Category: FWIW

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“Render Unto Caesar”

I was over at Cathouse chat, just checking in to see what has been going on in Kat’s life recently, when I stumbled across a comment that referred to Charles Chaput’s “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life”. Now, I’ve not yet read the book, but I have some taste of the probable thrust from the title. I’m not Roman Catholic either, but again, I think I can infer a bit of the content from my knowedge of Roman Catholicism, as well.

Looks/sounds interesting from what reviews I’ve seen. If its content is anything close to what I can infer from reviews/title/current knowledge about RC thought, I may well find myself in substantial agreement with Chaput.

Backing up a bit. I grew up in a Southern Baptist subculture where Matthew 22:17-21 ws usually applied thusly: pay your taxes and pay your tithe. Now, that’s always–even from childhood–struck me as a particularly shallow exegesis (*heh* from long before I had an inkling of an idea of what the word exegesis even meant). As I grew “in wisdom and in stature” (and in girdth and breadth *heh*), I became able to put some meat on the bones of my disatisfaction with that shallow interpretation. And so follows my shirt tail exegesis… a group of Pharisees came to Jesus and said,

Matthew 22:17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? 18 but Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, [ye] hypocrites? 19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. 20 And he saith unto them, Whose [is] this image and superscription? 21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

First, this was a group of Jewish “lawyers” attempting to pull Katie Couric on Jesus. Roman occupation (and Roman taxes) were strongly disliked by the Jews of Israel, so, they thought, if Jesus did not denounce paying Roman taxes they’d have trapped him into an unpopular stand. On the other hand, the Romans really came down hard on anything that even smacked of fomenting tax evasion or revolt, so if he did choose the popular answer they more than half expected, they could have him up on charges before the Roman government lickety split.

Horns of a dilemma? Not so. Jesus simply invoked the very orthodox Jewish principle of the imago dei–the concept that we are all made in God’s image, and then turned the Pharisees’ challenge on its head. “Whose image” is stamped upon the coin? Caesar’s. But you see, when Jesus followed that up with both “render to Caesar” and “render to God” he directly invoked the principle of imago dei, essentially saying, “This coin comes from Caesar, so pay him with it, but YOU are stamped with God’s image and belong to Him, therefore, you owe Him yourselves.”

I like to ask myself further, “What does this image of God look like when stamped on a man?” Now, we can look all through scripture and nature to discern what God’s image might “look” like, but I think Jesus was talking about His image as to character and behavior, and probably no other description succinctly distills the imago dei like Micah 6:8

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

That is what the “coin” stamped with the image of God looks like: Justice; Mercy; Humility. Look for those traits in someone who’s “render[ing] untoi God the things that are God’s” and you’ll see someone who has internalized 2 Corinthians 5:17… and who exemplifies submission to Jesus command in Matthew 22:21.

Yes, “render unto Caesar” means much more than simply paying our taxes. It also–at the very least–means obeying those laws that do not directly contradict biblical precepts (see Acts 3-4), and in a representative republic (with democratic elements), it also means we have a responsibility to govern well. (Which in my experience largely means we ought to concentrate on throwing the bums out of office at every election, but that’s just my view, of course. :-))

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

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Unintended Consequences

Probably. (As Napoleon is said to have opined, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.)

In the last few weeks, Congress has once again validated two aphorisms:

The eight most dreaded words in the English language are, “I’m from the government; I’m here to help.”

and

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”- Mark Twain

(Perhaps I should add another Twainism to the list of aphorisms Congress has recently validated: “There is no native criminal class except Congress.”)

Anywho…

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 that was signed into Law by Dhimmi Kahtah had ostensibly good intentions: allow folks who were being redlined (supposedly because of race but actually because they were BAD RISKS) to obtain mortgages for homes. Eventually, this led to

Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, passed during a lame duck Repugnican’t presidency by a Dhimmicrappic Congress, ” …required the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as Freddie Mac, to devote a percentage of their lending to support affordable housing. This in part, contributed to increased Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pooling and selling of such loans as securities , (i.e. securitization), and expanded the secondary market for those loans.”*

In part. The 1992 act required “a percentage” of Freddie/Fannie lending to support so-called “affordable housing” but it was in the hands of the Clintoon Administration that the practices accelerating the downfall of mortgage lenders reeally took off. Contra Bubba’s recent disclaimers, “In early 1993 President Clinton proposed new regulations for the CRA which would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities.[7] The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995… “*

And so it goes.

