The Bosque Boys

The Party is Over.

As I have written, the End of the Party means releasing unreasonable expectations and assumptions about the nature and meaning of life. The End of the Party means a return to reality. The End of the Party is an opportunity to purge our lives of pernicious distractions and reconnect with ancient human truths. Again, this is essentially positive--although it will have its inconveniences. Up until a few days ago, I believed most of us were in the process of coming to grips with these resurgent facts of life.

An Important Aside: the End of the Party, however, should not be confused with the "End of the World." The End of the World is a much scarier scenario, although, unfortunately, altogether possible.

A Note on Terms: to be clear, the "End of the World" speaks to the reality that we are flirting with a titanic economic collapse. A complete financial meltdown so mammoth that the government and culture of the United States would cease to exist in a form recognizable to our generation.

What to do? We the people must change our ways, and, more importantly, we must demand that the government change the way it does business to avert the eventual economic cataclysm is this country.

Perversely, massive federal borrowing to avert a bank collapse seems logical to me. We know exactly what happens when the banks fail (the Panics of 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, and 1929). Who knows what chaos such a financial calamity might wreak on our modern society? We cannot take that chance. Seven-hundred billion or three trillion dollars, restoring the financial sector in this country is a matter of national security; it is the proper role of government.

Having said that, the banking crisis and the recession are two different problems; they are connected but distinct. The difference? Most of us have lived through many recessions; few of us have lived through a bank panic. Fix the banks and heal the credit sector and the recession fixes itself naturally. However, there is a much bigger systemic liability: we are approaching a moment in which our collective ability to generate revenue can no longer support our extravagant national lifestyle.

What next? What must be done in Washington? Our government must work out a sustainable plan for the USA going forward. Understand our basic problem: we cannot be all things to all people. We can no longer believe that the key to economic success is spending every dime available and then some. We must face the unhappy reality that the Keynesian Interlude is finally over.

Although I dutifully voted for John McCain and divided government, for a brief moment during the transition, I allowed myself to believe in Barack Obama as the agent of necessary change. Why?

1. I am a person of hope.

2. As a nation, our other options were so dismal.

Barack Obama was uniquely qualified to bear bad news to an admiring nation. Only Nixon could go to China. Only Barack could explain our new reality to a nation in need of tough love.

Why was I hopeful that he would rise above partisanship and ideology to be a great American president? Because it was so necessary; our posterity depended on him doing just that. In my heart of hearts, no matter how illogical or un-biblical, I continue to trust in Providence as it concerns American government. I was optimistic about Barack Obama for the same reason I was optimistic about the "surge" in Iraq. Not because it was logical or likely--but because failure would be lethal. It just had to work.

Our economy today faces a crossroads that dwarfs Iraq in terms of importance. It is not an exaggeration to assert that our very survival as an independent nation is at stake. Would Barack Obama rise to the occasion? If he failed to grasp the urgency of the moment, we would be in dire straits.

The Bad News: the events of last week demonstrate clearly that he does NOT get it. Instead of folding our bad hand and leading us to a new epoch of real sustainability, the President has decided to double-down. If our pattern of spending, taxing, and borrowing regardless of sound economic principles and plain old good sense got us in to this mess, then more of the same will surely get us out.

What Now? I still support and respect this duly elected President of the United States. But it is now time to face facts. I am now painfully aware of how much I disagree with his governing philosophy. This President's political ideology is destructive, and we need to defeat his proposals.

During the transition, I entertained a hopeful hypothesis that Barack Obama was a sheep in wolf's clothing, a center-left statesman so perceptive, patriotic, and post-partisan that he might well govern center-right. Okay--I was wrong in a big way. Most of you were right. Implausible as it might seem to me, Sean Hannity had it right ("the radicals have taken over...").

As it turns out, Barack Obama really is a "liberal" in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who worked so assiduously during the 1930s to give the term "liberalism" its modern political meaning: an ideology that favors a powerful and active state committed to social justice and public welfare. In that sense, we now understand that this president is the most committed liberal to sit in the Oval Office since Lyndon Johnson, a Roosevelt acolyte, who attempted to complete the project of transforming the United States into a European-style welfare state during the 1960s.

