Home

A year and a half ago, I wrote the following about my contemporaries:

Now we have a new Congress. Will they be able to deliver for the American people? Part of the problem is that they’re not up there delivering for us, but for the special interest groups that put them there. But another part of the problem is that we’re basically choosing between two parts of the same generation of people. Ever since the early 1980’s, American politics have been dominated by Baby Boomers at the polls. The full effect was delayed by Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, but ever since the Great Arkie took office in 1993, we have had Boomers in full power. The Boomers like to refer to their parents as "the greatest generation." Their performance in the last quarter century or so has borne that out. The Boomers have three trademarks that make them unsuited to leave anything but a mess as a legacy…

Now Victor Davis Hanson comes to a similar conclusion:

Sociologists have correctly diagnosed the perfect storm that created the “me” generation — sudden postwar affluence, sacrificing parents who did not wish us to suffer as they had in the Great Depression and World War II, and the rise of therapeutic education that encouraged self-indulgence.

Perhaps the greatest trademark of the 1960s cohort was self-congratulation. Baby boomers alone claimed to have brought about changes in civil rights, women’s liberation, and environmental awareness — as if these were not prior concerns of earlier generations.

We apparently created all of our wealth rather than having inherited our roads, schools, and bountiful infrastructure from someone else. And in our self-absorption, no one accepted that our notorious appetites created more problems than our supposed “caring” solved.

Our present problems were not really caused by an unpopular president, a spendthrift Congress, the neocon bogeymen, the greedy Saudis, shifty bankers, or corporate oilmen in black hats and handlebar moustaches — much less the anonymous “they.”

The fault of this age, dear baby boomers, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

The Firesign Theatre’s observation applies to a country which is facing this…

If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue.

 …while in the interim promoting this:

The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has announced that its embassies will now be collaborating with local homosexual activist organisations in other countries to promote acceptance of homosexuality overseas. The goal, officials said, is to join forces with these groups in attempting to force other countries to implement the full homosexualist political agenda of equating homosexuality with natural relations between men and women.

Meg Munn, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, admitted that the British government would be working to overturn the laws of sovereign states. She said, "Working with human rights activists, international institutions and non-governmental organisations and like minded governments the Foreign Office is targeting states where same sex relations are illegal, to raise our concerns and encourage them to change their laws."

Sounds like what is going on in the UK is this:

Jesus himself, however, was aware of what they were thinking, and said to them: "Any kingdom wholly divided against itself becomes a desolation; and a divided house falls.  (Luke 11:17)

There was a time when letters like this were unnecessary, but no more:

The highest-ranking U.S. military officer has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the United States approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.

"The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times," wrote Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway."

Like an other portion of our government, the military has its specific interests.  It knows that those can be hurt by change in administration and public opinion.  The tumult over Vietnam was evidence of that, although the anti-war people never quite got the control at the top they wanted before the war ended.

The big difference between that era and this one is the fact that we have a volunteer military now, which improves its esprit de corps considerably.  If I were in the military and I saw a candidate like Barack Obama with the left-wing anti-war fanatics behind him, I’d worry to.  And his Democrat opponent is a product of the last wave of anti-military sentiment.

Back in the 1990’s there were many in the "militia movement" who had an idea that they could break our system from the bottom.  But if our system is to be broken, its most likely thorough an "inside job," and the military would be a central player in such a scenario.  People have the idea that this cannot happen in the interconnected world we live in, but it’s a lot easier to pull the plug on all that then most people realise.

Dangerous times…

 

This just keeps coming up in her talk:

TIME: Can you envision a point at which–if the race stays this close–Democratic Party elders would step in and say, "This is now hurting the party and whoever will be the nominee in the fall"?

CLINTON: No, I really can’t. I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.

And this was in March.  She repeated it today.

But the spectre of Obama’s assasination has been kicking around at least since January, as I reported in this post.  Quoting again the Times’ Lord Rees-Mogg;

I find myself worried by the figures with whom Mr Obama is compared. Martin Luther King obviously, John F. Kennedy, but also Abraham Lincoln and even Mahatma Gandhi. All four were charismatic figures who claimed to lead their nations in a new and idealistic way. What they also had in common is that they were assassinated. Such men attract the hatred of those who fear and resent their influence. When General Colin Powell was offered the Republican nomination in 1996, his wife persuaded him to reject it, on the grounds that he would be exposed to the assassination threat. Mrs Powell may have been right. The role of the first black president of the United States will be a dangerous one.

Froma Harrop hits on something that this blog has "danced around" for some time, but can’t be avoided:

But there is a marriage debate we ought to have — or to put it more accurately, a non-marriage debate. Over half of American households are now headed by single people. They include young singles and confirmed bachelors, the widowed and the divorced. Some are gay. Most are straight. Except for an occasional nod to elderly widows, single people and their concerns are nearly invisible in the presidential campaigns…

The troubling aspect of the push for gay marriage is the part that perpetuates the notion of marriage as a goody bag for sundry government and corporate benefits. A gay advocate asks, “Why can’t I leave my $4 million estate to my partner tax-free, as Jane and Joe Jones next door can do?” Valid question, but then one asks, “What about Widow Smith and her sister, who have lived together for decades? Shouldn’t tax law favor their estates as well?”

Christians don’t generally think of marriage in legal contract terms.  But, as long as they conflate civil marriage and Holy Matrimony, they really need to face this issue more squarely.  Sooner or later single people are going to start agitating for either the abolition of civil marriage or the state abandoning marriage in favour of civil unions between any two people.  And, if you look at things from a purely logical and legal standpoint, there’s no reason not to.

Let’s take the issue of the estate tax exemption for property transfer between spouses at death.  As I noted before, this has only been enshrined in U.S. law since the late 1940’s.  There’s nothing stopping Congress from revoking this.  On the flip side, where in the Bible does it say that this goes with marriage?  Personally, I don’t even think that estate taxes are Biblical!

Turning the issue around to something more Christians can relate to, how many people do you know who shack up to prevent a government benefit from being cut off if they’re married?

The state, with its widening, tangled web of rules and regulations, has made a mess of civil marriage, and adding same sex civil marriage only promises to make things worse.  Someone needs to "cut the Gordian Knot" on this issue.  If we don’t, someone else will.