Author: VD

When I played calcio as a practice scrub for a third-division prima squadra, one of my friends on the team was a hot-blooded Spaniard. He was a really good guy with a cute girlfriend and a great little dog named Psycho (seeko). He hooked me up with some software I needed, and I left my old Playstation with him, although I doubt he got much use out of Maddens. He collected more yellow and red cards than the rest of the team combined, but I never once saw his temper flare off the field, not even when I called him rather early in the European morning to announce that the USA was leading Portugal 2-0 in the World Cup.

It made me laugh, though, when I asked him one day which team he supported in La Liga. He looked at me as if in disbelief and said: “Madrid… alla morte!” I sure hope he wasn’t on one of those trains.

Evangelical Outpost writes: Although completely unwarranted, Hugh Hewitt has included me among an illustrious list of MilBlogs (Sgt Hook, Smash, MudvilleGazette, Blackfive, and Chief Wiggles). As he points out, my blog “ends more towards the cultural, religious, and political than the military.” That, however, will soon be changing as I just recently found out that I’m scheduled to leave for Iraq this fall. Now I’ll finally get to call myself a “warblogger” (or perhaps more fittingly, a “reconstruction blogger”).

Give Joe a visit and wish him well in his coming deployment. He’s a solid blogger, a Marine, and a stand-up Christian. Here’s hoping that he’ll be able to keep blogging in Iraq, and that he’ll stay safe and well while he’s there.

Daniel writes: In other words God promises to micromanage every detail of history to produce a good outcome for His people.

You’re still evading the point. I was not criticizing a broad transhistorical notion, I was criticizing the very common idea that God controls every single action of every single person every single day for the benefit of every single individual. Hence the appellation uber control freakdom. One reason that I have very little regard for the control freaks’ arguments is that their intellectual disputation tends to be either disingenuous or dishonest – giving them the benefit of the doubt in assuming that they even understand simple concepts like sovereignty in the first place – and continuously attempt to bring back the discussion to ground on which they feel comfortable without addressing questions that have been put to them.

If I have no free will, if I am not an acting individual, then God, the great puppet master, is simply amusing himself with his perfect plan by pulling everyone’s strings. Does God promise to micromanage every detail of Daniel’s life to produce a perfect outcome for Daniel? Does he promise to micromanage every detail of my life to produce a perfect outcome for me? That is the question that the control freaks are doing their best to dodge and evade, because the implications are both obvious and distasteful, but that is precisely what the average non-theologian in the pews believes when they talk about God’s plan for their life and isn’t it wonderful that God killed little Jennifer as part of his perfect plan.

This clumsy thinking is precisely what prevented me from becoming a Christian for more than 20 years. It’s why I thought Christians were a bunch of idiots who didn’t even understand their own Bible. Now, it is not for me to judge God, nor do I, but I can certainly judge the quality of the thinking of those who look at God’s sovereignty and from a misunderstanding of the concept develop a dogma that leads large quantities of Christians to believe they are helpless victims of what might as well be called fate.

You have said that you believe that God is sovereign but that He chooses to limit Himself to acting through human agencies.

Yes, I believe that because Jesus Christ said that. What do you think the point of all the parables about stewards and managers was, if not to point out that we are the ones responsible for the management of the place on the owner’s behalf. The control freak concept reminds me of the servant who receives his coin, does nothing with it and says, “hey, it’s your coin.” If God is at least in part limited to acting through angelic agencies on occasion, why is it inconsistent to theorize that he’s got other limitations as well, especially when there is Scripture to support the notion?

Of course remember this: Vox is more commited to his theory than letting Scripture reform his theory.

The fact that no control freak has directly answered a single point I’ve made, but has either a) reacted angrily; b) quoted Scripture that is tangential at best; or c) gone evasively off in an entirely new direction, does not mean that I am inextricably wedded to my theory. I’m even open to concepts that I see as far more dubious than control freakdom. But if you can’t even understand the very simple statement “I don’t know and neither do you”, then I have serious doubts about your perfect understanding of God’s perfect plan. I don’t question your faith, I don’t question your motives and I don’t question your heart; I do, however, question your understanding, and in some cases, your basic reading comprehension.

4,400 news stories later, Augusta National is still standing firm. The power of the cultural Left is not unlike Freddy Krueger’s in the first Nightmare on Elm Street – it can take you apart only if you allow it to do so. Hootie weathered the firestorm of media attention, took care to reduce his exposure to weaker wills that would be tempted to give in, waited patiently for Martha Burke to reveal herself for a fool, and now life goes on as before.

There’s a lesson in that.

A reader who shall remain anonymous asks if they are annoying me and if I would prefer that they refrain from posting. The short answer is no.

