We must be careful what we ask for from our government. Why? Check out that graphic above. It represents the balance of powers between the three branches of government, the fact that the people we elect are so untrustworthy that we have to figure out ways to prevent them from abusing the power we give them.
We make jokes about politicians, and we tend to think of them as a special class of human beings, but politicians are not all that extraordinary. They may on the average be a bit more intelligent and gifted with words, but they are not any more or any less wise than the rest of us. That is, we will find the same character flaws we find in our leaders in the rest of our fellow citizens. Likely, we also won’t find more or less wisdom in our self. So, not one of us is in a great position to demand wisdom from others. Yet we often do.
Here is a typical example, A Christian Nation? (insanitybytes2.wordpress.com). No. insanitybytes2 isn’t holding others to an absurd standard. She is calling for grace, forgiveness, and some thought.
I don’t like the idea of reaching across the aisle and working together, especially in this neck of the woods, because there is a lot of greed, envy, corruption, perversion, hostility. Like, I don’t even trust the dog catcher around here. Ultimately however, the path forward requires the little people on the ground to build alliances among ourselves, to come together to solve problems, to find some likemindedness. We have to stop dehumanizing one another and start perceiving one another as being made in the image of God.
I honestly believe our politics, our leadership is simply a symptom of a greater disease, one that runs through the little people of this nation where we have bought into a lot of lies about all our alleged divisions and we’re now trying to one up each another with our vastly superior ideologies. That was no accident, that’s the bread and circuses that is always used to divert our attention so corruption can climb the corporate political ladder unhindered.
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2022/09/19/a-christian-nation/comment-page-1/#comment-141951
insanitybytes2 points to two bloggers and for the most part she compliments them. The first posted Please Don’t Call America a Christian Nation (blueskiesandgreenpastures.com). It is easy to agree with most of the material in this writer’s post (writer is pkadams). Nevertheless, the writer makes a strategic error. Instead of focusing on a solution, she focuses almost solely on the problem (see ARE YOU FOCUSING ON THE PROBLEM OR THE SOLUTION?).
Is America a Christian nation? No. Have Christians done all that God has called upon us to do? No, but does pkadams suggest a solution? No. So, what is it that Christians have not done that we should feel guilty about? When we call for action, we need to be specific about what we think people need to do.
Does that seem like a trifling complaint? Keep in mind that Liberal Democrat politicians and their news media allies have published reams of material and filled the airwaves and numberless video streams enumerating all the problems we have. Then Liberal Democrat politicians have proudly boasted that they have the SOLUTIONS for all our innumerable problems. After that these same politicians and news media allies have proceeded to guilt us into giving them all the power and money they want without any serious debate.
DEBATE????!!!!! Can’t have that! Like the Wizard of Oz those politicians don’t want us to examine what is behind the curtain. They don’t want anyone to read what is in those bills they pass in the middle of the night. That is why they greet any resistance with charges of selfishness, accusations of greed, and venomous name calling.
What about the second blogger? The Night Wind may usually write good stuff, but I don’t recommend either “Godless Capitalism is No Solution Either” (nightwind777.blogspot.com) or “Godless Capitalism, Part Two”. Why not? I think The Night Wind is misrepresenting the opinions of some serious thinkers that the American public would find worth their hearing.
Oddly, The Night Wind quotes these people and he links to their articles, but he still takes their quotes out of context. For example, in “Godless Capitalism is No Solution Either”, The Night Wind takes a passage out America Delira by Victor Davis Hanson, and he condemns Hanson for not realizing that it is Wall Street—and it is Big Business, not Big Government, that is driving the woke agenda. That is just a weird interpretation of Hanson’s article. Who does Hanson identify as the culprit?
An affluent, bored, and leisured society had long decided that poverty was not an absolute but relative—to be gauged not by mass access to air conditioning, plentiful food, a car, and electronic entertainment—but to the degree all of that was not divided up proportionally. And thus, someone or something must be found culpable for the asymmetry in satisfying the appetites. Presto! Government, the media, the university, and the popular culture went after the culprits.
We went mad then because we easily could. And we could not because we were poor and oppressed, but because we were rich and bored.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/11/america-delira/
Hanson is going after our elites, not just the World Economic Forum or Big Business or Big Government. Hanson is attacking a flaw ideology.
