distorted as to be inscrutable by the persons for whom they are to apply, is that lawfulness and justice? Have we not entered into Kafka’s version of the Twilight Zone?

If Edward Snowden broke the law and is a traitor to the Constitution, it is only in the sense argued by 21^st Century American administrations and the toads who croak in choreographed unison. Theirs is a lawfulness and constitutionality of procedural rectitude.

We’ve got congressional oversight and judicial oversight…And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.⁸

A cadre of duly elected and appointed civic officials has conspired to concoct this “architecture of oppression”. Because this elite priesthood has deemed legal, violations to the Constitution and the plain understanding of the letter and spirit of its Articles, it must be legal. Two and two is equal to five because the duly elected and appointed overseers have all concurred with this madness. It seems incredible and unbelievable! For, even ‘checks and balances’ government is no guarantee against tyranny, wholesale injustice and lawlessness by its civic officials; especially when deft sleight of hand maneuvers were utilized to circumvent the Constitution. 

America (and other modern states) has approached the full fruition and reckoning of that judicial coup d’état of 1803 (Marbury v. Madison), which laid the groundwork for the undermining and overthrow of a written constitution and reversal of the American Revolution through the interpretative duplicity of sophists. “The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”⁹ Ultimately, the blame for the clear cut violations of Constitutional articles rests with the long and winding road of judicial interpretative contortionism, which allows the present President and his Pips, in their superior wisdom and comprehension of pig Latin, to deem wholesale overthrow of civil rights as “modest encroachments on privacy”.

The Administration’s argument is the same argument as that of the medieval Romanist Magisterium against Martin Luther and the Reformers. Over the centuries since Christ, the labyrinth of “proper” Magisterial interpretation of Scriptures became at wide variance and dissonance to common rendering and understanding of the original text. And like in Luther’s time, the duly appointed authorities deemed submission to authorities to be the only lawfulness, regardless of the virtue, wisdom and lawfulness of that authority and its rendering of the Biblical Constitution.

If Jesus of Nazareth had abided to this principle of lawfulness, He would have been a sinner. For, Christ defied the prevailing interpretation of Mosaic Law in regard to Sabbath Laws, the fourth article of the Decalogue, defined by the duly appointed Jewish religious authorities. He did not submit to their duly appointed authoritative interpretation of Mosaic Law. And as Christ pointed out by the deft hermeneutics of Jewish religious scholars in regard to Corban¹⁰, the interpretative traditions of religious jurists had construed to violate the fifth article of the Decalogue (“Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long on the land which the LORD your God gives you”¹¹)

Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.¹²

If Luther had capitulated to the Vatican demand that he submit to the duly self-appointed apostolic succession with its accumulation of hermeneutical contortionism which left Scriptures beyond all recognition, the Reformation would not have happened. (To underline the level of contortionism, this Roman Magisterium made the gift of conjugal sex, inherently imbued with evil and made conjugal relations that occurred on 67% or more of the days of the year, a venial sin requiring penitentials of various kinds.)

Without the fundamentally necessary principle of soul competence, the right and requirement that a doctrine, whether religious or secular, requires to be incontrovertibly proven to the subjective faculties of the beholder; the rise of Western Civilization would not have occurred. Yes. An individual may not, through disuse of intellectual faculties, intellectual dishonesty, lack of knowledge and understanding of proper principles of hermeneutics, reason and judgment of artifacts, find the truth. But knowledge of the truth is still a potential. This is a lesser ‘evil’ than the return to a medieval dark age; where cadre of priests, whether religious or secular, is able to pontificate assertions, without being perpetually subjected to scrutiny of any and every kind. It is for this reason; this modern dependence on ‘expert texperts’ and authoritative credentialism, that bullshit reigns in every intellectual discipline and sociopolitical endeavour.

