Two thugs exult in their thuggery

Two thugs brazenly celebrating the impunity with which they get away with their crimes against humanity. Absent repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, God will bring them to justice in this life and/or the next.

This happened today at the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires.

The two thugs whose tenures have been marked by multiple murders of exiles from their countries on other nations' soil, the invasion of other nations, persecution of those who challenge their oppression, and attacks on children, non-combatants, medical facilities, and orphanages, are (l. Muhammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and r. Vladimir Putin, president [read: dictator] of Russia.

Hello, France, Brazil, and Belgium!

Last week, I noticed that a lot of the traffic to the blog was from Russia, perennially in second-place among countries from which people visit the site. Today, with a surge of traffic generally, came a big surprise: Lots of folks from France, Brazil, and Belgium. (Along with readers from Italy, Kuwait, The Netherlands, Ukraine, Germany, and Canada.) Welcome to the site and feel free to leave comments! (By the way, I know nothing more about visitors than the countries from which they visit.)

"Car Dieu a tant aimé le monde, qu'il a donné son Fils unique, afin que quiconque croit en lui ne périsse point, mais qu'il ait la vie éternelle. Car Dieu n'a point envoyé son Fils dans le monde, pour condamner le monde, mais afin que le monde soit sauvé par lui. Celui qui croit en lui n'est point condamné, mais celui qui ne croit point est déjà condamné, parce qu'il n'a pas cru au nom du Fils unique de Dieu." (Jean 3:16-18)

"Porque Deus amou o mundo de tal maneira que deu o seu Filho unigênito, para que todo aquele que nele crê não pereça, mas tenha a vida eterna. Porque Deus enviou o seu Filho ao mundo, não para que julgasse o mundo, mas para que o mundo fosse salvo por ele. Quem crê nele não é julgado; mas quem não crê, já está julgado; porquanto não crê no nome do unigênito Filho de Deus." (João 3:16-18)

"Want alzo lief heeft God de wereld gehad, dat Hij Zijn eniggeboren Zoon gegeven heeft, opdat een iegelijk die in Hem gelooft, niet verderve, maar het eeuwige leven hebbe. Want God heeft Zijn Zoon niet gezonden in de wereld, opdat Hij de wereld veroordelen zou, maar opdat de wereld door Hem zou behouden worden. Die in Hem gelooft, wordt niet veroordeeld, maar die niet gelooft, is alrede veroordeeld, dewijl hij niet heeft geloofd in den Naam des eniggeboren Zoons van God." (Johannes 3:16-18)

Hello, Russia

Once again, Google reports on recent visits to this blog show quite a few readers looking in from Russia.

Of course, this data gives no indication of who the visitors are. For those reading from Russia, I share this message:

веруй в Господа Иисуса Христа, и спасешься ты и весь дом твой. (Acts 16:31)

Petition for Our Troubled World

This petition, an adaptation of a petition published by our brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, will be included in the Prayers of the Church at Living Water tomorrow morning. Please include similar petitions in your own personal prayers tonight and tomorrow:

Lord of all comfort and peace, give to the world that peace which only You can give. Deliver Christians from the hands of persecution, restore peace to lands ravaged by war, grant safety to refugees, and comfort those victimized by war and terrorism, especially we remember the people of Ukraine and Syria daily assaulted by the Russian military and the people of Britain recently attacked by Islamist terrorists. Bring peace to our own nation. In the face of political division and tension, let us find peace in You and Your unchanging promises. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Inviting All to Come and See (AUDIO)

Here.

How Christmas Looks from Heaven (Audio)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Light Has Pierced Our Darkness (AUDIO)

Here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Still big in Russia?

Well, not big. This blog doesn't get the kind of traffic the blogging biggies draw.

But it's always interesting to me that so many of this blog's readers come from Russia.

Over the course of the blog's life, the overwhelming majority of page views are from the United States, as you'd expect. But there are some weeks when lots of Russians seem to visit and, as with this week, the largest bloc of visitors are Russians. I'm not sure why.

If there are any Russians who would like to explain, leave your comments below.

By the way, I can't tell anything personally or individually about the people who visit the blog, just the big metrics.

So, hello, Russia. Christ is Lord!

[If the image below is too small to see, click on it to enlarge.]

