I put almost all my photos up at Flickr and the more arty ones up at shattered light. But this is much more of a standard touristy shot. Taken at around 3 PM today, from the top of signal Hill. 
From Signal Hill
1
Category Archives: Daybook
Weekend reading.
Life is getting busy again. I am the official chauffeur for the family, and since the school term has started up various jobs need to be done or delegated daily. So instead of putting together a pile of comments here is a pile of links.
Elspeth.
It’s not all about me, and it’s not all about you either.
A day in the life of a blogging housewife.
Badger Catholic
Dalrock
Cutting leaders off at the knees.
Alte
All your bodies are belong to us.
Elusive Wapati
The multi-gravidic survival advantage.
Dr Helen
No, women are not the second sex.
Electric Angel
How Patriarchy crumbled by silent assent.
It’s “take your daughter to work” day!
Have a good weekend, everyone.
Common Grace.
This really is a series of notes and qutoes. Let’s start with with Phil Johnson.
The distinction between common grace and special grace closely parallels the distinction between the general call and the effectual call. Common grace is extended to everyone. It is God’s goodness to humanity in general whereby God graciously restrains the full expression of sin and mitigates sin’s destructive effects in human society. Common grace imposes moral constraints on people’s behavior, maintains a semblance of order in human affairs, enforces a sense of right and wrong through conscience and civil government, enables men and women to appreciate beauty and goodness, and imparts blessings of all kinds to elect and non-elect alike. God “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). That is common grace.
Phil, like me, is Calvinist. The general call is the gospel… which should be preached to all. There is a need for the missionary endeavour — so all may hear. But not all hear. Not all are able to hear. The Calvinist theologians talk about how the Spirit allows the gospel to be heard… the effectual call.
In the same manner, all people live in a lawful world. This is part of Jewish and Christian theology, but as Spengler notes, this is not the case in Islam: for in Islam there is no doctrine of the love of God, nor of common grace.
A God of love is also a God of laws. For man to survive and prosper in the natural world, he must be able to understand enough of the laws of nature to plant crops and smelt iron and split atoms. This is not only a statement about nature but about the rightly constituted state. The biblical God places limits on his own powers by granting to man what the politicians later called inalienable rights. No one in a position of power, from kings and presidents down to the cop on the beat, may act arbitrarily, for the Covenant establishes a bond between God and every individual, whose rights are protected by laws that no earthly authority can disregard.
Allah is not a God of laws because he is not a God of love. It is possible for Muslims to love Allah, but nonsensical to imagine that God loves Muslims, declared Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), still the dominant authority in normative Islam. A leading Western historian of Islam calls him the most influential figure in Islam since the Prophet Mohammed, and such putative updaters of Islam as Tariq Ramadan still base their theology on al-Ghazali. “When there is love, there must be in the lover a sense of incompleteness; a recognition that the beloved is needed for complete realization of the self,” al-Ghazali wrote. But since Allah is perfect and complete, this notion of love is nonsensical. “There is no reaching out on the part of God… there can be no change in him; no development in him; no supplying of a lack in Himself.
Allah is beyond love and has therefore has no need to favor humankind with laws of nature. As al-Ghazali argues, The connection between what is habitually believe to be a cause and what is habitually believe to be an effect is not necessary, according to us. For example, there is no causal connection between the quenching of thirst and drinking, satiety and eating, burning and contact with fire. Light and the appearance of the sun, death and decapitation, healing and the drinking of medicine…and so on to include all that is observable in connected things in medicine, astronomy, arts and crafts. Their connection is due to the prior decree of God, who creates them side by side, not to it being necessary in itself, incapable of separation… the philosophers offer no other proof than the observation of the occurrence of the burning, when there is contact with fire, but observation proves only simultaneity, not causation, and, in reality, there is no other cause but God.
In this mainstream Muslim view of things, Allah personally and immediately controls the motion of every molecule by his ineffable and incomprehensible will, directly and without the mediation of any laws of nature. This philosophy is called occasionalism — all things happen merely because Allah decides that they should happen on each separate occasion. Unlike the biblical God of covenants, who is bound forever to his pledge to humankind, Allah may do whatever he pleases. As Pope Benedict XVI observed in his September 2006 address at Regensburg University, the eleventh-century Muslim theologian Ahmad Ibn Said Ibn Hazm taught that Allah was not bound even by his own word, and should Allah desire it, we must become idolaters.
The Judeo-Christian notion of divine love is what makes possible the rational ordering of human existence: as an act of love towards humankind, God made nature sufficiently intelligible for us to cope with it. For Jews and Christians, the rationality of everyday life proceeds from the biblical concept of covenant. Islam eschews reason. Muslim life is arbitrary because it rejects the concept of divine love as expressed in the covenant between God and man.
