Ronald Reagan and the Bush Family

On this day in 1981, 69 days after taking office, an assassination attempt was made on Ronald Reagan.

Nobody who has read Reagan's handwritten radio addresses during his California and pre-President days believes that he was a B-grade intellect.





I believe he was also surprisingly libertarian and pro-peace.

In short, I believe he was a true threat to the world of the Bush Family.

So I continue to be fascinated by the fact that on the day that Reagan was shot, a member of the Bush family was scheduled to have dinner with a member of the Hinckley family.

VOXNYC: "Bush Family Involvement in Reagan Assassination Attempt"

Reagan, Hinckley and the "Bushy Knoll" Conspiracy

Pacifist Podcasts

A kindred spirit in Wyoming has been podcasting some conversations we've had on pacifism. They are available here:

The Christian Pacifist Podcast
http://pacifist.atspace.com

Happy Birthday, Cyrus Vance

Cyrus Vance was born this day in 1917. He died in 2002.

Nobody under 40 remembers who Cyrus Vance was. He was Secretary of State under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1980.

Hamilton Jordan was credited with devising the strategy that led to Carter's November 1976 victory. Early in the campaign, Jordan stated:

If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I would quit. You're going to see new faces and new ideas.

Why did Jordan single out Cyrus Vance as someone that Carter would never, ever appoint as Secretary of State?

Because Jordan was painting a picture of Carter as an "outsider," and Vance was your typical "Insider." Jordan wanted American voters to believe that Jimmy Carter had the vision and the courage to "clean house," bring change to America, repudiate the plans of the "Insiders" and take America in a New Direction.

Incredibly, some Americans still believe such campaign promises.

Who Creates Your Vote?

While the federal government goes around the world "monitoring" elections in foreign nations, the government isn't saying anything about our own elections here at home.

The McClatchy Newspapers yesterday published old news about computer voting and the ease of manipulating elections. Appearing last month before a U.S. Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, Fla., a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount.

Everything Chavez knows about rigging elections, he learned from the U.S.

A voting machine company that partnered with a firm hired by Chavez's government, owned U.S.-based Sequoia Voting Systems until 2007. Sequoia machines were in use in 16 states and the District of Columbia at the time.

Sequoia machines were used by California, and were the object of a lawsuit I wrote nearly a decade ago.

The only thing more corrupt than "touchscreen" voting machines is the entire concept of one group of people "voting" to kill or steal from another group of people.

Marriage Redefined

The first edition (1828) of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language defines marriage:

MAR'RIAGE, n. [L. mas, maris.] The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity,and for securing the maintenance and education of children.
Marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled. Heb.13.
1. A feast made on the occasion of a marriage.
The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king, who made a marriage for his son. Matt.22.
2. In a scriptural sense, the union between Christ and his church by the covenant of grace. Rev.19.

A few years ago dictionaries started adding to the original definition. The new definition now states that marriage includes "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage."

In 1945, George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, and one of the characters in the book was the pig, Squealer, who arbitrarily redefined words so that they would mean what he wanted. As Orwell explained about Squealer, "he could turn black into white" as part of his attempt to get the other animals to accept his message; the same tactic is apparently being used in modern dictionaries.

If atheists should decide they want to be "baptized," should dictionaries change the definition of baptism? Who created "marriage?" Who created "baptism?"

In 1913, the Texas Supreme Court answered: "Marriage was not originated by human law. It is ... a status ordained by God."

James Wilson, who was a US Supreme Court Justice after he signed the Constitution, emphasized the importance of a Biblical concept of the family:

Whether we consult the soundest deductions of reason, or resort to the best information conveyed to us by history, or listen to the undoubted intelligence communicated in Holy Writ, we shall find that to the institution of marriage the true origin of society must be traced.

George Washington reminded the nation:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.—Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure—reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.—

Marriage: A God-Ordained Institution

Marriage Amendment

Sacred Civil Institutions

Republicans Legalize Homosexual "Marriage"

Cult Threatens Religious Liberty and Property Rights

Gay-Bashing and Christian-Bashing

Sex Education

Newsweek Attacks Marriage

Obama: Grow People for Parts

A good article about how the mainstream media ignored the real issues in the controversy surrounding Barack Obama's decision to steal from those who believe it is wrong to grow humans for body parts and give the money to Nazi "scientists" who kill human beings for body parts is this one by Josh Brahm:

9 Things the Media Messed Up About the Obama Stem Cell Story

Libertarians believe it is wrong to initiate force against others. This includes killing people for their body parts. It includes taking money by force from those who believe it is wrong to kill human beings for their body parts and giving that money to those who want to "experiment" on human beings for "medical research."

