Walter E. Williams puts forth a good argument in his latest article:

Imagine there’s an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here’s my question to you, and I’m almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady’s lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I’m hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow’s lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I’d say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate’s mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn. This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible, but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive.

This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one’s fellow man. Helping one’s fellow man in need, by reaching into one’s own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another’s pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.

I can’t find anything wrong with his logic. He also quotes James Madison, who said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” As Williams notes, “Tragically, today’s Americans would run Madison out of town on a rail.”

I’m no expert on healthcare systems, but I think we better look before we leap. I believe the problems in our own system are fixable, and I’m afraid many people are unaware of the problems of other types of systems. Take Japan, for example. It seems like almost every month I hear a new story about critically ill patients in Japan being taken to emergency rooms only to be turned away and then die waiting for treatment. Most recently, an 82-year-old woman was turned away by five different hospitals and ended up dying in the ambulance. A month ago, a 36-year-old woman was turned away by seven different hospitals and eventually died after giving birth at one of the hospitals that had earlier turned her down. That’s simply heartbreaking. Sadly, these stories are anything but rare in Japan.

Why does this happen? Because the hospitals are full. Why are they full? I’d have to say that one of the reasons is socialized healthcare. When people catch a cold in Japan they go to a hospital. Whenever I catch a cold, people around me are puzzled when I refuse to go to the hospital. It’s practically an unwritten rule. Stuffy nose? Go to the hospital. Stub your toe? Go to the hospital. Did you just sneeze? Better get to the hospital, then.

Elderly people use ambulances as taxis because it is free. When you’re paying nothing or next to nothing for medical care, you go to the hospital for even the most minor illnesses. When you consider the ratio of doctors to patients, simple math will tell you that this isn’t going to work.

There are no doubt problems with the healthcare system in the United States, but there are problems with the systems everywhere. Personally, I think I’d rather be in the US if I was ever to get severely ill. I think it would probably be better to fix the problems with our own system rather than blindly going over to yet another system that doesn’t work the way it should.

I’ve been really busy lately with work and probably will be for the next several days, so my posts will be few and far between. I did, however, want to share this article by Mark Steyn.

I disagree with my fellow conservatives who think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank liberal behemoth will so obviously screw up that they’ll be routed in two or four years’ time. The President-elect’s so-called “tax cut” will absolve 48 percent of Americans from paying any federal income tax at all, while those that are left will pay more. Just under half the population will be, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on the dole. By 2012, it will be more than half, and this will be an electorate where the majority of the electorate will be able to vote itself more lollipops from the minority of their compatriots still dumb enough to prioritize self-reliance, dynamism, and innovation over the sedating cocoon of the nanny state. That is the death of the American idea — which, after all, began as an economic argument: “No taxation without representation” is a great rallying cry. “No representation without taxation” has less mass appeal. For how do you tell an electorate living high off the entitlement hog that it’s unsustainable and you’ve got to give some of it back?

HT: Kansas Bob

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing, encourages Christians to make these four commitments to our new president:

1. I will pray for him and our country.
2. I will assume his motives are good, giving him the benefit of the doubt.
3. I will not speak ill of him, even if I don’t always agree with him.
4. I will cast off the spirit of cynicism, and be a positive force for good.

That last one’s going to be hard, but count me in.

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Well, my gut was wrong. Again. (I thought Fred Thompson was going to win the Republican nomination.) The difference between the Left and the Right, though? The Left hates the United States whenever a Republican is president. The Right will always love the United States.

Here’s hoping Paul Marston is correct. My gut tells me McCain is going to win, too (although I believe it will probaby be a clincher). The opinion polls historically favor Democrats by large margins. I’d say this time around it’s no different.

The Left is hinting at widespread chaos if Obama loses. Are they trying to scare people into voting for Obama? Are they trying to legitimize violence in the event that their candidate of choice loses? Are these Democrats convinced that if their candidate does not win then democracy will not/does not work? What exactly is the point of predicting riots? I wonder what Obama will do if he does lose. Will he do the right thing and condemn the rioting, or will he fan the flames like his pal Odinga did in Kenya?

If this isn’t an example of deliberate fact twisting, I don’t know what is.

This is not actually in response to a post on Caffeinated Thoughts, but that post convinced me to actually go ahead and write this one. I’m not looking to start an argument. I would just like to point out the glaring problems I see with Calvinism and see if anyone can provide me with a reasonable explanation for the seeming absurdities.

1. Calvinism teaches that man cannot choose God of his own will, correct? God must choose man. Man is totally depraved and will not come to God on his own. If that is the case, how can God hold people accountable for something they have no control over? Does this not mean that God created men without the ability to choose him? In the Calvinistic view, hell is a place of punishment for rejecting God, right? If so, then how can God punish people when they reject him not by choice but because they were unable to choose him of their own volition? Is this not the definition of a sadist?

2. Why does the Bible tell people to repent? What is the point of telling people to repent when if God “elects” someone they’re going to do that anyway? In other words, why give us instructions when we have no choice in the matter? That seems asinine to me. It’s like telling people to remember to breathe.

In fact, one of the commenters to the above-mentioned post pointed out almost the same thing. He said, “To say that the Holy Spirit works with the individual to convict them of sin to bring them to salvation is ludicrous IF they are incapable of doing anything, i.e. free will.”

3. What’s the point of offering the gift of salvation to people who have no ability to accept it? That’s like giving a peanut butter sandwich to your child who has a severe peanut allergy and saying, “There, I’ve given you your food. Go ahead and throw it away if you want, but don’t say I didn’t offer you anything.”

4. Did Adam and Eve have free will? Were they incapable of obeying God’s instructions? If they were capable of obeying but chose not to, then they had free will. If they were incapable of obeying in the first place, then God’s creation was not perfect, and God is the author of sin and evil.

A Calvinist friend suggested a video that was put out by a Calvinist who was trying to explain the idea of double predestination. He said the concept of “equal ultimacy” (i.e. that God deliberately sends people to hell by injecting or infusing unbelief and sin into their hearts) is “harsh and unbiblical,” making God out to be a “vicious tyrant.” I’d have to agree. On that he provides a good explanation. However, it seems to me that those same words could be used to describe Calvinism even if we reject the extreme belief of equal ultimacy.

One thing that was especially interesting to me was that about 24 minutes into the video, the guy gives us the example of Pharaoh in trying to explain the concept of double predestination and make it “palatable.” He did not accept the plain reading of Exodus when it came to God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. If you take the passage in Exodus at face value, however, it states very plainly that God actively hardened Pharaoh’s heart. It is only by comparing the passage with other doctrines taken from other passages that you can deduce that God only passively hardened Pharaoh’s heart (which I, too, believe, because we first read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart).

Calvinists always claim that those who disagree with them are ignoring the plain reading of scripture, but I’d say we’re simply comparing the passages with what is taught throughout the rest of the Bible–exactly what this teacher did with this particular passage. As I mentioned before, I think the passages that seem to be teaching Calvinism are better understood as substituting the secondary cause for the primary cause.