Digital Education vs. the Ruling Elite

By Gary North

Ruling elites as recently as 1600 appealed to God to justify their continuing rule.  This was called the divine right of kings: rulership beyond any earthly court of appeal.  That began to be undermined in the second half of the seventeenth century.  A century later, Enlightenment democratic theory had replaced the divine right of kings. The divine right of Parliament or the divine right of the People replaced it.

This forced a major strategic change on the ruling elite.  The ruling elite has to pretend that it does not exist.  It formally acknowledged the legitimacy of the People as the final court of appeal.  This involved training and screening the judges.

Basic to maintaining this deception has been control over the media.  Also vital has been control over the schools — compulsory attendance laws, teacher certification, tax funding, and school accreditation. Above all has been control over textbooks.

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This control is ending in the area of printed media, especially newspapers, which are dying.  Control over TV news is fading.  Digits are killing them.  Now control over education is about to be undermined.  Same reason: digits.

COMPETING DIGITAL CURRICULA

I have recommended to Ron Paul that he hire a director of curriculum development in one of his educational organizations.  The director should then contract with Ph.D.s to create a comprehensive K-12 curriculum.  Once it is ready, Paul’s organization can post it online for free. I have presented this plan here:

http://GaryNorth.com/public/6786.cfm

Some parents will want courses taught live.  Paul could also put together a faculty of graduate students with M.A. degrees or retired Ph.D.s to provide real-time lectures.  The exams can be administered digitally. Record-keeping is digital.

He could charge a minimal $250 per course and split the money 50-50 with the faculty member who teaches it. This should be a profit-seeking venture.  It could easily generate $25,000,000 a year.  I have explained this here:

http://GaryNorth.com/public/6773.cfm

Free academic software now allows this.  It’s called Moodle.  Any medium-size organization can now afford to create an online high school or even a university with this open source software.  The Mises Institute now has its own online program called Mises Academy.  People pay a minimal $250 to take a weekly class.  Dr. Tom Woods is teaching a course on Roosevelt’s New Deal this fall.

http://academy.mises.org

The existing system of government-funded education is facing a technological challenge.  The Web can deliver content for free.  The model for this is Salman Khan’s wonderful Khan Academy.  Students from all over the world start with 1 + 1 = 2, and go from there through calculus. It is all done with free 10-minute YouTube videos.

http://KhanAcademy.org

He did this in his spare time just because he wanted to. Now he has funding to create an entire curriculum.

In contrast, this is the model of today’s high school:

http://bit.ly/bFUclY

Right?  Right!  You know it.  I know it.  We have known it all our lives.  It never improves.  It gets more expensive.  It gets less efficient.  We know it has no hope.  Every few years, reformers announce a “new, improved” approach.  It is not widely adopted, and wherever it is adopted, scores get worse.  They will call for reforms forever.  The system will just get worse.

It is paid to get worse.  Tax money is automatic.  No one stands up locally and runs for the school board on this platform: “Let’s cut the budget by 10% next year, and another 10% the year after next.”  That would be considered the equivalent of blasphemy.  Yet we know the tax-funded schools will not improve.  Anyone who is so naive as to believe that the Next Great Reform will be successful throughout the country probably ought to be institutionalized — at a minimum, he should be kept away from sharp objects.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ACADEMIC CARTEL

The problem has been that private schools, also burdened with physical classrooms and buildings, are expensive.  Not many parents have been willing to pull their children out of the tax-funded schools and enroll them in a private academy.  They grin and bear it.  “Our schools are not like those other communities’ schools. Ours are highly rated.”  Really?  Rated by whom?  When? Using what methodology?  How long ago?

Who produces the textbooks?  New York publishing firms staffed by anti-capitalist Leftists?  The same textbooks used in those other communities’ schools?  You don’t say!

With the Web, a PDF file can be downloaded for free. This PDF can be a textbook.  If it’s in the public domain, it’s free.  You can print it out.  Cost: toner and paper. Maybe you will want to buy a 3-hole punch and a $7 binder. After all, that 3-hole punch is a permanent investment. Amortize it over a 30-year period.  You can afford it.

Do you want a video-based course?  Salman Khan offers them.

How about MP3 audio files?  There are free MP3 hosting sites.  Anyone can post lectures.

MIT has put 2,000 courses online for free.  Did you know this?  It’s here:

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Local colleges have resisted this.  If you were a faculty member of Podunk State University, would you want the whole world to see you and your peers online, 24×7? Would you be confident that parents and students would then be willing to pay $50,000 to get a degree from your backwater institution?

So, university faculties are now in a difficult position.  They must justify the absence of online lectures and course plans.  Silence is embarrassing.  The story of MIT’s program is getting out.  They will have to argue that MIT’s online curriculum is a fluke, that a normal university would not be wise in posting its lectures and course notes for the general public to view free of charge. Yes, MIT can do this, but it’s different.  It’s different because. . . .  Well, anyway, it’s different.  It’s not fair to use it as a model.  Why not?  Because it’s the best.  The academic world knows it’s the best.  As an MIT T-shirt says: “Harvard: Because not Everyone Can Get into MIT.”  The best doesn’t count.

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By the way, Salman Khan went to MIT and then the Harvard Business School.  Now look what he’s done.  What’s Podunk State to do?

Podunk State knows it is delivering a substandard product.  It knows that it can keeps its doors open only because tax money subsidizes its program.  If it is possible to provide digital education, with digital exams, digital grading, and digital record-keeping — and it is — then what does Podunk U bring to the table that (say) the 100 best colleges and universities could not do better? What is the justification for Podunk State?

