After reading the writeup, I just came away shaking my head and wondering what is prompting him to put himself out front in the media on this issue. Doesn’t he realize that the mainstream media uses people like him to drive whatever meme’ they are currently interested in? If he doesn’t, he needs to recognize soon before they just use him as a tool and throw him out. It’s what they do.

But, beyond that concern, I’m even more bothered by the horrible excuse for a logical argument that he uses. He makes this statement:

“There’s really nothing conservative — and certainly nothing evangelical — about a laissez-faire view of a lack of government regulation,” Moore says, “because we, as Christians, believe in sin.”

“That means if people are sinful, if all of us are sinful, then all of us have to have accountability — and that includes corporations.” Moore says. “Simply trusting corporations to go about their business without polluting the water streams and without destroying ecosystems is really a naive and utopian view of human nature. It’s not a Christian view of human nature.”

–NPR, Interview with Russell Moore

As is customary with bad argument analysis here on SB, we need to turn Dr. Moore’s argument into a syllogism for clarity:

• A. Christians believe in sin.(a)
• B. Accountability places a check on sin.(a)
• C. Conservative evangelicalism aims to minimize sin.(a)
• D. Government regulation places accountability on corporations.(a)
• Therefore, conservative evangelicals should be in favor of government regulations on corporations.

I believe that is a very fair representation of his argument. Now, let’s analyze it’s flaws.

Firstly, the most obvious flaw with his argument is that it proves too much. Every one of his four premises are universal positives. That’s always a dangerous way to argue because it ends up proving way more than you would like it to. In effect, I could use his argument to argue in favor of government regulation of anything. In fact, let’s do that:

• A. Christians believe in sin.(a)
• B. Accountability places a check on sin.(a)
• C. Conservative evangelicalism aims to minimize sin.(a)
• D. Government regulation places accountability on churches.(a)
• Therefore, conservative evangelicals should be in favor of government regulations of churches.

Churches do all kinds of horrible things as well. Just look at the Catholic sex scandals of the last two decades. Dr. Moore’s argument is ready and willing to justify government regulation of churches to curb the sinfulness of their congregants and leaders. All we would need to do is just tweak the last noun in premise D and we can justify the regulation of anything at all. That’s the sign of a bad argument.

But, getting back to his argument as stated; while it’s true that Christians believe in sin, and accountability helps to curb some forms of sinfulness, it’s not true that government regulation acts as a check on corporate “sinfulness.” As I show here often, government regulation is the very lifeblood of big business. The oil industry lives and dies by government. They use government regulation to stifle competition by making market entrance cost astronomical. They use regulations to limit their own liability in the case financial disaster. They use regulations to gain unfair advantage over foreign competitors, and on, and on. Government regulations are practically the mission statements of big business. The notion that a large corpus of government regulation places a real check on corporate malfeasance is utterly naive. Regulations don’t check corporate shenanigans, they enable them.

The concept that Dr. Moore seems to misunderstand is that government is inherently unable to perform the role of impartial regulator. It appears that he is under the impression that simply changing actors within the government structure, or perhaps changing the structure itself, would effect efficient regulation of corporate self interest. That is incorrect. I’ll repeat: government is inherently unable to regulate. This is because, no matter what regulatory structure you erect, or who you position within that structure, the undermining fact is that government has a monopoly on the use of force. They are the only ones that are legally allowed to use coercion at the barrel of a gun. You can’t reform that situation. It’s the very definition of moral hazard.

Let’s look at some real life oil spill regulations as an example:

But not as much for BP, thanks to a law passed in 1990 that will limit its liability for economic damages to a small fraction of the likely cost of the disaster.

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, signed in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, limits a firms’ economic liability from an oil spill to $75 million — a fixed number that hasn’t been indexed for inflation.

Any costs above that are covered by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund — funded by U.S. taxpayers — which can spend up to $1 billion per incident for oil removal and damages.

And for a company like BP, $75 million is truly a drop in the bucket: In 2009, BP’s daily profits average $93 million a day — which means they could absorb the loss in 24 hours and still have $18 million to spare.

BP has said that it will waive the limits on its liability and pay whatever claims come their way, although there’s nothing in the law that will compel them to do so. And as long as the law allows companies to carry out drilling projects but not face much economic risk in the case of an accident, critics say it gives a green light to risky behavior.

–Chris Cromm, Southernstudies.org

Guess who was the president in 1990. Yep, Daddy Bush. The “conservative evangelical.” The true punishment that the market would inflict on BP has been artificially inhibited by government regulations. Tell me how lassez-faire created that little gem.

On the other hand, there is a mechanism that provides an effective check on sin within the marketplace. It’s called the price mechanism, and it’s guided by the laws of economics. If allowed to function without interference, the pricing mechanism will regulate the behaviour of actors within the market by punishing them with losses or rewarding them with profits. Let’s look at the BP oil spill as an example. In a free market, what would keep BP from polluting and spilling oil all over the Gulf of Mexico? Simple. Every gallon of oil that goes into the water is a gallon of oil that BP can’t use. BP is self-motivated to not spill oil for the same reason that the deli owner is motivated not to leave his meat out on the counter all day. It would go rancid and he would lose money by having to throw it away. That’s a complete waste of money and resources. And you know what the market does to companies that waste money and resources? It drives them out of business.