Nine Things the Media Got Wrong, and thereby Promoted Human Experimentation

#1. Omitting the importance of iPS cells
#2. Omitting that the diseases everyone is talking about curing (diabetes, Parkinson's, paralysis) have already been treated with adult stem cells.
#3. Perpetuating the myth that stem cell research will likely cure Alzheimer's disease
#4. Omitting the dangers of HESCR
#5. Confusing or combining reproductive cloning with research cloning
#6. Creating a false choice that “leftover” embryos will either be used for research or be killed
#7. Dehumanizing human embryos
#8. Responding to a Strawman argument that pro-lifers are concerned about embryos being misused in laboratories (other than killing them)
#9. Bush’s policy restricted tax dollars being used on “all” stem cell research.

Did I overstate the case by calling pre-born stem-cell researchers "Nazis?"

No.

Brahm's conclusion:

This is not a small news story, ladies and gentlemen. This isn’t like a news channel failing to report that a large freeway is shut down due to an accident, and a bunch of people are late for work. This is a major event with profound moral and societal implications. President Obama left the door open to allowing American scientists to grow human beings for their body parts. This is a major ethical issue, not a trivial question about whether you should go vegan or not, and the mass media decided that it wasn’t important.

The New Calvinism

I just learned that the latest TIME Magazine says that "The New Calvinism" is one of the 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.

This was the first I'd heard of "the New Calvinism."

I've been a hard-core Calvinist for over 20 years, but I don't keep up with the latest evangelical trends anymore, possibly because all my Calvinist friends from decades past have excommunicated me because I'm a radical libertarian.

For me, "Calvinism" has always been a world-and-life view, not just a debate about who gets to go to heaven when they die. When Abraham Kuyper, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, delivered his "Lectures on Calvinism" at Princeton University, he didn't talk much about who the elect were, he talked about:

Lecture 1: Calvinism as a Life System
Lecture 2: Calvinism and Religion
Lecture 3: Calvinism and Politics ( This includes the ideas of resistance to tyranny that ignited the American Revolution.)
Lecture 4: Calvinism and Science
Lecture 5: Calvinism and Art
Lecture 6: Calvinism and the Future

So when TIME Magazine announced that "the New Calvinists" are "changing the world," I assumed that since I hadn't heard about "the New Calvinists," they weren't really changing the world, that is, they weren't a threat to the Eastern Liberal Obamanian world of TIME Magazine.

TIME says (links are mine),

Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a Rick Warren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at Christianity Today, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in the Evangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern [Baptist Theological] Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. The Calvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, and Reformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom's hottest links.

I've linked to Al Mohler once before. I recall seeing the fuzzy photo on the "Between Two Worlds" blog, but don't recall linking to it or any of the other "New Calvinists" mentioned by TIME.

It doesn't sound like the "New" Calvinists are much different from the Old Calvinists (though TIME never identifies who the truly "old" Calvinists are). Says TIME:

Calvin's 500th birthday will be this July. It will be interesting to see whether Calvin's latest legacy will be classic Protestant backbiting [Skirmishes among the Southern Baptists (who have a competing non-Calvinist camp) and online "flame wars" bode badly] or whether, during these hard times, more Christians searching for security will submit their wills to the austerely demanding God of their country's infancy.

I have had exactly zero contact with Southern Baptist flame wars between Calvinists and (presumably) Arminians. But the phrase "or whether" in the lines above is a complete non sequitur. The Calvinists of America's infancy surrendered America to the Unitarians and their atheist/ACLU progeny precisely by their theological flame wars over "security" (not "national security," but assurance of who goes where when they die) and submitting their wills not to "the austerely demanding God" of Calvinism, but to the austerely demanding clerics of the various established churches.

Pinpointing the elect seems to have annoyed the more deistic Founders like Jefferson, and protecting ecclesiastical power prevented various denominations from being able to promote a generic Christianity. John Adams, for example, proclaimed national days of prayer, but regretted some of them because they were exploited by one particular ecclesiastical body over others. These power-grabs prompted some Founders to tone down their public promotion of religion and resulted in an appearance of secularism which was exploited by the ACLU in the 20th century to create the modern myth of "the separation of church and state."

If they're really going to "change the world," the "New Calvinism" must undercut our trust in government and encourage submitting our wills (that is, every area of life -- even "public" life) to "the austerely demanding God" of Calvinism. John Calvin would never allow the civil government to ignore the most basic moral precepts: "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "Thou Shalt Not Steal."

A note on the "austerity" of God and/or Calvinism. One could start with Leland Ryken's Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were. Austerity is a myth. They dressed like peacocks and "Bloody" Mary said they danced jigs in church.

Anyone who attempts to obey God's commandments in a self-consciously systematic way (see the two "Thou Shalt Not" links above) will be called "austere" (or worse) by those who want the freedom to sin (meaning, in this case, the freedom to steal ("redistribute the wealth") and making the killing of inconvenient people "safe" and "legal."

The God of the Bible is hardly "austere." God designed the peacock. God commanded the building of a temple which could hardly be called austere. Toward those who obey Him, He promises blessings, not austerity. It is always secular governments that demand "austerity budgets."

The Invisible Hand of God's Sovereignty is the basis for optimism and a rising standard of living, not "austerity."