Accreditation.  That’s it?  That’s it.

The collegiate system is a cartel.  It is now being threatened by the University of Phoenix, with its 500,000 students at (probably) $10,000 each per semester.  The academic community sees the threat of profit-seeking universities.  With 15,000,000 students enrolled, it would take only three dozen University of Phoenixes to teach them all.  Let’s be generous.  Say that 100 schools could do this.  What would happen to the other 4,000?

Cartels always collapse.  Only the threat of government violence against “cheaters” can sustain cartels. The collegiate cartel in the United States is maintained by a series of Federal government-recognized but privately run accrediting agencies — agencies staffed by members of the cartel.  Here is the list:

http://bit.ly/EdCartel

What breaks cartels?  Price competition.

PRICE COMPETITION

Decades ago, management expert Peter Drucker observed that whenever a new production technique lowers costs by 90%, it comes to dominate.  The old producers can fight it, but they cannot prevail.

He said that existing producers can fight by pointing to the prestige of owning an expensive version.  This is an appeal to the rich.  It is an appeal to status.

People who are really self-confident about their status do not play this game.  I remember seeing an interview of Denzel Washington.  He showed his watch: a Casio.  “It cost $35, and it keeps perfect time.”  That kind of statement sends a chill down the spines of people working for Rolex.

Today, the cost of delivering a good education has fallen by far more than 90%.  It has fallen to the cost of bandwidth.  Bandwidth keeps getting cheaper.

Back in 1997, Drucker gave an interview to “Forbes.” In that interview, he offered this assessment and prediction.

Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive. It’s as large a change as when we first got the printed book.

Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care — without it the kids have no future.

Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.

http://bit.ly/DruckerCollege

If he was correct, the large physical universities have only 15 years to go.

Do I think they will disappear this fast?  No.  Why not?  Because control over education is the #1 control device of the ruling class.  It is even more important than the control over central banking.

The American educational system absorbs something in the range of 6% of the country’s GDP, which means over 10% of the private sector’s output. The finished product is a curriculum built on the presuppositions favored by the ruling class.  State-funded institutions teach respect for state funding and the bureaucrats who control the flow of funds.

If state-funded education were ever to end, the major means of control by the ruling class would end.  The ruling class will not surrender this control without a fight.  But it will lose this fight.

The tools of this fight are digital.  The basis of this fight is ethical: the right of parents to control the content of their children’s education.  The state-funded bureaucrats know this.  They have fought ever since the foundation of the modern educational system in Prussia after 1810 to insulate their class from political control, while collecting tax money.  This is the basis of the doctrine of academic freedom.  It means freedom from interference by taxpayers and politicians.

By severing payment from control, the educrats have gotten themselves a sweet deal.  Like the Congregational ministers in New England before 1819, they are on the state’s payroll, but they insist on autonomy.

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The cost of this arrangement is skyrocketing.  The educational cartel is facing a revolt.  Parents who don’t like the content of tax-funded education are breaking ranks.  They are teaching their children at home.  This was fought by the states in the 1980s, but a series of court cases undermined the laws against home schooling.

Now budget cuts are forcing public school districts to adopt distance-learning programs.  This is the death knell for the system.  The tax-funded schools are facing budget ceilings.  Meanwhile, education is getting steadily cheaper.

Dr. Art Robinson’s Robinson Curriculum costs $200 for K-12.  It’s a one-time payment for the entire family.  Yet it could be placed online and given away for free.  The curriculum is self-taught.  Students who pursue it can quiz out of two years of college, as his children did.  They can enter college as juniors at the age of 16.

Of course, a wise parent will not send a child off to college at age 16.  So, the child can take the last two years in a program such as Louisiana State University’s distance learning program, or at Excelsior College, a private online campus.

Total cost of college?  Under $11,000.  The student can work part-time and pay his way through college.

Or else he can ask his parents to foot the bill of a conventional on-campus program ($50,000 to $250,000).  He can also take on $20,000 in personal debt, which is now the national average.

If he flunks out, all this money is down the drain. Yet about half of students who enroll as freshmen do not graduate.

Which approach makes more economic sense?

What are you buying?  An education or a shot at status?  Is it a Casio or a Rolex?

There are not many Rolex-type watch firms.  There are only about three dozen Rolex-type universities.  They enroll about 2% of the college population.

What is the future for the 4,000 others?  Extinction or adjustment to the world of digits.

Digits are cheap.

A DIGITAL DAGGER

This is a digital dagger at the heart of the ruling elite.  As this spreads, it will be the end of the nearly monolithic educational worldview, a worldview that rests on the assumption that ideas must be controlled, and that this control is best accomplished through screening.  Such screening procedures must be in the hands of gatekeepers. These gatekeepers must be certified by other gatekeepers and protected by the state.

The Internet has destroyed most of the walls that give power to control over the gates.  The center will not hold. The many competing views of how the world works will act as acid for the worldview of the power elite.

The historical mark of the collapse of the strategy of gatekeeping, after 5,000 years, was Matt Drudge’s 1998 story about “Newsweek,” which had suppressed the story of the unnamed intern and Bill Clinton.  Soon, she was named. Then Clinton was impeached.  His Teflon charm let him avoid conviction, but his reputation never recovered.  He will always be remembered as the smiling rogue with a roving eye and a cigar.  This is not what a member of the ruling elite expects after his successful lifetime effort to shinny up the greased pole of political success.  It takes all the fun out of it.

