Harold and Me

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Administrator

Harold is at it again.

No, not my brother Harold.

The other Harold.

The Harold that goes about setting dates for the second coming of Jesus, aka, the Rapture and the end of the world.

That Harold is at it again, predicting a date for the Rapture: May 21, 2011 is it, kaput, Harold says. May 22 will be – well, Harold’s second coming? He did this once before, you know, back in 1994. My advice: prepare for Harold’s encore, not the Rapture.

Meanwhile, however, please accept my apology. I am thoroughly embarrassed that anyone named Harold would engage in such nonsense.

But in spite of my chagrin, Harold Camping does, perhaps every 17 years?

You should know, however, that my brother Harold doesn’t. He wouldn’t. In fact, my brother Harold really wasn’t.

Wasn’t Harold, I mean. Hey, maybe that get’s him off the hook?

Let me explain.

Hanging Harold

I need to explain, first to get my brother Harold off the hook; second to hang, if possible, the other Harold on a hook of his own making, that of a false prophet; and third to keep you from climbing on the hook with Harold along with your bank account which he would like you to send him. Doing so, he implies, will make you lighter, more airworthy, and more likely to fly up to meet Jesus in the air when he comes on May 21.

Let’s see…that gives you less than five months to sell all and send the proceeds including savings to Camping. Better get going. We assume he will use your money to save souls in the chaos following the Rapture because he sure as hell is not going with you.

Why?

One, false prophets don’t get into heaven.

Two, there‘s no place in heaven for him to spend your money.

So three, Harold has no plans to go. Earthbound, baby, he is happy as Scrooge McDuck diving in dough, swimming in swag, doing the backstroke through the greenbacks.

Say bye, bye, to the money pie the dough for which Harold is rolling out right now. It is April Fool’s in January: there ain’t nobody going to heaven on May 21 except by way of Forest Lawn, Eternal Valley, Inglewood Memorial, or some such equivalent. If you think otherwise, I bet Harold’s got you by the bank account.

The other Harold, I mean, Harold Camping.

Not the Harold who wasn’t, Harold my brother.

The Harold who wasn’t

The Harold who wasn’t actually was christened “Arthur Paul Walter Martin.”

But they called him Harold.

Four given names, plus the family surname, but still they called him Harold.

Word was a maiden aunt who idolized him sort of took over the task of raising him after his mother’s death. That would be my father Arthur Gustav’s first wife. His second wife (and last, by the way) Myrtle was my mother. The maiden aunt disliked the given names Arthur, Paul, Walter, and Martin. On her own she called her motherless charge Harold.

The name stuck.

To me he was always Harold, my one and only big brother, even if in fact a half-brother. We shared the same Dad. But since cancer claimed Harold’s Mom, I came along in a second marriage, different mother.

Harold never spoke about his Mom. I’m not sure he remembered much. But as for Dad, after his death we often talked about how he modeled music and Bible study for Harold and me. I remember home as a place of copious outpourings of musically-accented Bible-centered family gatherings in between Sundays, which we spent at the church house, of course. That was Crystal Street Assembly of God in Elgin, Illinois, and later one or another of several Assemblies of God in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Not that we were church hoppers. We certainly were not. Dad saw to that. It’s just that after leaving Elgin for Albuquerque we joined the newly founded First Assembly of God on Second Street downtown Albuquerque, the very first AG in town. Harold with wife Glenn and son Larry then helped pioneer Second Assembly, north of town (officially Revival Tabernacle). When Dad moved the rest of us south of town, we helped found yet another Assemblies of God Church, Valley Gospel Tabernacle with grandpa’s (my Mom’s Dad) revival tent as the initial sanctuary.

We got behind Valley Gospel AG as a natural outgrowth of those musically-accented home Bible study-worship times. I can hear Harold’s accordion (he was a classically trained pianist, but it’s not practical to drag a Steinway around) blending with Dad’s banjo or mandolin with other family members on a couple of guitars, trombone, and a second accordion. But I can also hear the various voices, not merely in joyous song, but in Bible reading and teaching, followed by questions, answers, and prayer.

