Monthly Archives: March 2007

Links: reaction to Dobson v. Fred Thompson

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Regarding the topic of this post I made:

There are more, but I’m probably already pushing the edge of the envelope by linking blogs I don’t know much about. I’ll do some more Dobson-Thomas links later.

But I have to remind everyone that if Dobson would try to define a Christian by what the Bible says (given his lack of personal knowledge or ecclesiastical authority regarding Thompson), he would have ended up looking a whole lot more Christian himself. Yep. This is a case in which the so-called “Federal Vision” would once again help someone look a lot less like a Pharisee.

Would that our Purgists in the Reformed ghetto would take note.

Reganomics for Russia?

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At the heart of the reforms lies the classical liberal tax theory according to which lower taxes translates into increased tax revenues. Therefore, it is an interesting historic irony that Russia, a country where the socialist creed reigned strong still very recently, has now been converted into the international showcase of economic liberalism. In America President Ronald Reagan and his supporters were known for campaigning for such tax policies, but it is Putin’s Russia that has actually implemented them. Hardly could Reagan have even dreamt of such measures as Putin’s 13% flat income tax rate. Fair to say that never before has there been such a dramatic and speedy shift from socialist tax policies to classical liberalism, and hardly could the results be any more impressive.

Is this article too good to be true? I sure hope not.

If you need any evidence that American Evangelicals are being judged by God

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just look at the stupid spokesmen he gives us. Since I’ve been getting all nostalgic about the Reagan era, I suppose I should admit to the aspects that I wish would die more quietly.

If Fred Thompson runs and does well and simply demonstrates that a broadcast center in Colorado is not in charge of North American Christendom, he will have done Evangelical Protestants a favor.

I know I get a lot of Evangelical traffic. Many of you blog. If you blog, make a point of expressing a brief opinion about whether or not James Dobson needs to “dare to discipline” his mouth when he’s talking to US News. And to praise Gingrich in the same phone conversation!? You can listen to Gingrich’s “confession” here (as “video, but it’s just a still picture with audio). This guy compares favorably to Thompson? In what universe?

If you think I’m missing something please leave a comment. To me it seems obvious that Dobson has been put in a position for which he is not remotely qualified.

(Hat Tip: Bobber)

ADD: This Time article has more from the Gingrich-Dobson interview.  You can judge for yourself but, if anything, it makes me even more outraged by what I see as Dobson’s  lack of wisdom and prudence.

Saving Private Christian?

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Apparently not. At least not from this rescue party.

This is a three way interview between Al Mohler a prominant and well-spoken calvinistic Southern Baptist, John Piper, another Baptist (nonSBC) who proves himself a gentleman toward Wright early on, and Lig Duncan, one of the leading PCA Purgists and a great preacher.

They all have gifts, but if you want to learn about N. T. Wright, you would be better off going to the source.

Some people think I’m cynical about civil government,

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but they’re wrong.

For instance, it never occurred to me in my wildest dystopian dream that I would ever read the following defense of government action, outside of a libertarian novel:

“No court,” said Solicitor General Paul Clement in his brief, has “ever recognized a constitutional right against retaliation . . . in the context of property rights.”

In other words, if the government asks you to do something you have the perfect legal right to refuse to do, and they proceed to harrass you and use their powers to punish you for your decision (including, in this case, bringing you to court on false charges), then they have done nothing wrong. Sure, we all know it is evil to retaliate against, say, a political activist for articulating views that the government opposes. But property rights, aren’t really protected. The First Amendment matters; the Fifth is dispensible.
From listening to the podcast, it seems as if some Supreme Court Justices are seriously committed to the idea that while they will defend the rights of the KKK and pornographers to be free to recruit children or whatever else seems progressive to do these days, if you want to keep and control your property you are in danger of destroying the foundations of society.

Listen to the interview and read the Legal Times piece.

A quotation from F. A. Hayek

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We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibility of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. . . . Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may rouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere “reasonable freedom of trade” or a mere “relaxation of controls” is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm. The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and thereby an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagina­tion of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.