But, BP has decided it’s far more in it’s own interest to protect itself from waste by lobbying and bribing a lot of regulations into place that insulate it from the harsh reality of the market. If Russell Moore really wants BP to bear true responsibility for the oil spill it created, he needs to take away it’s safety blanket of government and let the free market pronounce judgement on BP the way it’s supposed to.

2010 Overview from LifeWay VBS on Vimeo.

The protection of the creation isn’t just about seagulls and turtles and dolphins. That would be enough to prompt us to action, since God’s glory is in seagulls and turtles and dolphins (Gen. 6-9; Isa. 65).

Pollution kills people. Pollution dislocates families. Pollution defiles the icon of God’s Trinitarian joy, the creation of his theater (Ps. 19; Rom. 1).

Will people believe us when we speak about the One who brings life and that abundantly, when they see that we don’t care about that which kills and destroys? Will they hear us when we quote John 3:16 to them when, in the face of the loss of their lives, we shrug our shoulders and say, “Who is my neighbor?”

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

His point here is a decent one, but I think he’s on the cusp of over-spiritualizing the issue though. It might be right, in principle, for a Christian to be more in touch with the land and environment around him or her. In fact, I’m in the process of doing that very thing with my family at the moment. We are trying to buy some rural land where we can have livestock and larger agriculture on our homestead. But, tying the reputation of the Christian message to the ecological conscience of those who proclaim it is suspect. Augustine has been quoted as saying “never judge a philosophy by it’s abuse.” It’s the job of the hearer to rightly discern the truth of a particular message, independent of the messenger. If a fellow throws his #2 combo wrapper out of his car window and then turns to the passenger to tell him about Christ, so what? This Christian fellow is simply misinformed about the liability of his littering. He doesn’t understand properly how his actions harm others around him. That’s a separate argument from the legitimacy of the gospel. Confusing the two is strange.

I understand why he is linking the oil spill to Christian environmental attitude though. It’s an easy connection to make if you only read headlines and don’t look behind the curtain of government/media propaganda. He’s almost right when he says:

Too often, however, we’ve been willing not simply to vote for candidates who will protect unborn human life (as we ought to), but to also in the process adopt their worldviews on every other issue.

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

I would put it another way. We’ve been grossly naive to think that politicians who espouse pro-life rhetoric have any intention of actually doing anything about abortion on demand. Bush ran on pro-life this, pro-life that. What did he do in eight years in office? He signed a meaningless executive order to repeal the Mexico City policy. What a joke. Likewise, liberals are finding out the hard way that Obama has no intention of actually carrying through on all of his green rhetoric. I’ve posted here recently on how in bed with the oil industry he is and how the grass roots left are totally confused at how silent he has been on the oil spill issue. The religious right expected the conservative majorities of the 90′s and early 2000′s to gain some serious traction on the abortion issue. They didn’t. And, likewise, the liberal left expects the liberal majorities of today to do the same thing on the environmental issue. They won’t. The problem is not just that we have adopted the worldview of our political blowhards, it’s that we’ve actually believed that they took the issues seriously.

And this leads me to my real beef with his argument. There is an underlying assumption that state power is absolutely necessary, and that social power is only effectual when it is used as a tool to aim state power at a certain issue. He isn’t entertaining the notion that there is any effectiveness in social power itself to solve problems directly. He says:

Because we believe in free markets, we’ve acted as though this means we should trust corporations to protect the natural resources and habitats.

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

He didn’t think that statement out clearly before he wrote it. This is a question of ownership. If I own something, and it makes money for me, I will protect it and care for it. Why wouldn’t I? Allowing my property(an oil field in this case) to be ruined profits me nothing. It’s totally contrary to any logical expectation of human behaviour. You better believe that BP has every incentive in the world to get that leaked fixed and cleaned up rapidly. They are losing millions per week over this. That’s a far more powerful incentive than some government regulatory threat that has no teeth because the people making it are bought and paid for by BP lobbyists. This is the real world, not a naive 12th grade civics class.

He continues:

But a laissez-faire view of government regulation of corporations is akin to the youth minister who lets the teenage girl and boy sleep in the same sleeping bag at church camp because he “believes in young people.”

The Scripture gives us a vision of human sin that means there ought to be limits to every claim to sovereignty, whether from church, state, business or labor. A commitment to the free market doesn’t mean unfettered license any more than a commitment to free speech means hardcore pornography ought to be broadcast in prime-time by your local network television affiliate.

Caesar’s sword is there, by God’s authority, to restrain those who would harm others (Rom. 13). When government fails or refuses to protect its own people, whether from nuclear attack or from toxic waste spewing into our life-giving waters, the government has failed.

