American government is out of control. Everyone is saying it. Democrats blame Republicans and Republicans blame Democrats, but the real problem with government isn’t “conservative” policies or “liberal” policies; the problem is inconsistency. A law is only as good as the punishments backing it up. When too many lawbreakers go free and law-abiding citizens are treated like criminals, it encourages more lawbreaking. When the law in practice does not match the law on paper, it is a recipe for anarchy and war. It is the end of government.
I started writing this book in 2020 in a fit of anger. The anger has since worn off, but the problems have persisted. There are some signs that people are waking up and starting to solve the problems, but it might be too little, too late. Time will tell.
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The older I get, religion for me becomes less about the assurance that God will protect and provide and more about the realization that there is nothing in this world worth holding onto anyways.
I recently read the 2020 book Jesus Politics by Phil Robertson. I like Phil. I’ve seen his various shows a little bit. He has really made something out of himself by hard work. He remains connected to nature. He speaks firmly the truth about sin and redemption, but does it in love. He is not afraid to take on the leftist activists who are always stirring up trouble. I saw through the lies people told about him years ago. That is why I found his book so disappointing. It seems like he is falling into some of the stereotypes.
Before I bought it, I somehow thought the book’s message was going to be one of giving up on looking to politicians to solve our problems and instead putting our energy into spreading the gospel. Instead, it is the opposite. Phil apparently thinks we haven’t been putting enough energy into getting the right people elected, and through negligence have allowed Godless politicians to take over. There is much we agree on. We are both pro-life. We understand that the root of violence is not guns, but hate, and that broken families feed into this. We do not elevate nature over human needs. We are both skeptical of government-run health care. We are both sick and tired of the hateful attacks on public figures when some minor mistake they made twenty years ago is brought to light. We agree that we need to act with more mercy and teach truth gently. He rightly sees that in order to better society and spread the love of God, Christians must be free to speak about their faith and free to spend their own money to help others. By extension, we both believe in free speech and capitalism. Where I have trouble is the sloppy thinking around what he thinks are the solutions. I am fully against any government-created obstacles that would hamper the advancement of the Kingdom, but I see an important difference between a government that allows advancement, and one that would attempt to aid such an advancement. You can’t legislate morality. Threatening people with state punishment for sins will not make them better people inside, even if they act better on the outside. It will also create resentment, which can lead to retaliation and even more sin. Depending on just what it is we are talking about, it might create an underground black market for sin. Finally, giving the government so much power to regulate our lives creates the risk that it will be used to encourage sin and punish righteousness when the sinners win in the next election cycle. Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem. Throughout the book, it is never clear whether he is talking about a government that allows advancement, or one that aids. He cites some examples of leftist overreach, where government was used against the Kingdom, such as the time a Christian baker was forced to make gay wedding cakes or lose his business, the time a Christian foster care organization was forced to recommend gay couples, and the time that a school was forced to remove from display a copy of the Ten Commandments that a previous graduating class had gifted to the school. On these, I am with him totally that we must put a stop to such injustice, but then he goes on to say stuff like this: Speaking of Jesus, he says, “he asked us to bring the Kingdom into the world around us through every means possible, including, if possible, political means.” Do we bring forth the Kingdom or does God do it, drawing all men unto himself when we show Jesus? Are we to bring forth the Kingdom by sinful means? What does it mean to “render unto Caesar”? He says that Godless politicians removed God from public schools. In some cases, they tried, but in most cases, they merely stopped inappropriately bringing him into it. Just as you would never go to a dentist to buy flower seeds, you wouldn’t go to a school to learn about God. That’s what churches are for. Schools are for math, science, and geography. The real problem is that there is no way that we could bring God into the schools that would be acceptable by Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, and everyone else in the community. We shouldn’t be so arrogant to think we have the only correct model. He says we should vote for politicians that will “promote policies designed to strengthen families.” Strengthen families? Or get out of the way and stop breaking families up? Families should never be allowed to become dependent on the government. He says, “through politics the government liberalized sexuality, removing it from the confines of marriage.” Did government do that? Or did individual sinners do that while government did nothing to stop it? There is a big difference. He talks a lot about how no-fault divorce made our culture worse, but which is worse? A modern divorce? Or a spouse who commits abuse or adultery first in order to have grounds for a divorce they wanted anyways? Keeping people trapped in marriages does not make them better people. Only Jesus can make them better people. I bought the book hoping for JESUS politics; what I got was Jesus POLITICS. We should all know our purpose, yes. But for many of us, we will not know our whole life’s purpose until it is over. For now, living through to the next day is purpose enough. We would not expect a fetus to know of any greater purpose, why expect more of an adult?