The doctrine of Common Grace allows us to use deduction, observation, experiment and induction to understand the laws of the universe, to work with techniology, to develop, to learn. We lose this sense at our peril: we move to a position worse than the Muslim. For the Muslim rightly fears Allah and acknowledges him. The post modern instead worships himself. And we are not worthy objects of worship. Now, among the Christians, the byper-calvinists also share the Islamic error: they over emphasize the sovereignty of God, not allowing for a place in the cosmos for humanity.
But the credal position is not so. From the Catholic catechism
The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties:
For there is a true law: right reason. It is in conformity with nature, is diffused among all men, and is immutable and eternal; its orders summon to duty; its prohibitions turn away from offense …. To replace it with a contrary law is a sacrilege; failure to apply even one of its provisions is forbidden; no one can abrogate it entirely.Application of the natural law varies greatly; it can demand reflection that takes account of various conditions of life according to places, times, and circumstances. Nevertheless, in the diversity of cultures, the natural law remains as a rule that binds men among themselves and imposes on them, beyond the inevitable differences, common principles.
The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history; it subsists under the flux of ideas and customs and supports their progress. The rules that express it remain substantially valid. Even when it is rejected in its very principles, it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies:
Theft is surely punished by your law, O Lord, and by the law that is written in the human heart, the law that iniquity itself does not efface.The natural law, the Creator’s very good work, provides the solid foundation on which man can build the structure of moral rules to guide his choices. It also provides the indispensable moral foundation for building the human community. Finally, it provides the necessary basis for the civil law with which it is connected, whether by a reflection that draws conclusions from its principles, or by additions of a positive and juridical nature.
Now, the old divines did not exactly use more recent formulations, but the Westminster and Baptist confessions, both 17th Century, argued in a similar manner to the Catholics, as Barcellos notes
There are three key texts in both confessions which speak to the relationship between the Natural Law and the Ten Commandments: 4:2; 19:2; and 19:5. It must be granted that neither confession uses the phrase Natural Law, however, this does not mean that the phrase as understood in this essay does not adequately apply to the theology of these confessions. Both confessions do you the phrase “law of nature” (WCF 21:7 and BCF 22:7). The phrase Moral Law in the confession and the phrase Natural Law as understood in this essay are functionally synonymous. We will look at the three key texts in order.
In chapter 4, Of Creation, both confessions teach that Adam and Eve had “the law of God written in their hearts.” The full text of The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 4:2 reads:
After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created; being made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfil it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being justify to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change.
The Westminster Confession is slightly different in its wording, though not in doctrine. Both confessions reference Romans 2:14 and 15 for biblical support. Neither of them defines what is meant by the law of God written on the heart in this chapter. However, we do get help elsewhere in both confessions.
In chapter 19, Of the Law of God, both confessions define what they mean by “the law of God written in their hearts.” The Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 in 19:2 says,
The same law that was first written in the heart of man continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall, and was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables, the four first containing our duty towards God, and the other six, our duty to man.
Romans 2:14 and 15 is referenced for biblical support. Commenting on this statement, Samuel E. Waldron says, “The major assertion of paragraphs 1 and 2 is that the same law written in the heart of Adam was reiterated in the Ten Commandments.” (Samuel E. Waldron, A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, [Darlington, England, Evangelical Press, 1995 edition], 235.) In the very next section of both confessions, the Ten Commandments are identified as Moral Law. It is important to remember that neither confession teaches that the Decalogue exhausts Moral Law. Instead, they teach that the Decalogue summarily contains Moral Law. This indicates that both confessions teach that the Ten Commandments are Moral Law based on creation. This puts them squarely in the tradition of Calvin on this issue.
The final text in the confessions is found in chapter 19:5. The texts are identical and read as follows:
The moral law [Decalogue in context] doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof, and that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator, who gave it; neither doth Christ in the Gospel any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.
It is very clear that both confessions teach that all men are obliged to obey the Ten Commandments. “The moral law doth for ever bind all …” The obligation to keep the Ten Commandments for man in general is based on the nature or content of the commandments and God’s authority as Creator. The obligation for Christians to keep the Ten Commandments is based on their nature or content, God’s authority as Creator, and the gospel or redemption.
We now are left with a deep irony. On the side of natural law and common grace (which presumes natural law) are the creeds, the confessing and orthodox churches, and most Calvinists. Against this are the post-moderns (for queer studies argues explicitly that things against nature are legitimate), the Islamics, and the hyper-Calvinists. And, as a consequence, the serious Protestants and Serious Catholics find themselves allied. As a fellow Prot said to a Catholic sister but yesterday
No, not at all. I was simply trying to get you to understand the Evangelical perspective. I do appreciate the fact that sacraments are an important aspect of the Catholic connection to God, indeed Protestants do baptisms and a symbolic communion. If anything sacramentalism is one of the arguments FOR Catholicism that occasionally raises itself in my head.
