Now this next distinction is crucial. The fact that secular conservatives can see it and so express their support for things like pro-life legislation or marriage protection laws does not mean that they are capable of helping us out when it comes to the more complex, systemic and corporate issues we must face. The fact that they can read the big E on God’s eyechart for mankind does not mean that they can see the lowest line.
Thank goodness the govt. is keeping us safe from raw milk and Joel Salatin’s books.
One of Mark Nolt’s lasting images from last Friday’s raid of his farm by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, is of Bill Chirdon, the top PDA food safety official, walking off with a copy of Joel Salatin’s book, “Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal.”
If you don’t know who Joel is click here to see some of my other posts.
My wife and I had the privilege of attending Couples Camp at the Highlands Study Center last month. One of the nine sessions is posted on YouTube. R.C. turns the tables on Proverbs 31, ties it to our calling in Ephesians 5 to sanctify our wife and provides four points for success.
The Basement Tape “Daughters of Zion” is also a discussion of Eph. 5 among other things if your interested. This is an important message that men need to hear.
“I have asked before, and I will ask again, how far do they have to go? What do they have to do to our children before we will leave? Do they have to molest our children? They’ve done that. Do they have to beat, maim or kill our children? They’ve done that too. Do they have to fail to educate our children adequately? They’ve done that. Do they have to deny our God and his laws? They have done that too. Do they have to lead our children away from Christ and his Church in droves by indoctrinating them in Atheistic Secular Humanism? Check that one off too. When will enough be enough? When will our desire to raise our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4) outweigh our addiction to free daycare?”
Here are a few more I found a few weeks ago that I had saved.
“Modern American dating is no more than glorified divorce practice. Young people are learning how to give themselves away in exclusive, romantic, highly committed (at times sexual) relationships, only to break up and do it all over again. God never intended for His kids to live like this. And instead of stepping in and doing something, many Christian parents simply view these types of relationships as a normal and necessary part of growing up. Unless your child is wiser than Solomon, stronger than Samson, and more godly than David (all of whom sinned sexually), they are susceptible to sexual sin, and these premature relationships serve as open invitations.” (Source) Family Driven Faith (p. 21).
“You wanna know why I got married? Here’s the deal: The wisest man in the Bible, the strongest man in the Bible, and the godliest man in the Bible all fell into sexual sin. For me to stay engaged to Bridget from the time I was a sophomore until I graduated from college was for me to expect myself to be wiser than Solomon, stronger than Samson, and more godly than David- and I was neither- so we got married.” (Source)
Click here for other items tagged with “Voddie Baucham”
“In other words, anyone who would become a country home-maker is confronted, at the very outset, with the demand that he become something of an ornithologist, a geologist, a botanist, and an entomologist.”
…
“A good brook is money and joy in one, and I think so much of a beautiful stream of water that I should count it a very important item in selecting a country home. It is half of life to children, turning their mimic water wheels, and it will come very handy to irrigate your strawberries and help you through a drought that threatens to destroy your garden. The talking of a brook will put a lot of poetry into your daily life, and I can easily imagine how the mother of the household will find a bend where she can place her easy chair, and, under a beech or an apple tree, let the rippling and the singing sweeten her thoughts and drive away care.”
…
“Of course, some of us cannot have the first pick, but if you can overlook a beautiful valley you as good as own it. Your property is not measured exactly by what your deed covers, and this goes a long way farther in the country than in the city.”
…
“I would rather have a few old apple trees, put in good order, of course; just the trees that I climbed in my childhood, Spitzenburg and Rhode Island Greenings, some of them leaning down so that a child may creep up and hide with the robins among the apples.”
How did this disintegration of rational society happen? Chesterton argues that it started “in the drift from the hearth and the family.” The solution of course must involve a drift back. Chesterton was on the forefront of defending the attack on the family. What critics of Distributism have never addressed is that under the socialist or capitalist or servile systems that they defend, the family has been decimated by any number of forces, all of which directly relate to Statism and Commercialism, or Big Government and Big Business. Unlike the others, Distributism is centered around the family and the precept that every governmental, commercial or judicial force must be dedicated to protecting, nourishing, and encouraging the family. We see nothing of that sort in the modern world.