You should know that along with the Bible, Dad read Spurgeon shaded by a Lutheran heritage. He migrated to the AG brand of Pentecostalism after meeting up with the Salvation Army people as a soldier in France. The SA folk had just enough charismatic flair that later Dad went looking for what logically went with the SA fire, the fullness of the Holy Spirit. His search led him to the AG folk whose theology, unlike many strands of early Pentecostalism, had just enough Reformed flavor that his search ended.

Dad was not a five point Calvinist, the Lutheran shading was too deep. But as for sovereign grace, well: sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solo Christo, soli Deo gloria.

He embraced fully the five solas of the Protestant Reformation: by Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, and glory to God alone.

So to hell with Harold alone.

This both Harold and I learned in Dad’s Reformed-flavored, Pentecostal-seasoned home Bible studies balanced with the solid classical wisdom of Western Civilization shaped by a strong connection to the organized church house. Dad believed good people from the apostles on had good things to say we needed to hear, and good people in the church house even during its most apostate times had preserved this body of wisdom and passed it along. We learned that this is how we received the biblical texts we now study, along with other historical documents that shine into present times with knowledge and understanding. As a given, then, we assumed a balance between our own creative, independent thinking and the settled, proven, accumulated knowledge of the past and present in our approach to Scripture. We held the opened Bible in one hand, the accumulated wisdom of church and civilization in the other. We read Scripture in the context of all of Scripture, but also all of Scripture in the context of all of reality, or at least that part of it accessible to us. In this way, we grew up learning to critique all the lame-brained religious theories that came along including especially date-based rapturism and lone-prophet messianism.

Hello Harold.

As can best be figured from Harold Camping’s own sources, at 89 years of age Harold is president of Family Stations, Inc., a California-based, non profit, ministry with worldwide broadcast facilities. These include more than 150 outlets in the United States.

With a Dutch Reformed Church background including a period teaching Bible classes, he earned a BS in Civil Engineering from UC Berkeley in 1942. After founding his own construction company, he went on to found Family Stations, Inc. aka, Family Radio with the help of a couple other people. Thereupon, he began accumulating FM licenses on commercial frequencies before many owned FM radios. His holdings now include affiliates in the New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore/Washington, and San Francisco radio markets which are on prime commercial frequencies. Along the way Camping sold his construction company to serve as fulltime operator of Family Radio.

Obviously, he is a gifted business person with remarkable strategic foresight. As such, he is a brilliant marketer and extremely ambitious, even sinister competitor. In pursuing his vision for Family Radio, he left destruction behind, savagely decimating unsuspecting potential rivals while cornering a biased, one-sided hearing for his own views.

Following Harold

It happened that for awhile he provided access to radio broadcasting for many grateful pastors, even as he launched his own nightly call in show with a talk-radio format. Listeners and callers were primarily parishioners from churches with pastors with programs on Harold’s network. Strategically building a loyal audience from this group, he enticed his listeners with mysterious, esoteric, allegorical interpretations of Scripture merging his technical civil engineering-math background with various obscure biblical passages mentioning numbers. He sold this as hidden wisdom found nowhere else. To an alert Bible student this “nowhere else” claim rings alarms. But to the ordinary church goer it can seem to be a source of exciting, avant-garde, secret knowledge putting them “in the know,” as it were. Pastors had little chance for corrective teaching on air lest Harold pull the broadcast plug on them. Thus, he had deceptively allowed them to provide him with a loyal audience while painting themselves into the proverbial corner.

Then in 1994 Harold announced the End of the World, First Edition. He even published a book about it. When the prophecy failed, his way out was a brilliant marketing ploy: the Great Tribulation had begun and God had abandoned the church. He then began to urge his listeners to leave their churches all of which were now under God’s judgment. Harold alone had the skinny on the Bible. From now on, listeners should affiliate only with Family Radio as their voice of truth, authority, and direction. He literally pulled the plug on pastor’s who protested. Many churches lost members who exited, following Harold.

Now we have “End of the World, Second Edition.”