We need an image that represents the digital transformation.  I think it ought to be Alex Jones’s bullhorn.  He posts those video clips of him and some of his supporters standing outside a Bilderberg meeting or some other closed-door conclave of the ruling elite.  He has his trusty bullhorn in hand.  He shouts at them.  He tells them that the People are watching.  They don’t know what to do about this.

Are the People watching?  A few may be.  Probably not all that many.  They are watching funny videos, or pornography, or some other entertainment.  But, from the point of view of the ruling elite, nobody is supposed to be watching a Jones video.  They hate him and his bullhorn, but they can do nothing about it.

CONCLUSION

We are living in the era that will go into the textbooks.  If I had the influence to name it, the way that historians designated 1946-1991 as “the Cold War,” I would call 1995- “the end of the gatekeepers.”  It is the Berners-Lee era, but that reference is too obscure.

Every ruling elite rules on behalf of a basic idea, and this idea usually has a slogan.  I think the ruling idea today is this: “the mixed economy.”  Digital technology and state bankruptcies are going to unmix it.

Karl Marx called capitalism’s system “the cash nexus.” Others summarize it as “money talks.”  I call it price competition.

The ruling elite has justified its claim to sovereignty and therefore legitimacy in terms of superior technological wisdom — the unique possession of an elite. One institution stands as a testimony against such a claim: Wikipedia.  I think it will still be around in 2100.  I don’t think today’s ruling elite will be.

Have We Reached the Cultural, Moral, and Political Tipping Point of No Return?

By Gary DeMar

In the 1980s, I wrote a three-volume book series titled God and Government. It has sold nearly 250,000 copies. A better title would have been God and Governments (plural) since the series attempted to show that in biblical and historical terms there are three governments — family, church, and civil. Underpinning these three institutional governments is the necessary requirement of self-government under God.
Today, we’re repeatedly told that when the word “government” is used, it refers to civil government – the State. It’s gotten so bad that there isn’t any room for self-government. The State has subsumed them all. Even the individual has given up his individuality and has become part of the collective.
Joel Belz’s article “Tipping Point?” that appears in the December 1, 2012 issue of World magazine states the issue well:

“Elections tell us what voters believe about important matters. And the evidence of the 2012 election is pretty overwhelming that most Americans have now become practical secularists. Their second nature is to believe that government is there to be their helper and provider. Anything that messes with that secularist assumption these days is messing with a root belief of at least 51 percent of American voters. These are folks who got John Kennedy exactly backward: ‘Always ask,’ they say, ‘what it is that your country can do for you.’ These folks are now dominant — and these are the voters who elect presidents. The American public has been going through a massive change — and the evidence grows that that ‘belief’ change has now passed a tipping point, beyond which it may be very difficult to go back.”

Mr. Belz is no defeatist. Like me, he believes that the solution to this national problem is not found in politics. Of course, this very clear observation does not mean that we should not be involved in the governmental process at the civil level, as long as we understand the biblical and historical definitions of government. That’s why I wrote the God and Government series. Government is not a synonym for politics.
Let me ask you two questions: Where do your children go to school? Who’s educating them? The fact that 51 percent of the voters in America see the State as their parent does not absolve us of the responsibility and the freedom to do the right thing in the areas of self-, family, and church government. Education is not the domain of the State, either at the national or state level. As parents, we are responsible.
Right now we can make a difference in the future of our nation by getting our children out of the hands of the one institution that fills their minds with Statist propaganda six or more hours a day, five days a week, ten months every year for at least twelve years. We don’t have to wait until 2014 or 2016 to change America; we can do it tomorrow.
I know some of your will say that your school is different, that it’s all those other schools that are the problem. The parents of those other schools are saying the same thing – about your school!
I received the following email from a parent who is a pastor regarding a school board meeting that will take place this evening (Nov. 29, 2012):

“There is an attempt to establish gender ID confusion laws to bathrooms permitting children from elementary school and up to use the bathroom with the opposite sex because another child may get his/her feelings hurt. I have an idea and want to see if you can help me. The Civil rights act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in employment based upon race, ethnicity and sex. Was the definition of ‘sex’ simply male and female?”

Conservatives have been trying to save the public (government) schools for more than 50 years. We’ve been on defense for 50 years while educational budgets have grown, the schools have gotten more statist, and the graduates (when they do graduate) become spokesmen for the State. Yes, I know there are exceptions. But there aren’t enough of them, and there never will be.
Can you imagine where we would be today as a nation if parents had removed their children from government schools in the early 1960s before prayer and Bible reading had been prohibited?
What parents didn’t do 50 years ago must be done today — before we are told we can’t do it.

No estado de Taraba (Nigéria), o número de mortos sobe para dez

13º país na classificação de nações que mais perseguem os cristãos, a Nigéria está sempre no noticiário internacional por conta da violência religiosa que ocorre no norte do território. Dessa vez, o problema se instalou na parte sul: dez pessoas já foram mortas.

O número de mortos na violência que eclodiu na manhã de domingo (18), entre muçulmanos e cristãos, na cidade de Ibi, estado de Taraba, subiu para dez.
Entre os que foram mortos na segunda-feira (19), um policial faleceu na tentativa de resgatar alguns refugiados que fugiam da cidade para evitar serem pegos no fogo cruzado.