…
“Hardly anybody…dares to defend the family. The world around us has accepted a social system which denies the family. It will sometimes help the child in spite of the family; the mother in spite of the family; the grandfather in spite of the family. It will not help the family.”
Stephen Marglin of Harvard University and author of The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the markets and community. Marglin argues that markets and commercial transactions undermine the connections between us. He wants people to pay more attention to what is lost and not just what is gained by the pursuit of material well-being. Topics discussed include the nature of community, the role that voluntary associations play in our lives, the costs and benefits of mobility, the role of insurance in reducing our dependence on each other, and the nature of knowledge.
Got a little more done on the playhouse this weekend. I am eager to get the roof and sides on, hopefully I will be able to get to it this weekend. The kids are eager to help paint.
The quote below is from an article I found on a Marxist site of all places! I don’t too often find myself in agreement with Marxists but this paragraph is just too good to pass up. The article can be found here. It mentions a school called Summerhill which actually exists, see here, the site is a hoot (”imagine a school where you can play all day if you want to”).
“Our economic system must create men who fit its needs; men who cooperate smoothly; men who want to consume more and more. Our system must create men whose tastes are standardized, men who can be easily influenced, men whose needs can be anticipated. Our system needs men who feel free and independent but who are nevertheless willing to do what is expected of them, men who will fit into the social machine without friction, who can be guided without force, who can be led without leaders, and who can be directed without any aim except the one to “make good.” (For a more detailed analysis of the influence of our industrial system on the character structure of the individual, see E. Fromm, The Sane Society, Rinehart and Co. Inc., New York, 1955.) It is not that authority has disappeared, nor even that it has lost in strength, but that it has been transformed from the overt authority of force to the anonymous authority of persuasion and suggestion. In other words, in order to be adaptable, modern man is obliged to nourish the illusion that everything is done with his consent, even though such consent be extracted from him by subtle manipulation.”
If you have Netflix and broadband the documentary “The Future of Food” is now available for streaming online. My wife is pregnant and has refused to watch (she fears she won’t be capable of eating anything if she does). This is next on my list of things to watch (alone I guess).
Director Patrick Creadon, who made The New York Times crossword puzzle fun on film in his documentary “Wordplay,” calls “I.O.U.S.A.” a primer for ordinary Americans on the financial state of an economy saddled by a rapidly growing federal debt.
Click here to read the Reuters article about the film. This is the I.O.U.S.A. website.
I know many of my posts begin with “this is worth watching/listening to” and I apologise for its frequent use, but I must use it once again. This is worth watching and besides you probably paid for part of it. This is an amazing study of culture and technology.
Quick update, I was just on Drudge and saw this story which is relevant if you watched the program.
This video was fun to watch and I learned why the current monetary/banking system requires continuous economic growth in order to keep running (and why deflation is such a potential monster!).
I could not find any critiques of the movie, please leave a comment if you know if any, I am sure there must be a few. The creator’s website is found here.
“Yet I believe that the new anarchism will attract growing attention in circles both intelligent and free from the taint of utopianism. For the degeneration of the modern western State has surely not yet run its course. ‘We shall tax and tax and tax and spend and spend and spend’ [7] and the end of this process is not in sight. Inflation will again and again be declared an enemy, but at the first whiff of corrective recession, it will be embraced as a friend and its rate will accelerate. The State will intervene more and more in the market and the citizen will find that his control over his own life will become less and less. In their bewilderment most citizens will acquiesce in a totalitarian solution, thus fastening the State even more tightly around their necks; but many will be attracted to the belief that the State is indeed as the neo-anarchists describe it, and is indeed incurable.”
[7] Per Harry Hopkins, President Franklin Roosevelt’s confidant and alter ego
If I made a ten loaves of bread in my kitchen and gave them away to my neighbors I have broken no laws, but if I charge a penny for each loaf I have probably broken multiple laws. This story is an example of a women who was reported to the “authorities” for selling homemade chicken salad. Does the word homemade even have any meaning when you see it in the grocery store? I am sure the laws and restrictions for this sort of activity vary from local to local but there are likely restrictions of some sort almost everywhere.