Dear Friends, this is Harold. I now see that Jesus will return on May 21, 2011, and the world will end on the following October 21. Send me all your money…

Yes, O Harold, the one and only.

Harold and me

You see my problem with Harold? Camping I mean. My brother Harold and me are tight; he is now in heaven with Jesus anyway. Ironically, I think, he just went the way that others will go to be with Jesus this coming May 21, notwithstanding the prediction of Harold, the one and only. I find it ironic because my brother, along with all believers who have died in the Lord, forecast exactly what will happen on May 21. He did this without saying a word way before Harold, the one and only, conjured up his false prophecy. How do I know it is false? Because out of all the days Jesus’ coming might happen, it will not happen on the day Harold predicts it. Jesus stated plainly no one knows the day or the hour of his coming. That makes Harold, the one and only, a liar, which is bad enough. But in lying about the meaning of my brother’s death as applied to the death of every believer in Jesus upcoming on May 21, he dirties the name Harold with deceit and greed.

So Harold Camping, we – Harold my brother retroactively, but I currently – call you to account before God in heaven and man on earth. Repent and believe the gospel. All liars will have their part in the Lake of Fire. So I predict now that apart from repentance you’re headed there. Harold, hell awaits. Knowing the Harold who wasn’t, he concurs.

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Meandering Through the Marigolds No More

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Administrator

Sorry folks, but it’s simply true: the days when we could meander through the marigolds while ignoring events beyond the garden wall are no more.

Who wants to know that A strong sense of pessimism shrouded the start of an economic summit…with…world leaders…sharply divided…failure could have severe consequences that…would ‘bankrupt’ the world.”

But we do know, like it or not.

And we know more: that a Jew building a home in Jerusalem stirs such resentment in a Muslim kneeling on a prayer rug in Jakarta that a Christian planting flowers in Joplin cannot buy fertilizer without thinking that they make bombs of the stuff.

 “People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world,” Jesus predicted. Like it or not, we literally “see” his words being fulfilled in ways unimagined till now.

If not global bankruptcy, bombs meant to kill, maim, and injure us make headlines.

Wish you may, wish you might, the ubiquitous presence of information increasingly makes wishing upon a star that it will all go away useless. Information impinges upon your peace; knowing what you’d rather not know disturbs your equilibrium.

Is it possible we know too much?

What do we do with all the information?

More than marigolds

First, do not fear. Neither should you retreat into rapture-mania. Rather, know that God purposes that you get such information for your benefit.

He has more than meandering through the marigolds in mind for us.

 Marigolds can stir up your allergies, anyway. Did you know some species have a scent distinct enough to keep rabbits away from the carrot patch? So strolling by the marigolds scattered through, say, the Descanso Gardens “edible estates” display, may not always be a good thing after all.

Still, I bet you, like me, meander somewhere from time to time focused on as much peace, pleasantness, and insulated “while away the time” diversions as possible.

Not that this is bad; bad is that we’re finding less of it is possible.

Even so, though others faint we do not. In fact, if you grasp what is happening in this vast flood of disturbing information, and get in on the flow of God’s good purpose, you just will find yourself tending a garden of blessing and prosperity only God can plant.

So let me tell you about such a garden.

Marigolds on a mission

More and more between now and Jesus appearing in glory the marigolds will be harder to come by as an escape from unpleasantness overwhelming the world beyond the garden wall. But not to worry. God intends this not because he dislikes marigolds or begrudges you time spent with them but because he likes mission even more.

So right in the middle of the bright reds, oranges, and yellows of the marigolds you will more often be stumbling upon the larger concerns of the God who created the colors but also the connectedness of quarks, electrons, neurons, and nerve endings that makes the colors and your perception of them possible. He will allow the very same connectedness that makes your enjoyment of nature’s beauty possible make you aware of the enormous expansion of evil engaged in an attempt to destroy the beauty. He will do so not to distract from the marigolds; but to engage you in a mission he has launched against evil.

In doing this, he will get us into a different sort of garden.

