Today (and far less consequentially) I suggest a one-word refutation to the notion that liberalism, in any positive sense, works: California.
My home state for generations, California should be the most prosperous state in the Union. It has literally everything good. It has farmlands, vacation vistas; it has desert, mountains, forests, beaches. It has natural resources from agriculture to oil. It has (should-be) moneymaking engines from border to border. It is a gorgeous state, an amazing plot of land.
Yet spiritually and financially and morally and legally it is a smoking crater, a cesspool, a vortex that will suck not only its citizens' resources into a black hole, but those of the nation as well. When you know that vacation paradise Mammoth Lakes filed for bankruptcy, you know everything you need to know.
Why?
Liberalism.
Liberals have gotten most of what they wanted, and now they're positioned to get just about everything they want. Takers form the majority, and they've put their dealers in charge. And it's ruined the state.I thank God for so much about our move to Texas. But one of my saddest thanksgivings is the fact that I was enabled to get my family off that sinking pleasure barge before it was too late. Both my wife's and my (very good) places of employment suffered layoff after layoff. By God's grace we both survived, but prospects were grim.
Here's an anecdote that tells the tale. The man who drove the van with our household belongings says he has no problems whatever booking jobs to move folks out of California. The problem is getting return bookings. Only military folks (and, I think he said, government employees) are moving into California.
So in Texas we have a good Republican governor and Republican legislators and Republican voters. I know many hip young Christianoids, eager to fit in with the crowd that is eager to be different, are trying hard to make themselves feel good about being Democrats and Christians at the same time, but facts are stubborn things: there's a big difference between the parties. Not as big as most of us conservatives wish, but big. Liberalism is a ruinous religion.Texas prospers because, so far, it's resistant.
Our fear is that, as citizens flee liberal hellholes like California and New York, they'll bring their liberalism here. That makes insane sense, given that human nature is not rational. Liberals never admit that their philosophy is necessarily ruinous — or, at any rate, they never admit it and remain liberals.
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17 comments:
What a great article. I recently read about twenty or so conservative states petitioning to secede from the union. My colleague and I were discussing that if it was every allowed, that eventually millions of people would cram into those states due to the ruin they brought on themselves in other states.
Well said, Dan. What happened in California is sad, and yet is the inevitable result of godless, foolish people running the show, sinners going further and further astray from biblical principles and a biblically based society.
Earlier this week I saw the new Ken Burns documentary about the Dust Bowl, which included the story about how prosperous California was, and the largest migration of people from one part of the U.S. (mainly the midwest) to another, and all the great natural resources and jobs and prosperity then available in California. Yet how quickly it can change, from what it was 75 years ago: a lesson for all of us to consider, wherever we live.
I'm sure you're right, Bowmanh23.
Lynda, it also illustrates insanity, doesn't it? Doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results?
Yes, indeed -- human nature that just keeps doing the same thing over and over, like how unbelievers will even repeat the same questions over and over, as though perhaps they'll get a different answer if they keep asking. (I'm thinking about the dialogue in John 9, from recent sermon listening, and S. Lewis Johnson's comments on that very human trait.) Like Chantry said recently, sin is stupidity ... and insanity.
"Our fear is that, as citizens flee liberal hellholes like California and New York, they'll bring their liberalism here."
Been to Colorado lately? Or New Mexico? They prove your point (fear).
Are you a fan of Atlas Shrugged (not including the implied atheism)?
This entry sounds like you'd be a fan.
That's not a bad thing, by the way (I'm a fan), I'm curious.
And as a warning and reminder of what people do in second terms, look what Jerry Brown did in his second term as governor of CA:
Brown won re-election in 1978 against Republican state Attorney General Evelle J. Younger. Brown appointed the first openly gay judge in the United States when he named Stephen Lachs to serve on the Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1979.In 1981, he also appointed the first openly lesbian judge in the United States, Mary C. Morgan to the San Francisco Municipal Court.Brown completed his second term having appointed a total of five openly homosexual judges, including Rand Schrader and Jerold Krieger.Through his first term as Governor, Brown had not appointed any openly gay people to any position, but he cited the failed 1978 Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban homosexuals from working in California's public schools, for his increased support of gay rights.
Like the Who said, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," but unfortunately we have been fooled again.
Through work, I had a lot of interaction with immigrants from Eastern Europe around 2009-10. Generally speaking, they agreed on a few key points about our national politics.
1) We came here (in some cases, risking their lives) to get away from this garbage
2) We can't believe you're going down this road voluntarily
3) If you keep this up, we'd want to leave - but where else do we have to go?