…

Moreover, we’ve seen some of the theological and ideological fringes in the environmentalist movement, fringes that enabled us to see them as not “with us,” and, frankly, to enable us to make fun of the entire question as a silly enterprise. But perhaps the void is being filled by leftists and liberals and wannabe liberal evangelicals simply because those who ought to know better are off doing something else. Working with our secular progressive neighbors on, for instance, saving the Gulf no more compromises the evangelical witness than our working with feminists to combat pornography or with Latter-day Saints to protect marriage.

–Russell D. Moore, Blog

If I’m reading him correctly here, he starts off by saying that having government set business regulations is like having the fox guarding the hen house. I would whole-heartedly agree with that. But then he diverts into the typical mistake of using bad analogies to demonstrate how the free market is just like any other organization or group that would be dangerous if given “unfettered license.” The fact is, the free market is not just a different version of a government or corporation. It’s not an entity at all. It’s not a “system.” The free market is a loose set of concepts that identify human behaviour and economic law. It says “when X happens, Y will be the natural economic or praxeological result.” Giving an analogy of pornography as a result of unregulated free speech isn’t a legitimate criticism of the free market. That’s like saying, if you pay someone a salary, they might buy drugs with the money. Therefore, we should heavily regulate wages.

The problem with the BP oil spill is that someone made a mistake and lots of oil is now flowing into the gulf and needs to be cleaned up. That’s it. Period. BP screwed up and needs to clean up their mess. The thing that needs to be remembered is that the oil industry is NOT a free market. They haven’t been a free market in over a hundred years. They enjoy all types of regulatory protection from competition in exchange for lobbying dollars to Congress. Therefore, making arguments about the failure of the free market as it relates to this oil spill is illegitimate. And, likewise, arguing that the government should stay out of BP’s way and let the free market work is also illegitimate, because BP’s market isn’t free. The true solution is to have the government get out of the way altogether so that the economic and praxeological principles of free market exchange can work correctly, unencumbered by artificial influence from the outside.

Conservatives Christians aren’t to blame for turning a blind eye toward ecological concerns. We all operate in a rigged system, where the real answer to the problem is prohibited. But, things are changing. The local, organic food movement is a tide that has been rising for quite a few years now. Farmer’s markets and CSA’s are appealing to people of all political persuasions – conservatives and liberals. These things represent real alternatives to the artifical food marketplace that has been created by misleading government regulation of agriculture. In short, a real market is being born to compete with the fake one. And, people are flocking to it. Just drive around. You’ll see hundreds of people planting gardens for the first time this year. Many of these people are conservative Christians.

My criticism of Russell Moore’s argument is that he isn’t seeing these issues clearly. You can’t say that conservative christians have neglected ecological concerns when the game has been rigged the whole time. When the only options they are given are two different types of new government regulations then what are they supposed to do? If they choose to remain silent in the face of that rigged proposal, that isn’t the same as being unconcerned. It just means they’d rather not choose between two decisions that both serve corporate interests through increases in state power.

Firstly, I want to reiterate that when I say that laws are insufficient for their purported purpose, that’s not the same thing as saying that “laws are bad” or “laws shouldn’t exist.” I’m not saying that. I’m proposing something very specific: laws can’t ever do what they are intended to do. I gave the example last time of drunk driving, and how laws designed to stop it can’t actually do that. All they end up doing is punishing drunk driving after the fact. And that is not the same thing as stopping it. A law can’t do that. But, if that’s the case, then, from a Christian perspective, why the ten commandments? Why did God tell his people “Thou shall not kill?”

Obviously, it wasn’t because God thought that a law stating “thou shall not kill” would actually stop murder from happening among the Israelites. In fact, if we interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, as we discussed yesterday, we see a clearer picture of the law presented by Christ himself. He says:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment;”

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

–Matthew 5 via ESV Online

He goes on and gives a few more “you’ve heard X, but I say Y” statements. In this way, He’s clearly showing that each law that they cherished, even if fully adhered to, is still not adequate for meeting the standard that it is derived from. God’s standard is a level of moral and emotional perfection that is so foreign to us that it’s inscrutable. Christ is telling the Jews here that the law wasn’t meant as a measuring stick, but as a whip. Paul confirms this later on in Galatians when he says “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” Put more clearly, the law is for punishment, nothing else.

For that reason, I’m in favor of laws that are geographically local and limited in scope. For instance, I would be in favor of laws and rules in a household set down by parents. After all, the scripture says “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Parents know themselves and their children best and are able to tailor rules that minimize negative side-effects and target particular bad behavior better. I’d be ok with some sort of community rules or laws too, as long as they were few and targeted. Beyond that, I don’t see the point. Once you get beyond the community level, the only laws that do less harm than good are pinpoint targeted laws that are part of the universal moral code already. Things such as “don’t murder” or “don’t steal.” Those things hardly need to be defined as laws by the state. Everyone has those laws burned into them already by virtue of our humanity under God’s common grace. Defining them on paper doesn’t make them any more or less enforceable.