Soldados do 93º Batalhão de Takum agiram a fim de restabelecer a normalidade à cidade. Os oficiais prenderam um número desconhecido de pessoas vestidas com o uniforme do Exército e, acredita-se que eram mercenários de Sarkin Kudu, uma aldeia localizada na fronteira do estado de Plateau.

Armas perigosas, incluindo três fuzis AK 47, uma espingarda, 12 canhões de barril único, fabricados localmente, um lançador de foguetes, uma pistola, 23 armas e 55 munições dinamarquesas, bem como 20 anéis e vários encantos, foram recuperados por soldados liderados pelo tenente-coronel N.J Edet.

Além dos mortos, mais de 200 pessoas sofreram diferentes graus de lesão e estão recebendo tratamento em vários hospitais em Ibi e no Hospital Geral de Wukari, que se diz lotado, sem condições para cuidar de mais vítimas.

Domingo (18), cinco pessoas foram mortas pela violência desencadeada a partir da tentativa de um homem de passar pela barricada montada em frente à Igreja Cristã Reformada da Nigéria (CRCN, sigla em inglês). Enquanto o culto ainda estava em andamento, a Boys Brigade (Brigada dos Meninos, tradução livre) resistiu ao ataque, com o objetivo de proteger aqueles que estavam dentro da igreja.

Presidente do governo local de Ibi, Alhaji Ishaka Adamu, disse ao jornal THISDAY que a violência tem um tom político e também parece ser uma crise religiosa. Ele confirmou que várias casas foram incendiadas nos ataques.

Por conta dos levantes violentos, o governo estadual declarou toque de recolher de 24 horas na cidade, como parte dos esforços para evitar uma nova escalada dos ataques.

Uma equipe de soldados do 93º Batalhão de Takum e policiais anti-motim estão espalhados pela cidade a fim de combater a violência. Em comunicado assinado pelo Comissário Estadual da Informação, Sr. Emmanuel Bello, o governo afirmou que não vai parar enquanto não devolver a paz à cidade conturbada.

Fonte: All Africa

It’s time for radical long-run optimism

By Joel McDurmon

On the heels of a defeat for Republicans and the re-election of one of the most radical, leftist presidents in American history, conservative columnists spewed mainly confusion and despair. One of the most insightful articles I’ve seen suggested that such hopelessness in itself has played a large part in the vicious cycle of creeping statism all long. The author writes,

The Conservative has long been marked, whether he knows it or not, by long-run pessimism: by the belief that the long-run trend, and therefore time itself, is against him. Hence, the inevitable trend runs toward left-wing statism at home and communism abroad. It is this long-run despair that accounts for the Conservative’s rather bizarre short-run optimism, for since the long run is given up as hopeless, the Conservative feels that his only hope of success rests in the current moment. In foreign affairs, this point of view leads the Conservative to call for desperate showdowns with communism, for he feels that the longer he waits the worse things will ineluctably become; at home, it leads him to total concentration on the very next election, where he is always hoping for victory and never achieving it. The quintessence of the practical man, and beset by long-run despair, the Conservative refuses to think or plan beyond the election of the day.

Consider the vast chorus of conservatives who have been repeating the long-debunked freeloader myth to argue that we have passed the “tipping point”—the point of no return from total socialism.

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Consider wailings such as Ann Coulter’s on Laura Ingraham’s show: “It’s over. There is no hope.”

Consider these things, and the insight above seems relevant, timely.

But consider that it was written in 1965, and it seems profoundly prophetic. Or worse: simply true. It reveals a particular psychosis within conservatism.

The quotation was the opening paragraph to the Libertarian Murray Rothbard’s essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty,” written in 1965. It’s a long essay. But with the exception of a few fundamental philosophical differences I have, most of it is profound.

It’s also sad that it’s so true. Conservatives have done little except prove these introductory sentiments true for nearly fifty years.

There was a brief exception in conservative rhetoric. In 1984, a Reagan ad touted “morning in America.” It was an optimistic message. With Mondale’s ineptitude and legacy as Carter-light, we saw the greatest electoral landslide of the century: 525 to 13. America hadn’t seen a blowout like that since 1980. Democrats lost, Reagan ruled, and it was thus “Morning in America.”

(Previous elections had been blowouts as well. One of them was LBJ over Goldwater in 1964. Obviously, at that time, there must have been more “takers” than “makers” in America, as LBJ wooed the electorate with the promise of the Great Society, which he delivered in 1965. Was the “tipping point” really in 1964? I’m sure we would have heard about it then, except that Ann was only 3 years old.)

But with few exceptions, the morning was more like a sunset. Reagan’s “morning” had pretty much ended after the presidential honeymoon in 1981. By the end of the first term, even Bob Dole could quip, “Now the bloom is gone.”^[1] Not too much transpired to advance the causes of American liberty under the sun of that 1984 dayspring. (Reagan’s legacy has been dissected here.)

There was, of course, a Wall that he helped to get torn down in 1987, but as I’ve argued elsewhere, it seems to have fallen in this direction. The waves of socialism and socialists have flooded our way. Some of them just wanted to eat, sure, but others want to eat the rich and teach our children to do so, too.

Conservatives, of course, have enabled the latter by sending their kids to socialist teachers at socialist institutions to learn socialism through both instruction and osmosis. When criticized on the issue of public education, most conservatives and even many Christians not only support the socialistic institution, but defend it fiercely as if it were part and parcel of John 3:16. Then they wonder why culture is slipping away from Christian values, and even act shocked as to why their children no longer go to church, have sex in high school, become atheists in college, and vote for Obama.

