2016 election cancelled!

Update: the 2016 election has been cancelled, except in southern states.  Western states are due to be auctioned off to settle the National Debt on January 31st, 2013, with China and Japan the leading contenders for the choice states, and India a dark horse.  New York City has been bought by a Saudi Prince as a theme park: the New England states will be paved for parking.  Midwest states have petitioned Canada for admission.  The District of Columbia will secede as an independent kingdom, with five royal golf courses in Virginia and Maryland (this took some negotiating, and repeated Air Force flyovers) to settle the Royal Nerves after the close reelection victory. 

Phil Zuckerman: Jesus wants you to vote Democratic

Pastor Phil is ready to
preach.

It is common for skeptics to argue that Christians betray the teachings of Jesus.  Our own pastors often tell us the same thing, and Jesus himself could be pretty hard on his disciples. I find some such sermons irritatingly self-righteous, though, especially from a preacher who forgets he's not Jesus.  Here I'll dissect one from the increasingly popular sociologist Philip Zuckerman, an atheist whose papers on how much better secular European societies are, compared to the more religious and supposedly backwards United States have spread like wildfire among the Gnu blogoscenti.  This article (co-authored by one Dan Cady, an historian in the California State system) was written last year, but seems especially relevant in the present campaign season -- as, I hope, will be the skeptical comments I append to it. -- DM

"Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus"

Posted: 03/ 3/11 10:06 AM ET

Cultures of Corruption

How Broke States Export Failure to Washington

The fifty states of the United States have just been ranked according to how "well-run" they are. 

Guess what?  California now comes in dead last.  The state has an A- credit rating, the lowest in history for any state.  It has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country. 

The "Golden State" is blessed with abundant natural and human resouces: the world's biggest trees, glorious mountains and coast (thus home to the world's leading film industry), oil (lying undeveloped off her coast), Mickey Mouse, Hollywood, vast acreage in some of the planet's prime farmland, the geniuses of Silicon Valley who create and run the planet's information systems.  How did the state blow so many advantages so badly?

And is it coincidence that the woman more responsible for more debt than perhaps any other human being in history, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House during the Years of Debt, and who epitomizes the Democratic Party that controls the state, comes from San Francisco?

Number two on the list is Illinois.

Yes, the home of Rod Blagojevich, and a long line of other ex-governor convicts.

Also, of course, the home of a Chicago politician who voted for, and now rather passively and petulantly presides over, the massive growth in national debt under Nancy Pelosi's watch: Barack H. Obama.

Another coincidence?

The third worst-run state is Michigan, home of the unions to which the Democratic Party is so deeply indebted.

Arizona is next worst, then Nevada, home of Harry Reid, majority leader of the US Senate.  Again the theme of Vegas-style spending -- it shames Vegas, actually -- housing bubble, then collapse, links local fortunes to what the most powerful politician from Vegas has been doing at the Great Roulette Table in Washington.

Two other Democratic strongholds do better in the standings, but also lustrate this trend by their faults.  Connecticut, home to Chris Dodd, is ranked as 22nd best run state -- but has the 4th highest per capita debt.  Massachusetts, home to Barney Frank, is ranked 20th WORST-run state (all those universities and their economic spin-offs no doubt keep it from sinking lower), but is highest of all in per capita debt. 

Dodd and Frank, of course, just "reformed" the bank regulatory system, after (many say) being largely responsible for the debacle they were supposedly fixing.  (And some say their "fix" is causing far more problems than it will solve.)

This is not mainly a political blog.  I recognize that many people who share my views on religion or philosophy may differ from me on politics. I don't want to offend Democrats who read it for insight on other issues. 

But the world economy is going over Niagara Falls in a barrel right now.  Record floods of government spending are the force dragging us over those falls.  The rocks and shoals below those falls must also be part of any good map of the world. 

Each American is now indebted $45,000 to people they don't know, for services already rendered by a bloated national government.  That's $180, 000 for a family of 4.  You will now pay tens of thousands of dollars in the next ten years, merely for INTEREST on this debt -- for nothing, in other words.  After that, it is only due to get worse.   

The bubble will burst, in Greece, Spain, Italy, and in the US.  Lives will be ruined on a massive scale, because of our unrestrained indulgence.  The next generation, and the generation after that, will have to pay for all of this, and try (even as we compete with a renewed China and India) to pick up the pieces. 

The less money we have to spend, the less good we can do in the world, when we really have the chance to do good. 

Republicans have played a major role in this over-spending, no doubt.   A year ago, the party cleaned house a bit by electing a number of representatives who seem serious about dealing with Entitlements and pork-barrel spending.  They have not been able to accomplish much yet, however, because the opposing party has chosen to obstruct almost every serious reform proposal, even villifying those trying to cut spending as trying to "push Grandma over a cliff." 

So Democrats: please recognize the even larger role your leaders have played in this "generational theft," as John McCain aptly called  it.  This may be the great moral issue of our day.  Please recognize the pattern, the danger, and the spiritual nature of the crisis.  Please call your representatives to account, demand real, even painful cuts in spending, and let's get on the same page and clean up the "culture of corruption" that is destroying the Western world.

Obama: read Moses, wise up, and put it in reverse!

Deuteronomy vs. the National Debt

The names of the last books of the Torah -- Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy -- seem coined to induce somnolescence. For centuries, skeptics have quoted the harsher statutes in these books as evidence that God either did not inspire the Bible, or that He is a "vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogenistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully," to quote Richard Dawkin's anti-encomomium.

I admit I don't always enjoy reading these books, partly because they do indeed not always seem to reflect well on God. What's the point of punishing a nation for sometimes killing children, by killing all their children? Did the list of capital offenses really have to include picking up sticks on Saturday?

On balance, however, reading the Torah and the Chinese Book of History the past month, I think the Hebrew statutes were more just and useful in creating a free, prosperous society, than any other set of laws from antiquity I know of. While I don't advocate any form of "Christian shariah" -- this is really not I think the point of the Sermon on the Mount -- I also think Dawkins is wrong. There is more good here than bad. The New Atheists (here I especially include one of my sparing partners, Hector Avalos, along with Dawkins) are, among other things, dead wrong when they suggest the Torah only told Jews to care for Jews. Furthermore, I find rules in the Torah that would make modern America a better place, were we to listen.

Consider the "Grand Canyon" of debt we have been amassing for our children and grandchildren over the past few decades, and with increasing, frenzied speed lately. (Now over $13 trillion! Now there are some scary "Numbers!" Watch the "Exodus" of dollars from your children's wallets!)

Here's what Moses said about national debt:

"When the Lord your God blesses you as He promised to you, then you shall lend to many nations, but not borrow; you shall rule many nations, but they shall not rule over you." (Deuteronomy 15:6)

Where has the balance of power in the relationship between the US and China gone in the past few years? See this from Saturday Night Live on who is now in a position to tell whom how to act!

Or again:

"The Lord will open for you His rich treasury, the heavens to give rain upon your soil in its season, blessings to rest on all your enterprises. You shall lend to many nations while you yourselves borrow from none." (Deut. 28:12)

It is a remarkable thing. A Bronze Age confederacy of tribes somehow hoped to prosper 3000 years ago without borrowing a dime from neighbors. But the United States of America, which invented cars, airplanes and computers and explored the solar system, now thinks we need to borrow $40,000 per head to pay our government tab -- largely from countries like China and Saudi Arabia, who are not our friends.

This is not only a disgrace, it is a sin against our children.