So do not be bothered that your eye that catches beauty may also catch images on a smart phone as you walk through the garden; or on a computer, television, or movie screen not far away from, if not in the garden. Expect that your ear that catches the chirps of birds frequenting the garden might have to strain to hear above the growing din of unpleasant broadcast messages more and more difficult to ignore.

The wonder of this is that the same connectedness of quarks, electrons, neurons, and nerve endings that makes enjoyment of the garden possible also makes the flood of information possible. With a little imagination, you might think of the flood of information as marigolds on a mission because the same subatomic structure underlies the whole shebang. More importantly, the same word of God holds it all together and assigns the wonderful particles of matter to their task. So what we see, hear, taste, touch, feel, or smell, whether in a garden of marigolds or an Apple store with iPhones, iPads, and PCs, consists of the same basic stuff ordered in various ways by God’s command. While some of the stuff comprising reality forms beautiful flowers eliciting wonder making peaceful escapes possible, more of the same stuff forms less beautiful but more powerful dynamic structures eliciting a potency making limitless connectedness possible.

Indeed, you and I living at this wonderful moment in God’s story are stepping into a garden where technology and horticulture merge, mission and marigolds meet in the purposes of the God who enables both to be. You are coming into the garden of God that is the creation redeemed in every aspect by Jesus through the cross and the resurrection. Thus, you are engaging in a mission into the nooks and crannies, corners and crevices of creation to reclaim what he redeemed in anticipation of a complete restoration. Unlike the fracturing, dividing, and pulling apart of the old creation damaged by disobedience, in this newly unfolding reordering of reality the beauty of marigolds is but the flip side of the dynamism of mission: where the one goes, the other tags along.

Monsters amongst the marigolds

So of what use is a flood of information?

Not much – until it is filtered and focused. Then it can be of great use, for good or evil.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that until recent times the powers of this world – visible and invisible – tightly controlled the information flow, which was not so hard since the flow was low and slow; more a trickle than a flood. Various anomalies resulted.

For example, the famous  Battle of New Orleans, the final battle and greatest victory for the U.S. in the War of 1812, was fought two weeks after the war ended. The U. S. and Britain had signed a peace treaty in what is today Belgium on Christmas Eve of 1814; news of the signing did not reach troops in the field in Louisiana until February 1815. The main battle of New Orleans took place on January 8. Similarly, the last major battles of the Civil War, The Battle of Columbus (GA) and the  Battle of West Point were fought on April 16, 1865, a week after Lee had surrendered to Grant on April 9.

The point is elites in power decided things – for good and bad – without the common people affected thereby knowing. In fact, it was often assumed they should not know, and so channels of information delivery were tightly controlled.

As a very sinister example, Woodrow Wilson so tightly controlled and manipulated the flow of information reaching the American public in the years leading to and following WW1 that no one outside a small, closed circle within the White House knew that Wilson was entirely incapacitated due to a stroke the final year of his presidency. As a result, unknown to the American public, Edith Wilson served as a surrogate President secretly carrying out the duties of the office.

Interestingly, Richard Nixon, who saw himself as inheriting the mantle of Wilson, was infamous for his sinister secrecy and self-serving use of information, injuring many people in the process. His presidency was marked by “flagrant abuse of presidential power and the public trust,” according to one source.

This changed, of course, with Watergate. We can only guess what injury to the nation might have been had not the Watergate episode exposed a dark side of his presidency to the public. More importantly, Watergate marked a new phase in the management of information, and the role of the common people in the information flow. In the sovereign purposes of God, Watergate became a primary gate God opened forcing the powers of this world to let go of what to that point they had controlled so tightly.

Watergate was  “a critical milestone, especially for broadcast media. For the first time…Americans could ‘enter into the chambers of government’ thanks to enterprising reporters and the unprecedented 300-plus hours television networks devoted to covering Watergate hearings and events. Viewers became acquainted with diverse personalities such as John Dean, Charles Colson, H.R. Haldeman, Senate Watergate Committee Chairman Sam Ervin, and felon and future talk show host G. Gordon Liddy.”