I recently read The Sun Is Still Rising (2018) by Scott W. Rasmussen. The basic premise is that voting will not fix our problems, but community can.
Politics doesn’t work. Politicians are too spineless to act when there is a divided electorate and the regulatory bureaucrats that actually run things are unelected. This is a driving force in the rise of partisan conflict, as a quote from page 66 makes clear: “Partisanship doesn’t matter so much when the formal government is a distant abstraction and we are generally free to live our lives as we see fit. It matters a lot when the change of government from one party to the other impacts our day-to-day life. It matters even more when nothing can be done to prevent the bureaucrats from imposing their own hand-book for redemption. The more that government assumes sole responsibility for governing, the more polarization will increase.” The lessons of the book are that the public sector can be just as greedy as the private sector and that the private sector also regulates (governs) society through a network of clubs, businesses, and informal relationships. Rasmussen believes that the culture of America is basically good and that politics flows from culture. He has great hope that the politicians will eventually follow the changing attitudes of the people, but in the meantime we must solve our problems without government aid. What are these problems and what are the solutions? It is never fully spelled out. Rasmussen hints that the poor can find food, shelter, and jobs through the actions of businesses, charities, new technology, and simply by being more connected and fostering community. He also mentions that the increased ability to move our home address creates competition between states for our business. Beyond this, there are only platitudes and vague assurances. Of all the problems I care about and that make the news, ninety percent of them necessarily involve the government because the problem is that government won’t allow the private sector to do what needs to be done. Unless we get the government fixed first, there will never be any community solutions. Furthermore, I don’t have the faith in the citizenry that Rasmussen has. I agree that politics flows from culture. That’s why I think our problems are only going to get worse. There are millions of people that demand it. I also find it borderline comical how at his late stage in life he seems to have suddenly discovered what libertarians have known all along and he thinks it is something new. Of course the public sector is greedy! That’s why it was created. Of course the private sector regulates society! That’s called the invisible hand of the free market. The whole book reads like its author is an 18-year-old that has just discovered politics and thinks he knows everything. It’s not necessarily wrong, but there is no depth of insight. Even though women do it too, some would call it mansplaining. Of all the chapters, chapter 11 was the most irksome, so I feel like I have to single it out for special criticism. It was a sloppy mess that only muddied the water around the conversation over states’ rights and the trouble with Trump. It was borderline dishonest. Though I understand the terminology is problematic, there is a such thing as states’ rights and it has next to nothing to do with racism or slavery. The concept has been invoked in debates over gay marriage, abortion, immigration, the drawing of voting districts, the electoral college, prohibition, health insurance, taxes, and education. Just because at one point in history there were some that attempted to use the argument to protect slavery doesn’t mean we should do away with the term any more than we should ban cars worldwide because one guy once rode over a dog. The idea that modern blacks distrust rolling back federal power because they think it means an increase in state power and they don’t trust the states not to revert to racism without federal checks is silly. The federal government is the sum of the people from all the states. They are no more trustworthy. Furthermore, the idea that blacks dislike Trump because he wanted to reign in federal power clashes both with the facts that blacks supported Trump more than any Republican since the sixties, and that Trump in some small ways wanted to increase federal power, even while shrinking it in other ways that would be beneficial to blacks (and everyone else). The words in this book fed into the narrative the Democrats have been pushing that Trump is racist, without clearly saying it one way or the other. It’s irresponsible. It’s not a bad book overall; it’s just disappointing. |
AuthorMy name is Dan. I am an author, artist, explorer, and contemplator of subjects large and small. Archives
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