Let me be blunt: one major reason culture is slowly slipping away is because you send your children to public schools, and because you defend the institution of public schools.

There is no bigger cause of the problem, and there is no bigger fix to creeping liberalism than to begin homeschooling or at least private schooling now, as in right now, today, when you finish reading this sentence.

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Yet, too many Christian conservatives will deny this, and will fight and argue to rationalize their use of socialized education.

(I can hear those ravenous liberal now: “Kids need to be better socialized you say? Hehe. We can take care of that.”)

Pessimism is as pessimism does. If you refuse to practice and promote free Christian models of living, you are only aiding and abetting the decline and fall of free Christian society.

Solving the problems of pessimism

For Christians, there are two main facets to the problem of pessimism: 1) beliefs about “end times,” and 2) a false view of “left” and “right.” Both are simple to address, although one will be considered a radical to do so.

The first is obvious (although Rothbard hadn’t seemed to consider this one in 1965). It is Christian eschatology, or “end times” views. The most common view of “end times” among Evangelicals is dispensational premillennialism. In relation to end times teachings, this is most commonly understood as the “left behind” school. It emphasizes the gradual decline of the world into total submission to Satan—or “the antichrist.” At some point (very soon now, we are assured), Christ comes back to “rapture” out the saints, initiate a seven-year period of tribulation in the land of Israel, and bind Satan during a 1,000-year physical rule from the literal city of Jerusalem.

The main point here is that the world must, according to this view, devolve gradually into corruption and evil before any of the return and rule of Christ can even begin. Thus, conservatives who believe this—and it is a large portion of them—accept the gradual decline of society now as a welcome part of their Christian expectations. It is prophecy fulfilled, God’s will, the way things must be.

Thus, no matter how upset they were that their candidate was a Mormon, and no matter how upset they were that their candidate lost to a socialist they perceive to be an American-hatin’ Muslim, indeed, no matter how much they decry and lament the comprehensive decline and fall of America—these Christians must secretly embrace that decline in their hearts as confirmation that we’re closer to the return of Christ.

Christian Reconstructionist, theonomists, and other postmillennialists have criticized these “pessimillennialists” as historical defeatists who believe that Christ and the Holy Spirit must suffer defeat in history in regard to the very Great Commission He gave us. In response to the force of such arguments, several premillennialists and even some amillennialists have attempted to present themselves as “optimistic” and working toward the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, even if in futility, as a testimony against the forces of Satan.

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But this budding number of dispensationalists is up against its own inner contradictions. It’s simple. If your end-times belief system dictates that the world must degenerate and fall completely, or almost completely, into the hands of Satan before the Lord even starts to return, then the conclusion is inescapable: whether you fight outwardly or not, you still must inwardly long for the advance of evil in the here and now.

Such a Christian must, even if subconsciously and secretly, love and embrace—earnestly desire—the advance of Obama, socialism, liberalism, homosexual marriage, “gay rights,” abortion, economic crisis, inflation, the Federal Reserve, war, natural disasters, radical Muslim immigration, and indeed the entire evisceration, decline, fall, destruction and utter desolation of the United States of America.

While obviously they would be personally opposed to all of these things, such Christians must of doctrinal necessity laud the advance of these things in the public square. For the worse things get, the closer we must be to Jesus coming back.

And on the contrary, any earnest effort to halt such things, especially politically, must be judged as at best naïve, and at worst an attempt to thwart the will of God by the “works of man.”

I say, such an eschatology is pessimistic. It demands and welcomes consistent historical defeat until Christ returns (“soon,” of course). And the fact that such a view dominates a large portion of the political landscape among the GOP is a tremendous obstacle to the advance of Christ’s Kingdom, which is Freedom.

Until the majority of Christians change their eschatology, there is very little hope of political progress for conservatives. Political progress toward freedom requires a goal, a plan, and an optimistic faith, both short-term and long-run. But such an outlook is by definitionimpossible for dispensationalists and premillennialists in general (and to be honest, most amillennialists, too).

It just so happens that the dispensational premillennial view of end times is not difficult to refute from Scripture, nor to replace with the Scriptural view of Christ’s continuing dominion from His heavenly seat until that conquest is finished and the last enemy is destroyed. The optimistic faith we need is right there in the clearest terms in undeniable passages of Scripture. These passages interpret the prophecies for us so we don’t have to rely on novels, movies, and newspaper clippings interpreted by fast-talking prophecy teachers with too much hair spray.

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In the meantime, we will learn that we Christians need to get to work. This means doing certain things in accord with the Gospel and law of God.

This means understanding the second main problem of pessimism among conservatives: a warped view of the left and right. This pertains specifically to the goals at which we must aim and the plan to get there. We have come to understand these terms to apply as “left = liberal, Democrat” and “right = conservative, Republican.” Further confusing the historical facts are the common association that the left wants big government and socialism while the right wants small government and freedom.

This is almost the opposite of the truth.

Historically, at least in the British tradition which influenced early America, the “left” and “liberals” were the proponents of freedom, voluntarism, contracts, rule of law, and Constitutionalism. The “right” was the Old Regime which believed in strong, centralized government, an established church, government control over money, finance, commerce, cronyism, corporatism, etc. It was the monarchical and mercantilist party dominated by wealthy men who had gotten wealthy by government coercion, favors, subsidies, etc.