More recently,

“In 2002 there was an inter-agency review of the effectiveness of the 1995 regulatory changes to the Community Reinvestment Act and new proposals were considered. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Office of the Controller of the Currency put new regulations into effect September of 2005. The regulations were opposed by a contingent of Democrats because the action ‘undercuts the statutory purpose of the Act for institutions to meet the needs of low and moderate-income persons and communities by OTS.'”*

So, Dhimmis conspired to leave the CRA free to wreak havoc on our financial system by appealing to two base traits shared by many humans: risk avoidance (after all, don’t make those loans to people who might default and you KNOW the Feds are gonna squeeze your privates for “discrimination” or some such bullshit) and greed (“If I have to make these crappy loans, I might as well get as much as I can out of ’em before they go toxic”).

Let me leave you with this video. Watch the whole thing. Yes, the whole thing. Get a cuppa joe or two to help you sit still that long if you’re AADHD or whatever, but WATCH IT!

Now, go watch this one, too.

Do note, America’s Third World County isn’t participating in the CRA-Freddie-Fannie-Wall Street kerfuffle. Sure folks elsewhere are losing their shirts, but around here, the banks are solid (don’t ask about St Louis or KC, though–those places on on another planet far, far removed from America’s Third World County), business and life goes on.

NOTE: I did use Wikipedia for the citations, despite its notoriously uneven content. The key to using Wikipedia wisely is filtering. One must learn a great deal from elsewhere about a subject so that filtering out the B.S. and outright stupidity that frequently creeps into Wikipedia articles–Jerry Pournelle has given up on correcting misstatements of verifiable fact in the biographical Wikipedia article on himself, for example–becomes simply an exercise in doing ones own homework. When, as here, I find a Wikipedia article worth citing because of accuracy and concise treatment, I’ll use it. But that doesn’t happen all that often.

Trackposted to Diary of the Mad Pigeon, , Faultline USA, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Hard Left Turn Away from Current Events

From slightly off-the-wall territory, seeing this video of Joe Biden at Nuke’s place sent me down a rabbit trail. (Some might say down the rabbit hole. *heh*)

Let’s start with the premise that p-sychology is about as scientific as voodoo and p-sychs might as well wear dreadlock wigs and shake chicken bone rattles as inflict any one of the current fads in p-sych on their unwitting victims. Still, voodoo does help some folks deal with life, and so does p-sych. Seriously. It’s not all bad, and some perceptive p-sychs can actually do genuine good despite their training.

That said, I do find some personality theories/p-sych models interesting and even useful constructs for viewing the world. Without much comment, here’s a list of some p-sych thinkers I find intriguing, even sometimes useful:

Roberto Assagioli–Psychosynthesis
Viktor Frankl–Noetic counseling (more useful than most, IMO)
Medard Boss–Daseinsanalysis (useful framework)
William James–known as a Pragmatist who attempted to present psychology as a natural science (failed, IMO), but his “Varieties of Religious Experience” is a p-sych tome that’s a very interesting read.
Ludwig Binswanger–a pioneer existential p-sych

It’s interesting to me that while James attempted to cram p-sych into a natural science mold, Medard Boss–who attempted no such thing–came closer to actually providing some sort of falsifiable model of personality (close but no cigar–still, he wasn’t trying to do so). No, I’ve never heard a p-sych professor claim this, but then I’ve yet to meet a p-sych professor who had much understanding of scientific modeling. (OK, OK, one.)

There. A throwaway post having not much to do with anything at all, just one of those voices in my head (or two or three) clamoring* for an opportunity to speak… *heh*

Addendum: I guess this’ll be a kind of catchall post. Here’s an unrelated thought found while reading about eating pine bark:

It has been my frequent observation that many writers merely regurgitate what they have read elsewhere, rehashing over and over the same errors so much so that eventually the error becomes embedded in nearly all literature on the subject and is thought of as the gospel truth even by those considered an authority on the subject.