The longer and more precise answer is: probably, but so what? If you’re annoying me enough that I actually want you to stop posting, I will tell you in the Comments that you are annoying me and I want you to stop posting on that subject. If you ignore the warning, I will ban you and delete your future posts should you use a different IP address and continue to post in a recognizable manner. The ban is nothing personal, and if you post reasonably in the future, I don’t mind at all if you’re back under another name or whatever. In any case, this hardly ever happens. Otherwise, annoy away. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, heck, I’m usually surprised so many people do.

However, I do not feel that I need to explain myself every time I dismiss an argument. Those posting here are not only politically diverse, they are of varying levels of age, knowledge, education, experience and intelligence. What is new to one may well be old to another, indeed, it may be thousands of years old. I, for one, was shocked when I learned that women in the military as social engineering was first broached in Plato’s Republic. There is nothing new under the sun, not much, anyhow.

If I am short and dismissive of your argument, I suggest that you ask your fellow blog readers why they think I am doing so. There are plenty of smart people here, and chances are that they not only know why but will be more inclined to explain than me. Believe me, I’m not going to write my one-thousandth critique of the Labor Theory of Value every time a Marxian pops up, instead I will almost surely mock them briefly and move on. While it’s true that insulting isn’t persuading, neither is it an automatic admission that you know what you’re talking about. Sometimes, it’s just my recognition that it will take a good bit of reading before you can even begin to have a reasonable conversation with me.

Since politics has much to do with economics, and since very few people know anything at all about economics while I happen to be trained in the theories of the three (four if you count monetarists separate from Keynesians) economic schools, this is bound to happen from time to time. I’m always pleased to argue arcana with a true believing macro number cruncher like WB, but if you don’t know C+I+G, well, I just don’t have any interest in revisiting 101. But maybe someone else does.

So, develop a thick skin and learn to choose your shot. If I survived four years of Marxians and Keynesians doing their best to slash apart my Austrian arguments, you’ll survive the occasional metaphorical spanking and perhaps even deliver one from time to time.

Okay, so last week’s completely blew. Sorry about that. I had other things on my mind and didn’t think it through, so this week’s should be more interesting.

Why is conspiracy theory inherently ridiculous? Why is labling something a conspiracy sufficient to dismiss it from consideration?

The genius blesses us with his words: And I’m not supposed to tell you this, so keep this under your hat, but you know that Mars Rover thing? You know, the one where these two armored vehicles are running around Mars, sampling things and looking at things? The truth is, and don’t tell anyone I told you, that Mars was actually the first planet in this solar system that had a central bank and a fiat currency. Yeah! Surprised, huh? And now look at it! No water, no air, no Starbucks, no nothing! In fact, Earth was originally populated by a few rich Martians who barely escaped the devastation of Mars when the inflation reduced the value of the currency to the point where the economy was destroyed, and then the people were destroyed, and then the planet was destroyed. They barely made it here with their lives!

And I call myself a fiction writer. Pah! Unworthy, unworthy! The man can out-imagine Kim Stanley Robinson in a throwaway paragraph.

Okay, I added those who’ve requested it to the Reader Blogroll. And not to worry, Sarah, if I am ever named to the post of Planetary Dark Lord, I’m planning for my minions to run a little less on lines of deeply contemplative intellectual narcissism and be cut generally in the Marisa Miller/Veronica Verikova brain-optional mode. The standard uniform will, of course, be that of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I’d probably be fiction’s worst Dark Lord:

“Sir, what shall we do?”

“Obviously, my dear Dark Captain, you’re mistaking me for someone who cares.”

“But, great and mighty Dark Lord, shall we not blow the great horn of Hayek, summon our forces and crush the armies of the West?”

“If you like, as long as you don’t bother anybody. And leave the poor armies of the West alone. Don’t hassle anybody who doesn’t feel like showing either.”

A good offseason for the Vikings – so far. The additions of Winfield (CB) and Marcus Robinson (WR) should help make a good offense even better and shore up what has been a weak spot defensively for years. We still need that outside rusher, although I’m glad they didn’t go after Kearse or Wistrom. The first has been a bust for the last three years and the second simply isn’t worth the price that Seattle paid. They’ll have to address D-line in the draft, although some linebacker help is needed too.

Fortunately, there’s no need to do anything on a very deep offense, except perhaps to draft a few late-round linemen. This could be a very decent year for the Vikings; I’ll be surprised if they don’t take the NFC North and at least threaten to make some noise in the playoffs.

Double-M writes: Talk about splitting hairs! I see Vox’s views like this: He would let his Libertarian views run worldly / political affairs and his Christian ones run his personal affairs. There aren’t neccessarily any contradictions. He would let it be legal to whore about and get high on any substance, but as a Christian would preach against it and avoid it himself. Vox, am I right here?

This is absolutely correct. You see, I believe there is a difference between legality and morality. Those who insist on conflating the two quickly find themselves in the position of either a) jailing adulterers – good luck with your police-state – or b) having to defend death camp operators who were acting in full obedience of the law.

Some might call this hair-splitting. I see it as a clear distinction between obeying God and obeying Man.