Echoes in Eternity

Today, Russell Moore, Dean of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, gave a prophetic chapel message which every Christian should hear.

Right on the heels of Tony Perkins' video on the Connecticut proposition comes this disturbing news item.

A public school in San Francisco bused 18 first-graders to City Hall yesterday, so the youngsters could scatter rose petals in celebration of their lesbian teacher's wedding.

The students, from Creative Arts Charter School, waited on the steps for their teacher with bags of pink rose petals, bottles of bubbles and, at least for some, with political buttons asking Californians to vote down Proposition 8, a ballot measure that seeks to define marriage in the state as a union between one man and one woman.

"She's a really nice teacher. She's the best," 6-year-old Chava Novogrodsky-Godt told the San Francisco Chronicle, wearing a "No on 8" button on her shirt. "I want her to have a good wedding."

I wonder if they ever went on a field trip to a heterosexual wedding.

Legislators get some perspective.

Dr. Dalrymple discussed the financial crisis this week, taking the opportunity to examine what it indicates about Western culture at large. As usual, his unique insight incites (how's that for a use of homophones) much thought and introspection.

Canvassing the opinion of friends and acquaintances as to the meaning of all this financial turmoil, I began to feel like a share in one of those vulnerable companies that would seesaw wildly in value on the stock exchange, according to the latest rumour, the day before it either collapsed completely or was rescued by one expedient or another. Some would say that the crisis was at most an epiphenomenon [secondary complication], and that the real economy, the one that baked bread and made nuts and bolts, would continue unaffected. Others would say that this was the beginning of the end, that we should all spend the rest of our lives struggling to make ends meet, eking out a bare subsistence, and that we should never feel secure and prosperous again.
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By no means a financial wizard – my love affair with money has thus far remained unrequited – I could not help thinking that the episode, whether it prove fleeting or of limited duration and minor consequence, was not without an important cultural dimension. Everything that happens tells us something about the way we live now, even when what happens is not entirely without precedent...

Of course, one’s assessment of the cultural significance of events depends upon one’s understanding, whether true or false, of their causation. Therefore, in what follows, I am depending upon my no doubt somewhat schematic understanding of the turmoil on the Anglo-American markets. It is therefore only right that I should state what my understanding is, before launching out on my main observations. If my understanding is fundamentally wrong, then my other observations are null and void.

Large quantities of money result in easy credit, and easy credit inflates the value of assets such as houses. This in turn means that houses, whose prices appear to be rising effortlessly like a good souffle, become collateral to loans to people who would otherwise not merit loans.

The banks and mortgage companies, whose business, after all, is lending money, did not enquire too closely into the biographical record of their borrowers. Indeed, those who sold mortgages often had little connection to those who lent the money: rising prices would take care of any risk inherent in ignorance or fraud.
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Now pyramid schemes of this nature work splendidly for a time, and those who get out before the denouement, or manage to extract enough from them before they collapse, make a fortune. That, of course, is why they recur through history: many lose in the end, but a few gain, and gain astronomically, in the meantime. Mankind is a herd to be fleeced, and luckily the wool always grows back.

Let us now consider some of the cultural implications of what has happened. A few words seem to sum it up: improvidence [lack of foresight] and lack of probity [honesty]. But whose, exactly, and in what proportion and with what implications?

The butcher and the baker, upon whose benevolence Adam Smith famously told us that we do not rely for the quality of our meat and bread, are kept in line by the evident and close connection between how they conduct themselves and the profit that they make. In other words, their self-interest guarantees their providence and probity; assuming they have no natural or unnatural monopoly, they would go out of business very quickly if they passed off measly pork and adulterated bread as the finest that money could supply.

But the connection between such virtues as providence and probity on the one hand, and reward on the other, is - it must be confessed - somewhat attenuated in the modern world of capitalism. There are so many steps between raw material and final product, or between the initiator of a productive process and the final consumer of whatever it is that is produced, that there is plenty of opportunity for the vices corresponding to providence and probity to operate and flourish, at least long enough for those who display them to line their nest with feathers of gold. This makes providence and probity all the more desirable, of course.

