8/28/2013
SOFT TOTALITARIANISM
GOAFS II: #57
SOFT TOTALITARIANISM
AUGUST 28, 2013
Here is another quote from THE SERVILE MIND to ponder as you watch
the evening news and consider the current political climate.
“The traditional balance between
evils that we may change and evils we must put up with has been lost in the
public imagination. In the popular view, anything
can be achieved that governments decide to do. Our sense of reality has
been seriously disrupted by the vast augmentation of the power available to
western governments. One consequence of this development has been the
propensity of politicians to curry favor with the electorate by promising to
solve everyday problems. One needs to distinguish between two kinds of power
generating this dream of government omnipotence. One kind of power is
technological and another kind stems from what the states learned about the
uses of authority during the world wars of the twentieth century. Western
populations think , then, in terms of “abuses” occurring in society, and the
power, and the responsibility of governments exercising popular authority to
remove them. This power has been used in various countries to “forbid” smoking,
hunting with dogs, smacking children, and a variety of other activities
previously left to the discretion of individuals.
“The
disposition of democratic governments to exercise their authority by command
has, then, expanded the size of the law codes of Western states enormously. The
situation, however, is even worse than this might suggest. For democracies have
now taken over what was once a celebrated device of despotism. The device
consists in suggesting that some group ought voluntarily limit its activities
in some way, with the additional threat
that if the group fails to act satisfactorily, the government will exercise its
power to legislate. This is among the devices that are now coming to be
recognized as “soft totalitarianism.” PPS 64-65, THE SERVILE MIND
I would suggest that another technique of “soft
totalitarianism” is the well-developed habit of the current Chief Executive of
doing just as he pleases by executive order because “the Congress won’t do what
needs to be done.” Very often, “what he pleases,” is either unlawful or
unconstitutional or both.
JERRY SWEERS
cmudgeon@windstream.net
8/21/2013
ROSE
GOAFS II: #56
ROSE
AUGUST 21, 2013
This is a story about a young woman named Rose who came into
the Women For Life Pregnancy Center (now called Assurance) in Lexington for a pregnancy
test and counseling. The story is true, only the names have been changed.
Rose was brought by a friend, Joy, who had introduced her to
Christ and showed her that aborting a baby was murder. Rose was familiar with
the signs of pregnancy. As we got to know her, we understood why.
Rose finished high school—her mother knew the value of an
education and insisted. This was unusual—Rose was beginning the fifth
generation of a welfare family that had been wards of the state for a very long
time. But when she graduated she began having a good time, sleeping around, doing
all the things she had delayed to get her diploma. In the next 5 years she
conceived a child 4 times, by four different casual acquaintances. In each case
she quickly and easily obtained an abortion.
When she knew which man was responsible, she got him to pay
for it or at least help her pay. She was young and strong and had an unusual
toughness. She got money when she had to by cutting cane or working in a
carwash.
Rose had no real home. She usually stayed with the latest
boyfriend. After each abortion, that arrangement changed. Even in the relative
morality of the underclass, she had become “damaged goods.”
But she was ready to break this cycle--her new life as a Christian
helped her see this new life in her womb as marvelous thing and a serious responsibility.
When we asked her who the father was, she thought about it some and finally wrote
down 4 names and said, “It is probably one of these, but I could not say for
sure—I was always pretty drunk.
We did the test and she was pregnant. This was her fifth child
conceived out of wedlock. We talked to her about placing the baby in a two-parent
Christian home or raising the baby herself. She insisted that she wanted to
keep the baby. With the twisted logic that is common among girls in her
condition, she had said, “What kind of person would I be to give my baby away
to strangers.”
Over time we did our best to prepare her for single
motherhood. She kept busy fantasizing about having her own child, as most of
the young women in this position seem to do. Today girls often get pregnant in
high school as a sort of status symbol.
We gave her the necessary clothes, blankets, bottles, changing
table, and even a very nice crib—all donated by friends of Assurance. We also
gave her as much instruction in childrearing as she was able to absorb.
The new baby girl came on schedule and without complications.
There were traces of cocaine in her system but she did not appear to have been
damaged. Rose then admitted to having used cocaine but she insisted she had
stopped that before she became pregnant. She named the little girl Ashley.
