The article in Reason is worth reading. However, the issue of the will of the governing classes to cut has to be considered. If we ask who benefits from the stimulus — the answer is the civil servant, the teacher… and their unions.

So if the average family were seeking to trim its operating costs, there are 28,953 non-essential dollars, well over 50 percent of total spending, that could hypothetically be cut. The federal government could do it as well. I don’t think citizens concerned about the nation’s economic future will accept arguments that spending can’t be cut when we taxpayers can and do cut our personal spending during difficult times. I also doubt that 0.02 percent is all that can be trimmed from the budget. The cuts we need and should demand are more like 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, or more. It’s time for lawmakers and the policy community to start acting like real people with real money and to start excising those billions from the nation’s bloated budget.

via Spending Can Be Cut – Reason Magazine.

In short, the left — who see their role as providing for the proleteriat — which they both idolise and need as justification for their salaries — benefits from the expansion of the state and the move to a levelling of society.

What they call economic justice used to be called the sin of… envy.

And… the state is now a huge structural burden that, as the author said, cannot shrink in times of trouble. I recall Regan closed down the cold war because keeping the Soviet army became unsustainable. It may that the same thing is happening to the USA…. but the civil pensions, the salaries of the state workers, and the size of government should and mus be cut before those services which defend our nations are cut.

In this the left (and Obama shows this) have their priorities backwards. You need wealth before you can acquire it to assuage the envy of the masses you have inflamed. And without security of contract and property, you will have no wealth.

The end of the exodus is met with a parting pf the waters. The move into the new land is heralded by the parting of the waters. Instead of Moses the man of God, the ark — which contains the law — is the instrument that leads to the waters being broken.

And… preempting the higher critics — the waters of the Jordan were in flood.

God can choose when to declare his glory and his judgment. Joshua was sent to annihilate a society that had institutionalised Baalism and the sacrifice of children to Molech. As God had said… Israel was to wait until the iniquities of the Amorites and Caananites were complete. In this, Joshua was an instrument of Judgment. His war — to acquire a homeland and to kill all inhabitants… was removing from the culture of the world’s people a branch that was poisonous.

Joshua 3

14When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. 15Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, 16the waters flowing from above stood still, rising up in a single heap far off at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, while those flowing toward the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. 17While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan.

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Ministries & Programs — GAMC.

In the last century, a genocidal cult called National Socialism infected Germany. It was removed — root and branch — but many Germans, Russians and Western allies died in the war that did this.

In this century, we will also face death cults. But they are now subtle, and among us. The God of Jericho says we need to be hard. People forget that Jesus preached more about hell than any other person in the Bible.

And in the church… we need to be careful about our own errors and not excuse our own sins. We are all guilty — but in the postmodern silence what horrors are hidden? Are we, like the Canaanites, sacrificing our children?