Infectious Chutzpah

A couple of weeks ago we noted how a local minister was thinking that we could use our technology to help God out with his kingdom building. Now the same kind of thinking has reached all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Last week, President Obama told a group of rabbis, “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death.” Besides being a devastating way to refute Sarah Palin’s death panels argument (that’s sarcasm, Albert), it prompted this fine bit of theologizing from Andrew Klavan.

I would like to make a subtle theological point:  No, we’re not.  For those of you who aren’t versed in the finer points of theology, let me try to simplify that for you:  No.  We’re not.  Or to put it even more simply:  No.  We.  Are.  Not.

…When God tells Jeremiah (1:5),  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” or when he sarcastically asks Job (38:17), “Have the gates of death been opened unto thee?  Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?” does that sound to you like a guy discussing matters with his partners?  To me, God really seems to be suggesting there that we humans know sweet suffering goose-egg about the greater mysteries of life and death.  Indeed, he seems to feel that the understanding of those mysteries is reserved for him alone and their disposition in his sole power.  It’s possible, if properly understood, he might include even Barack Obama in his list of people whose partnership he is not soliciting in these matters.

Well. Said.

HT: Instapundit.

The utility of Great Satans

A while back we were discussing the wisdom of attacking Satan, and after three posts I thought I had dealt with the issue. Not quite. Consider this the fourth in that series.

One of the points I made in the first post was that a defining characteristic of false teachers is that they disrespect Satan and his horde of celestial beings. At the time, I referred to the idea as counterintuitive, which got me thinking. Why is it that contrabiblical teachers also tend to be anti-Satan?

I think we can find part of the answer in Iran. If you have the courage and bad fortune to attend a state-supported public rally there or in several other Muslim countries, you’re very likely to hear the leaders exhorting the crowd in chants of “Death to America” or “Death to the Great Satan” (same thing). For a while, George W. Bush was the face of the Great Satan, and Barack Obama came to office hoping to change the satanic perception of America. Some may have been surprised when two weeks before his inauguration, Obama had become the newest incarnation of the ever-threatening Great Satan. As Mark Steyn observed, “Meet the new Great Satan, the same as the Old…”

Here was a diplomacy-loving, Muslim-raised new leader who had promised to remake our relationship with the Muslim world. Why, then, was Obama Satanized?

It’s simply because the leaders of countries like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and North Korea need an all-powerful enemy to blame for the basketcases that they’ve turned their countries into. Iran, one of the world’s most important suppliers of oil, would be crippled if we cut off petroleum imports, such is the country’s economic disrepair. To prevent the public from turning on the mullahs and “elected” leaders for causing the problems that they live with every day, it’s more convenient to blame the Great Satan. If it were ever known that the United States was not a threat and was, very often, a source of important humanitarian aid, leaders would lose the ability to rally public anger against the imaginary foreign devil.

Here’s the key point: enemies create unity and passion that is independent of a leader.

George Orwell understood the point as well, and illustrated it in 1984 with his description of the Two Minutes Hate.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared.

The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even – so it was occasionally rumoured – in some hiding-place in Oceania itself…

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen…

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic…

At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration.

And that’s the key. If I can get you to hate an enemy I rage against, perhaps I can get you to love me without having to offer you any good reason to do so. That’s why false teachers need a Great Satan.

If you can focus my attention on fighting an enemy who doesn’t need to be fought, you can distract me from worrying about the veracity of your teaching.

If you can make me join you in facing down what appears to be a common enemy, I might not ever wonder if you might also be my enemy.

And if you make a habit of denouncing every other church in town, I might conclude that yours is the only source of truth and salvation.

Hillary Clinton is theologically correct

Not often, but when she is, it’s worth pointing out.

That’s a stack of money

A trillion dollars is difficult to comprehend, but this visual depiction is helpful, amazing, and ultimately depressing.

HT: The Corner

Let’s play Cabinet musical chairs

Tim Geithner, for whom a 1040 tax form is too complicated, does understand what’s wrong with the climate and knows how to fix it.

“We don’t believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem). We don’t think that’s good economic policy and we think changing those incentives is good for the country,” Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing on the White House’s proposed budget for the 2010 spending year.

Perhaps we can ask the head of the EPA to give us a plan to save the banks.

You’ll need to drive with earplugs

When people start putting these on their cars, it’s going to get loud.