What is at stake? Think on this: the national transfiguration from limited constitutional governance envisioned during the founding to the modern leviathan we encounter today boils down to two very brief periods in our 225-plus year history.

1933-1937. The New Deal, while failing to solve the immediate economic crisis that fueled its revolutionary ethos, succeeded in forever instilling a popular expectation of government as guarantor of public welfare and individual prosperity. Franklin Roosevelt expertly recast the conception of individual liberty, forever linking freedom to insulation from personal misfortune and a government-given right to "a healthy peacetime life" for its citizens.

1965-1967. The Great Society, coming three decades later, proved wildly unsuccessful at defeating poverty and a litany of other targeted ills that beset humankind in general and our national community in particular. No matter, Lyndon Johnson's New Deal 2.0 further insinuated the virus of personal dependence on the state into the American body politic.

What do those two periods have in common? A powerful liberal president bent on radically remaking the American system paired with a happily compliant overwhelming majority in Congress. One emerged during a period of economic crisis, one during a period of great prosperity, but both presidents understood perfectly the small window of opportunity for a massive re-imagining of the American creed.

Now, some forty-odd years later, we are most likely on the brink of the next (perhaps final) phase of the great transformation of American society. The President understands that he is in the midst of a moment ripe for completing the massive project began so many decades ago. This window won't last for long, but the President and his rubber-stamp Congress don't need all that much time.

What is at stake? Forgive the analogy, but being a conservative is a lot like the old anti-terrorism conundrum. The haunting reality of your mission is that you must defeat your opponent everyday to win, while your opponent only needs to beat you once to totally defeat you.

An Aside: how bad is it really? When Paul Krugman and Robert Reich are beside themselves with joy over the agenda of this administration, prudence, indeed, will dictate that we ready ourselves for a ferocious political battle to preserve the last vestiges of our uniquely American experiment in liberty.

We live in interesting times.

Today the President announced the intended withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

While I am grateful that he seized this moment to salute our military and briefly recognize the most-overlooked hero in the recent happy turn of events in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, the President took great pains NOT to characterize the wind-down to this six-year conflict as anything resembling success.

Even as this President inherits a world in crisis, ironically, we can point to Iraq as one of the few areas of the world in which the situation on the ground is greatly improved over its condition eight years previous. President Obama can rest a little bit easier each night knowing that Iraq no longer poses a grave threat to American interests or regional security; in fact, the new Iraq, incredibly, today stands out as one of the few bright spots in an extremely troubled Middle East.

An Aside: the implicit trade off seems to be that President Obama will allow Secretary Gates and Generals Petraeus and Odierno to hammer down the hard-won victory in Iraq--as long as no one mentions that inconvenient fact publicly. We'll take that deal.

One more thing: for years we have heard the opposition harangue President Bush over the cost of the war in terms of blood and treasure.

The human cost has been high (over 4250 American soldiers killed in action).

However, the projected trillion-dollar price tag for the transformation of Iraq, relative to the events of the past month, suddenly seems like a drop in the bucket.

Tired of Freebird after the 10,000th time? Wonder if Southern Rock is more than replays of Lynard Skynard, Allman Brothers, or J. Geils?

Give a listen to Drive By Truckers. Hard rocking. And hard-edged. Music from the Southern underside. Lots of sin, little grace, despair faced down by grit, prickly pride.

Lookout Mountain

Never Gonna Change

Decoration Day

Lyrics by album.

I have said before that Bobby Jindal is likely to be the next Republican elected president of the United States. Some of the bloom came off his rose this week, but c'est le vie politique. Climbing the greasy pole is, by definition, not easy; the journey to the Oval Office is not usually a rocket ship to the moon. No matter, the youthful governor of Louisiana continues to impress me as the most articulate and dynamic young face in the GOP, and, reminding you that nobody knows anything--and that goes double for me, I stand by my prediction. Having said that, for myriad reasons, he should not be our candidate for 2012.