Likewise, the same dynamics and principles that required an overthrow of duly appointed and credentialed authority in religious matters, requires a same application to secular political constitutions. The current understandings and practices by the civic agents of the state are at a great dissonance to the plain scrutable rendering of a Constitution that has neither been legally abrogated nor amended to justify such strange understandings of its wording. Just because the incompetent and compromised buffoons in Congress, the arrogant Pretender in the White House, kowtowing to the military-industrial complex, and judicial deceit have incestuously conspired to fashion a Kafkaesque lawlessness that blatantly contradicts reasonable understanding of the Constitution; their practicable interpretations of constitutions are no more legal than the ways that the Nazi regime contorted the non-abrogated Constitution of the Weimar Republic. It was through clear violations of a common understanding of the Weimar Constitution that German war criminals were convicted at Nuremberg.

Martin Luther repudiated the vow of celibacy that was insisted upon all Romanist theologians. His argument was that it was not an oath that was justified by the plain rendering of Scriptures but was that coerced through magisterial contortionism by a religious judicial tradition that had contorted the original and reasonable understanding of Biblical text. Edward Snowden’s oath, which he has violated, can be deemed similarly to be more valid, if by that oath he is required to do nothing while lawlessness and evil is perpetuated. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke) If Snowden violated laws, which themselves violated the Higher Law; in this case, the plain rendering of the Constitution, he is no more a criminal and traitor to the American Constitution than Jesus Christ or Martin Luther was to the Law of God. 

Something is constitutional or lawful, when the plain and scrutable rendering of the constitution or law allows for it; not when some judicial priest contorts and distorts the meaning of said constitution or law beyond all recognition!

Christians are a People of the Book. We have a long history of contending with those many deceitful persons and artifices which have construed to make the Biblical Constitution state what it does not state, and to not state what it does state. We ought to inherently understand the dangers of a political establishment which has done much the same and in which the Constitution is becoming thoroughly unrecognizable in its practicable application by the duly elected and appointed.

 ©Copyright Johnny Hutchinson

 

 

NOTES

1. Tim Challies, “Fear God More Than the NSA”, …Informing the Reforming, June 12, 2013, Accessed http://www.challies.com/articles/fear-god-more-than-the-nsa on June 18, 2013.
2. John Whitehead is a Christian civil rights lawyer, having represented Paula Jones against Bill Clinton. There was a write up by Ted Olsen of Christianity Today “The Dragon Slayer” (December 7, 1998). Otherwise, his perspective can be found at https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/.
3. Franklin Graham, “Letter to President Obam”, Samaritan’s Purse, June 14, 2013, Accessed http://www.scribd.com/doc/148384711/Rev-Franklin-Graham-urges-President-Obama-to-keep-America-out-of-Syrian-conflict on June 18, 2013.
4. It should be understood that I have conflicted thoughts on this matter. I am not a citizen of the jurisdiction in which this issue is being debated. My contempt is for the unjustified conscription of Scriptures to support a political issue. See “Evangelical Support for Immigration Reform is Biblical, Not Political” reblogged on Timothy Dalrymple’s Patheos Philosophical Fragments blog, March 13, 2013, Accessed  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/philosophicalfragments/2013/03/13/evangelical-support-immigration-reform-biblical-not-political-soerens/ on June 18, 2013.
5. Matthew 23:19-22
6. As understood by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, (1866) as beyond above the laws of God and men.
7. David Frost, Interview with Richard Nixon, Part 3, May 19, 1977.
8. President Barack Obama, “Speech in San Jose, California”, June 7, 2013.
9. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Spencer Roane, 1819.
10. Mark 7:7-13
11. Exodus 20:12
12. Mark 7:13

 

 

 

NSA and the Circling of the Wagons

In these weeks following the Snowden revelations, we are witnessing a coming together, a circling of wagons by the current American elites, both political operatives and pundits, regardless of political persuasion. This abrupt ad hoc unity contrasts with the all-too-familiar and perennial internecine schism that has predominated for decades. This unity, granting unmitigated justification for invasion of privacy and violation of Constitutional precepts, and which denounces and disparages Snowden for daring to confront this established consensus, defies an increasing and virulent opposition as the governed are temporarily stirred from their long somnolence with worthless baubles and silly trivialities.

Current Events Repeat Itself

It is an old adage that history repeats itself. I much prefer Mark Twain’s variation that “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Many individuals pay exceeding heed to the particulars of a specific development and are obstinately oblivious to parallel dynamics in other similar events.