Similarly, in “Godless Capitalism, Part Two”, The Night Wind attacks Dennis Prager for what he writes in Nice People Do a Lot of Damage (https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/13/nice-people-do-a-lot-of-damage/).
What is Prager’s article about? Here how it starts.
It can be said that gaining wisdom is a process of gaining some dark insights into life.
One such insight is this: A lot of evil has been abetted by nice people.
continued => https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/13/nice-people-do-a-lot-of-damage/
It is not exactly nice to be called nice. Check out the etymology of nice (etymonline.com).
Nice is not the same thing as good, and Prager makes that clear. What Prager is trying to explain is how some people can seem to be good in their personal life (the micro) and still support awful beliefs like Communism or Nazism (the macro).
Just the same, The Night Wind still finds a way to use that article to attack Prager.
“The human being is composed of two moral components—the micro and the macro. In a truly good human being—”good” is not the same as “nice”—one is good in both realms. It is therefore quite possible to be nice in the micro and hold awful values for society; and it is quite possible to have excellent macro values and not be a particularly nice person.” No, Dennis. What you say is not true. There is no dichotomy between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ approaches to society; there is only the element of Virtue or lack of it. Good people want to do good things; bad people do not; and their motives are reflective of the criterion upon which their actions are judged good or bad.
Prager’s position is essentially a morally relativist one, though he would never admit that. Belief in this ideology is one reason why we see so much hypocrisy on the political Right these days.
http://nightwind777.blogspot.com/2022/09/godless-capitalism-is-no-solution-part.html
The Night Wind‘s interpretation of what Prager wrote is absurd. I doubt Prager thought he was writing about an ideology. All he was doing is describing how we can compartmentalize our behavior. Think about the Nazi prison guard who both approved of Nazism and worked in a concentration camp full of starving Jews and other enemies of The Third Reich. How did that guy manage to go home and have fun playing with his children? It boggles the mind, but it still happened.
Nonetheless, that did not stop The Night Wind from using Prager’s ideology to attack other Conservatives.
If one has seen some recent headlines among the Controlled Opposition Conservative Media, A pair of politically ambitious Republican Governors are proving their ability not to be nice on the macro level by making a big show of putting illegal immigrants on various forms of transportation and shipping them to ‘sanctuary cities.’ These actions have garnered effusive praise from many on the knee-jerk Right, but even from the standpoint of pure Realpolitik, it’s a stupid idea. If illegals should all be deported—like these jokers claim to want—how is sending them to Sanctuary Cities where they won’t be deported supposed to accomplish that?
http://nightwind777.blogspot.com/2022/09/godless-capitalism-is-no-solution-part.html
Controlled Opposition Conservative Media? I suppose there is a bit of paranoia in what The Night Wind writes. Can’t blame him for that, however. Our leaders have lied to us too much. If enough people lie and lie all the time, there is a point where we start expecting lies. I wonder how he distinguishes truth from lies. I wonder how any of us do.
Is shipping illegal aliens directly to ‘sanctuary cities’ a bad idea? It has most certainly exposed the hypocrisy of the open borders advocates. What doesn’t get much notice is the fact that the illegal aliens shipped to the ‘sanctuary cities’ are actually better off. Because the hordes of illegal aliens crossing the border are now so huge, the border cities don’t have the facilities to feed, cloth, and shelter them. So, whereas Democrats are shipping the illegal aliens in secret during the dark of night, Republicans chose to do it in broad daylight.
Were the Republicans supposed to ship the illegal aliens out at night? Was that their sin?
So, what is the lesson here? We cannot perfect each other. The imperfect cannot perfect the imperfect. We have not got the words. God has them, but God did not give us His words to serve our own ends. We can only bring another to the foot of the cross, to listen to God speak.
insanitybytes is right. We need to treat each other with grace and forgiveness. In particular, we need to give some thought about how we should treat those who should be our friends. Instead of expecting anyone to agree perfectly with us, we may wish to give other people the same consideration when they pursue their own beliefs that we expect when we pursue our own.
Of course, we will still come into conflict, but without grace and forgiveness those conflicts will be far more bitter. May our Lord have mercy upon us. May our Lord give us the grace and forgiveness to love each other.
Citizen Tom 
Reblogged this on boudica.us.
Thanks very much!