The “will to power” is supposedly a basic evil drive in human affairs–one that often explains the expansion of the state over society.
But what happens when we see factions preferring defeat and loss of power to doing what is necessary to win? How do we explain John McCain or the present Republican Party?
It is not all about power. It is about praise. It is about belonging to an elite class and wanting the approval of fellow elites. Paul gave us the ultimate solution, but it needs to be tried.
“We cannot succeed in Afghanistan or anywhere else, but let’s talk specifically about Afghanistan, by killing Afghan civilians,” Admiral Mullen said, adding that “we can’t keep going through incidents like this and expect the strategy to work.”
At the same time, Admiral Mullen said, “we can’t tie our troops’ hands behind their backs.”
via Joint Chiefs Chairman Criticizes Afghan Air Strikes – NYTimes.com.
If we remove their hands from Afghanistan, then we won’t need to choose between hand-tying them or killing.
Remember this entry?
What I wonder is this: Did the precedent set by resistance growing into revolution mean that rulers would no longer tolerate resistance? Now, instead of hoping to settle and compromise, resistance might end in complete overthrow. Is this the reason why tarring and feathering, why rioting, is so much less common–to the point of disappearing from the US?
Sometimes an old song you liked by haven heard in many years comes up on some radio station you happen to be listening to, and you bask in nostalgia. Some times this happens, and you cringe and wish you could travel back in time and beat the tar out of your younger idiot self.
I just heard Mother today. What a vile instance of self-righteous, victimhood! I can’t figure out how I managed to resist vomiting when I first heard this song, and how I could like it is an eternal mystery.
I can only hope that I just didn’t think about it because I liked other songs in the concept album–having to do with drafting young fathers and getting them killed, or public school, rather than about blaming one’s mother for one’s own giant deficiencies.
But it wasn’t just me. A whole generation imbibed this stuff. What were we thinking? Worse, what were we becoming?
Many readers of the Bible read the whole Bible through the lens of the gospel they believe and this is what that gospel looks like:
- God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
- But you have a sin problem that separates you from God.
- The good news is that Jesus came to die for your sins.
- If you accept Jesus’ death, you can be reconnected to God.
- Those who are reconnected to God will live in heaven with God.
Every line of that statement is more or less true. It is the sequencing of those lines, the “story” of that gospel if you will, that concerns me and that turns Jesus’ message of the kingdom into a blue parakeet. And it is not only the sequencing, it is the omitting of major themes in the Bible that concerns me. What most shocks the one who reads the Bible as Story, where the focus is overwhelmingly on God forming a covenant community, is that this outline of the gospel above does two things: it eliminates community and it turns the entire gospel into a “me and God” or “God and me” gospel. Who needs a church if this is the gospel? (Answer: no one.) What becomes of the church for this gospel? (Answer: an organization for those who want to do that sort of thing.) While every line in this gospel is more or less true, what concerns many of us today is that this gospel makes the church unimportant.
via Kingdom Gospel 1 – Jesus Creed.
Hat Tip: iMonk
At some point I should research and write about how Hodge may or may not have brought this “gospel” (the one without the kingdom) into Presbyterianism.
Where does tyranny come from? Levinas and Simone Weil argue that it grows out of the decay of neighborliness and hospitality…
Read the rest at Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Tyranny and law.
Seems to jive with some of my recent thoughts.
“When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. And if he is a poor man, you shall not sleep in his pledge. You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the LORD your God.” This verse occurred to me when I read and listened to this.
Mark Horne » 1 reason I am depressed this evening = spent day listening to talk radio.
Just to add something, not only are the importance of the Bush tax cuts in question, but the cause of the prosperity of the 80s requires some thought. There is no question that Reagan’s policies were far better than Carter/Ford/Nixon/etc’s. But Volcker’s willingness to put us through a recession to end the problems is also a huge deal.
Did we benefit from the anomaly of a Fed Chairman doing the right thing?
When Rush spoke at CPAC, he said virtually nothing about foreign policy. It gave me false hope. Needless to say, Fox News is worse (with the exception of “the freedom hour”!).
But even domestic policy comments are half delusional these days. This blog post summed up part of the problem, but it goes deeper. Every time I hear someone lauding the Bush tax cuts, I want to know if their data excludes the fact of tremendously low interest rates of the Bush regime–rates that caused a bubble that could only pop. Even if my hunch can be proven wrong, that work needs to be done. There are people far more skeptical of conservative claims than I am.
And then today I heard people singing the praises of Cheney. The same people who sneer at big-government conservatism laud the big-governor-in-chief. Bush destroys the GOP and we’re supposed to defend that legacy? How is nation-building and sending drone bombs into civilian-populated homes remotely conservative?
It is not. There simply is no conservative presence anywhere significant. Obama in the White House should be the beginning of great things for the GOP, but they are going to blow it.
Here is what I want to see as a real conservative movement:
Love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debt, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy, of the patronage of the president.
Just dreaming.