In short, Watergate exposed monsters amongst the marigolds, evil crooks inside the White House, parading unseen right under our noses in the middle of that beautifully landscaped and wonderfully appointed 18 acres of hallowed American ground that is home to the highest and best aspirations of the American dream. In doing so, it opened an information gate, unleashing a pent up torrent that had been pressing to get out at least since Wilson invented the autocratic presidency cloaked in secrecy.

“The Watergate era did produce several noteworthy reforms dealing with abuse-of-power issues…such as the War Powers Act, which mandates congressional approval for initiating military actions; the Fair Campaign Practices Act, which demands stricter accountability regarding campaign contributions; and the Freedom of Information Act, which allows citizens access to some government information.”

What made Watergate so important?

First, Watergate coincided with a vastly increased expansion of that ubiquitous connectedness that makes it increasingly difficult for monsters to hide amongst the marigolds. It came as a corollary to technology enabling those who embrace the technology to be the new gatekeepers of the information.

As the technology becomes increasingly democratized, gate-keeping does also. Beginning with the telephone, movies, radio, and then TV, technology advances led to the PC, camcorder, cell phone, Internet, and cable TV. Now with a Smartphone one has the power of the entire revolution in one device held in one hand.

But equally important, Watergate supplied a rationale for egalitarian distribution of information; it cried out for a democratization of the information flow, and equality of access to the information reservoir. It made potential information heroes or villains of common people.

So which will we be? On the one hand, we have reached the point that anyone or everyone can be a gatekeeper; this means in effect there are no gatekeepers: the information flow is so vast, pervasive, and directionless it risks becoming mere static.

On the other, the demand is for people who care as much for marigolds as they dislike monsters; that is, people who will take up trowel, rake, scythe, and hoe, to dig into soil of the flower garden freshly moistened by a flood of information to weed out the monsters amongst the marigolds.

If the result is a jolt to an elite ruling class, so be it. This is exactly as God intends. Good people can now match the monsters’ manipulation of information with filters of honesty designed to weed out the lies. This is nothing less than a transfer of power to people who can focus truth that emerges on the monsters, but also on the marigolds to illuminate the glory of God’s creation that stands out when we chase the monsters away.

Measuring marigolds in the garden of God

In the many varieties of flowers offered by a popular Internet-based florist, I have yet to run across a marigold. This so, perhaps, because the measure of a marigold is not in its value as an accent in a bouquet as much as in its more practical uses.

The marigold is an edible flower, and a smelly one, too. Planted in a vegetable garden it keeps pests away and still can be added as an accent to a vegetable dish. The colorful beauty of a marigold, then, is almost secondary.

But not quite. The true measure of a marigold is that it is beautiful and practical, too. This double-whammy valuation makes it a candidate for centerpiece in the garden of God.

For believers in Jesus, the information revolution is like this: it is the flip side of a renewed creation to which God is restoring the beauty marred by evil powers of “this world:” not Planet Earth, as such, but the control system inspired by hell that until the cross and resurrection enveloped Planet Earth. To cover fully, this requires another post. The point is that as a result of the cross and resurrection Jesus Christ is Lord of All, including Planet Earth. He aims to remove the ugliness from the Planet not you.

Thus, he brings about the information revolution as if he were planting a new batch of marigolds in the middle of the garden that will one day be a completely renewed Planet Earth. The precious, beautiful, wonderful Holy Spirit has been planted in us as a foretaste of the very power that will completely transform the planet when Jesus appears in glory; but he also transforms us now, in order that we might transform the environment around us wherever we are. Our mission is to exercise faith, confess his authority, and apply the power given to us as we bear fruit and release gifts of the Holy Spirit.

This should happen not just in a service on Sunday morning but 24/7.

He “uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).

Hey, what can I say? We are to bloom beautifully but be smelly, too. How much farther can the beauty and aroma reach just because we can no longer meander among the marigolds isolated and alone?

If the world insists upon breaking in uninvited from beyond the wall with news scary enough to cause “people to faint from terror,” why not just break down the wall and let both the beauty and the aroma of the marigolds out into the world to share the beauty, assurance, and safety of the garden with everyone?