It is in this regard that Rothbard—and again I reserve certain fundamental philosophical differences with him—is particularly helpful. He explains the divide historically, and then makes reference to the views of the great champion of freedom Lord Acton:

Acton wrote that “Liberalism wishes for what ought to be, irrespective of what is.” In working out this view, incidentally, it was Acton, not Trotsky, who first arrived at the concept of the “permanent revolution.” As Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote in her excellent study of Acton:

. . . his philosophy develop(ed) to the point where the future was seen as the avowed enemy of the past, and where the past was allowed no authority except as it happened to conform to morality. To take seriously this Liberal theory of history, to give precedence to “what ought to be” over “what is,” was, he admitted, virtually to install a “revolution in permanence.”

The “revolution in permanence,” as Acton hinted in the inaugural lecture and admitted frankly in his notes, was the culmination of his philosophy of history and theory of politics. . . . This idea of conscience, that men carry about with them the knowledge of good and evil, is the very root of revolution, for it destroys the sanctity of the past. . . . “Liberalism is essentially revolutionary,” Acton observed. “Facts must yield to ideas. Peaceably and patiently if possible. Violently if not.”

The Liberal, wrote Acton, far surpassed the Whig:

The Whig governed by compromise. The Liberal begins the reign of ideas. . . . One is practical, gradual, ready for compromise. The other works out a principle philosophically. One is a policy aiming at a philosophy. The other is a philosophy seeking a policy.

Nothing suits the more recent history of the GOP better, as we have just witnessed, than Acton’s expression of the old Whig tradition here: “ready for compromise.” In practice, this results in stagnation at best, decline more likely. For any compromise with evil is a victory for evil. It is difficult to make a similar argument for any “good” that may be achieved while simultaneously promoting social evil.

But more to the immediate point, the old-school “liberal” (it’s scary today even to try to re-appropriate the term in a positive way!) was a principled champion of freedom who had two things: 1) a political and social goal at which to aim, and 2) an uncompromising commitment to get there eventually.

Rothbard then explains how such a view of the “left” was lost and eventually replaced with the left we know today—the socialist, communistic left. But his reasoning is very revealing. For those who would be queasy to study the thoughts of the Libertarian Rothbard for whatever reason, consider the following two factors to which he points for the wane of the old Liberty movement:

Two philosophical roots of this decay may be discerned. First is the abandonment of natural rights and “higher law” theory for utilitarianism, for only forms of natural or higher law theory can provide a radical base outside the existing system from which to challenge the status quo; and only such theory furnishes a sense of necessary immediacy to the libertarian struggle by focusing on the necessity of bringing existing criminal rulers to the bar of justice. Utilitarians, on the other hand, in abandoning justice for expediency, also abandon immediacy for quiet stagnation and inevitably end up as objective apologists for the existing order.

The second great philosophical influence on the decline of liberalism was evolutionism, or Social Darwinism, which put the finishing touches to liberalism as a radical force in society. For the Social Darwinist erroneously saw history and society through the peaceful, rose-colored glasses of infinitely slow, infinitely gradual social evolution. Ignoring the prime fact that no ruling caste in history has ever voluntarily surrendered its power, and that, therefore, liberalism had to break through by means of a series of revolutions, the Social Darwinists looked forward peacefully and cheerfully to thousands of years of infinitely gradual evolution to the next supposedly inevitable stage of individualism.

Study these closely: they may be summarized in my own way as 1) a departure from God’s law, and 2) the embrace of Social Darwinism.

The first summary is not a stretch because “natural rights” and “higher law” together can only mean God’s law in any consistent worldview. Surely in the context of the eighteenth-century English liberals, there was influence from this perspective. This means that even the agnostic Rothbard recognized the need for a law higher than mere human laws (positive laws, statute laws) if there is to be 1) true liberty, and 2) the prospect for the advance of liberty in society.

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What’s even more powerful is what Rothbard’s comments entail: the belief that the state itself must be subject to this “higher law.” Indeed, such a system promotes liberty and brings an urgency toward that end, as freedom would demand us to bring “criminal rulers to the bar of justice.”

As he rightly notes, the two major compromises which destroyed this liberal tradition were utilitarianism and social Darwinism. Both of these should be obvious: the former subjects the freedom and rights of individuals to the “greater happiness” of the greatest number of people—not even a majority, but a plurality! This obviously leads to pragmatism, political gamesmanship, corruption, and suppression.

It also can breed elitism, which is what social Darwinism effectively becomes. This view says that man has evolved to the point that he can be the wise director, planner, caretaker of nature. This mandates that the most intelligent and careful few among us direct, plan, and take care of the rest. The result is, well, the history of leftism as we know it today. Its clearest manifestation is the public school system, of which the godfather of social Darwinism, Lester Frank Ward, was a vigorous proponent.

The antidote to this whole problem begins by adjusting our understanding of left and right. We should not understand these as D vs. R. We should understand them as liberty vs. tyranny as judged at the bar of the eternal higher law—God’s law.

From this perspective, and the perspective of history, D and R are both far to the right of this schema—far towards tyranny. Both believe in using statist, oppressive means in order to further agendas, many of which are unbiblical. They are each unbiblical for some similar and some different reasons, but they are both unbiblical and tyrannical nonetheless. We should view them that way, and as the preferred alternative, view the goal of biblical law as the cause of Liberty toward which we must aim.