We can only guess how long it will take before those types of conversations take place in Texas. Hopefully it's decades away, but if it's the biggest ship left afloat when the others go under, prepare to be overrun with unrepentant rats.
I feel sorry for my friends who came here from Europe and Asia, particularly the ones from Communist and predominantly Muslim countries. I keep asking myself, "Where will I flee to?" And I don't know the answer. I'm not looking forward to old age at all when I read about what is happening to the elderly in the U.K. and the rest of Europe. I think their governments want them dead, by rationing healthcare, because these old folks are the last vestiges of a good and decent age.
Nevada used to be a conservative state. Now thanks to the unions who rule Las Vegas, and the Californians who moved, Nevada is now a liberal state. I always loved the benefits of living across the line but enjoying all California had to offer.
I was amazed after the election to read one young Christian pastor (a Driscoll wannabe) state that Obama is a professing Christian and our brother in Christ...and I, once again, just shook my head in amazement at the lack of discernment.
My daughter lives in West Hollywood and is deeply entrenched in progressive liberalism. She is so excited for Obamacare. I wonder how she will feel once the fairly small business she works for puts workers on part time and lays off the others.
Similarly, in Canada where I reside,
the most Liberal provinces are the poorest, least productive, and depend on Federal transfer payments.
The more Conservative parts of the country, like Alberta, (Oil Production) are more prosperous, economically.
Of course, the whole country is impoverished spiritually, conservative or liberal.
Communists are wont to believe that the sole reason why communism has not flourished is not because it is a failed (and devilish) model, but because the "right" people have not yet managed it.
The hammer of the hammer and sickle is not in retreat; it is withdrawn for the next blow.
Liberalism/socialism/progressivism is nothing more than communism in the slow lane, and those who support those isms wear a label coined by Marx, Lenin, Engels, et al: "useful idiots".
Wow Dan, Liberalism? Really? How about the fact that the state is chalk full of SINNERS that need CHRIST? How about praying that the Lord would stir the hearts of His people in the state and if there are not enough, that He would send more to make disciples? How about PRAYING for California? How about dumping all the worldly/political rubbish and concentrate on the GOSPEL! That has to be the most nonsensical piece of clap-trap I've heard from you in awhile. Your a pastor? Wow...
"How about the fact that the state is chalk full of SINNERS that need CHRIST?"
He already said it's full of liberals.
And lest anyone think I'm joking, the overlap between hostility towards God's Word (theological liberalism) and hostility towards God's Wisdom (political liberalism) is too thorough to be coincidental. The liberal worldview is completely dead-set against Christ's lordship.
But supposing this comment has merit, let's apply the logic to another topic. This week there were a lot of posts about domestic violence. We could object along the same lines: why write such claptrap when you should be focusing on the GOSPEL?
Of course, that comes off as silly, immature, and ridiculous. Obviously, when the God-ordained institution of the family breaks down so horribly, and becomes a perverse theater for abuse, it IS an issue of sin which needs to be cured by the gospel. Same thing when the God-ordained institution of government breaks down horribly and becomes a theater for systemic abuse.
ChosenClay: sorry to find you so angry, and trying to see past the anger to what you're trying to say to me.
Are you saying that liberalism hasn't ruined California? If so, then we must disagree. I lived the first 56 years of my life there, and my family goes back generations. I think I have a handle on the course the state's taken.
Are you saying that Californians need the Gospel more than they need politics per se? If so, then we agree — but anyone who reads my blogs or my books, or listens to my sermons (yes, I'm a pastor) knows that I believe that.
Are you saying that every post has to say everything I think about everything, and if I don't say a thing in one post (though I've said it in a dozen others), then I don't think it? Or that individual posts can't focus on individual topics without pretending to be encyclopedic? If so, then we have different philosophies of blogging, and of fair reading.
Are you saying that you have a way of knowing that I don't pray for California because I don't say it in a post on California? If so, your way has failed you in this case; I pray for revival of the Gospel in all of America, not just California. And I and my family pray for you and yours as well.
God bless.
We need to split this country down the middle (maybe along the Mississippi River). Let the liberals have the East.
Within a year, liberals will be tunneling into our side trying to escape their 'utopian' version.
Thanks for the greta photos of the mammoth area. I've spent a lot of time up there. Just a beautiful place.
theoldadam
I'm a citizen of liberal Canada, and I wish to be an American citizen. Aside from Texas, what are other Republican/conservative states?
Is there one state that is more conservative than the others?
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