Who's it going to be? Mitt Romney, who gave a rousing speech today at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Why?

He is ready and willing. Defeating an incumbent Obama will be a daunting task in 2012 (I say impossible). Most ambitious Republicans will be hanging back to position themselves for the better window for victory in 2016. For a number of reasons (age being one of them), Romney will be reluctant to sit out a cycle. Moreover, if the planet does not slip off its axis between now and then, he will also be in position to finance his own campaign, if necessary.

But that won't be necessary. Romney emerged from 2008 as the conservative favorite in the race. Conservatives had to hold their noses as John McCain, the epitome of center-right Republicanism, won the nomination and went on to lose the General Election in a big way. Never mind that 2008 was a year so poisoned for Republicans that a resurrected Abraham Lincoln would have faced an uphill battle, the McCain campaign proved to many that moderation is a losing hand. Right-wing Republicans will rise again during the next cycle, arguing that it is time to run an ideologically pure movement conservative. Romney now fits that bill.

Romney is a handsome man and a talented orator (albeit with some limits). He exudes an aura of confidence and competence on economic issues. Right now, we think the next election will center on the economy (of course, conventional wisdom held for a long time that the previous election would turn on progress in Iraq--ooops). Mitt Romney can present a cogent and compelling case for conservative fundamentals.

Any Republican candidate is likely to lose the next election. Romney probably has a better chance than most of pulling off an upset. If he does not, he will run with integrity and vigor--and we won't waste any of our promising young guns in a brave but fatal charge against Cemetery Ridge.

The invention of the arts, and other things which serve the common use and convenience of life, is a gift of God by no means to be despised, and a faculty worthy of commendation. John Calvin

Recently on Wednesday night our church has begun a new Family Night format called "Dinner and a Movie." We eat, and then we watch 15 or 20 minutes of a movie followed by discussion and Bible Study. The plan is to finish one movie over the course of Lent, then see if we want to repeat the experience. We do this as a single mixed-ages group: what those who get paid for being church consultants call "intergenerational approach to education." For those of you new to the blog, our congregation is Native American, mostly Comanche, Kiowa, and Ft. Sill Apache.

I am structuring the first part of the discussion around the "world-view" presented in the movie. William D. Romanowski, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College, suggests this approach in his book Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture. (Here is a brief review of this book I wrote for Perspectives. Scroll down to page 9.) If you've not read it, I recommend this book. Then we move to discussing the themes presented by the film. After discussion we move to a teaching Bible Study on one or more of the themes.

If you have never seen it, I suggest you rent the movie we are now watching: Smoke Signals. Both the writer, Sherman Alexie, and the director, Chris Eyre, are Native American: Eyre is Cheyenne-Arapaho, and Alexie is Spokane-Coeur d'Alene. The movie centers around two Indian young men, their relationship to their families and to each other, and to a tragedy early in their lives. Funny, poignant, insightful, true-to-life, definately worth a view.

The themes from the movie that we are doing Bible Study on are family, friendship, and forgiveness.

Recently the U.S. State Department issued a Travel Warning for U.S. citizens regarding Mexico. An excerpt:

The greatest increase in violence has occurred near the U.S. border. However, U.S. citizens traveling throughout Mexico should exercise caution in unfamiliar areas and be aware of their surroundings at all times. Mexican and foreign bystanders have been injured or killed in violent attacks in cities across the country, demonstrating the heightened risk of violence in public places. In recent years, dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped across Mexico. Many of these cases remain unresolved. U.S. citizens who believe they are being targeted for kidnapping or other crimes should notify Mexican officials and the nearest American consulate or the Embassy as soon as possible, and should consider returning to the United States.
. . .
Mexican drug cartels are engaged in an increasingly violent conflict - both among themselves and with Mexican security services - for control of narcotics trafficking routes along the U.S.-Mexico border. In order to combat violence, the government of Mexico has deployed troops in various parts of the country. U.S. citizens should cooperate fully with official checkpoints when traveling on Mexican highways.

Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades. Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez. During some of these incidents, U.S. citizens have been trapped and temporarily prevented from leaving the area. The U.S. Mission in Mexico currently restricts non-essential travel to the state of Durango and all parts of the state of Coahuila south of Mexican Highways 25 and 22 and the Alamos River for U.S. government employees assigned to Mexico. This restriction was implemented in light of the recent increase in assaults, murders, and kidnappings in those two states. The situation in northern Mexico remains fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements cannot be predicted.

Many U.S. colleges and universities have issued warnings to students to avoid travel to Mexico, and even the southern U.S. near the border.

This violence results from the money to be made smuggling illegal drugs into the U.S. for sale. The demand for illegal drugs by U.S. citizens drives the killing in Mexico.

So, what should we do?

I wish I knew a great and simple answer to that question.

For starters, I have advocated before the legalization of marijuana use--not because I think it harmless, but because too many Americans want to use it to make stopping it possible, while preserving a free society.

Do the arguments I use to argue for legalization of marijuana mean also that all drugs should become legal? Legalizing all drugs probably would end much of the violence in Mexico, and in our own cities. The large underground drug economy would be taken up into the tax-paying legal economy.

But, part of my rationale for marijuana legalization is that the social harm done by marijuana is less than the social harm done by making it illegal. I don't think that case can be made for lots of other drugs, such as meth. Though with the damage being done to Mexico, perhaps I need to rethink my position.

So, what can/should we do, before our neighbor to the south slips further into violent anarchy?

Would gaining actual control of our border with Mexco help? If, and that is a big if for logistical and political reasons, we gain control of our border, then the fighing for control of smuggling routes should decline. I think, therefore that securing the border must become a higher priority not only for ourselves, but for the Mexican government.

Would it help to try to decrease the demand? Seems obvious to me. Perhaps we should have taken a few tens-of-millions away from some of the pork items in the "Stimulus" bill and put them into drug rehabilitation, advertizing, and community faith-based organizations.

And if we take a strong position on prosecuting for possession and use, how about CCC-style work camps with literacy training and skill development.

I wish I knew a quick and easy answer that will save Mexico from the consequences of our bad habits.

Very interesting post from Brits at their Best on the contrast between Britain and Europe in the past, quoting from a book by Alan Macfarlane, who uses among other sources Montesquieu's observations when he visited Britain in 1729. Montesquieu was a French thinker who was read and admired by the Founders of our nation.

In The Origins of English Individualism, Alan Macfarlane explains that Montesquieu visited England in 1729 and plunged into a study of its political and social institutions which he clearly found alien -

"'I am here in a country which hardly resembles the rest of Europe.'

In his work on The Spirit of the Laws, he noted that the social, economic and religious situation, connected to law and politics, was different in England. The English were wealthy, enjoying a 'solid luxury'; England was a trading nation as a result of its freedom from restrictive laws and 'pernicious prejudices'."

Between the 16th and 18th centuries English travellers noticed with shock and horror that France's rural populations had a miserable diet and pathetic clothing. The French were oppressed by heavy taxes and by royal troops that regularly pillaged and beggared villages.

"The husbandman in France, 'scraped to the bones, and . . .dressed in hemp', 'never goeth to the market, to sell anything: but he payeth a toll, almost the half of that he selleth'."

In contrast, travellers in England, among them the Venetian Embassy, noted with amazement -

". . .the absence of heavy taxation, of billeted soldiers, and of internal taxes. This meant that 'every inhabiter of that realm useth and enjoyeth at his pleasure all the fruits that his land or cattle. . .or travail gaineth'.

Yeomen ate plentifully of fish and flesh, drank beer or wine, wore fine wool, had a great store of tools, and often sent their children to university.

'. . .the riches of England are greater than those of any other country in Europe. . .there is no small innkeeper, however poor and humble he may be, who does not serve his table with silver dishes and drinking cups. . .'"

Notice among the differences which gave advantage to Britain were low or no taxes enabling persons to keep the wealth they generated which in tern enabled them to start their families on a path of upward mobility.