Conclusion

While so much more could—and should—be said in these regards, the basic conclusions are simple. Conservatives fall into hopelessness and despair because they are trained to be pessimistic and reactionary, and from this malady they are provided no escape which is not condemned as “radical.”

These characteristics are expressed and exacerbated most vividly in widespread pessimistic eschatology and a failure to critique the false view of left and right that is foisted upon them.

With the former problem comes a secret love of cultural decline. The second brings a secret refusal to adopt biblical, as opposed to secular, standards of liberty. Both are then compounded by a self-induced paralysis to do any different. As the trend spirals downward, the entrapped refuse even to listen to anything outside of the prison of their pessimism.

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The solution to these problems is education in dominion theology. This addresses, among other things, both the eschatology and the political standard. It supplies optimism in both the goal at which to aim and the confidence of seeing it come to pass according to God’s own promise.

Until we make strides in these basic areas, the next “election of the day” will be one more, and one more, and one more, near-sighted project destined for pity and despair—even after a win as rhetorically optimistic as the great Reagan revolution.

If we do begin to overcome the gloom and compromise, it will only be because we set clear biblical goals, and then marched, sweated, spent, and bled for them.

Endnotes:

1. See p. 8 in the link. [↩]

A Tale of Two Calvinists – Part II

                                                             By Aaron Everingham 

I attempted, in Part I of this article, to put some flesh on the bones of the idea of “embracing the doctrines of grace”, or “becoming a Calvinist.” While I avoided delving into the Biblical and theological fount of these doctrines, and I scarcely touched on them historically, I hope that what I did achieve was to begin to depict my encounter with such doctrines, and their subsequent effect on my faith. I also hoped to undergird the truth that, as mere labels, they positively distinguish the true gospel from “sub-Biblical, synergistic versions” of the gospel which are especially prevalent today.

I could make the point by saying, I’m a Biblicist, therefore, I’m a Calvinist. I hold these precious truths of God’s sovereign grace as a matter of conscience, and indelible, Scriptural conviction. To restate the experience just as emphatically as in Part I, yet more narrowly, a fundamental understanding of true grace was absolutely necessary to my spiritual health and religious affections. It continues to be necessary to my growth in grace and truth, and therefore my approach to worship. And it is an understanding which, through Christ’s mediation and the work of the Holy Spirit our lives, we have reaffirmed every Sabbath at the levels of both the mind (through our senses), and the heart. Our omniscient and benevolent Father knows the “weakness of our faith”. Therefore, every Sabbath…

“He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul…”

and He

“[prepares] a table before me…”

We who are in Christ receive, by grace, these most sublime benefits: imputed righteousness, mediation, union, adoption, sanctification, intimacy with God, the means of grace, and the list could go on… As my wife and I began to learn this, it was spiritual nourishment like we had never experienced. It was freedom renewed, and confidence rooted firmly in God’s unbreakable and eternal covenant. It clarified things in the Scriptures that once confused us. It was a gut-level rebuke of our legalism and list-keeping and toxic self-righteousness. With eyes of faith we began to see that both our justification and sanctification, signified through baptism and declared in the Holy Supper and the preaching of the gospel, flow from our union in Christ. They are truly and completely by grace, with no square inch to claim as our own. We are eclipsed by the luminescent tsunami that is God’s love. And that is true liberty.

I believe that what the Scriptures teach regarding God and His creation, regarding Christ and His kingdom, and the eschatological center of the whole, can be loosely summarized as “Reformed theology.” I come to the Reformed tradition with much ignorance, naivete, and spiritual immaturity. But I come with “fresh eyes” – the eyes of the newly converted; as one only 5 years into his Christian pilgrimage who has, by grace, drawn nearer to the heart of the catholic faith.

My goal is that throughout this short series of articles, I may demonstrate the importance, within the Church, of the mutual nurturing of long-time Calvinists and new Calvinists together, in the spirit of edification and discipleship. I also hope to elevate these truths for the glory of God, and the zeal of His people.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”

“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
(Romans 11:33-36)

A Tale of Two Calvinists – Part I

By Aaron Everingham 

As one who is relatively new to the Reformed tradition, and one who has ‘come over’ from a broadly pietistic, Baptistic and non-confessional background, I think I have a fairly interesting perspective. Fresh eyes, if you will. Having joined a Presbyterian congregation with many members who ‘grew up in the church’, were baptized as infants as a sign and seal of God’s covenant promise, were re-born by the power of the Spirit at an early age “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”, and grew up reading the Westminster Shorter Catechism (or for some, the Heidelberg Catechism, as there are many Dutch Reformed families in our congregation), we have, in a sense, a unique vantage point. We, like probably a small minority in our church, were saved only five and a half years ago, and certainly not Reformed until sometime around the end of 2010 (and then, only as far as our soteriology).

Our gradual growth and change which resulted in our embracing of the Reformed tradition began with, as it has for many of the people I have met, the “discovery” of the doctrines of grace (see Rev. Ligon Duncan on the resurgence of Calvinism, here). I hate to call it a discovery because that implies a sense of novelty or doctrinal individualism inherent in something which is anything but novel or innovative. With B.B. Warfield I stand in agreement that, “the world should realize with increased clearness that Evangelicalism stands or falls with Calvinism.”