“Many will travel,” Daniel says; and as a result, “knowledge will be increased” (Daniel 12:4 Heritage Bible). The information revolution makes fulfillment of this prophecy possible in ways never before imagined. We can “travel” beyond the limitations of church walls, living room comfort, and community borders in trip after trip on that marvelous information highway called the Internet. In doing so, we can increase everyone’s knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So turn the tables on the bad news; get out some good news. Why not be the smelliest, most beautiful marigolds the world has ever seen?

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A Fool’s game for Turkeys: Woodrow Wilson’s Social Justice

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Administrator
  • Please note this important caveat: in a prosperous society ignoring hungry people can needlessly short-circuit God’s purpose for life. Thus, it is just to assuage hunger collectively as a society. A food stamp program might help. But any program can go bad. We should correct the bad, while pursuing a just outcome that includes caring for hungry people in a compassionate yet productive way.

They are a family of five with household income just under $60,000 yearly, not a fortune but not bad. Oh, they also get food stamps. Oddly, their food stamps are paid for in part, anyway, by another family of five with the very same income, minus the food stamps.

The second family does not refuse the stamps; they do not qualify. Neither do they know they are paying for the other family. Rather, the government quietly picks one family’s pocket to fill the other – though their incomes are exactly the same.

Say what?

How fair is that?

Not very.

So how can this happen when we sense so acutely what injustice is?

First, because of where it happens. In this case, the one family lives in Hawaii, and the other in any one of several other states not having Hawaii’s hutzpa for grabbing a neighbor’s grub. Hawaii is just “better” at playing a game in which the greedier not the needier often win.

But secondly, because of how it happens: as part of a larger game called “social justice.”

But there is nothing just about it.

Puzzled?

What is really going on?

Wolves in wool socks

“Social justice” is a jiggly, smeary phrase that gets swirled around like peanut butter in jelly on hot toast. A little stirring can make of it what you will.

Accordingly, social activists have pounced on the ambiguity to hijack it just because it is rife with bubblegum spirituality: ghosts of angels or demons summoned up by hot air according to whim. Supposedly coined by a Jesuit priest, big-government advocates attach it to the idea that the government should “decide the share of individuals in the social product,” as economist-social philosopher F.A. Hayek stated the case. Sharply critical of it, Hayek described it in action as “The Road to Serfdom.” He argued in effect that “social justice” means nothing less than the government taking from, not the rich, but anyone it can swindle to give to anyone it wishes to influence and favor. Ultimately it leads to poverty.

As one advocate of such “justice” once opined, “…must not government lay aside all timid scruple and boldly make itself an agency for social reform as well as for political control?”

That was Woodrow Wilson in 1887 when the game, imported from Europe, was just getting underway in America. Today it seems to be the only game in town. Big-government advocates have wrapped up a whole series of cold scary processes in the warm fuzzy “social justice” catch-phrase to get all sorts of garbage by you without notice. In fact, they have slipped a pack of hungry wolves into wool socks hoping you will think they are sheep.

A game for turkeys

Let me describe the game for you. It is shot through with deception, corruption, and injustice as if by a bevy of 12 gauge double-barrels in the hands of poachers chasing geese out of season in a game preserve. In such an imagined scenario, some birds might fly away safely to their nesting grounds; but many will end up roasted and on the tables of the crooks. Government bureaucrats managing the preserve tolerate the poachers, on the one hand, because poachers are needy people, too; and the geese are all about goodwill and Christmas give-away, anyway – supposedly. So the game preserve is just one more “social justice” program making sure Tiny Tim gets his Christmas goose, or turkey as the case may be. On the other hand, the poachers reinforce the managers’ job security. Managers can point to missing geese, cry scarcity, and get taxpayers to pay for raising more so as not to have to depend on Scrooge to be there for Tim next Christmas. Even if Scrooge had a change of heart this year, they argue, he might not be in the mood next year. The private sector is just not up to the task of supplying Christmas geese, they say. So government must expand its reach to search out nesting places for geese, raise more geese, and get them to the tables of poachers and Tiny Tim, too. Of course, they do not tell you the real point of the game is to keep Tim as tiny and helpless and acquiescent as can be!