I don’t think there is much doubt that the banks, in my own country at any rate, have been improvident and lacking in probity. If I may descend for a moment from abstraction to anecdote, I will recount my experiences with my own bank over the years that illustrate a change not just in its attitude to credit, but in our culture.

Shortly after I opened an account there, forty years ago, I received a letter from the manager drawing my attention with some asperity to the fact that my account was almost $5 dollars overdrawn, and that he trusted that I would soon rectify the situation by the end of the week. Forty years later, when I was again overdrawn, I received a telephone call from the manager – the bank’s motto being ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’ – asking to see me. Indeed, the manager said he would come to my house.

Gosh, I thought, now I’m in trouble. When he arrived, I told him that I was about to pay the amount by which I was overdrawn into my account. He looked extremely crestfallen.

‘You mean you don’t want to borrow more?’ he said. ‘I’ve come here to offer you more.’ A wasted journey, obviously.

A short time later, I went to my bank to borrow money to buy a house while I sold another. Within five minutes I was offered a sum the like of which I had never previously handled, and in excess of anything I needed. While it was smaller than my total nominal assets, as I enumerated them, the bank made absolutely no effort to verify that I was indeed the owner of these assets.

With a large loan outstanding, I continued to receive, about every month or so, offers of a further loan of $50,000, no questions asked and mine for the borrowing by mere telephone call, just in case there were any little extras or extravagances I happened to feel like treating myself to (but apply now, before next month’s offer of precisely the same thing!). The principal example given of the little extras or extravagances to which I might want to treat myself was the holiday of a lifetime.

Two considerations led me to turn down all these kind offers. The first is that my taste in holidays of a lifetime runs more to observing civil wars than to lolling in the lap of luxury, and while sometimes expensive to go to, civil wars offer little in the way of sybaritic possibilities (though there was a surprising availability of pink champagne during the Liberian civil war, even if it was difficult to chill).

The second consideration was the faintly puritanical belief, no doubt the psychological consequence of having been born only a few years after the end of the Second World War, that if one could not afford to pay cash on the nail for the holiday of a lifetime, one could not afford the holiday of a lifetime. One did not go deeply into debt for the sake of evanescent [fleeting] pleasures...

Even allowing for the change in my personal circumstances over the forty years, the irresponsibility of the bank (and other financial institutions) seemed to me – if one absented a knowledge of history, that is - astonishing. There is no doubt, however, that many people, in fact many millions of people, listened to the siren song of easy credit, of fritter now, pay later.

The interesting question for me, then, is not that of the foolishness or dishonesty of the financial institutions, but that of the population. At what point did the population come to believe that it was possible (to cite the advertising slogan of a new credit card launched in Britain in the 1970s) to ‘take the waiting out of wanting’?

Let us try to imagine what it is to be a sub-prime borrower, or indeed a borrower of any kind who over-extends himself and goes into debt for trifles light as air, for the procuring of what will predictably bring him no more than a few moments’ satisfaction, soon to be followed by a further fevered search for a few more moments’ satisfaction.

When I sought my large loan from the bank, I – who have by no means maximised my economic opportunities throughout my life, or behaved with squirrel-like wisdom and foresight, believing in my twenties, for example, that I would never survive to my present great age - considered such matters as to whether, in the event of not selling my other house, I should still be able to service my debt; whether I could find other means of paying the loan back; what happened if interest rates rose and my income fell; etc., etc. These did not seem to me to be terribly difficult thoughts, indeed they seemed rather obvious ones, almost coterminous with the decision to seek the loan, and certainly with the signing of the agreement. Yet it now appears that millions of people, in my own country and elsewhere, have not thought such thoughts, and this is really rather depressing. I suppose they thought they were getting something for nothing; the more sophisticated among them probably realised that, since they had no assets to speak of, they had nothing to lose. But I am not sure that mass lack of probity is much better than mass lack of providence (the question would make an interesting one for a student term paper).