But when is history is history? Technically, it is the nanosecond following the event itself. However, there is a more realistic if subjective opinion that if events occur in one’s ancestors’ time, it is history. If it occurs while within conscious memory of one’s own duration on the earth, it is current events. It is still immediately real and likely retains a direct impact on one’s psyche and thought to varying degrees.

With this in mind, I proceed.

While Greenspan was declaiming the irrational exuberance in 1996, his monetary policies were affording its opportunity. And waves of asset bubbles and bursts ensured throughout his Fed reign.

With the Fed-induced current monetarist environment of low interest rates and attempts to spur the economy through encouragement of further indebtedness; and in the light of continued organic restraints on wage labour to prevent wage and price inflation that is normally associated with loose monetary policy; the hot air of extremely cheap money must find some outlet, some weak lining to bulge. It is not rocket science to predict more asset bursts on the way. The trick is to determine which asset class will be the instrument of the next financial tsunami.

In other news, the Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available¹ to people with weaker credit.

Yet in other news, Wall Street is resurrecting many of the same financial instruments² that were catalyst to the market crash of 2008. The banks are churning out some of these structured products at rates greater than the peak in early 2005.

It seems that in these days of folly, it is not history that repeats itself, but current events.

 NOTES

¹Conor Friedersdorf, “Team Obama to Banks: Issue Home Loans to Riskier Borrowers”, The Atlantic Monthly, April 4, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/team-obama-to-banks-issue-home-loans-to-riskier-borrowers/274647/

²Nathaniel Popper, Alchemists of Wall Street at it again: Arcane-sounding names hide big risks, The New York Times, April 19, 2013, http://business.financialpost.com/2013/04/19/alchemists-of-wall-street-at-it-again-arcane-sounding-names-hide-big-risks/

 

 

Abdication of Duty: Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The Presidential Oath of Office (U.S. Constitution – Article II, Section 1)

On February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a memorandum to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John A. Boehner, informing him that President Obama’s administration “will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman”. I consider any decision to refuse to give full, proper and vigorous representation to defend all laws of the land in accordance to the sworn duties of office, to be an impeachable offense. This severe indictment has nothing to do with the gay rights issue. Rather, in the name of this issue, this administration has proceeded to violate an elementary principle of civics; which because it concerns a highly public issue, will likely invoke worse ramifications in the ensuing years.

However, before making the argument, a couple of necessary disclaimers are required. As noted elsewhere on this web site (The Problem of Gay Marriage), I consider it unwise for the state to have made or make any definition for marriage or to involve itself so extensively in legislative or judicial regulation of the Estate. Such involvement has always led to travesties and injustice of various sorts (Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act – 1753 relating to religion and age, Anti-miscegenation laws, eugenic-associated marriage laws). The benefits to the state of such laws are far outweighed by the risks to civil unrest on a matter in this day. There are guaranteed losers upon making any public definition on marriage. Either perceived violations against equality or violations against conscience will invariably suffer. And it will just add one more item to the litany of flashpoints in a culture war which will increasingly heat up in waves until its climax.

Secondly, although I might consider myself a moderate conservative, the best description of the increasingly polarized factions in the U.S. is encapsulated by The Doors. “And All the Children Are Insane” (“The End” –  1967). I would find it difficult, in good conscience, to vote for either side, even were I able. I considered the deceit of the Bush Administration concerning WMDs in Iraq, which was the purported justification to obtain public support for initiating and conducting a foolish war, to be also grounds for impeachment. Surely, if Puritanical prosecutors can beat the bushes to induce a few lies about minor scandals and abuse of power in the Clinton years, surely a whopper weave of deceit and lies such as the WMD deserves a prosecutor or two. Thus, I am an equal opportunity impeacher. And I consider the practice of de facto not forcing the law to the best of ability to be similar grounds for impeachment.

When I heard about this decision last year, the memory of the last years of the Wiemar Republic and early years of the Nazi regime came to mind. Though laws were on the books, the cops, sympathetic to right-wing and Nazi sentiments, failed to enforce the law and protect the Jewish and other minorities from thuggery as well as pick sides in riots between the Nazis and the Communists.

