Amen for those Bayly Boys

Tim assesses Planned Parenthood’s gift certificate program.

Read it here.

Give us another 1000 like these men Lord.

In praise of Catholics.

Amen.

The Catholics say they will shut down their hospitals if Obama forces them to perform abortions.

Homeland Defense or Martial Law?

The A.P. reports.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday ordered his top department leaders to conduct a broad review to determine whether the military, National Guard and Reserve can adequately deal with domestic disasters and whether they have the training and equipment to defend the homeland.
…

“Make no mistake, his decisions are aimed at landmark changes, changes that are essential if the Guard and Reserves are to remain fully capable of meeting current and future threats,” said Punaro.

There is certainly fear that eventually all the actions taken by the govt. to save the economy are going to fail (they will). News such as this should not be taken lightly. These actions are obviously aimed at containing civil unrest or imposing martial law if need be. One should really ponder what sort of conditions would be required to lead to the sort of unrest they want to be prepared for,  Federal govt. bankruptcy, 20% unemployment, food shortages, confiscation of assets, stock market collapse, banking collapse? Hard to know but someone seems to think these things are certainly a possibility.

401K losses, mildy amusing.

Herrick is putting together some important posts over at The Deliberate Agrarian regarding our economic woes. I must admit I spend a lot of time ruminating about these things.

• Please take time to read Slouching Away from Prosperity – Part I, Part II

I am quoting Herrick’s article here.

I’ve read that the average stock market investor has lost half the value of his portfolio in the recent stock market plunge. A man I work with, who has faithfully saved for years, and invested in stocks, admits to losing $250,000 this year, thus far.

These sort of losses are typical. The remarkable thing to me has been the rather casual reaction people have had towards the loss of such large sums of money. You can easily confirm this by performing a “Twitter” search for the term 401K. Twitter is sort of a mini-blog which people use to quickly publish very short remarks to a network of friends.  Click the link and you will see what I mean. Most folks seem to laugh off losing 50% of the value of their retirement savings. How can this be? How can they remain so calm?

I would love to believe that they are all trusting in the Lord and his promises to care for even the sparrows but I know that is not the case. No, I am sure they are trusting that within a year or two everything will return to normal. As I said I spend a lot of time ruminating about this so here are a few random thoughts regarding 401K’s and retirement.

• Most folks calculate at a minimum 6% growth rate compounded for a number of years in order to retire with a sufficient income to maintain a modest living standard. Even if the market somehow manages to get back to 10,000 this year or next it is going to take years for you to recover the lost value and there is no reason for you to think there won’t be another crash.
• While I believe the U.S. will remain very competitive in comparison to the rest of the world, it is going to become much harder. The only analogy I can think to make here is to say we are entering the “playoffs” and teams which previously seemed easy to beat are going to get a lot tougher. This is going to make it harder to maintain the consistent year to year growth you need to retire.
• The world is not happy with us, and they are not happy with the dollar. It is going to take time but they will not bow to the American Empire forever, they are going to bring us down a notch and it is going to hurt. Sources I read say this could take another 10+ years to happen. Another reason to doubt the market stability required for you to save adequately for retirement.
• There is talk that the govt. will allow people to voluntarily hand their retirement accounts over the govt. in trade for a guaranteed return. There is no reason to think the words voluntarily and guaranteed actually mean anything like…voluntarily and guaranteed.
• Increased centralization and socialization of our economy is only going to make things worse. The only thing the govt. can do efficiently is spread misery.
• It is likely that wages will fall as the number of available workers increase and the number of jobs decrease. Any growth going forward will have to be “real” growth and as such labor rates should be lower. This means less money to save.
• While we may see lower prices in the short term as a result of deflation in the long run the govt. will resort to inflating the monetary supply in order to maintain it’s existence. Prices will rise again eventually, so you won’t be able to make up for less savings with lower prices.
• As G.K. Chesterton says about democracy, one should not ask what you will do with the poor, you should ask what the poor are going to do with you.

If even some of the factors I mentioned here are true you are going to have to seriously rethink how much money you will have when you retire. I didn’t even mention all of the other looming disasters such as Social Security and Medicare.

Now let me ask you one question, and really think about this. If you knew for a fact that in twenty years all of your retirement savings was going to be wiped out,(zero, zilch, nada) what would you be doing now to prepare for that day? Is it fearful or prudent to make such preparations? Are these preparations evidence that you are not trusting in the Lord to care for you and your family?