I was only trying to get you to understand why the Bible is so important to Evangelicals. Because that, for us, is our primary mode of connection, as sacraments are for you. For example: you’re reading your Bible, and something LEAPS OFF THE PAGE at you, and a few hours later you find yourself in a situation where you really need to apply that truth IRL. That sort of thing. God really does speak through the Scripture. Indeed, it was the Bible that lead me to faith.
Common Grace, and the natural law, thus matter.
Around the traps.
I am taking a break from analysing data and writing reports to go through some of the more interesting critiques in the last week. David French starts us rolling with his fairly blunt criticism of the mores of contemporary evangelism.
I have my own explanation for these trends, but first let me clearly state that I know there is no such thing as a utopian church. We are still fallen people living in a fallen world, and there will always be premarital sex and unplanned pregnancies. But with that caveat, I think it’s fairly clear that not only can we do better, we’ve done better before.
But why are we doing so much worse now? I tend to think it’s a logical result of the “everything but” culture that’s overrun much of the church. In other words, “We Christians live just like you, but without the sin.” … …Similarly, within the world of Christian marriage, it’s impossible to overstate the extent to which healthy marriage is discussed within secular frameworks of happiness and fulfillment, with scripture providing the holy means for gaining secular ends.
In short, Christians lost the culture but kept adapting to its demands. In the aftermath of the sexual revolution, the culture was bound to postpone marriage, and Christians postponed marriage. In the age of no-fault divorce, the culture was bound to view marriage as more contract than covenant, and Christians viewed marriage as more contract than covenant. But clawing back will require us to do something most of us haven’t been willing to do — give up our cultural “relevance,” give up our one degree of deviation from the mean, and rethink our relationships from inception to conception — and beyond.
Now, the question has to be.. how to rethink it? The Biblical answer to this is tradtional marriage. This involves submission. And no one who goes down that path considers it easy. But there is some witness — that it is worthwhile.
There’s no flow, and the purpose of WHY we do these things has been relegated to the merely utilitarian
Exactly, and that was my motivation for this article. Everyone IRL says, “If you had to do it again, would you?” Sometimes if I’m bored, I’m tempted to say, “No way! I’d stay single and travel and work at a glamorous job.” Or if I’m stressed out, I’m tempted to say, “No way! I’d join a convent and spend my life in contemplative prayer.” But if I’d done either of those things, then I’d be complaining about wanting children, or being lonely, or being bored, or missing sex and romance, or whatever.
I do know that my particular marriage has offered me plenty of chances for spiritual growth because so few things have worked out according to my carefully-laid plans. God apparently knows how to reform me and He seems to have a deep sense of irony. All vocations offer that benefit because choosing a vocation and remaining faithful to it requires you to mature and grow into your new role, even if things don’t really work out.
That’s why a vocation is different than a “job”. If you have a job, you can always change jobs if things don’t really work out and you aren’t having fun. But if you have a vocation, then you’ve made a commitment, and you have to stick it out. You can change your vocation, but it’s not as simple. People try to take that “job” mentality into their vocations, and it causes a lot of grief. That’s why you see people discarding their marriages as if they were shoes that didn’t fit properly. “Oh, we didn’t get along.” “Oh, I had to go find myself.” “Oh, I just thought there might be someone better out there.” These aren’t serious people.
Going into marriage with the expectation that it’ll make you happy just sets you up to be miserable. Being married will make you married, and whether or not you’re happy is mostly up to you. Realizing that has actually made me much happier. I used to get into a bad mood and then get resentful at everyone around me about my mood. (Women, especially, seem prone to this, because we’re so coddled and it can lead to spoilage.) Now if I’m in a bad mood, I just think (or have someone tell me), “Stop being so grumpy!” and then I eventually get over it.
Well Dalrock has been thinking about advice for young women. And he has some trenchant points to make about submission. He states
While wives submitting to their husbands is a clear command in the new testament, very few devout Christians even take this seriously in practice. It flies against the norms of our culture, and even those who are very traditional are likely to be alarmed by the statement.
In fact, (submission) should frighten you. If it doesn’t, you likely aren’t understanding the gravity of the situation. I’m assuming it immediately raised questions in your mind like:
What if he is abusive?
What if he won’t take her needs and wants into sufficient consideration when making decisions?
What if he is prone to make risky or irresponsible decisions?
What if he isn’t faithful?
What if he isn’t motivated to work to provide for his family?
What are his religious and moral values?
Is he a kind person?
Is he mentally and emotionally stable?
Is he capable of leading her in a way which she is comfortable following? (leadership style/game)The proof that this is the right process is that these are all of the right questions. These are the questions women looking to marry should be asking but very often aren’t.