Macfarlane also noted that de Tocqueville on his visit to England made similar observations and credited English prosperity to

'The spirit which animates the complete body of English legislation' and because 'The nobles and the middle classes in England followed together the same courses of business, entered the same professions, and what is much more significant, intermarried. . . .'
'classes which overlap, nobility of birth set on one side, aristocracy thrown open, wealth as the source of power, equality before the law, office open to all, liberty of the press, publicity of debate' (L' Ancien Regime).

Why do the Democratic party leadership want to make us look more like France, ancient and modern?

Speaking of the European Union, Brits offers this explanation and contrast:

Today, Socialists and redistributors share a weird mental delusion. They take a snapshot of the poor, the middle class and the upper class and they freeze it in time. In their vision, those who are poor will always be poor - unless the government intervenes. Those who are rich will always be rich - unless, again, the government intervenes.

This is like taking a picture of your children and thinking they are always going to be seven years old.

It is certainly true that there will probably always be individuals who are poorer than others, but over a period of years they will not be the same individuals. Socialists and redistributors do not see this because they do not see individuals. They see classes.

I would modify this assessment and exchange "familes" for "individuals" as more realistic. In our country we have seen over and over again one generation toiling on a lower rung of the ladder in order to enable the next generation to climb to a higher rung. The American immigrant experience often has been of Mom and Dad barely speak English, work hard at entry-level jobs, push their children to succeed in school, and their children move into the Middle Class.

In my first year of seminary (1980-81) I was a Youth Pastor in Kearny, New Jersey, an urban working-class Scots-Irish neighborhood. Over 80% of our congregation had been born overseas. The pastor and I joked that our youth ministry motto should be "Training Tomorrow's Leaders for Suburban Churches". Most of the "kids" of our church would go on to live further out from New York in more affluent suburbs.

The revolution for social justice at NYU was dealt a significant setback today. Gawker has the details here. Please try not to laugh.

In Revolutionary-Era republicanism, the ideology that informed the Revolution, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution, the most precious of all things in this world was Liberty. In the view of the Founders, Liberty was rare in history, and constantly threatened. The threats to Liberty could be categorized as tyranny (the arbitrary and unjust power of some over others), anarchy (when everyone acts according to his or her passions then no one is free), and foreign domination (which would mean the end of community self-rule). Of course as some of you have already seen, anarchy was regarded as a temporary condition that would lead to the tyranny of the strong. And foreign domination is simply tyranny by outsiders.

Our economic policy is threatening our liberty by inviting foreign domination.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday urged China to keep buying US debt as she wrapped up her first overseas trip, during which she agreed to work closely with Beijing on the financial crisis.

Clinton made the plea shortly before leaving China, the final stop on a four-nation Asian tour that also took her to Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, where she worked the crowds to try to restore America's standing abroad.

In Beijing, she called on authorities in Beijing to continue buying US Treasuries, saying it would help jumpstart the flagging US economy and stimulate imports of Chinese goods.

"By continuing to support American Treasury instruments the Chinese are recognising our interconnection. We are truly going to rise or fall together," Clinton said at the US embassy here.

Clinton had sought to focus on economic and environmental issues in Beijing, saying Washington's concerns about the human rights situation in China should not be a distraction from those vital matters.

Full story linked by Drudge from Breitbart.

It is not difficult to imagine a future scenario in which China threatens to stop buying U.S. Treasury notes, and to dump the ones it now holds, unless the U.S. act in certain ways. We are giving them a lot of leverage.

To those who say that China would never harm our economy because we are such a good customer I have three responses: (1) the Chinese leadership does not have to face the voters, and could decide that long-term strategic gain would be worth short-term econmic pain; (2) lots of history results from "Oh sh*t, that's not how I wanted that to turn out." One can imagine Chinese leadership making the threat quietly, assuming we would cave quickly, we don't, a secret game of chicken ensues, word leaks out and our markets go in a nosedive; (3) France was Germany's leading trade partner in 1938.