It seems to me that the utility of a law (here I’m speaking of those laws that aren’t just restatements of the universal moral code within each man) is inversely proportional to that law’s geographical scope. That is to say, the more people that fall under the jurisdiction of a particular law, the greater the probability that, that law will do more net harm than good.

For instance, consider a proposed law that bans the trading of financial derivatives. This might seem like a good idea at first, and that it should be applied across the board as a Federal law. But, the fact is that a derivative in and of itself is just a financial instrument to hedge against risk. It has no moral character on it’s on. Some people will use it as a means of reasonably protecting themselves against loss in a responsible manner. Others will use it as a means to overleverage themselves knowing that they can use the taxpayer as a backstop against loss. Banning the sale of derivatives altogether doesn’t stop financial catastrophe from occuring. It just harms those institutions that would have used it wisely.

A better alternative would be for institutions themselves to apply rules about derivative use internally, or perhaps to form working groups with other firms to agree on a set of common rules. Don’t scoff. This happens all of the time. Tell me which government agency developed the USB standard that computers use to connect devices. That’s right. None. The computer industry itself saw the need for a high speed interconnect and developed a working group to address the issue. Manufacturers saw it as being in their best interest and adopted the proposed standard. That’s how these things work. No state was necessary to bring all of that about. And no state is necessary to enforce a law that says “don’t make incompatible USB devices.” It’s not necessary because the firms involved know that if they go off and break the standard, nobody will buy their product.

In the same way, it’s not necessary to have a state that pronounces nation-wide laws. Individuals, families and communities are better equipped to develop laws that are more suited for the problems they face as small people groups. Those types of laws, while not perfect, since no law can be, will at least do less secondary harm.

Firstly, let me quickly give a definition of my anarchism. I believe that the state should be abolished, not government. For some clarity on what I see as the points of distinction between the two, see my series of posts on Albert J. Nock’s book called Our Enemy, The State. Ok, moving on.

To me, it’s clear that laws cannot perfectly represent the ideas they are meant to enforce. There will always be gaps which exclude some people that should have been included, and exclude people that should have been included. It’s the nature of what a law is. They are inherently imperfect analogs of ideas. Let’s take an example: drunk driving. We all would agree that driving under the influence is very dangerous and needs to stop. So, how do we make a law that stops drunk driving? There is only one way, and that is to ban cars. Anything less than that will be simply variations of ways to punish drunk driving after the fact. And that’s not the same thing as stopping it. Instead, that’s just punishing it. Those are two different things.

This inability to make laws(like our drunk driving example) that properly enforce the ideals behind them leads to a worse problem. Because no law can stop something like terrorism, the only option you’re left with is to enact laws with various levels of preemption. So, returning to our drunk driving example for a moment – we know that we can’t create a law that simply stops drunk driving without resorting to some extreme like banning cars. And, that’s not going to fly. We, therefore, decide to create a law that says “you are only allowed to buy 1 alcoholic beverage per 150 pounds of body weight per day.” That way, nobody can drink too much at any one given time.

Well, that’s not exactly accurate. What if someone decided to get drunk on a Friday night and spends all week going to the store, once per day, buying his one beer and then stockpiling it. Then, on Friday night, he drinks his 7 beers and drives down to the pool hall, drunk as a skunk. Ok, so that won’t work. What if we change the law to now say that “you are only allowed to buy 1 alcoholic beverage per 150 pounds of body weight per day, and you must drink it before leaving the premises of the store where you bought it.” Well, now that won’t work either. Now you’re enforcing that people drink before they get behind the wheel. So, we are forced to keep modifying the law over and over until we find an “acceptable” amount of preemptive inconvenience or harm in order to make the law at least somewhat effective. But, even then it will never do what it was intended to do in the first place: stop drunk driving.

At this point you may be comparing what I’m saying to scripture and wondering why I’m ignoring the fact that God handed down lots of laws. If laws are so inherently broken then why did God seem to have no problem handing them down to his people? The answer to this, is to remember, first, that it’s proper in biblical interpretation to interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. And, given that principle, we must look at what the New Testament teaches with regards to laws. Let’s look at a couple of passages:

18 A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

19And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.

20″You know the commandments, ‘DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’”

21And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.”

22When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

23But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

–Luke 18:18-23(NASB), via Bible Gateway

This is the familiar story of the so-called “rich young ruler.” This man first asks Jesus what he must do in order to be saved. Christ answers him and cites a few of the ten commandments. He answers and says that he’s done all of those things. Christ then gives him a new paradigm, by telling him that he needs to sell everything he owns, give that money to the poor, and follow Him. What an interesting answer. Jesus is telling the man that it’s not laws that are going to save him, because there are no laws capable of encapsulating the proper requirements of salvation. Laws were not sufficient to get across the ideas necessary. Jesus showed him this by giving him, not a law, but a principled action that He knew the young man wouldn’t be able to fulfill because of his love of money. Christ exposed the man’s sin without using an appeal to law, because laws were insufficient for the task.

This is getting long. We’ll look at another example next time.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A bill to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes has been approved by an Alabama House committee.