This also resolves the problem of the wife potentially moving in a different direction than her husband over time. If she is following his leadership, while change is nearly guaranteed they will be changing together. In picking him she is both making a guess at the kind of life she hopes to live and picking someone she trusts to work with her while navigating the process. In the true spirit of one and done marriage, she is hooking her wagon to him for the duration. For richer or poorer, in sickness and health, they will succeed or fail together.
I think Alte is correct: marriage is a vocation and it should be a one-way door. And being married changes you. Having kids changes you. If you are married, then you have to, have to consider your spouse. (And yes, this applies to men — our command is to love our wifes, not oppress them, and give up our lives for them. Neither role is easy).
But… this has been lost in the idea that marriage is about personal growth or fulfilment. It is about being happy. We have forgotten that you cannot chase joy. We have lost our love, We have been compromised: we walk within our society and it has made us dirty. The very idea that we can commit to one person, follow or lead one person, be accountable to one person — in all areas — frightens us. We have been trained to be selfish. The old divines knew of this.
They have lost their clear discovery of Christ. They see Him but dimly. They have lost the sight of His beauty — the savor of His good ointment — the hold of His garment. They seek Him, but find Him not. They cannot stir up the heart to lay hold on Christ.
The Spirit dwells scantily in their soul. The living water seems almost dried up within them. The soul is dry and barren. Corruptions are strong: grace is very weak.
Love to the brethren fades. United prayer is forsaken. The little assembly no more appears beautiful. Compassion for the unconverted is low and cold. Sin is unrebuked, though committed under their eye. Christ is not confessed before men. Perhaps the soul falls into sin, and is afraid to return; it stays far off from God, and lodges in the wilderness.
Ah! this is the case, I fear, with many. It is a fearfully dangerous time. Nothing but a visit of the free Spirit to your soul can persuade you to return. Is it not a time for this prayer — “Wilt thou not revive us again?”
It is no point, at present, looking outwards and arguing against the corruption of our society, and the compromises we are being told to make on issues such as gay marriage unless we are prepared to sit down and weep for our own failures, for our own faults… individually and as a congregation.
A divorce should be a time of mourning and repentance not celebrated and called growth.
Men need to look at hat is the nature of women, in general, and how to lead women. We need much more biblical teaching on this than on how to act in the bedroom. In a similar manner, older women need to obey the clear command to teach younger women how to love their husbands and children. You see, caring for the other does not come naturally. Infatuation can only take you so far. In the end, you need to see marriage, as Alte wisely says, as a vocation.
Feedweb plugin for WordPress. v1.3.11 © Feedweb Research, 2012
Anzac heroes.
This is from today’s Herald. Another Catholic who sets an example for those who follow.
A small bronze crucifix welded from World War I rifle bullet cartridges stands as a testament to the bravery and selflessness shown by an Auckland bishop who tried to rescue the wounded on the fields of France.
The crucifix belonged to Bishop Henry Cleary, the Catholic Bishop of Auckland from 1910 to 1929, who took his duties right to the frontline.
In 1916, Bishop Cleary travelled from Auckland to London to seek medical treatment, intending to resign because of poor health.
Instead, he discovered there was no Catholic chaplain with the New Zealand 2nd Brigade in France and volunteered to serve on the frontline near Fromelles.
After just a night and a day of fighting at Fromelles, 1500 British and 5533 Australian soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner by the Germans.
The soldiers’ bodies and many wounded were left on the battlefield in no man’s land – unable to be recovered and buried.
Although a temporary truce had been made with the Germans to allow the wounded to be rescued it was vetoed by senior officers, and the New Zealand troops were deeply troubled by their inability to recover and bury their comrades.
Bishop Cleary and an officer crawled out and lay in the snow amid the remains of the dead. In his diaries, Bishop Cleary comments several times on the dead lying “out there” and how the Germans used to shoot burial parties.
Just 50m from the enemy line he said a “De Profundis” over the bodies – a psalm which normally forms part of the prayers for the dead recited at Catholic funerals.
However, Bishop Cleary’s wooden crucifix was badly damaged while he was in the trenches so the Kiwi soldiers gathered up spent shell cases and cobbled together a new crucifix for him.
Not all of us are playing the secular games.
One of the hazards that happen if you hang around this part of the interwebz is that you get really cynical and misanthropic. I look at what is going on and despair when I should not.
Consider for a second the pick up scene. Son one talked to me (when he was 15 at the time) about classmates going down to the student bars and trying to pull girls. He considered them stupid, and putting themselves at risk. (Well there was a context, One of the 17 year old prefects had just hung himself after he was told to provide for his pregnant girlfriend. Last year’s tragedy at school). And there are plenty of young people who are trying to live Godly and circmuspect lives. I’m not of their generation, but I know them through my kids. As Kathy noted:
I am not a young single woman but I know of quite a few. My own nearly sixteen year old daughter has lovely friends. Really nice girls… I have spoken at length with many of them..