What say you?

So that your prayers may not be hindered.

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.  1 Peter 3:7

This one is easy to forget at times. Hindered prayers cause frustration, frustration causes us to step on the flowers, stepping on the flowers hinders our prayers, and round we go again. My advice to you little buddy…make sure you show them a little weakness now and then, hindered prayers are like trying to fly with a pocket full of kryptonite.

Self-Pity

“Feeling sorry for yourself is one of the strongest, most addictive narcotics known to man. It feels so good to feel so bad. Self-pity arises so easily, seems so plausible, and proves so hard to shake off.”

- David Powlison, Journal of Biblical Counseling (Summer 2007, Vol. 25, No. 3) p. 7.

Source: Tony Reinke

Constitutional Idolatry

Through New Eyes – Developing a Biblical Worldview by James Jordan

The Constitution no longer has the same power in the minds of men as it did when it was written, and it can never again have such power. It can, of course, continue to function as the foundation of our laws, provided we understand that it inevitably will be reinterpreted from generation to generation, though hopefully within Christian parameters.

The second problem with trying to revivify old symbols is that such an attempt can become idolatrous, if it says that the mainspring of human society lies  in man-made symbols, instead of in God’s symbols, It is idolatrous to say that restoring the U.S. Constitution is more necessary to social renewal than restoring the sacraments. The key to social renewal, to cultural reformation, to Christian reclamation, then, is this: We must restore the primary special symbols: Word, Sacrament, Persons. That is because only the primary special symbols transcend history, and thus only they can form the wellspring of historical progress.

I agree with Jordan and Whitehead on this one. It is a good fight but not one that will be one easily, and one which required discernment on the part of the church.

On the weakness of catechism.

Through New Eyes – Developing a Biblical Worldview by James Jordan

In the Western world for several centuries, men have assumed that the proper way to express truth is by means of abstract, philosophical language. Wherever we find imagery, parable, symbolism, or typology, we ought to translate such language into proper abstractions. This, however, is not how God chose to reveal Himself to us. To be sure, some parts of the Bible are written in abstract language, especially the epistles of St. Paul. Most of the Bible, however, is written in stories, histories, poems, symbols, parables, and the like. As far as God is concerned, this way of revealing truth is equally as important as abstract philosophizing. Notice, for instance, the way in which our confessions of faith and catechisms are written. They are virtually devoid of imagery. Solomon wrote Proverbs to instruct youth, but for centuries Christians have used catechisms that consist basically of definitions of terms: What is justification; what is prayer; what is meant by the fourth petition; etc. The contrast of approaches is quite startling. It illustrates for us the problem we have in recovering the Biblical worldview.

Constant drumbeat of bad news.

Kay comments on a Rod Dreher’s post here ‘Volcker: We’re melting down‘. Kay’s sentiment very much characterizes my own.

I don’t know about other folks, but this constant drumbeat of bad news is provoking two reactions on my part–one is a kind of paralysis in that I know I need to be DOING SOMETHING, but I can’t seem to bring myself to act–and the other is a kind of denial, thinking that somehow we’ll snap out of this. We are doing a bit of food stockpiling, are planning our garden for the spring, and we have become proud “clingers” to protect ourselves, and we’ve even starting getting a bit of gold. But still, we laugh at ourselves every time we take a preparatory step–and I think that internal laughter/disbelief is keeping us from preparing as well as we should.

Ron Paul remarks on the upcoming global financial summit.

Balanced budgets, smaller government, sound money, the Constitution, what a nut case!

98 days in jail for couch in yard (Orwellian Justice).

This is an interesting story about a man going to jail for 93 days. The crime, he had a couch in “his” yard and refused to consent or recognize the state’s authority regarding the matter. He is a far braver man than I. I would have got rid of the couch and paid the fine, I would have got back in line, I have a family to feed. The lesson here is one most don’t understand. Ultimately every infraction of the state’s laws, no matter how minor, can be enforced using force (the sword). If this man continues to resist the state his life and property will slowly be taken from him. Today I saw a story that the Dallas Independent School District has been using false social security numbers to hire illegal immigrants. Does the state ever prosecute the state? Unlikely.

Source: Lew Rockwell