H/T: The Corner

We are governed by morons: Part 4

Joe Biden forgets the number for his website.

Jindal needs some speech practice

I like Bobby Jindal a great deal, but he’s not ready for prime time. He sounds like he’s reading a story to a group of school children. Talking to the American people should not sound like you’re talking to the voters’ kids.

Palin scored with her speeches because she talked to Americans like we were adults. Reagan was the master of it. Clinton could do it. Gore was and still is hopeless at it.

Governor Jindal, show us the respect of talking–talking–to us like real people, and we’ll be more likely to do you the favor of giving you our vote.

Based on tonight, Palin’s still ahead of Jindal for 2012.

We are governed by morons, Part 3

The Senate Banking Committee chairman, Chris Dodd, opened his mouth yesterday and sent bank stocks plummeting briefly when he suggested that bank nationalization would probably be necessary.

The senator’s stupid comment is a reminder that it is hard to overstate the degree to which incompetence can be found in the overpaid senior levels of our life, whether in the corporate management suite or the halls of government.

Never assume that the chairman of a legislative banking committee is an expert on banking, or the chief executive of a bank fully understands the investments his own institution is getting into. In real life there is no “Mission: Impossible,” nor even a “West Wing.” In real life, many key jobs are filled by people who don’t really know what they are doing.

H/T: Instapundit

Rush asks Obama for a weasel-free answer

Rush Limbaugh’s WSJ op-ed asks Obama to rule out all forms of content-monitoring and control on radio. 

I have a straightforward question, which I hope you will answer in a straightforward way: Is it your intention to censor talk radio through a variety of contrivances, such as “local content,” “diversity of ownership,” and “public interest” rules — all of which are designed to appeal to populist sentiments but, as you know, are the death knell of talk radio and the AM band?

Limbaugh reminds the President that the primary purpose of the First Amendment is to prevent the government from restricting critical political speech.

The fact that the federal government issues broadcast licenses, the original purpose of which was to regulate radio signals, ought not become an excuse to destroy one of the most accessible and popular marketplaces of expression. The AM broadcast spectrum cannot honestly be considered a “scarce” resource.

Will Obama answer Rush? Probably not.

Will a reporter ask him at his next press conference? Good luck with that.

Obama, at least, denies he wants to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine

At least we have some good news, that on the eve of a Rush Limbaugh op-ed on the FedDoc, an Obama spokesman suddenly discovered some clarity within the administration and said that Obama will stand by his campaign rhetoric on the issue.

That’s good as far as it goes, but there are a few problems:

1. Obama’s campaign promises have a habit of expiring.
2. Obama does not run his own party, Nancy does.
3. Acorn is not putting down its guns.
4. It will probably come under a different brand name anyway.
5. He may be saving his ammunition for the Internet.

At least one Democrat is against the Fairness Doctrine

Self-described liberal Democrat Camille Paglia complains that her party has betrayed its soul by thinking it can monitor and control the ideological content of the mass media.

Good for her, but where are the other “liberal” defenders of free speech?

H/T: Instapundit

Fairness Doctrine is coming sooner than anyone thought

Obama’s two main spokesmen, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, have both refused to put to rest rumors that the administration is planning to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine. With the country facing Obama’s promised economic catastrophe, one might have thought it in Obama’s interest to put this “distraction” behind him and rule it out once and for all. 

My guess is that the passage of the spending bill last week has given Obama a sense of invincibility, even though he may realize it won’t last long. He needs to get his censorship agenda passed quickly, before the deleterious effects of last week’s bill start to become apparent to too many people.

The rationale will be that conservative radio talkers are undermining the administration’s efforts at repairing the nation and helping us all work together, so they need to be held accountable by forcing them to present the other side. Of course, the real outcome will be the silencing of such criticism because radio listeners have repeated shown they’d rather listen to Australian polka music than liberal talkers.

From the illustrated Road to Serfdom

The stimulus: Extending the frontiers of mathematics

Exciting news:

PALO ALTO, CA – An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value “by a totally mindblowing shitload.” Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a “stimulus,” could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting.

“Unlike previous large numbers like the Googleplex or the Bazillionty, the Stimulus has no static numerical definition,” said Xiao. “It keeps growing and growing, compounding factorially, eating up all zeros in its path. It moves freely across Cartesian dimensions and has the power to make any other number irrational.”

H/T: Instapundit

Picture-perfect government

From despair.com.