And yes the young women that I associate with here in Oz are not mercenary types. I did not say that they do not exist.( Both mercenary men and women DO exist.) Just that I do not encounter them.
My husband has older brothers whose daughters are married. All nice women who married nice blokes.
Much has to do with upbringing. I have always said this.
In the older age group, there are plenty of women who are trying to make the best of it around their families and trying to live godly lives (something we all fail at, in some times, and succeed at, in others). Magistra describes this beautifully
I no longer have the husband but I’m still home-centered until the boys are grown up and gone. I didn’t have any idea what a sinner I was until I married and, especially, had children. I still am confronted with my sinfulness as I am lazy, impatient, unloving, selfish, etc. with my children every single day. I am also daily thankful beyond words for the grace of God in Jesus Christ and the gospel.
The traditional model IS the best and I agree with Alcest that the modern crop of singles who think only of themselves cheapens the idea of the single life. The apostle Paul had good things to say about that vocation and if I am to remain single the rest of my life, I can already see several areas of ministry in which I can participate once my children are grown. What a privilege that would be!
I am testimony that being a SAHM is no proof against divorce but I also have watched the Lord take care of me and my children through various avenues so that I can still follow the vocation He gave me when I first married and bore my children. He is faithful even when husbands and wives are not.
This is the hardest job I’ve ever had (my part-time job is a breeze in comparision) but it is also the most satisfying in many ways. I wouldn’t trade it for the world or a boatload of money.
Now, I have met some people like Magistra. Most of these women are not interested in any romance at present. They have their hands full: with kids, with jobs, with life. Raising kids, particularly small kids, solo is hard.
What we tend to forget is that the hard things make us grow. They make us mentally, physically and spiritually fit. If we want to climb hills, we have to train for it. If we want to be Godly, we have to train at it. And marriage is one of God’s training places. At times all this is messy. Saint Velvet commented on the same thread. (SAHM is an Americanism — “Stay at home mother”)
It’s an interesting study in bigotry to be a sahm who was formerly “career” – add to it a weird family dynamic that essentially declares you a traitor to the sisterhood and a burden to your poor old husband (I love how people assume they know anything about our finances) and you’ve got yourself a tragedy fit for the stage.
… Feminism has compartmentalized the efforts in order to minimize them – there is no “all in” – you’re either a wife or a mother or a homemaker or a business person/employee – few women see themselves in the traditional role Alte describes, they sort of live a la carte existences, call it multi-tasking, and then wonder why they’re so strung out. There’s no flow, and the purpose of WHY we do these things has been relegated to the merely utilitarian. “I shouldn’t have to clean the toilet/mop the floor/carry out the compost because I’m too fabulously educated/beautiful/successful” is just a strange mindset. There is the wonderful list of all the things a man should be able to do, in a generalist spirit, but most women seem to refuse this sort of integrated notion.Can you tell this is spring cleaning week and I feel the need to validate my existence?
One of the things about American secular life is the emphasis on having it all and doing it all is conflated with presenteeism. You have to be present — at work, in sports, in the culture (attending the opera and art museums) and also keep the home to a Martha Stewart standard while looking like someone who can prowl down a catwalk.
The idea of seaons in a life is lost. The idea of a couple working together to make things flow is lost. And the fact that growth is hard, and childish things have to be given up… is lost. Our children have judged the current secular world as full of fools. Have we?
Self Hatred.
There is a thread over at TC about the Republicrats alleged war on woman, This really is code for restrictions in the ability of a woman to terminate pregnancies. To have minimal access to the morning after pill, mifepristone, and abortion. There is a lot of emotion around this issue.
I have a dog in this fight. I am the product of an accident… my birth mother was a nursing student, unmarried as all nursing students had to be in late 1959, and she was sent back to the farm and had me nine months to the day after Christmas of that year.
She then returned to nursing… and left six months short of graduation because she was in love with her husband. The Matron refused to give permission for her to marry. Nursing lost: she raised two children by him and is a granmother at least five times over and a great grandmother.
So when people talk about being forced to carry a child to term, I have little sympathy. I respect my birth mother, love the woman who raise me, who I call Mum, and my kids and grandkids. I do not consider our lives a waste, even though the more pure would say, correctly, that I was conceived in sin.
7Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. 9Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. 10Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.11But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness. 12I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven on account of his name. 13I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young people, because you have conquered the evil one. 14I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young people, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
15Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; 16for all that is in the world – the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches – comes not from the Father but from the world. 17And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.
People have a weird idea about love. They consider that if one is loved, that that person who loves them will give them what they want. They are like two year olds begging for pudding, when they have not eaten their meal.