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Should Americans be making more babies?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues that they should be. While it's good that teens are having fewer babies, he argues:

It used to be taken for granted that the best indicator of a nation's health was its citizens' desire and capacity to reproduce. And it should still seem self-evident that people's willingness to have children is not only a sign of confidence in the future, but a sign of cultural health. It's a signal that people are willing to commit to the most enduring responsibility on Earth, which is raising a child.

But reproduction is also a sign of national health in a more dollars-and-cents way. The more productive people you have in your society, the healthier your country's economy. It's an idea that was obvious back in the 17th century, when economist Jean Bodin wrote "the only wealth is people."

This is still fairly clear, I think. Despite the menacing moves of authoritarian Russia and communist China toward exercising regional hegemony (or more), both countries are severely limited in their aspirations by their birth rate trends. Russia is already aged and in crisis, China will almost inevitably be in such crisis soon.

That doesn't mean that married couples should have more kids so that we can forestall the Russians and the Chinese, though both of those nations, at present, pose a far greater existential threat to the peace and security of the United States than do Islamist terrorists.

I would argue that our reticence about having more kids in this country is rooted less in concern about the environment, a fear fostered Paul Erhlich's absurdly overwrought book, The Population Bomb, back in the the late-60s and 70s--a fear that many in my generation, fearful of having less, bought into, than it is in materialism and selfishness.

We had two children who I love dearly, but I wish that we'd had more. There's simply nothing like family living and being a dad is, for me, not only one of the biggest challenges in the world, but also one of its greatest pleasures. There's something beautiful and humbling about pouring yourself into your children and watching them grow up to be wonderful in spite of your parenting.

According to Gobry, there are practical reasons why the United States should be concerned about its low birth rate, "59.6 births per 1000 women," the lowest rate in US history:

Today we see the problems wrought by the decline in productive populations all over the industrialized world, where polities are ripping each other to shreds over how to pay for various forms of entitlements, especially for old people. The debates play out in different ways in different countries, but in other ways they are exactly the same. That's because they are ruled by the same ruthless math: The fewer young, productive people you have to pay for entitlements for old, unproductive people, the steeper the bill for the entire society becomes. This basic problem is strangling Europe's economies. And while the United States is among the least bad of the bunch, it is still headed in the wrong direction.

While acknowledging that evidence for the effectiveness of government programs to encourage people to have kids is mixed, Gobry points out "the fact of the matter is that in contemporary America, 40 percent of women have fewer children than they want to."

Gobry suggests several ways government could entice husbands and wives to have more kids. But for me, the most compelling reason for bigger families is spiritual. The Bible teaches that it's more blessed to give than to receive. Apart from the fact that a nation with fewer children leads to scarcity, fewer opportunities, less productivity, and economic and military weakness, couples who have the wherewithal to raise families--and far more do than they think they do, learn the blessedness of giving to themselves to their kids, not indulgently, but with love that includes loving discipline, time, and personal investment. A parent learns that life isn't about what you keep, harbor, husband, or get for yourself, it's about what you give away.

Parents have a sacred and fulfilling two-fold responsibility. First, they are to prepare their own children for adulthood, nurturing them with the two sides of the coin of love: gracious love and gracious discipline. Second, they are to "make disciples," teaching their children to know the God we meet in Jesus Christ so that they can become not only their children, but God's children as well.

Parenting is a daunting thing. But God has also engineered it to be one of the greatest blessings a human being could ever experience. And, for those who seek to follow Christ, parenting can be a tremendous calling in which to learn love, humility, selflessness, and a right relationship with money and possessions, among other things.

OK, husbands and wives of child-bearing age, don't replicate the mistake of my own self-centered Baby Boomer generation, get busy and make babies.*

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

*By the way, it has always struck me as absurd that people my age can get "senior discounts," something utterly unnecessary for most of us, while young couples with kids and mortgages have to pay full price. It ought to be the other way around, shouldn't it?

Hello, Russia...and the rest of the world

It's a funny thing. Millions don't read this blog.

But whenever I check to see where people live who do read it--and, by the way, I can only check on readers' countries, nothing about specific readers or the towns in which they live--the overwhelming majority are from the United States.

Russian readership is usually in a distant second place. Why that is, I have no idea.

But this week presents an even bigger mystery. Look at this screen shot of the most recent report on the countries from which people are reading this blog.

Hello, Russia...and hello too, to the USA, as well as to the Netherlands, Germany, Latvia, the Falklands (or the Malvinas, if you're an Argentinian), Luxembourg, China, the United Kingdom, and Ireland! It mystifies me how the biggest chunk of readers this week is from Russia. But you're welcome to read away!