I have seen many babies in my time, and, and with the
exception of my own children, Ashley was one of the most beautiful. She was
bright, blond, fine featured and looked like she would grow up to be a real
lady. Ashley was cared for by a center volunteer foster family for a few days
to give her a good start, then brought in and presented to Rose in our office. That
was at 10:00 in the morning.
By three in the afternoon, we received the tenth phone call from
Rose, with questions. After the initial thrill of showing the baby off, the
full weight of what she was taking on landed on her. We fully answered every
question, but each time we also reminded her that adoption was still an option.
At three P.M. she called and told us she just could not do it, it would be
unfair to this beautiful little girl, would we pick her up and arrange for an
adoption.
The volunteer foster family went at once and we began the
process. I will never forget the looks on the faces of the new parents about
two weeks later when we introduced them to the baby. For a while Rose wanted to
hear about the baby’s progress and the new family was faithful to send notes to
her through us. Eventually she was happy and satisfied that her baby would have
the best of things and she no longer wished to receive updates. She wanted to
move on. I do not know the rest of the story but I know God is a
covenant-keeping God, and I expect to meet Rose again in the New Heaven and New
Earth where I will ask her about the rest of the story.
Many morals could be drawn from the tale. The main one would
be that God, in Christ has no trouble breaking the worst kind of
poverty-induced cycle of failure and sin. He is more than enough able to
“restore the years the locusts have eaten.” (Joel 2.25.)
JERRY SWEERS
cmudgeon@windstream.net
8/13/2013
DEMOCRACY
GOAFS II: #55
DEMOCRACY
AUGUST 14, 2013
I am writing to commend to you a book that you should read if
you are at all concerned about the vast mischief the liberal progressive
democrat elite is doing to America today. There are a lot of books on this. It seems
like a new one comes out every few days from some conservative talking head,
but they all are similar and by U.S. or Canadian authors. The book I am
suggesting was written by Kenneth Minogue. He is an emeritus professor of
political science at the London School of Economics. He has written numerous
other books, columns for British newspapers, and is well-known and respected.
He was born in New Zealand and educated in Australia.
The author’s perspective is similar to Alexis d Tocqueville who
observed and wrote about democracy in America in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Minogue
is the Tocqueville of the 20th century.
This is not an overtly Christian book, at least in the first
50 pages. But when the author mentions the impact of religious belief on the
Democratic process, in an admirably brief and concise paragraph he describes
the difference between reformed theology and Arminian theology without
mentioning Calvin, Arminius, or any famous theologians. None of the theologians
I am familiar with would find fault with this paragraph.
What I see in the book is a very accessible and scholarly
study of what happens when the democratic process is run by the sons of Adam,
who “want to be like God, knowing good from evil,” and believe strongly they
are gods and subject to no authority higher than their own autonomous human
reason.
THE SERVILE MIND
HOW DEMOCRACY ERODES THE MORAL LIFE
Kenneth Minogue
Encounter Books
New York, 2010
Minogue has been discussing taxes and observed that in
democratic states the government taxes between 30 and 50 percent of the wealth
and uses it for things the government deems necessary and important. Some of
these important things are collective goods such as defense and justice, but
more and more of them are projects of redistribution of wealth to the needy and
incompetent or the unwilling to take responsibility for themselves. This is the
context of the paragraph from the book I have quoted below.
For me this is one of those rare books that has multiple
quotable quotes on every page.
“The
inescapable conclusion is that the rulers of democratic states judge the
populations of democratic states to be incompetent over a whole range of
important matters—yet these are the very people who are charged by the
constitution with deciding who should have the power to rule them. The paradox
arises because the foolish are deciding who the wise are. People often
legislatively judged foolish may determine who as our governors shall have the
vast powers of deciding the conditions under which we today live. And we might
say that this is a problem whose salience increases over time because
democratic governments have revealed an almost continuous drive to take more
and more control over the details of society, and particularly to judge more
and more people unable to live their own lives.” P. 36-37
Get the book, it is worth your time and attention.
JERRY SWEERS
cmudgeon@windstream.net