Loving a person has to be about wishing the best for them. And that includes correction, reminding, saying no… not just saying yes. It involves putting a frame around the emotional weaknesses of the other.
It involves limits.
And at times it involves anger. When people talk about those who are inconveniant, that the timing for this pregnancy is wrong, that children are difficult… I get angry. For me (for my conception was quite inconvenient) and my children (who followed).
When my daughter is criticized for having three children, I get ferally angry. For there should not be self hatred among believers. Their should be support and love. Those who promote death forget that most people love life, most women grow to love the child within them over nine months (ambivalence about being pregnant NOW is so common to be normal) and that there are many childless couples who are looking for a child… knowing that they cannot have one from their own bodies.
We should be promoting true love (which is not copulation). And adoption. Abortions should be done extremely rarely (the mother will die and the baby is nonviable) and be considered a serious adverse event.
But don’t play emotional games here. Babies are our future, not something we project our self hatred.
Why the left has lost.
I note that today, in a period when the PM is being challenged on his negotiations with a casino to build a convention centre in Auckland (It revolves around poker machines) the most recent poll shows… despite being hosed in the media… his ratings have gone up.
I wrote this over at In Mala Fide about a year ago when Will S and I used to discuss things Canadian there. Despite Ferd hating the Canucks. But it was true then, and it is true now.
The left basically are rooted. They have NO, NO options left. In NZ, Oz and Canada (at various times) the tax rates have been ramped sky high — I recall 68 c on the dollar if I worked a weekend when I was a young man — and we still almost went bankrupt.
In all three countries, the elite has misread the population. When I go to Wellington, they are still mourning the loss of that malevolent bitch Clarke: Ottawa wants the Grits back, and Canberra wants a tame leftie (of any party in charge).
None of the people inside the corridors of power were aware of how angry people are. They hate the denigration of their way of life in the name of multiculturalism. They dislike the games that are played and the money wasted playing them while their food bills go up. They hold the family and human rights courts in contempt.
The left has betrayed the working and middle class man: the loyal man, the man who used to vote tribally Labour or Liberal because that was what one did. And once that person has gone, they won’t come back.
The state cannot be our shield. We need to find it outside — locally, either in community banks, trusts, churches or lodges: but the government will not be able to insure us. Because they are bankrupt. The right see this. The left NEED to see this — and resurrect the union based health and insurance systems that used to exist. (In the elite they still do — University Health, University Superannuation, and the Senior Common Room are “nice” shelters if you have managed to weasel tenure. I am such a weasel).
The neo feudal politics of identity have failed: let’s see if the modern mandarins can adapt, or if they will be made irrelevant.
Chris Trotter, who is the last standing Socailist in my view, can still analyse the situation well. And be pointed out what Ferd noted: that the poor, the young… have disengaged. The Left are the new Tories. Like the Lords of old. They do not work for you, they do things to you.
IN THE LAST ELECTION just over three-and-a-quarter million New Zealanders were eligible to vote. On the day, however, only just over two-and-a-quarter million Kiwis actually made it to the polling booths. Or, to put it more precisely, only 69.6 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2011 General Election – one of the lowest turnouts on record.
Now, there will always be a hard-core of the more feckless sort of citizen who’ll just never be bothered taking their civic responsibilities seriously (a statistician friend of mine reckons the figure hovers somewhere around the six percent mark). There’s another group, however, whose refusal to enter the polling booth is a conscious political statement. These abstainers, and their number has been growing steadily since the mid-1980s, have a blunt message for the political parties: “You don’t know me. You won’t help me. You don’t understand me. You can’t even speak my language.” A significant minority add: “You betrayed me.”
Overwhelmingly, these abstainers are young (18-25 years) poorly-educated and unskilled workers and beneficiaries, and most of them reside in electorates that, historically, have been Labour strongholds. “Politics”, if it means anything at all to these youngsters, is generally construed as the sum of all their fears, and “politicians”, far from being regarded as people they elect to do things forthem, are seen as the people others elect to do things tothem. They couldn’t tell you how they know, but they do know, and deep in their gut the knowledge festers like a malignant tumour: they are the ones who are being blamed; they are the ones who are being punished; for economic and social sins they can barely pronounce.
You simply do not win people by saying that is their fault. You win people, in today’s times, by being an anti politician. By telling the truth. By treating people as responsible, using words they can understand… and by not living above those who you are there to serve.
The Left used to live in working class suburbs: Otahuhu, Mangere, South Dunedin. The new left live in the leafy suburbs: Mt Eden, Epsom, Maori Hill. And the left continue to speak as if we can afford this huge edifice of paternalism… while not actually protecting workers from the winds of international change (their boss is no longer local and can no longer be picketed). We need to look back.