To all who read the blog, next time you stop by, leave a comment. Tell me how you found the blog and what drew you here. I would be interested in knowing those tidbits.

Я буду видеть Вас здесь в ближайшее время .

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Good for Medvedev

Here.

Mr. Obama Goes to Moscow, Where the Real Story is Beijing and Tehran

While the Vice President put his foot in his mouth (twice) and his seasoned political pro, Rahm Emanuel, did the same, President Obama was acomplishing quite a lot during his trip to Russia. The BBC reports:

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have reached an outline agreement to cut back their nations' stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The "joint understanding" signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty.

The accord would replace the 1991 Start I treaty, which expires in December.

Mr Obama said the two countries were both "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past".

Separately, Russia also agreed to allow the US military to fly troops and weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, allowing it to avoid using supply routes through Pakistan that are attacked by militants.

These are huge agreements, which also bring huge benefits to US interests.

More broadly speaking, they also may help to lay a foundation for Russia, the US, and India in forming an informal hedge against the Chinese regime in Beijing and Islamic Republic's government in Tehran, each of which appears intent not only on oppressing their own peoples, but also on extending their powers regionally and globally.

One lesson of history is that oppressive regimes with designs on regional or global hegemony need to be checked by other nations cooperatively. In recent weeks, both Tehran and Beijing governments have provided more evidence of their malevolent intentions and of their need to be checke. Better to thwart them now peacefully through temporary, realist alliances, than to face major conflicts with them later.

One might also hope that Russian accords signal an intention on the Obama Administration's part to curb Chinese investment in US bonds, already at an alarming level.

The trip to Russia, I believe, was less about Russia, than it was about China, and certainly about nailing al Qaeda in the mountainous areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's interesting that the Russians are cooperating and hard not to speculate on what sorts of concessions were exacted from the US side,

Obama appears intent to follow a foreign policy realist's approach, a departure both from recent Democratic orthodoxy and from the Wilsonian adventurism of his immediate predecessor, Republican President, George W. Bush.

Iceland Raises Prime Interest Rate to 18%

So what? It's seen as an indication that the nation, the economy of which is in something of a freefall, has negotiated a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), often accused of making steep demands on client nations.

If the move and IMF loan can arrest Iceland's decline, that's good.

My apprehension has been that Iceland would go through with loans for which it was negotiating with Russia.

The last thing we want to see happen right now is for nations to become beholden to either Russia or China. The governments of both of those countries can be expected to attempt leveraging loan agreements for strategic advantage, destructive of the interests of both the international community and of their own peoples.

Russia and Georgia Redux

Kenneth Anderson, professor at the Washington Law School of American University, knows a thing or two about Russia and Georgia.

He makes four key points in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia for current and potential US foreign policy makers:

First, I share unreservedly the belief that Russia is deliberately undertaking a dangerous, threatening, imperial expansion in the “near abroad” and that it must be opposed and rolled back...

Second, NATO is going to undergo a reshaping in two directions out of this crisis...[T]he idea of NATO evolving into some kind of post Cold War ‘legionnaires of the good guys’, into which Russia would eventually become attached in some friendly way, is dead...On the other hand, the idea of NATO as a genuine mutual protection club is back, at least as far as the Eastern Europeans are concerned; since the Western Europeans are much more interested in gas than protection, however, the forward path of NATO as a re-invigorated mutual protection association is cloudy...

Third, it is a grave error to conflate rolling back Russian expansionism with the idea that Georgia should have actual political, security, and military control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This is a difficult point, but it is essential...You can tell me about how Georgia is a democracy and allied with the US and NATO and those things wouldn’t happen any more. Maybe. But frankly I doubt it...[Georgia, he says, is guilty of ethnic violence in the effort to hold South Ossetia and Abkhazia and would need to engage in more such violence in order to keep the two provinces within Georgia.]...It cannot possibly be, in other words, in the foreign policy interest of the United States to commit itself to a policy of actual, in fact Georgian political and military and security control over zones that would be in the same general ball-park as suggesting that, in the name of territorial integrity, Serbia could run Kosovo...

Fourth,...US policy must also disentangle “democracy” from what Georgian democracy currently is - which is best characterized not as democracy, but instead as “participatory ethnic nationalism.”

As I suggested here, it will take a subtle hand to deal with Russia. According to Anderson, it will take the same subtlety in dealing with Georgia, encouraging democracy with a fair-minded regard for the rights of minorities there. (See also here.) (TY to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for pointing to Anderson's post.)