Well, of course. Glad someone else has noticed that as well. *heh* “Conventional wisdom” often isn’t, of course. Oh, it’s conventional, all right, just often not very wise. I’m reminded of self-described “conservative” writers touting “traditional values” who, when asked to define them, often stumble and mutter a bit about “family and religion or something” demonstrating that all they’re really doing is parroting someone else’s catch phrase. And even when they can delineate what they really mean by the term (indicating they’ve given it some thought) just as often they’ll reveal a stunning lack of historical knowlege while doing so.

Ditto with ideologues of other persuasions (heck, anarcho-tyranist lefties often can’t even define their terms at all, because, often, all they have is parroting-points).

Off to catalog stands of pine trees in America’s Third World County, now…

* I always seem to have to pause and think to differentiate between “clamor” (make an outcry, hubbub, commotion) and “clamber” (climb awkwardly, scramble, struggle gropingly), although here either would probably have worked. 😉

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Pitchin’ a concept…

Off-the-wall

For all the folks missing their “Harry Potter” fix cos Rowling’s not doing that gig any more, hows about someone comes up with a series about a Canine Witch… with a crab family for her “familiar”.

Yep, a Canine Witch with crabs. Hey! I can see the first movie already! Bitchin’! (As Sherry M. wrote in my first high school yearbook, many, many, many decades of moons ago… Hey! I earned that by letting her copy my tests in biology. *heh*.)

Be hard to come up with a catchy name for the central character, though, since NOW has a lock on all the really good ones.

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The Bell Curve

No, not that one (although there are strong corelations); I’m talking about the reality bell curve, where the left-hand side indicates propensity toward fantasy unrelated to reality (or “reality-based fantasy” among its most rational inhabitants) and the right-hand side indicates a propensity toward a connection with “real” reality in ones thinking. Or think of such a bell curve as left-hand side: arational; right-hand side: rational.

In such a model, the political Left/Right divide begins to make sense…

Those of us stuck in the middle can only fantasize about politics driven by reason.

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Hmmm… Harvey has another take on the issue.

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Among Likely Voters, Whatsisname/Palin by 10 Points?

That’s apparently what Gallup says, now. (h.t. STACLU)

When the redes are in your favor, though, check your six…

And…

What of the likely Electoral College breakdown in the polls? Subtracting the “tossup” states parameter at Real Clear Politics’s composite of the pollsters’ output yields an eight point spread between The Obamassiah/The Plagiarist Hack and Whatsisname/Palin. Advantage: The Obamassiah/The Plagiarist Hack.

And there are still what? 63 Days til November 5?

A long row to hoe in tall cotton…

[micro-mini update: *argh!* I know election day is November 4th this year, but I keep getting it wrong because “Guy Fawkes Day” is November 5th… seriously, that is the reason. It’s a BIG holiday for me… *heh*]

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“The Stupid Party” Strikes Again

Longtime Republicans have called their own party “The Stupid Party” because of phone calls like I just recieved from the McCain Campaign. Seems I’m invited (only God knows why) to a McCain-Palin “Victory Rally” 75 miles away from twc central. The doors open at 8:30 a.m. and the rally begins at 10:30 a.m.

Monday morning.

Cluebat to The Stupid Party: Your base isn’t manufactured “victim” welfare Democrats. Your base actually works for a living.

Dumbasses.

Trackposted to Pet’s Garden Blog, No Apology, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Pink Flamingo, Woman Honor Thyself, and Democrat=Socialist, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Travel Through Time in the Middle East

For a cool, not entirely inaccurate OK, OK, moderately accurate, within the constraints of the medium (just quibbles for the most part) 90-second overview of the past few thousand years’ history of the Middle East, check this flash animated map out.


CLICK HERE for the animation

While it won’t illuminate much for folks who don’t already have some grounding in the area’s history, it’s a pretty cool review for folks who do.

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Heigh-Ho…

Or perhaps, “Eighteen tons and what do you get… ”

Well, at least I have refuge from the word (and activity) that gave Maynard G Krebs heart palpitations every time it was uttered…

Yeh, that’s the ticket: home sweet home, refuge from a world gone mad. But then…

Lovely Daughter has planned on moving back into the twc central catacombs (finished basement), which means… the room that we’ve used for storage for the past five or six years must be cleaned out. Unfortunately, that happens to be the single largest room in the house, about 10 SF larger than the living room, in fact. And it is (was) packed to the gills.