This is why the Left, though loud at the moment, are lost. They will lose. We are moving back to an older manifesto. It is going to collapse. If we are lucky, we will get the Scenario that Alte suggests:
The political center is so far to the left that only a full-scale economic collapse will facilitate a true, wide-ranging reform. What traditionalists can do now is to make the unspeakable speakable, to make the immoderate sound moderate, to make the far-right the center-right, by shifting the center and establishing a new extreme.
Here are reforms I hold tightly to, and wait for the center to move in my direction.
- An end to divorce. All legal divorce should be abolished, to be replaced by legal separation (i.e. no remarriage) only. In the event of legal separation, sole paternal custody should be the default. There should be no alimony or child support granted, other than what the couple has predefined by contract. No child support outside of marriage. Barring that, marriage should be moved completely into the private sphere and handled under contract law.
- An end to all domestic violence laws. Severe instances can be handled by legal separation or criminal assault charges. Everything else… suck it up and deal. We need to get out of the habit of meddling in people’s homes. No more family courts.
- An end to public schooling, including public universities. All education should be selected and directed by the parent, with the public providing vouchers as needed.
- An end to female suffrage. I’m not sure yet what I’d like to replace it with, or if I’m even sure I wish for voting to continue. All I am certain of is that it is an abomination for women to rule the country through the ballot box.
- An end to abortion, and severe restrictions on artificial birth control.
- An end to bloated government and a return to subsidiarity. The government should be cut down to about half of its current size, and a tax-overhaul should rid us of the vote-buying and coercion rampant in the current revenue system. Power should be devolved down to the male heads of family, the community, the state, and only then the federal government.
- An end to mass immigration and liberal immigration policies. A country should only take in as many immigrants as it can assimilate. Anything else is to welcome a conquering horde, which goes beyond the bounds of neighborly generosity.
- An end to affirmative action, quotas, unequal entrance qualifications, etc.
- An end to feminist criminology, and the rampant injustice that results from it. All felonies must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, including sex crimes.
Whether the center does move or not, we shall see. Perhaps it will simply fall, and we will sink into anarchy. Perhaps they will swamp everything remaining, or devour it like locusts. I only know that it won’t move further left on my account, that is for sure. I am not giving an inch, for they will surely take a mile.
What the current elite forget is that the old system was sustainable. Marriage has never been a perfect institution… but it worked well enough. Churches and charities could be used as tools of oppression … but the stigma associated with taking charity meant that those who were desperate got help and freeloaders where shunned.
The Leftist and feminist experiment has failed. It is time to move back — to what worked. And that will look quite a lot like Alte’s list.
The elite idiocracy.
I simply do not understand the American Power Elite. They seem to shoot themselves in the feet — from deciding to do a SWAT type takedown of Kim Dotcom and then leave the NZ police to deal with a court with a low probability of success at the same time they are trying to shore up their influence in the Pacific (which is the one place where NZ is a regional power) to alienating any mother who looks after children.
There are some women you only take on when you absolutely have to. Locally, many of them meet up in the various cafes along the street I live on. (Which is why I am not naming them). Their children go to the local private schools. Woe betide any man or woman who gets in the way of them raising their children. I’d rather take on a Pit Bull, Ann Coulter or Megan Fox.
Many mothers today have seen the financial and emotional burden of daycare and after-school programs and have said, “No thanks. Not for my children.” And so we sold our second car, bought a smaller house, spent time meal planning and coupon clipping, growing gardens, and homeschooling our broods (or spent massive amounts of time on the PTA or in the principal’s office advocating for better education.) We do this because we believe the future truly does rest on the the shoulders of the people we are shaping right now. They are more important to us than any luxury a second salary could provide.
That some women need to work or want to work is their business. Some women need to be with their children and it is as valid (if not more so) than needing another vacation or a daily venti mocha from a tatted-up barista. What really annoys is the wedge Rosen is trying to drive between women.. It pits us against one another and causes the us vs. them insults to fly (like my snarky Starbucks barb above). The truth is, Obamanomics is bad for ALL women, poor, rich, middle class, working or non-working, all women are suffering under economic policies that are bankrupting our nation and saddling our children with unsustainable debt.
The chances of providing the same or better financial comfort for your children your parents were able to give you is dwindling quickly. When I go to the grocery store and see $3.98 on a gallon of milk I break out in hives. Gas at $4.19 a gallon makes my gluteal muscles clench. At the same time employers aren’t raising salaries fast enough to accommodate the higher cost of living because profits are down. The price of food is skyrocketing because of the cost to truck it into town.