Why the Russian Attack on Georgia is Inexcusable..and Some Spinoff Thoughts from Me

[These are just my thoughts. Please don't think that because I'm a pastor, I think that they're imbued with the truth of God. I'm just me and I could be wrong.]

Columnist Trudy Rubin says that she's gotten a lot of flak for her support of the US government's condemnation of the Russian attack on neighboring Georgia. The objections have, she says, fallen into three main categories:

• Because of the US invasion of Iraq, the US has lost any moral authority in condemning Russia
• Because the Georgian president "miscalculated" by "invading" South Ossetia, a province of the Georgian nation
• Because the US allegedly put the Georgians up to the aforementioned "invasion"

Rubin opposes the Bush doctrine of preemption and acknowledges what she sees as errors in the US policy in Iraq. But, she asserts, "they don't excuse Russia's brutal behavior in Georgia or toward its other neighbors, behavior that began long before Bush took office. America's 'moral standing' is irrelevant in judging Russia's actions." She also says that President "Saakashvili may have acted rashly, and he may have flaws as a leader, but he's the elected president of a tiny nation next to a giant nuclear power." [emphasis mine]

She goes on to write:

Russia presents itself as a champion of Ossetian self-determination. That's absurd. Russia has brutally repressed separatist movements inside its territory, particularly in Chechnya, where Russian artillery and bombs have killed untold thousands of civilians.

This is an important point. A recent poll in the US says that a frightening percentage of Americans think that it's okay for a portion of our country to secede any time it wants. An even higher percentage of younger Americans believe secession is fine.

This sentiment overlooks a fundamental assertion of the Founders, one that was underscored by our own Civil War: Secession or independence can only be legitimate when rooted in moral imperatives.

The Declaration of Independence legitimized the US breakaway from Great Britain on the basis of "self-evident" moral principles. When the Confederate States broke away from the US, they claimed to do so on the basis of similar moral principles. They wanted freedom. But the freedom they wanted was the freedom to enslave others unencumbered by moral considerations.*

The two troublesome provinces in Georgia may want independence. But it appears that the desire has nothing to do with moral principles. That is one more factor which, for Americans conversant with their history anyway, should further delegitimize Russia's invasion of Georgia.

And Russia, which has, at best, limited concern for other peoples' "self-determination," is acting solely on the desire of Vladimir Putin to in some way reconstitute the Soviet Union. As Rubin writes:

Putin has been clear about wanting to restore the Kremlin's former empire, calling the Soviet breakup the "greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century."
Given what has happened to Georgia, other former Soviet Republics now have good reason to worry. Putin has threatened to target Russia's nuclear weapons against Ukraine if that country continues efforts to join NATO (and a Russian general just warned that Poland could face attack over a missile-defense deal with Washington).
Russia has cut supplies of natural gas to Ukraine and waged cyberwar against Baltic states. Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko believes Moscow was behind an assassination attempt by poison that nearly killed him...
So it doesn't matter who "started" the crisis in Georgia. It has little to do with Ossetian rights and everything to do with Putin's drive to restore Russian power. Had Saakashvili not sent troops into Ossetia, Russia would have found another excuse to attack.