Do not be too quick to dismiss this analogy. In essence it is an accurate picture of the real intent driving the social justice game. You may remember that Stalin’s Soviet Union of the 1930s purposely created scarcity, indeed famine, to force the masses into the big tent of totalitarian government. As Soviet disciples the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot repeated such atrocities in the 1970s. Millions starved but so what: the Tiny Tim’s that survived had no will to resist government which was the object anyway.

Okay, enough of scary Tiny Tim stories. The point is social justice is a game for dumb turkeys, as my nephew once said, not for people intended by God to soar with eagles!

Twelve words

So how did the game get going in a nation of people who want to soar, especially given our inherent sense of right and wrong expressed specifically in our Founding Documents shaped by our forefathers’ high view of intrinsic universal justice?

Go figure: as a matter of actually being played as a serious competitor to the “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” protected by our U.S. Constitution the “social justice” game came to America from Europe by way of a lawyer. But not just any lawyer; a key to the whole game as played here is that this lawyer was Woodrow Wilson mentioned above, who earned a Ph.D. from the newly minted Johns Hopkins University. This plus that he became our 28th President makes the social justice game what it is in our nation today.

Whatever the game was or would have become without him, he foretold what the radically altered game would actually be in twelve words added to the statement above. Appearing originally in an essay titled “Socialism and Democracy” he wrote:

“…omnipotence of legislation is the first postulate of all just political theory.”

With these 12 words Wilson made the social justice game what it is in America today. Beyond just the economics of social justice as defined by Hayek, to understand where we are as a nation, to grasp the significance of political, legal, cultural, and social battles from healthcare to welfare, from minimum wage to the national debt, from taxes to the Tea Party, from the ACLU to George Soros to the Huffington Post to abortion, you must know the significance of  Wilson’s 12 words: they headline the obituary for everything true, tried, tested, and traditional, while conjuring up from hell all things merely conventional, expedient, faddish, foolish, self-serving, and wrong.

The negative role of positive law

The only U.S. President to hold a Ph.D., Wilson had attended Princeton, passed the Georgia bar in 1882, and practiced law for a year in Atlanta. Unable to make it in the private practice he returned to academia, enrolling in a doctoral program at JHU.

What he assimilated there would determine the fate of the social justice game America. It did so by validating and greatly empowering Wilson’s deepening belief in man-centered positive law cut loose from the anchor of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” core principles affirming Constitutional concepts of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Wilson’s doctoral dissertation was knowingly titled “Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics,” a system Wilson viewed with disdain.

Johns Hopkins was the original hotbed in America of man-centered education imported from Germany’s (Prussia) University of Berlin. Modeled after the German elite’s love affair with social engineering that would lead to WWI, WWII, and the Holocaust, JHU merged the social justice game with positive law legal theory that made a god of government.

Embracing this merger, Wilson upended the American concept of justice. Surely disturbing Thomas Jefferson’s slumber in eternity along with every signer of the Declaration of Independence and framers of our Constitution Wilson arrogantly defined “omnipotence of legislation,” positive, re, posited law, as the basis of justice, even though the Founding Fathers had insisted that justice was the basis of law. They had made this critical concept the bedrock of our national existence.

The difference may appear subtle, but could not be more radical. If justice is the basis of law, only God is omnipotent. If law is the basis of justice, positive law, law posited by man, not “good” law, but mere human legislation, is omnipotent for those who make it.

Of course, positive law is not omnipotent in fact. At best, it can be human legislation in a natural law framework, posited law verified and held in check by natural law. The Founding Fathers intended this, and so appealed to the “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” They assumed the existence of natural law constituting a higher authority within which American constitutional law was framed, positive law legislated, and justice defined. This legal theory reaches back to the Bible and beyond. So when Peter replies to human legislators, the Sanhedrin, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God,” in principle he invoked natural law doctrine (Acts 4:19).