This issue bumped up into consciousness again last week when encountering a report concerning similar neglects of duty by Greek bureaucrats, judiciaries and cops against immigrants, minorities and political enemies without police intervention. The issue is relevant in the contemporary political setting.

For example, immigrants were first demonized by the state itself. They were interned, and their rights were cancelled in practice. Bureaucrats failed to enforce protective labour legislation. The police and the judiciary do not prosecute fascists under existing laws, which are more or less adequate, and don’t penalize racial attacks, antisemitism and spreading of hate, all trademarks of Golden Dawn.

Golden Dawn and the Rise of Fascism, The Guardian, June 19, 2012

If one faction or the other side, decides, for whatever excuse it gives itself, not to defend a duly initiated law, which in this case had acquired overwhelming support in both U.S. Congressional Houses and the executive branch; it is akin to doing to law what would occur to a charged defendant in which no lawyer would defend nor be appointed. In an already unjust judicial system, where money buys the best sophists, the dynamics of this refusal to uphold the laws of the land, on the basis of self-appointed interpretation of the law in reference to the Constitution, lends to practicable tilting of the balance of justice.

However, the great peril lies in this. It sets precedent, by which either side can effectually nullify any law that they dislike through not giving full defense of it. Certainly, the rabble rousers and the single-minded zealots within each faction may denigrate the issue of rule of law or procedural niceties of the political process, in the name of their concept of a “higher principle”. Such zealots, animated with only myopic self-interest and without principle, will not appreciate the a graver threat lies in lawlessness, even to their own long-term interests. Instigating a principle of capriciously setting aside full defense of any given law, whenever the mood strikes, soon proliferates into a habit by whichever faction acquires the Commanding Heights of sociopolitical power. Surely, the adversaries of the Obama Administration will simply retaliate when power returns to their hands, having been given full justification by precedent. And such precedents have tendency to proliferate with even more flimsier basis than those provided in this incident. The complaint by the losing liberal parties of the Weimar Republic at Hitler’s use of the anti-hate laws to suppress free expression, was legitimately cast in these liberals’ faces.

The long term consequences could include a deepening detestation of each other faction as each perceive the other as violating law and equity to pursue their own self-interests and agendas. A government of laws could hereby easily descend into a government of raw power. Free civil institutions and government will be effectually overthrown. Herein, in this most basic of civic principles, the current Obama administration shows itself to be incompetent and foolish.

Handicapping the American Election: First U.S. Presidential Debate

Except that I was visiting my folks, I would not have even bothered to watch the dang thing. Outside of that one vice-presidential debate (Bentsen v. Quayle – 1988) which delivered one of the best political put downs in a losing cause; (“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”); U.S. debates are generally not memorable or politically significant. It has been generations since U.S. political culture produced those who could deliver an [apparent] off-the-cuff rhetorical zinger or flourish.

I am not particular partisan in this election. Though having conservative sentiments, they are of a moderate kind, akin to David Brooks; seeking a conservative solution to what are deemed leftist issues, such as income and wealth disparity, for which I have been deeply concerned since the early 90s. One couldn’t even find socialist voice on the issue in that day. Contemporary conservatism has so veered to pre-Disraeli (or pre-Teddy Roosevelt) extremes, that that most-liberal of U.S. Senators, Obama, starts to look attractive.

I left two thirds of the way through; with the impression that Romney was clearly winning; knowing, however, that personal bias might have planked perspective. He came off, in convincing fashion, as more moderate than prior held general impression; putting lie to the portrait that his campaign had allowed itself to be defined by. The responses to the talking points and straw men arguments from Obama were subtly countered (attacking components of the Dodds-Frank bill, rather than the bill itself). He painted a First Administration that has lacked creative measures, which could reinvigorate the economy. Obama came across with an astonishingly world-weary lackluster and was devoid of suppleness of mind.