Rubin, I think, is right to say that the next US president will have to evolve a common policy with the Europeans for dealing with the Russian government's desire to keep its neighbors--and others--under its thumb.
Russia, as Rubin concedes, has every right to develop a sphere of influence via economic and diplomatic means. But Putin's Neo-Stalinism must be confronted by the world. (Please don't think I'm advocating a war with Russia. I'm not.)
There are several implications that arise from the events in Russia, the emailed reactions received by Rubin, and general US ignorance of our own history:
1. Given the enormous challenges represented by the repressive regimes in both Russia and China, the next president will have to make international cooperation a top priority. This doesn't mean ceding US sovereignty, but ensuring its continuation.
2. The US has dithered on this point for thirty years, but it is essential that we develop our own energy sources. There appears to be an increasing consensus, even in this contentious election year, that we must develop multiple energy sources and they must be of the domestic variety. The US can ill-afford to allow itself to be raked over an energy barrel. With the rise of the BRIC nations--Brazil, Russia, India, and China, there will be increased competition for world oil and gas resources. Two of those countries can, I think, be classified as hostile competitors. (Note: I did not describe them as enemies.) In the real world of the twenty-first century, the US must engage these powers, but understand that we cannot look into the eyes of their leaders and detect benign democrats. We must ensure energy self-sufficiency.
3. Reports of the demise of the state in deference to a globalized world in which organizations and corporations that cross national lines play the supreme role are greatly exaggerated. Richard Branson's Virgin brand may, for example, undertake space flight, taking on benign functions previously associated with governments. And the evil of terrorism may be directed by a wealthy person like Osama bin Laden. But governments, with their power (and responsibility) to tax, are the entities that have the greatest ability to help their people or project power in a way that endangers and enslaves their own nation and other peoples. US foreign policy must not forget that we still live in world in which governments wield great influence in human affairs.
4. Domestically, we must give higher priority to teaching history and other social studies. For Americans to so misread the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence as to accept that secession can be undertaken just when people feel like it, thereby legitimizing not just breakaways in distant Georgia, but maybe even within this country, is frightening. The ethnic and religious fragmentations in today's world are buttressed by such ignorance. "A knowledge of the past prepares us for the crisis of the present and the challenge of the future," John Kennedy once wrote. We will do more to ensure America's future with a true, honest, and appreciative understanding of our history and the principles that underlay our Revolution, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution than we will by enhancing science education, important though that is. Ignorant citizens are ill-prepared to make wise judgments when they go to the voting booth. An understanding of our own history will be a positive lens through which to view world events.
End of this far-flung lunchtime rant.

*Ann Althouse, a professor of Constitutional Law, recently wrote about this here.

Author Joyce Hakim also wrote about when secession is legitimate or illegitimate in her readable history of the United States. Writing of the sentiments of the rebel Confederate States in the present tense, Hakim notes:

...the Southerners...believe in "states' rights." They think any state should have the right to pull out of the Union, and that it is tyranny to keep them in against their wishes. They say they are doing the same thing George Washington and the other revolutionaries did against King George: fighting for their freedom. But it is a white freedom they are fighting for, and the North won't let them do it. Revolution is only right, says President Lincoln, "for morally justified cause." The South has no just cause. So, said Lincoln, secession is "simply a wicked exercise of political power."

Not all revolutions or secessionist movements should be wrapped in red, white, and blue bunting.

Russian Government Gave Chinese Government Cover on Zimbabwe Vote

Here.

Imagine...

if the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced that she was awarding Germany's highest civilian honor posthumously to a Nazi death camp commander.

How would we react to that?

What would such an award say about Germany's intentions today or how it viewed its despotic past?

Questions like this rattled around in my mind the other day when I read this profile of George Koval in The New York Times. Koval was the Iowa-born son of Russian immigrants who gained high security clearance to the Manhattan Project in which America's atomic bombs were developed. He then passed the information he gained along to the late Soviet Union.

Koval, of whom I'd never previously heard, died recently. Russian president Vladimir Putin has honored Koval for helping to "speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.”

Putin's apparent intention for honoring Koval was to give his Russian nation someone to celebrate. But he's honored a spy who betrayed the United States while in the US Army. His greatest achievement was stealing technological secrets that allowed the Soviets to develop atomic weaponry they would not have likely developed on their own intellectual firepower.

Putin could honor people like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author who courageously stood up to Soviet Communism and fought for democracy. Or someone like Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet-era physicist who also became a democracy advocate. Those and countless others like them could legitimately be recognized as Russian heroes.

But it says volumes about Putin, the former KGB-agent who apparently will let go of executive power only in name once his presidential term is completed, and about his nation, that they select as a hero a quisling whose thievery supported one of the most murderous empires in human history.

Democracy is a wonderful system of government. But it doesn't cure all ills. Unless a nation has what I call the metaphysical infrastructure to allow for the functioning of democracy, it won't behave differently from traditional, more despotic, forms of government.

Democracy, of a kind, has come to Russia. But Russia's national inferiority complex, evident since the days of Peter the Great, who slavishly imitated European ways, and the strong tendency of Russians to applaud authoritarianism mean that it's plausible for the country's president to honor someone like Koval.

In this age of radical Islamic terrorism and the rise of China, it would be good for Americans and American policymakers to remember that many Russians and Russian leaders still brood over the way the Cold War ended and still see something laudable and heroic in the Communist era.

If Angela Merkel honored an old Nazi, we would be appalled. We should be no less horrified by Vladimir Putin's recognition of George Koval.

[From The New York Times, above, left to right: George Koval, Vladimir Putin.]