…
Au’contrair, mon ennemi! I object! The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world and buys the groceries and this mama is very concerned about the economic state of this country. As a tax-paying citizen (yes, I pay property taxes, sales taxes and income tax for the few freelance jobs I do from my house) my ideas matter.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Parent Teacher Interviews. During those meetings, I discussed a certian teacher (who shall remain unamed) who had given some very low marks — a standard deviation lower — to basically all the boys the teacher taught. Within 24 hours, the coffee network had started the pressure (with the year dean and head of department) to get her shifted. School starts again next Monday. It will be interesting to see what happens. For in New Zealand, the knife is gently introduced, quietly, out of sight, so your career expires quietly, muted by orders for soy lattes.
We are not Americans. Thank God. There are but five million of us, and a fifth of those are expatriate: we make a quarter to a fifth of what the richest countries do, and the only areas where we are major exporters are commodity markets. We were a colony: in fact, our colonial status (which helps in the UK: we do not fit into the class system) has left us without an inflated sense of our own importance or righteousness. Our elite ae nicely kept in check by the culture. We have to live together. This leads to a sense of conformity, a superficial politeness, and a care in making enemies. For our enemy, if not our neighbour now, may be next week.
The USA is now reaching the point of imperial over reach. They are the biggest debtor nation in the world: more than the EU combined. This level of indebtness eventually helped destroy the British Empire. Now I know Spengler’s law of empire: “Small civilizations perish for any number of reasons, but great civilizations die only when they no longer want to live. The Brits got deeply in debt in the wars of Empires and paid it off thrice. But the third time the Left was running the show, and they killed the empire.
The current elite — of both parties — in the US sees themselves as enlightned leaders of a state, regulating an unruly populace and managing a hegemony of ignorant peasants. Well, speaking as one of those peasants, this is rubbish. The same elite have taken all that is great in our culture — from Chaucer to Donne, from Milton to Principilia Mathematica and thrown them out, replacing them with the tawdry works of the politically correct. When I was sixteen I was reading Schaeffer, Shakespeare and Solzyntisyn: none of these is now acceptable. They have regulated the water, air, businesses, the family and want to regulate our souls.
They are in a death spiral. And Spengler’s rule of societal death applies particularly to them: The best thing you can do for zombie cultures is, don’t be one of them.
UPDATE.
Bill Price has a useful analysis of how feminism is peaking at this time of over reach.
I’m not sure how much longer feminism will be such a powerful force in national politics, but I suspect this election, and perhaps the next one, will be the peak. After that, there will be a decline that, while not entirely noticeable at first, should really become apparent by some time in the next decade. Younger feminists simply don’t have the passion or cohesion to repeat the successes of the Hilary Rosens and Hillary Clintons of the world. As far as I can tell, to them feminism means little more than getting a free lunch. At least, they don’t articulate much else, and if they can get a free lunch by getting married and having children a lot of them will do so and quickly forget all about the gender studies classes they took in college. Furthermore, as I’ve stressed recently, a lot more young white Americans will be the children of the Mitt and Ann Romneys of the US (not to mention Rick Santorums) than they will of the Hilary Rosens. Feminism is simply going to be alien and weird to an increasing proportion of the population. As for minorities, they never really bought into it anyway; feminism has been pretty much a white woman’s game from the beginning.
So, men, I think we should sit back, grab a bag of popcorn, and watch how it all goes down. We are witnessing the culmination of a very strange era in Western history, and it’s going to be history fairly soon. There’s no telling exactly what will come next, but I’m fairly certain that the feminism that has come to define this election cycle will begin to ebb away as something new emerges.
Some day when I’m old and gray, I expect to see people snicker and joke about the feminism that was such a powerful force in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Our current era will be seen by young adults and children as just as alien as the prewar era is to us today. And no, there will never be a matriarchal regime; that’s against human nature and unprecedented in human history. People simply haven’t changed that much, and due to birth control, abortion and other factors that limit feminist fertility the demographic momentum is pushing in the other direction now, and has been for over a generation.
In the meanwhile, we men should take care of ourselves, our families and our brethren. Just hang in there, weather this storm, and try to keep your mental and physical health. When we get through to the other side, we’ll be able to breathe a lot easier than we have in a long, long time.
I agree with Bill about the over reach of Feminism. My concern is that this over reach (since feminists come from the elite) may take down the American Republic.
Outcome, Faith, Spirit.
Overnight one or two people have commented that they cannot understand how the wronged spouse can forgive and reconcile. I think the issues around this relate not as much to the dirt we are in and the difficulties we have but to the God we worship.
For the outcome he is looking for is that we may lead to him being glorified. And he gives us the Spirit to enrich our faith.
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, 7so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
John 14:15-17
15″If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
But… the world does not understand this. We are speaking in a foreign language, not because the words are unusual, but because the thoughts that underly them are unthinkable without a hope and without God. At times this leads to anger. People consider that you MUST leave, you MUST sue… because that is justice.
But God is about mercy, not justice. His outcome is not that of this world. It is about the Glory of God and the Kingdom of God, not us.