*heh*

Sooo, in the past week, as time and energy has permitted, Son&Heir and I have been sorting and re-packing and throwing stuff out, no matter how appealing the junk may be. Including, but certainly not limited to, a storehouse of “ancient” computers and computer parts, 8088/8086/286/386/486 and old Pentiums/586/686 computers, stripped of usable (or even potentially usable) parts (which are now packed away and stored much, much more compactly) and hauled out for disposal. Eleven of ’em so far.

Oh, I’m keeping 6 of the older, rarely-booted 486 and Pentium boxes, primarily just for fun, although I do have some old files archived on a 486 I really ought to transfer elsewhere. Heck, it’s an old Win 3.11 for Workgroups comp I no longer even have a network card in… getting that thing on the network ought to be a buncha fun all by its lonesome. *heh*

And then there are all the peripherals. Most of them are sorted pretty well, but many of them just need to be tossed. Who needs a bunch of perfectly usable, but slow, CD read-only drives, anyway? (OK, I’ll hang on to the NEC CD changer drive, cos it’s cool, and I can use it building a media center. A six CD shuffler would be OK in a multi-drive system. Besides, the faceplate’s already painted black, which should match up well with the rest of my components.)

And, of course, the computer related junk is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were. Boxes of books that we want to hang onto are going in pastic tubs and then into the newly-emptied storage shed outside (and yes, that was a fun chore, too :-)).

More fun ‘n’ games? Yeh, what I want to do in that room, after a thorough cleaning, is reseal and “plaster” the walls, add a ceiling fan (have one) and ethernet cabling (2 of 4 of the other rooms downstairs already have ethernet, and I think the bathroom doesn’t really need it, do you? :-)). Oh, and a little work on the closet in that room might be in order. Already have a “new” door set aside for the place and Lovely Daughter will need to pick out her own paint color(s). Yep. Another two weeks from today should be about right.

So, who needs [that word that drove Maynard G Krebs around the bend] to stay busy?

😉

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Distrust Authority

This is a re-run from “I don’t know when; I’m too lazy to search” *heh*

I believe people today are too “credentials crazy” and rely too heavily on someone’s C.V. to provide validation for their opinions, including blog postings. While I have gone the university/grad school route (in a couple of different fields), I try to avoid citing those degrees or even my experience in those fields, as much as possible, to stamp “authority” over an opinion. If a particular personal experience (or set of experiences) can serve as support for other material from other sources, then that seems valid, but just saying “I have a (or several) degree(s) in such-and-so and work in the field” as an argument in and of itself for or against a position is just so much bullshit.

OK, rabbit trail (although this does indeed go somewhere, and will be revelatory). Authority has several faces, and several sources. Some legitimate and others not so (or not at all).

Two classes make religious authoritarian statements (although one denies it): actual, well, “religious leaders” and soi disant “scientists” who make religious claims about “science” (yes, there’s a good reason for the scare quotes).

In the area of relatively above board religious statements, there’s divine authority and human opinion. Wanna argue with God? Be my guest. (Glutton for punishment.) Some religious leaders claim divine authority. Tricky question. If one accepts the Bible as divinely authoritative, then a religious leader within Christianity (or I’d suppose Judaism) could claim to speak with authority if what he’s saying is… scripture. Otherwise, it’s just his opinion, and that’s only as authoritative as it is subject to reason, morality and scripture itself (we are talking about a particular set of authority here, after all). Any religious leader who simply asserts his opinion as authoritative because of his position within some religious hierarchy is playing at being the devil.

And yeh, if you wanna make an issue of it, I’ll argue that assertion from scripture.

Scientists as religious dogmatists? Global warming. There. That should be enough to tell any reasonable person to check the data, examine the processes, testing instruments and underlying assumptions at the very least before accepting any likely lie beginning with “scientists believe” or “scholars are in agreement” or any such crypto-cultic balderdash.

Oh! Lambasting “authorities”! Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan. Just buy it and read. I don’t claim Hogan’s an “authority” on any of the subjects he touches on (nor does he), but he does point out some serious holes in the (really) religious statements of faith in scientism. Anthropogenic Global Warmism? Neodarwinism? Heck, “Einsteinism”. *heh* All just sects of the religion of scientism. And none of them nearly so authoritative as scientism would have you believe.

But what of darned near all other authority?

