The bottom line is humility and humanity

If a stranger came to your door, virtually compelled you for some of your money in order that he may solve some very massive problems would you give him the money?  Would if all you knew of that stranger was that his office was hundreds of miles away, most the money he spent wasn't to solve said problems, and that he had a terrible financial record would you give it to him then?  Remember, it's for the children...which is probably why we all happily go to the polls fulfilling our "civic duty" enthusiastically putting said strangers, and spendthrifts into office.

I sent the below letter to the Holland Sentinel.

To the Editor,

If Ray Buursma hadn’t “taken his tongue out of his cheek” at the end of last week’s column, I’d have thought it was straight from 19^th century America (“Sure, let everyone fend for themselves” 1/13).  Buursma attempts to appeal to our dignity by invoking ideals such as “community” and “responsibility” in an essay that was a snide slap in the face to the character and ethics of the truly dignified people who once populated this country. 

President Cleveland once vetoed a bill to send federal money to drought-stricken farmers in Texas with the admonition, "Though the people support the government, it is not the duty of the government to support the people."  Those farmers got their aid - 10 times more in private assistance as the amount the President refused to redistribute through a federal bureaucracy.  His veto continued: "The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune." Aid from Washington only "encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character."

Cleveland tried to tell us that government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and that a government big enough to give us everything we want is big enough to take away everything we’ve got.  We've since fooled ourselves into thinking that government can help our fellow man better, faster, and cheaper than we can help them ourselves.  Buursma is only halfway there by saying “the bottom line is humanity.”  The bottom line is also humility – humility to confess that a massive, distant bureaucracy can’t solve individual problems at the local level, and the humility to confess that the enforced taking of your neighbor’s money has no place in true responsibility, community, and charity.

The path to happiness

Dr. Jim Otteson is now writing a column for Forbes.  In his first column he notes that many of the world's scientist claim to know what gives people greatest happiness and therefore they should be given authority by the government to dictate choices and regulations, etc. such that we will all lead happier lives.  Years ago we had not attained to this level of knowledge - how to construct society so that its members will be happier.  Now, finally, we've made it.  Actually, we haven't and we never will. Jim explains why we should never allow government experts the power to make decisions over our lives:

[Adam Smith said] that the legislator who fancied himself able to guide others' daily lives was not only bound to fail but was dangerous to boot--because the fantastic overestimation of his abilities probably means a megalomaniacal ego too. And we all know where megalomaniacs with expansive government power tend to end up.

Smith also identified a Great Mind Fallacy: the belief, or hope, that there is someone out there smart enough and benevolent enough to make these decisions for us, leaving us peacefully secure in the knowledge that somebody somewhere is protecting and taking care of us.

It would be nice. Alas, here on earth there is no such Great Mind. And no fallible human being--not even a "government expert"--ever will be.

The road to happiness is certainly not handing more power over to government authorities.  

The path to joy

It's not actually a path to joy so much as it is a path of joy and a path to God.  My friend Jason has written very beautifully on the pursuit of joy and how that joy can be lost, even if we're concentrating on pursuing joy itself:

In order to get joy you have to forget about it and focus on something else (namely, God). But the saddest thing about life is that we (I mean, Christians) too often don't get this right. In fact, we do the opposite all of the time. We want the joy/hope/etc. and so we use God so that we can have joy, but then we forget about God entirely. We get God for the things he gives us, but then we revel in the things He gives us over God Himself! Those things are good, and He does give us them, but why would we rather having them over having God?!? We focus too much on the thing we want, and we lose the object so much, we lose God. When we focus on God we get the joy as well, but that's not as important as God. But when we focus on the joy itself, we lose both the joy and God. What a travesty.

Read the whole thing.

What are politicians?

Well, they're not thoughtful, and they're not frugal.  We know that much.

I recently sent the following letter to the Midland Daily News:

To the Editor,

In a recent editorial regarding Senator Harry Reid you said, “…Isn't open and honest dialogue what we desire as a nation from our elected officials? Wouldn't we rather know what they really think about situations rather than the pat and proper answers that tell us nothing?”

Your first question assumes that we desire openness and honesty from our politicians.  There are probably a handful of folks who desire this.  But far more than that, most desire free handouts; they want taxes raised as long as it’s on the other guy, government to regulate competing businesses, government to hand out checks or give breaks to their own business, and the government to keep printing money (a highly dishonest act!) in the name of stimulating the economy. 

Your second question assumes that politicians think.  They seldom think of little else than the next election, poll numbers, vote trading, and bringing home the bacon.  Unfortunately, our political system has evolved over the years into nothing more than a machine whose inputs are those people who desire to tell other people how to live their life, and whose outputs are disastrously harmful legislation, diving into deep debt so fast they make a crew of drunken sailors look like a prudential group of misers.

Christianity is something we all need

If you didn't catch it already, Brit Hume gave an excellent testimony for Christ on FOXNews recently.  The temptation with this situation is to think of Tiger as a horrible sinner, worse than the rest of us, or the average joe.  This of course is not true.  We are all horrible sinners.  The way I've tried to think of it is to imagine all my secret wrongs exposed to the world, or at least to those who would care most.  Well, those sins are exposed already - to God.  But thanks be to God there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus....

If you're scared of asteroids....

You should check out what the government has done to the money supply.  Just don't forget where the real danger lies.  And don't think too small: the real battle is not about ideologies, free-markets vs. socialism, big government vs. small government etc.  Things are far bigger than that.  The real battle is still and always will be, until the final victory comes, between the woman's seed and the seed of the serpent.  And men won't have free markets until God grants men free grace.

I recently sent this letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Michio Kaku states that he and other “scientists are applauding the Russian Space Agency for addressing the [threat of an earth-bound asteroid], even if the danger from Apophis is slight.  Sooner or later we will face a catastrophic threat from space” (Russia Takes Aim at Asteroids 1/6).

I would argue that scientists and the population at large face and are ignorant of devastating threats from within our own terrestrial ball.  Governments routinely perform catastrophic acts against their people when they try to educate children, regulate entire industries, and perform eminent domain.  What’s more, they insult our intelligence by telling us these things are for are own good – as if we can’t make our own decisions about education, health, and property!

Asteroids present danger only in the sense that they provide more “crisis” opportunities for government to grab power and eliminate more of our liberties.