The sponsor, Democratic Rep. Patricia Todd of Birmingham, acknowledges that with only five days remaining the bill has little chance of winning final passage this session.

The bill would allow a patient suffering serious pain because of cancer or other ailments to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana. The patient would need permission from a doctor and could grow his or her own marijuana.

One committee member, Democratic Rep. Yusuf Salaam of Selma, expressed concern that allowing marijuana use for medical purposes might open the door to full scale legalization of the drug.

The bill now goes to the full House.

–AP via al.com

While this may instill fear of quickening societal decline in the hearts of Christians, when you sit back and think about it logically, it really doesn’t make any sense for drugs to be illegal in the first place. And, there is no solid biblical or ethical reason to criminalize drug use. Now, I don’t expect you to just take my previous statement on face value. So, I’m going to step through my argument and try and convince you.

Here’s my argument:

• Christians should support the repeal of all laws that criminalize the use, possession or cultivation of drugs, because the enforcement of those laws, and resultant negative externalities, cause more harm than the drugs themselves.

Here’s my disclaimer:

• I, personally, do not use/take any illegal drugs whatsoever. And, if any currently illegal drug was to be made legal, I still would not put it into my body. In short, I do not and will not use drugs, now or in the future.

Now, my argument for repealing all drug laws is based on what I think is a set of obvious, common-sense observations about the consequences of criminalizing human behaviours that don’t harm others. I’m going to go through these observations one by one using marijuana laws as my example, but please note that I believe this applies to all drug laws. Not just marijuana.

1.) Marijuana’s legal status is not the determining factor upon which people decide to smoke it or not. Think about it for a moment. If you don’t currently use marijuana, is it because it’s illegal? Of course not. The reason you don’t smoke pot is because you’ve made either a moral, or a health decision to abstain from it. Marijuana’s legality doesn’t play into that decision making process at all. There are plenty of things that are legal to ingest that you, in fact, do not ingest. Tobacco for instance. Tobacco is fully legal, yet only about 21% of the U.S. population smoke cigarettes. Furthermore, that 21% number represents a drop in smokers from almost 43% in 1964 to 21% in 2005. That’s a 50% drop in 40 years, with smoking still being fully legal the entire time.

So, what is the reason for this drop in tobacco smoking rates? The overwhelming factors are social stigma and health concerns. Legality has nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, most people begin smoking early in life, before they are of legal age, only to quit later as adults. This fact shows how ineffectual bans on personal behaviour are. If a majority of people begin using a drug when it’s illegal and then quit when it’s legal, that blows the whole theory out of the water from the get go. The bottom line is that legality doesn’t influence usage among behaviours that have moral stigma attached. If a person doesn’t smoke weed now, it’s about 99% certain that he won’t smoke it when it’s legal.

2.) Drug laws put people in prison for engaging in a behaviour that doesn’t harm anyone. People should not go to jail for ingesting something into their body. I believe it’s immoral to lock someone in a cage for eating, smoking or ingesting something into their body that we don’t approve of. But, let me be clear. This is an entirely different argument from things like drunk driving or negligence. What I’m talking about is the simple act of picking a plant out of your back yard, sticking it in a cigarette paper and inhaling the smoke. Knocking down a person’s door, kidnapping them from their family and throwing them in prison for months or years at a time simply for doing that act is immoral.

3.) Drug criminalization creates violence and suffering. You know what’s worse than smoking dope? Children being killed in the crossfire of Mexican drug wars and innocent people being murdered to keep them quiet about drug trafficking in inner-city neighborhoods. If prohibition taught us anything, it’s that making the personal consumption of certain substances illegal instantly creates a black market. And, that black market spawns gangs, violence, murder and all sorts of horrible side effects. What finally brought down Al Capone’s gang? It wasn’t the FBI. It was the repeal of prohibition. Want to destroy Mexican drug cartels? Repeal all of the drug laws. When things are made illegal, people fight over them. When those things are legalized people engage in commerce. It’s been said that when goods can’t cross borders, bullets will.

4.) Being an addict is not the same as being a criminal. Drugs are addictive. That’s a fact. Putting someone in prison doesn’t make them any less addicted to heroine. In fact, it complicates their recovery from that addiction. There’s plenty of drugs in prison. There’s also plenty of rape and violence. And, in the mean time, the addict is now isolated from their family, church and other loved ones. It’s sick. Showing the love of Christ to an addict is only complicated and frustrated by locking them up in a cage. And treating them like a criminal, so that they have to hide from public view, creates in them a sense of criminality that leads to worse behaviour and possibly real crime. What’s better? Having a prison ministry to go and preach to drug offenders, or not having them be prisoners at all and witnessing to them on their own front lawn.

5.) Enforcement of drug laws consume tens of billions of tax dollars each year. The DEA(Drug Enforcement Agency) has a budget of $2.6 billion dollars. When you take into account all of the thousands of enforcement agents, local police, state troopers, marshalls, court employees, etc. that are required to enforce the U.S. drug laws, it’s just insane the amount of money that is wasted on this nonsense. There are now roughly 50,000 people in prison in this country on marijuana charges, at a cost of $1 billion per year to the tax payer. When drugs as a whole are taken into account, the numbers are far higher. Again, I believe it’s wrong to be in favor of the caging of my fellow citizens for simply smoking a plant. If they get behind the wheel of a car or neglect their children in favor of drugs, let’s intervene as a society, but anything less is just bullying.