Did you know that the CBO recommends raising food stamp benefits as a method of “economic stimulus”? You can read Greg Mankiw’s thoughts on that here.
Well on to my economic stimulus package. I believe that if you lifted all restrictions on the preparation and sale of food (laws and taxes) and allowed one neighbor to sell to another without restriction you would see an amazing boom of enterprise. We bought a bread machine last night, we are also buying a wheat grinder. The investment will be over $300. I am positive that even my 5 year old is ready and willing to begin her bread making business and I am sure she could single handily make a return on our investment in a few months, and she would love to do it. This plan would have a greater impact than raising food stamp benefits although the processed food industry might not be too happy about it.
“Unemployment is low, inflation is low, wages are rising, this economy is on the move! (crowd cheers)” - President Bush on the State of the Economy 2007
The more I learn about Fractional Reserve Banking, Federal Reserve policies, inflation, and economics in general, the more I see how easy the present banking collapse was to predict. I have found a number of blogs that were sounding the alarm more than a year ago. Read the words above and ask yourself if the man that said them actually believed what he was saying? I can’t believe he did. The BBC put together two short 20 minute programs on the current banking collapse which is both informative and interesting to listen to. If you want a good overview of some of the issues this is a good place to start.
Here are some questions to think about as talk of recession looms.
Why do economic stimulus packages always require the govt. to spend more money? Where does the money come from? Aren’t we are already spending money we don’t have (budget deficit)? How is spending money we don’t have good? If it is good why not double or triple the current spending proposals, won’t that be better?
Why is the president visiting Saudi Arabia?
Why does Wall Street always want the interest rate lower? If this is so good for the economy why not drop it to zero?
Name the last Republican president that had a balanced budget or shrank the size of govt.
Just going to throw out a bunch of videos I found tonight. Really enjoyed them. A few of them seem to be movies a guy by the name of Les Blank made (some additional clips which I have not previewed here). Some look pretty good. If you like garlic, colorful people, dancing and folk music you will love these.
This old lecture from ISI by Cleanth Brooks was an enjoyable listen. Cleanth spoke about his early years as one of the editors of Southern Review.
The topic I must confess is a highly interesting one to me and poor as my memory has become in these later years, some of the events that occurred in those earlier years, still grip my mind with an intense strength. - Cleanth Brooks
I love that description. I think I know what he means by this.
Note: The introduction is about 15 minutes and the audio cuts out before he is finished.
If you enjoy listening to Cleanth you may also appreciate these free interviews from Cumberland Books.
The fundamental idea of Distributism is economic independence and economic freedom for families, with the government in a subsidiary and supportive role. It is the concept of Democracy applied to the field of economics. It’s the question of who is in control of our work.
A succinct definition of Distributism. I note that many moving in the direction of agrarianism are students of economics, family centered, and people who value freedom among other things. Much work would have to be done to define the word freedom and I am sure I have not the words nor the wisdom to do such a thing. Suffice it to say that the word freedom is worthy of thoughtful consideration as is its counterpart slavery.
The Distributist believes workers are most free when they own their own tools and are their own bosses. They are least free when they hire out for a wage and work at the command and sufferance of someone else who owns the tools, machinery, and land.
I would add that the right to own property is a very important component of freedom. Property taxes (rents) are an infringement upon the actual ownership. Many families not far from us pay the city $20,000 a year for the “right” to “own” a home.
Our idea of “The American Way of Life,” is wrapped up in the whole notion of a “Standard of Living.” The “Living Standard” is a measure of consumer spending. It is concerned with how many things we can buy, how expensively we are able to live, what luxuries we might afford.
…
We live in a society that has enshrined the seven deadly sins as the seven lively ideals. I don’t mean that these sins are committed, I mean these sins are recommended.
The article ends with a list of 10 commandments for the Urban Distributionist. Please read the entire article if this has been of interest to you.
I discovered the ISI lectures a few days ago. At present I am enjoying these two lectures by Rod Dreher author of Crunchy Cons. Doug Wilson had a few posts here on the book. These lectures that they are worth going back and making a few notes so if you don’t want to listen twice keep pen in hand.
No Comments » | 
Government | Tagged: Doug Wilson, Politics | 
Permalink
Posted by poststop