Be that as it may, all these people are voters, who have the future direction of their country in their hands, at least in so far as a choice between candidates for office makes any difference to the direction their country takes. The future, it seems, depends upon the dishonest and the improvident. This is not altogether reassuring, at least in the abstract, until one considers the behaviour of the class from whom the candidates usually emerge. It takes a thief to elect a thief; and in the imperfect sublunary world, perhaps that is the best to which we can aspire. At any rate, I prefer it to the unrestricted reign of honest men.

As a side note, Dalrymple's new book just came out. Needless to say, I already have it in hand. :)

Sharia law is now officially sanctioned in Britain.

It's been awhile since a Mark Steyn sighting on this blog, but he has finally written something since a summer-long hiatus from public writing. This weekend, he chimed in on the Sarah Palin VP pick.

From first appearances, I am liking what I'm seeing of McCain's VP choice, Sarah Palin. She has taken on her own party when it was right (she cleaned up rampant corruption in Alaskan politics). She has followed the law even when it went against her personal beliefs. But most of all, she has lived her pro-life views out in her own personal life, as Kathryn Lopez points out in her piece today.

John McCain could save lives with his vice-presidential pick.

“I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”

That’s Alaska’s Republican governor, Sarah Palin, talking about her infant son, Trig, born with Down Syndrome. When Todd and Sarah Palin learned last December that their baby would have Down Syndrome, they not only saved a life but made a decision that would touch the lives of families living with similar gifts across the country.
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Not only are children with Down Syndrome people too, they inspire a deep love and enthusiastic appreciation. Especially in the face of a culture that wants to expunge them. According to a study cited in the New York Times last year, “About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.” (Emphasis added.) Most American women are given prenatal tests.

At 44, Governor Palin is a bit young and relatively new to the political scene yet. These are no small considerations when electing someone who could assume the role of president (Democrats: Check out your nominee with that reservation . . . ). But if the youngest life she and her husband care for can wake up a nation that’s blind to the eugenics in its midst, a routine part of medicine today, she and John McCain would be offering human rights and dignity a great, honorable service. In contrast to Barack Obama, who would let the survivors of botched abortion attempts be killed, the Palins could serve as a great clarifier for voters this fall — and an education.

Introducing your next Vice President... Sarah Palin.

Watch this video, it is priceless (no pun intended). Pelosi is such a hypocrite.

The teachers in Dallas have come up with a BRILLIANT new plan: don't penalize students for late or poorly done homework!

[T]he new rules require teachers to accept late work and prevent them from penalizing students for missed deadlines. Homework grades that would drag down a student's overall average will be thrown out.

This is genius, why didn't we think of that before? After all, the real world operates just like that: you can turn your work in late and everything is hunky dory.

When asked by Rick Warren at the recent Saddleback Presidential Forum when he thought a baby gets human rights, John McCain said "at conception." Obama, on the other hand, replied that "answering that question is above my pay-grade."

Nevermind that he HAS answered that question repeatedly with previous votes and remarks, such as the ones made in front of Planned Parenthood which I posted earlier this summer.

From an interview in 2004...

OBAMA: I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.

OBAMA: I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.

OBAMA: When I’m talking to a group and I’m saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I’m just being glib or clever.

GG: What’s that power? Is it the holy spirit? God?

OBAMA: Well, I think it’s the power of the recognition of God, or the recognition of a larger truth that is being shared between me and an audience.

GG: Who’s Jesus to you?

OBAMA: Right. Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.

OBAMA: There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell. … I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell.

OBAMA: What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.

GG: What is sin?

OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values. {emphasis mine}

GG: What happens if you have sin in your life?

OBAMA: I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.

GG: What are you doing when you feel the most centered, the most aligned spiritually?

OBAMA: I think I already described it. It’s when I’m being true to myself.

What a surprise...