I know how brash that may sound. What he meant by that, I believe, comes from this: Calvinism is used simply as a label that distinguishes the gospel from all of its sub-Biblical and synergistic variations. That the future of Evangelicalism (something Warfield was deeply concerned with), depends on whether or not it clings to those truths encompassed by what is called “Calvinism.” As well, this agrees with C.H. Spurgeon, who wrote,

“The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox’s gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.”

I can’t help but assume that where Spurgeon was referring solely to so-called “five points of Calvinism”, Warfield was referring broadly, nevertheless with greater accuracy, to the whole system of doctrine encompassed in the confessions of the Reformed tradition (with its emphasis on justification by grace alone).

So when I say “discovery” of these doctrines, what I mean is that through the study of the Word of God, outside of the anti-Reformed context of our first church, we were broken of our anti-Reformed presuppositions. We were so frustrated with the teaching and attitude of those within our fundamentalist-Baptist camp (broadly) towards things which seemed so plain in Scripture, that we had to look outside the camp for answers (I am not making any intentional allusion to the book of Hebrews here). It was in that ‘looking outside’ (i.e. reading literature and listening to sermons from non-fundamentalist theologians) that we began to have our questions about the sovereignty of God and the salvation of man answered. And they were answered Scripturally, soundly, basically understandably, leaving us with overwhelming conviction as to their veracity.

The word “Calvinist” in our circles was one of the worst possible words. This is no exaggeration. Our first church practically split over a perceived Calvinistic sympathy in the heart of an assistant pastor. I have friends who, having left that tradition, now fully confirm monergistic regeneration and limited atonement, yet will not touch the label out of latent fear. Calvinists were falsely thought of as heretics, and preachers of “another gospel”. Well known Reformed ministers of the present and the past were practically demonized, or at least, branded as dangerous (the irony of that is astounding, given their hymnals, the Calvinist KJV translators, and their penchant to uphold Spurgeon as hero of the faith). So at first, our inquiry was secretive. We didn’t want to be lumped in with the heretics. I was hoping to become a pastor one day, and assumed that would be impossible in those circles if I so much as winked at the theologian John Calvin (or used the word ‘elect’ in corporate prayer – but that’s a story for another blog post!) I was essentially a ‘closet Calvinist’.

This was the third most important thing to happen in my life (behind salvation and marriage). I had come to embrace what I believe to be an unadulterated gospel. The Holy Spirit had graciously given me to understand the most fundamental teaching of the Bible: God saves sinners. That God does not make salvation possible, but in His great mercy He actually sent His Son to die for His people, and to redeem the world, thus securing our salvation. In the eternal counsel of the godhead, He had predetermined the fate of those He would call His own. Not as a respecter of persons, for we are all dead in our sins and enemies of God, but according to His grace and mercy. That He would pass over the non-elect, who will receive what we all deserve: divine justice. That our wills, constrained by our nature as Adam’s helpless and broken race, require God’s free and enabling grace. Therefore God must intervene, granting us repentance and faith. Granting us new hearts, so that we can come to Him freely for the forgiveness of our sins, and be sealed until the day of redemption. Amen.

These doctrines I have briefly tired to capture, which are commonly known as the five-points of Calvinism, or by the acrostic TULIP, or as the doctrines of grace, we embraced wholeheartedly. Or more accurately, they seemed to embrace us. I remember likening it to being born again, again. The Bible gradually began to come together like never before. Passages we literally avoided were now passages of both great comfort and accepted, awesome mystery. There was no rationalizing away the mystery of God’s sovereign predestination and man’s responsibility anymore; at the heart of Calvinism is this mystery.  God Himself became ‘bigger’; that is, our perception of God’s character through His revelation enlarged, so that in our hearts his attributes eclipsed all that we had previously thought of Him. We felt more free, more secure, more treasured and more joyful in Christ than ever. It was humbling as well, suddenly coming to learn the true depths of my depravity, that God alone saved me, and that I contributed nothing to it. It is the true gospel alone that brings the Christian to his knees before God to cry, “why me, Lord?”

So as I hope I’ve illustrated, we came to embrace the doctrines of grace gradually. This led to our tearful but necessary departure from the only church we knew, the very church God had saved us in. Despite it being difficult to leave (we love those people despite doctrinal differences), we were very excited because we knew we were following Jesus. We were following what He had put before us, and by the Spirit’s convicting us through the Word, were completely persuaded that this was God’s will. And, we were going to a church where we would be united with a congregation of God’s people who had all come to the same understanding. A relatively young congregation, where these old Biblical truths were the champion of many once-weary hearts.

But I have (joyfully) digressed. What I am setting out to do in this post is to lay the groundwork for the question of why I think we, and others like us, have a unique perspective when joining a long-standing Reformed congregation. I believe that in order to effectively accomplish that, I had to explain what I mean by “embrace”, when I am speaking about Calvinism. I needed to depict how God graciously led us to discovery and drink deeply from the Word of His sovereign grace. This will help me to describe what I mean by “a tale of two Calvinists”.

I would like to set up a small disclaimer before ending Part I: as I endeavor to articulate my thoughts here, let me be clear that I am not going to be pitting two groups against each other. Neither am I drawing out two classes of Christian, nor trying to be overtly definitive in this “tale of two Calvinists.” I hope it will be an encouragement to both new and old Calvinists alike! If anything, I’d love to build up zeal for the truths of God’s sovereign grace, those old truths which pump through the veins of the Reformed tradition. Those massive, humbling, tectonic truths which have set ablaze every man and woman I know who have come to embrace them. They are the kiln of true, evangelistic piety.