Look at the Bible Through New Eyes.

Odds 'n' Ends (Mostly for Google's Benefit)

Calvin's Institutes on the Civil Magistrate
Book III Chapter 19
Book IV Chapter 20
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 1
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 10
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 11
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 12
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 13
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 14
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 2
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 3
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 4
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 5
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 6
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 7
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 8
Book IV Chapter 20 Section 9
Calvin on Romans 12
Calvin on Romans 13
Calvin on Romans 13:8-10
Calvinism and Anarchism
Calvinism: Source of Democracy?
Calvin's America
Calvin's Defense of the State
Contents: Calvin Thesis files
Defining "The State"
God Sends EVIL ! Why Calvinists are Anarchists
In Defense of the Crusades
Outline - Calvinist Anarcho-Capitalism
Outline - Calvinist Anarcho-Theocracy
Predestination in American History
PROBLEMS IN EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Prospectus
Radical Calvinism
Refuting "the State" by Defining "the State"
Romans 12 and 13
Romans 12 Cross-References
Romans 13 and the American Revolution
Romans 13:9-10
Scandal and conscience in Romans 13
The Biblical Prohibition of Vengeance
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS THE DIVINE ORDINATION OF GOVERNMENT: The Parallels
"Private" Vengeance and "Public Justice."
A Prima Facie Case for Biblical Anarchism
Anarchism: Chaos or God's Law?
Bibliography - Calvinist Anarcho-Capitalism
The Myth of Private Religion
The Old Testament and the New America
The Structure of the Book of Romans
The Thesis in Broader Perspective
VIOLENCE AND THE STATE: Why the Prince of Peace was an Anarchist

Pray for Slay

My brother-in-law, Chuck Slay, is undergoing 10 hours of back surgery as I write this.

Your prayers for him and his surgeons would be appreciated.

Obama's Anti-Employment Policies

Imagine that Smith is employed and Jones is unemployed, and that Smith and Jones are equally qualified in every conceivable way for the same job.

It is in Smith's self-interest that wages rise.

It is in Jones's self-interest that wages decline. That is, it is in Jones' self-interest that any union or government minimum wage law be eliminated so that Jones can bid for Smith's job at a lower price.

Smith's enemy is not his employer, who would just as soon pay a lower wage for the equally-qualified Jones. Smith's enemy is the unemployed Jones. Employees and employers are not competitors; employees compete against other prospective employees.

Prof. Reisman points out:

    Thus there are two parties -- unemployed workers and employers -- whose self-interest lies with a reduction in the higher wage rates achieved by collective bargaining.
    If these parties are free to act in their self-interest, the system of collective bargaining must break down. How are they to be prevented from acting in their self-interest?
    The answer is physical force.

Reisman observes:

    A recent article in The New York Times quotes President Obama as saying, “I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective-bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment. If you’ve got workers who have decent pay and benefits, they’re also customers for business.” (March 2, 2009, p. B3.)
    Collective bargaining is the joining together, typically through the instrumentality of a labor union, of all workers in a given occupation or industry for the purpose of acting as a single unit in seeking pay and benefits. It is an attempt to compel employers to deal with just one party—i.e., the labor union—and to come to terms agreeable to that party or to be unable to obtain labor.
    The imposition and maintenance of collective bargaining necessarily depends on compulsion and coercion, i.e., on the use of physical force against both employers and unemployed workers.

See Reisman's blog for an excellent summary of the damage done to all American workers by forcing wage rates up by compulsion and coersion.

Economic Planning

I received a letter that went largely like this:

> I need a plan to take the place of the "constitutions"
> If as you say, God does not bless constitutions
> and that we should have a "Vine & Fig Tree" society,
> then people will want me to tell them,
> what is the structure to take the place of
> the constitutions
> I have ideas
> What are your comments..........
> and I have read your links

I like Murray Rothbard's story of the fellow in a communist country who proposed handing over the manufacture and sale of shoes to the Free Market.

The point: no "plan" will work.
What WILL work is liberty -- allowing entrepreneurs, visionaries, investors, inventors, to make plans to create new goods and services, and people like you and me being free to choose from all the available alternatives put forth by the people above.

You and I make plans, and those entrepreneurs make (and constantly revise) their plans. If an entrepreneur plans to sell me something, I might change my plans and buy it, or I might decide that purchasing his product or service will not advance my own plans, in which case the entrepreneur will have to change HIS plans.

In a world of "Liberty Under God," economic plans change not just when Congress is in session, but monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, even in split seconds as traders and investors revise their plans, and millions of people buy and sell according to their own economic plans.

I know more about how to make plans in my business, and you know more about how to make plans in your business, and 300 million Americans know more about rational economic planning for their individual lives and businesses than Congress or any bureaucracy or central planning board.

http://AstonishingProvidence.com/invisiblehand.htm

Total "anarchy" allows for MORE PLANNING than a monopoly of planning by a central planning board. Anarcho-capitalism works better than any level of centralized planning.