I write now, upon reflection and after going through American punditry, particularly of the left-leaning kind (Washington Post, Time, CNN) and find a remarkable immediate consensus on the verdict. This is highly abnormal. Usually, the partisan spin that inundates the media organizations generally reign over fair analysis in the immediate aftermath of such events. The polls tend to follow partisan bias; sometimes deliberate, but often as consequence of a shared political language with the champions of their cause. They cannot comprehend the vernacular of the other.

How abnormal is consensus on these events? In the 1984 Canadian election (Mulroney v Turner), in which Mulroney stung Turner about confirming last day political appointments by Trudeau; it was not evident until days and perhaps weeks after that the zinger moment (a rhetorically pathetic one about a trifling issue) had any lasting effect. The Bentsen moment had immediate cache. However, it was a vice-presidential debate and actually caused me to want the dignified Senator to be the Democratic President candidate, instead of whomever.

The fact is, as political gladiatorial sports go, Romney literally owned the incumbent President. I don’t think I have seen such lop-sidedness in these generally carefully-scripted politically choreographed ballets. And I am somewhat surprised, as ought to be the near 60% that predicted that Obama would win (compared to about 25% for Romney). As even conservative pundits (i.e. Peggy Noonan) intimated, Romney appeared to be a political bumpkin to which even James Buchanan or Herbert Hoover could have won re-election.

A rash of conflicting and confusing statistics usually leads to a lethargic draw. However, in demonstrating clear, concise and comprehensible arguments like the $90 Billions wasted on green energy projects (Obama) drown out corporate welfare on energy subsidies of $2B annually, Romney lands a count. The unintended effects of the Dodds-Frank bill were also succinctly presented. The counter to the Obama claim about deductions for relocation was a good-humored, folksy zinger. “The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas. Look, I’ve been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant.”

Obama’s argument about the likely long-term effects of side-by-side government versus voucher system health care paradigms has merit. It is a harder argument to make, even though valid. However, contrary Obama’s reputed communication skills; he was not particularly adept at proving the point. It was muddled.

As a statesmen, I have thought Obama is as vacuous as Bush; another emperor with no clothes. However, considering his success in the 2008 campaign, I had hitherto thought much more highly of his political and partisan acumen. My own impression is that the narcissistic and arrogant President underestimated his opponent, believing the rhetoric of his own campaign, and was highly unprepared.

A quip that Obama made, likely a mere misstatement, which could be well exploited as a Republican political sound bite was the following (35 minutes into the debate).

“And the magnitude of the tax cuts that you’re talking about, Governor, would end up resulting in severe hardship for people, but more importantly, would not help us grow.”

Did Obama say that? Did he actually suggest that severely hurting people are less important than the more esoteric goal of economic growth, whose purpose is to help these hurting people? This uncovers a subterranean attitude of many a statist thinker, who concern themselves with systems. People are of less consequence.

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Is this debate a game changer? In a politically fluid electorate, it should be. The current economic and geopolitical prospects for the American nation should also make the non-incumbent a shoe-in. However, the ideologically static polarization in the current American sociopolitical landscape might not move the yard sticks all that much.

I don’t think it matters who wins. The American economy, although hanging on, is on the ropes; held together by a false economy produced by private debt inducing and addicting loose Fed monetary policy and surreal trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. There is no allowance for cushion should another extraneous shock occur. The state of the economy and the world economy is in peril. The ability to return to normal growth has to contend with the cross currents of a normalization of interest rates and fiscal budgets; let alone some of the overarching structural impediments (concentration of income, wealth and means of production).

Secondly, the nation is in a perilous sociopolitical polarization that Monroe (Federalist Paper #10) and Washington (Farewell Address) forewarned as being detrimental to all civil polities. One of the consequences, most apparent at the present time, is political deadlock. Brinkmanship is becoming regular practice. One of these times, the brinkmanship might produce an economic or sociopolitical earthquake on its own.

The Left is bereft of novel ideas; largely fighting this war with the weapons of prior battles; and deploying them unwisely. The Right is barely doing better. Lowering taxes as an incentive policy is a mere tinkering compared to the enormous socioeconomic problems that advanced capitalism or aging and decadent societies pose. To those, I will attend at another time.