First, I distrust ALL assertions of authority. Unless a person can prove by citation of verifiable fact and via sound reasoning that their assertions are valid, then I don’t consider their assertions to have any authority at all. Credentials don’t count with me.

That includes doctors.

Lawyers.

Preachers.

Teachers (of anything). Particularly, if a teacher cannot do–competently–what they are purporting to teach others, then I tend to write them off as blowhards.

I will always place more credence in a carpenter telling me “This is how it’s done” (cos the carpenter’s authority can be checked by looking at his work) than I would a politician telling me, well, anything (because a politician can be checked by looking at his work *heh*), but particularly, “This is just political reality.” “Political reality” is a self-referential construct, only as “real” as the power we give to (or is illegitimately seized by) the politician claiming it.

What of authority as exercised by various civil governments? More and more, if measured by the principles this nation was built on as articulated by the Founders’ generation particularly, civil government authority is illegitimate. Think Kelo or Martha Stewart or Ramos and Compean or Ruby Ridge or the TSA or… (yes, the list is long and growing)

In fact, the more powerful the government entity, the more abusive and illegitimate its authority seems to be. Which is why so many of the easy pickings in governmental/bureaucratic abuses are from federal exercises of authority.

In fact, if all I were to say about the illegitimate use of “feddle gummint” authority–indeed, abuse of citizens that is in exactly the same vein as those abuses the Founders decried in the Declaratiion of Independence–were “Lon Horiuchi” then that would be enough to demonstrate absolute proof of Samuel Francis’ “anarcho-tyranny” label of bureaucratic/governmental abuse of authority.

And oh, my! did the Department of “Justice” cover itself in shame in the Ruby Ridge/Lon Horiuchi coverup or not? Department of “Jam-up-citizens” would be a more accurate name…

Authority: distrust it. Make it prove itself worthy of respect. Martha Stewart is my hero(ine). If only because her case made manifest the depravity of abusive “feddle gummint” turf-building anarcho-tyrannists. She was punished under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for “Lying to Government Agents”–according to testimony by the government agents in question AND a witness the “feddle gummint” persecutors later indicted for perjury for his testimony against Stewart. (Yeh, I don’t recall reading how that ended, but that they themselves indicted their own well-coached witness, the one who was THE critical nail in Martha’s coffin, says a lot, doesn’t it?)

At least some good, of a sort, has come out of the Martha Principle: “How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents.”

Read it. Somewhere, there’s a feddle prosecutor or bureaucrat who can nail you for breaking a law or regulatory rule you don’t know exists. All that’s needed is for a feddle gummint bureaucrat or prosecutor to set his/her sights on you and decide they want your hide. That’s an essential element of anarcho-tyranny: the ability to pick and choose among thousands of regulations and laws and selectively enforce them for personal gain–turf-building, career-enhancement or simply petty revenge.

That’s where abuse of Constitutional authority has led us.

ANY abuse of authority is just as evil. Yes, evil.

Distrust authority. Men lie, usually for short-term gain. Bureaucrats are more likely because they are petty, venal, corrupt and/or incompetent than not. Politicians are more likely to be all of those AND consumate liars than not.

And that brings me back to a revelation. Yeh, I have some academic creds. They are all crap. At best. From my earliest years, I learned to tune out the bullshit artists who claimed to be teachers (though I was fortunate to have some at all stages of my formal education path who were able doers in their field, as well). I consider myself semi-literate. Not a day goes by that I don’t make a new (to me) discovery, a “Hey! I didn’t know that!” kinda experience. Not all are as shocking as picking up an uncle’s “Bible”… to discover that it was in Greek (“But, but, I just heard him reading a passage aloud in English!”). Put me in a mind to get me one-a those thangs, too…

No, not all my “Aha!”s open up what seems to be a whole new world, as that experience did, but daily I learn new things that remind me–daily–how much there is to know that I do not.

And that also makes me a bit suspicious of folks who say with “authority” that things are such-and-so, when not only can I see exceptions to their model, but once firmly held their (false) view myself…

Question authority. Give persons “in authority” only the respect they are due… which means, only when they are right or at least honestly attempting to argue from reason and verifiable fact. When they are wrong, blow them a big, fat, juicy-wet raspberry. Ridicule is the highest, best response to false authority, the most generous response false authority deserves.

Want my C.V.? Go suck on a rock. My C.V. is irrelevant.

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