6.) Drug laws are completely inconsistent. This is an easy one. Marijuana is illegal. Alcohol isn’t. There is no difference between the two. Case closed.

7.) Sin is not the same as crime. There are lots of things that are sinful, that aren’t criminal. For instance, coveting your neighbors possessions is sinful. But it’s absolutely not criminal. The same applies to drugs and alcohol. Scripture tells us that our bodies are the “temple of the Lord.” Therefore, we should take care of our bodies and not damage them carelessly. But, using that as the basis of a civil law is silliness. Where does it stop? Sure, some people drink too much and some people smoke weed, and that impairs their judgement. But, many people also willingly push their bodies to the physical limit and get drowsy behind the wheel from overwork. Should we imprison them too? Also, many people willingly don’t eat right, so that their bodies get sick and they can’t take care of their families like they should. Should we imprison them too? Of course not. Smoking marijuana may be sinful, but it isn’t criminal any more than becoming addicted to Ambien is criminal. Both impair your judgement, but you only go to jail for one.

8.) Drug laws increase State power at the expense of social power. Christians should be the first in line to come to the aid of those in the grip of drug addiction. But, we have acquiesced to the impersonal, faceless, cold State. They might get somewhat better after the State puts them through mandatory drug rehab programs, but where is the love of Christ? Drugs have always carried social stigma. And, even before there were marijuana laws(The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937) those addicted to drugs were social outcasts. Christ told us to minister to those people, not throw them in a cage. That effort is hindered, not helped, by zealous District Attorneys that just need another notch on their belt in an election year.

9.) Drug laws just simply don’t work. I heard it said recently that the drug wars are over and the drugs won. That’s a very true statement. It’s estimated that roughly 100 million Americans have smoked pot at some point in their lives or actively smoke it now. Statistically, this is an absolutely dismal failure. While this isn’t an argument in and of itself, it lends us an insight into the feasability of outlawing non-harmful behaviour. In short, banning a behaviour doesn’t stop that behaviour. It just empowers the State. The only thing that keeps people from doing drugs is shame and lack of funds. Not laws.

And finally:

Legalization of marijuana is inevitable. It’s going to happen folks. It’s just a matter of time. California could legalize marijuana as early as this year. And, if that happens and they successfully tax the crap out of it, you will see a rapid domino effect across all of the other states as they join in the action to save their dwindling budgets. What you won’t see is millions of non-pot smokers going to the pot store to buy some weed for the first time when it’s finally legalized. That’s just not the way things work. As a Christian, I want people to refrain from behaviour that could harm themselves. But, so much more harm comes from drug law enforcement than from the actual drugs themselves that I believe it’s the appropriate Christians stance to support repeal of drug laws. At the very least, it would put us back to the pre-1937 stance of curbing drug use simply through societal shame and addiction treatment, not laws.

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.

“Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.

–Jerome Starkey, Times Online

This is the “new tone” that Obama brought to the world stage. This is how he restores “respect to America’s image in the world.” Just a few more children that will grow up without parents thanks to the whims of an American president. God help us. Christians love to rail against abortion, yet they actively worship at the feet of a military that just killed two pregnant women. And, yes, I said worship and meant it. Have you been to the Lifeway book store lately and seen their military section with paintings of soldiers kneeling at the cross? It’s sickening.

Why do I think it’s so important? Well, partly it’s because of what i just wrote above. There are laws of economics, just like there are laws of physics. Gravity is a law. And, jumping off of a tall building means you will fall and kill yourself. Even if you don’t understand gravity and could care less about physics, you will still die. And, economic law might play itself out differently in the real world, but it’s no less of a law than physical laws are. If you do A, then B will happen. It’s that simple. And, because of that, Christians are consistently making stupid blunders in thinking on moral and social issues because we don’t understand these things.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I stumbled on an article the other day while doing some research for an upcoming blog post on retirement. The title is: “Does God only care about abortion and homosexuality?” The article was a critique of a response that William Lane Craig recently gave to a question about politics. In general, I see the writer’s point and agree with his conclusion that evangelicals seem to only get involved in politics when it comes to abortion, same-sex marriage and one or two other hot button issues. This has been a critique by the so-called “Christian Left” for a long time, and it’s generally true. But he attempts to make larger points that show his total ignorance of economics:

I was more than a bit dismayed by these comments. Craig only seems interested in the ethical dimensions of healthcare when the issue touches on the life of a fetus. But what about healthcare itself? Isn’t that a moral issue? What about a baby born addicted to crack? Or a single mom who cannot afford health insurance? Or a family who just had Cigna deny their request for their child’s organ transplant? What about the very idea of a system of healthcare that is driven not by care of the patient but delivering profits to shareholders? What about the soaring profits of corporations like Wellpoint even as they raise premiums on people already living at the margins? On what planet aren’t these moral issues?