To the contrary, “Woodrow Wilson…once warned that ‘if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface’” observes R. J. Prestritto. The Preface, of course, refers to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” which inherently implies a higher power than government and thus limitations on its reach. Echoing Daniel Coit Gilman, founding president of Johns Hopkins who in the spirit of German higher criticism insisted education was not for the sake of God (as if to affirm this Gilman invited agnostic Thomas Huxley to deliver the opening address at the new JHU) Wilson insisted that God not interfere with his administration of justice. It matters not that Wilson was a Southern Presbyterian and Gilman a Congregationalist who served as President of the American Bible Society. The Bible was a mere appendage, a thin moral veneer laid over their larger theories of social engineering. If they could dismiss Scripture so easily while maintaining a public face of spirituality and respectability what bother was it for them to set aside the U.S. Constitution?

In practical terms, how did this play out?

”Under his leadership, Congress enacted the most cohesive, complete, and elaborate program of federal oversight of the nation’s economy up to that time…and laid the basis for the modern welfare state.”

Wilson invented big-government and handed it to America as a new god. Except for vigorous opposition, and  Providential events disturbing, delaying, and detouring his grandiose vision, America would be a full-fledged socialist state today in which the most powerful special interests groups would run the show. Use your imagination.

The objectives of power

For Wilson, supposedly the objectives of power coalesced in efficient public administration achieving the best for society. But with a caveat: by “best” he meant whatever was determined by mere “omnipotent legislation,” unrestrained by the Omnipotent God. A primary objective for Wilson, then, was circumventing, diluting, or eliminating the U.S. Constitution with its restraints of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Let an elite class decide what is best, a national legislature he first thought, but this morphed into a powerful President operating a one-man show from the White House on the order of Bismarck’s Prussia. Ironically, this became a one woman show when a stroke rendered Wilson helpless and Mrs. Wilson, Edith, operated a shadow government from the White House the entire final year of her husband’s presidency.

Wilson, the Fathers, and food stamps

So how would Wilson and the Fathers have viewed food stamps differently?

Suffice it to say there were no social programs in the Fathers vision for the nation. The private social conscience was on public display: frugality stretched resources, while faith motivated sharing what resources there were. Food stamps would have been unwarranted intrusion of government into private matters of faith.

This does not mean that a limited public safety net of some sort would have been viewed as inherently unconstitutional. However, as F.A. Hayek insists, the universal justice of natural law demands that such safety nets achieve just outcomes: the Hawaii food stamp game cannot be played, nor any larger game with similar outcomes. So-called “distributive justice” redistributing income is an oxymoron, indeed a lie, in a natural law framework: the government dare not take from one to give to another by mere legislation. Of course, by true common consent the people may enter into an agreement and share resources through government programs. The difference is profound.

In any case, Wilson was little concerned with either frugality or faith, caught up as he was in a grand rearrangement of government with reference to the private sector. If really socially conscious regarding human need, his administration did not reflect it. Rather, he governed as an elite administrator far removed from the messiness of common people.

Right off he began betraying African Americans. Blacks had abandoned the Republican Party of Lincoln they had supported since the Civil War to vote for Wilson in 1912 believing his promises to help Blacks. Instead, as a matter of political expediency in keeping with positive law theory, he governed as a prejudiced Southerner. Gross racial discrimination marked his presidency.

He ended similarly by betraying doughboys, farmers, and business as a matter of political expediency, tragically mishandling the close of WW1 on the domestic front. “Demobilization proved chaotic and violent. Four million soldiers were sent home with little planning, little money, and few benefits. A wartime bubble in prices of farmland burst, leaving many farmers bankrupt or deeply in debt after they purchased new land [for the war effort]. Major strikes in steel, coal, and meatpacking followed in 1919. Serious race riots hit Chicago, Omaha and two dozen other cities…”

So much for the game of social justice based on positive law. Consistently played for the benefit of a few at the expense of many, it is a fool’s game for turkeys. Where true social safety nets exist and work they are the product of carefully crafted legislation in the natural law tradition that many people still believe in a fight for.

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