–Randal Rauser, ChristianPost.com

This sentence is the heart of his argument: “What about the very idea of a system of healthcare that is driven not by care of the patient but delivering profits to shareholders?” That’s what he is complaining about, and the rest of what he describes are, in his view, logical outflows of that one issue. And that issue is an economic complaint about the nature of health care. He is complaining that health care workers care more about making money than helping people. The problem is that is a completely meaningless, but sadly oft-repeated, statement because of what is called the “economic calculation problem.” Let’s look at it in more detail.

What’s called the “economic calculation problem” is a law of economics that, in part, describes the impossibility of making rational economic decisions when confronted with unknowable values. These unknowable values can be unknowable by virtue of the “knowledge problem” of central planning, or because their value is simply inscrutable, such as with slavery. What is the “value” of a slave? How do you rationally factor labour costs when you don’t value that labour(slaves in this case) in monetary units? You know that the slaves are costing you something, but you don’t know how much. You can’t know because you are trying to factor monetary decisions using non-monetary criteria. It’s the same problem as putting a price tag on “good will” when buying a business. The valuations of the owner, the buyer and independent valuators can be wildly different.

And, this is the problem with a statement like, “What about the very idea of a system of health care that is driven not by care of the patient but delivering profits to shareholders?” Health care providers must operate in the realm of monetary calculation. They cannot purchase 1000 gallons of betadine solution with 100 units of “care of the patient.” That’s completely irrational. There must be money(a medium of exchange) involved in order to make the proper business calculations to properly allocate the necessary resources to provide “care of the patient.” There’s no other way this can happen. And, what’s being completely missed in Rauser’s complaint is the role of the consumer in these calculations.

When he says, “What about the very idea of a system of health care that is driven not by care of the patient but delivering profits to shareholders?”, he’s making an implicit argument that valuing profits devalues your product. But this is silly. It doesn’t matter if the product in question is health care or basketballs. As consumers value your product less, more of them will buy that product elsewhere, which will reduce your profits. In a properly functioning free market, increasing profits requires increasing product value to the consumer. This is the way that businesses know what they are doing wrong and what they are doing right. By profits. As profits go down, good businessmen will see that for what it is: a signal that consumers are valuing their products less. As profits go up, the reverse it true. Thus, you must calculate “care of the patient”, not on some inscrutable emotional level, but by profits. How else do you know, as a business man, if you’ve given satisfactory care to your customers(the patients), unless profits increase. That’s called the price signal.

Rauser has, unknowingly, set up a false dichotomy between profits and product value that doesn’t make any sense. Profits are the results of increasing product value. They are inextricably linked together by economic law. And for good reasons. This relationship of profit to product is absolutely necessary to produce quality products that consumers need. But, Rauser is commenting on the basis of Christian conviction, without a proper understanding of economics to inform those convictions, so what he says comes off confused. He just doesn’t understand what he’s talking about.

I want to make a followup point, though. When the natural relationship of product to profit is interfered with by government intervention, as our health care system has been, bad things happen. Again, there’s the law aspect. I’m not saying that the health care industry as we know it now is functioning properly. It’s not. Government has been slowly encroaching more and more into health care for decades, to the point where most of the industry are actively in bed with government policy makers. They have destroyed their own pricing mechanism through government involvement in the market, so that now, many of them simply don’t have a coherent link to the consumer any more.

The channel of health care provider -> insurance company -> place of business -> consumer with hundreds of layers of mandated government compliance at every step has retarded the price mechanism beyond recognition. This is why the age old example of an aspirin costing $8 per pill in the hospital but .05 cents per pill at the grocery store holds true. The answer to our health care woes, therefore, is to eradicate government involvement from the industry. This would restore the proper competition and economic calculation to the industry. But, something makes me think this isn’t what Rauser had in mind. And that’s too bad. Because, if he understood the underlying economics better, as all Christians should, he would be part of a solution that would restore good quality medical care to even the most poor among us. The problems he lists would be solved once and for all instead of just band-aided with more government manipulation which will eventually collapse the whole system.

I’m going to go with a bottom-up approach, using John Macarthur’s hermeneutic rule that you always take the plain reading of a passage as it’s actual meaning unless the passage itself forces you not to. Then you work your way out to solve any conflicts with other scripture. This may seem odd, since the usual inclination is to work from that larger context down to the smaller so as to preserve contextual meaning. But, in this case, the problem with this passage isn’t contextual.  It’s internal.  I’ll do my best to explain.

Here’s what Romans 13 says (verse numbers in [brackets]):

[1] Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. [2] Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. [3] For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; [4] for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.

[5] Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. [6] For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. [7] Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

[8] Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

–Romans 13, NASB

The plain, and most widely accepted interpretation of this passage is that Paul is telling us to submit to “government” because God has put “government” in place. Therefore, if we rebel against “government”, we are essentially rebelling against God’s very plan.

It’s my contention that this can’t be the meaning of this passage. The reason it can’t is because, if that’s what Paul is indeed saying, then he is lying or he is ignorant. And, neither one of those is a hermeneutical option for believers. This is one of those passages that seems to have a very clear meaning, but when you work it out in your mind, you find that the clear meaning is fraught with problems. Let me lay out the problems you will have to accept if you take the standard interpretation:

• In verse 3, the standard interpretation will require you to live in a fantasy world where good deeds are always applauded by government and bad deeds are always punished.
• Verse 4 will required you to believe that all war that is waged by the state, and all capital punishment, is justly administered.
• Verse 5 seems to indicate that taxes are the primary method by which God has chosen to fund these governments that he has put in place.

Verses 3 and 4 are what blow up the whole standard interpretation of this verse.  Paul simply can’t mean what it sounds like he means here.  If Paul is really saying that government always celebrates good and punishes evil then he is delusional.  But, we know that’s not the case.  Paul himself was unjustly imprisoned and killed by Rome, and he saw the rampant imperialistic wars that Rome waged all over Europe to enslave it’s people. He knew, more than most, how rampantly corrupt government is, and how unjustly it treats it’s subjects.

And, in our own time, we have seen one murderous regime after another during the 20th century.  From Stalin to the Holocaust to Pol Pot, we know that government doesn’t operate in the way Paul describes here.  Instead, they punish good and reward evil all the time.  He knew better than to make a statement like that.  And, that’s why I can’t accept that, that’s what he meant.  There must be some other interpretation that doesn’t require Paul to be clearly denying reality(i.e. insane).  So, what could that be?

Well, what Paul is describing here is “government.”  That word is the critical point to understanding all of this.  Remember the law of non-contradiction:  A is NOT equal to non-A.  Therefore, if the thing(government) that Paul is describing is not identical to the thing we are thinking about (government as we know it), then we aren’t talking about the same thing.  Paul is talking about something different.  Put more plainly, what Paul is talking about here is not the thing we know as government.  It can’t be, because the properties he ascribes to “government” don’t match the properties we see in “government.”  He means one thing.  We mean something else.

It’s plain to me that he’s talking about what government is supposed to be.  He’s describing government in it’s truest form.  It’s pure form.  But, not everything that claims to be a certain thing really is.  What North Korea calls it’s government isn’t a government.  It’s a gang of dictators that are holding that country hostage.  Just because they label themselves as a government doesn’t mean that they actually are one.  I can call myself the President of Uganda.  That doesn’t mean that I actually am.

And this leads to the correct interpretation of this passage:  when government fulfills it’s role, it’s ordained by God, and we are subject to it.  When government violates it’s role as Paul has defined it, that government is no government at all.  Therefore, it can’t be ordained by God, because it’s something different than what Paul describes.

This is getting really long, so I’ll pick it back up next time to talk about the problem of movement that you encounter if you accept the standard interpretation.

3. The state turns misfortune into a political asset.

A third index is seen in the erection of poverty and mendicancy into a permanent political asset.
Two years ago, many of our people were in hard straits; to some extent, no doubt, through no fault
of their own, though it is now clear that in the popular view of their case, as well as in the political
view, the line between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor was not distinctly drawn.
Popular feeling ran high at the time, and the prevailing wretchedness was regarded with
undiscriminating emotion, as evidence of some general wrong done upon its victims by society at
large, rather than as the natural penalty of greed, folly or actual misdoings; which in large part it
was. The State, always instinctively “turning every contingency into a resource” for accelerating the
conversion of social power into State power, was quick to take advantage of this state of mind. All
that was needed to organize these unfortunates into an invaluable political property was to declare
the doctrine that the State owes all its citizens a living; and this was accordingly done. It
immediately precipitated an enormous mass of subsidized voting-power, an enormous resource for
strengthening the State at the expense of society.

–Nock, Our Enemy, The State

Remember that this was written in 1935. So, when he says, “Two years ago, many of our people were in hard straits,” he means the Great Depression. He is talking here of the appropriation, by the state, of an actual state of being. They actually began, around that time, turning poverty and misfortune into political footballs to be tossed about for the purpose of vote buying and political power grabs. This, at once, has the effect of putting the lie to the notion that the state cares anything about ending poverty. Of course they don’t. Why would they want to end such a potent political tool as that. It would be like banning abortion. They never will, because as soon as they do, they would lose that issue as a way to buy votes. It’s much more valuable as a tool. Morality be damned.

This is also, so far as I’m concerned, the major flaw in the thinking that drives much of the “social gospel” movement’s leadership. I’ve posted on this before. Many, or them seek to expropriate the power of the state and apply it toward social ills, such as poverty. This can’t work, because of what we just covered. The state has no desire to end poverty. But, it does have an interest in making you think it does. That’s the whole game in and of itself. So, trying to get the right guy in office, or protesting, or whatever is just a complete waste of time. By definition, it can’t work. And, also by definition, you will always be made to think that it is working. So unless you enjoy being lied to and playing the fool, it’s a really bad idea to attempt to ally any aspect of the church with the state.