A Christian Eye on Politics
The current situation has sorely needed a Winston Churchill who would offer only 'blood, sweat and tears' for the next few years while being prepared to initiate some drastic measures. Unfortunately, we only have a Brown and an Obama who choose to throw 'good money after bad'
From the BBC News website comes the following:
'About 100,000 people have taken part in protests in Dublin city centre to vent their anger at the Irish government's handling of the country's recession.
They oppose plans to impose a pension levy on 350,000 public sector workers.
Trade union organisers of the march said workers did not cause the economic crisis but were having to pay for it.
In a statement, the Irish government said it recognised that the measures it was taking were "difficult and in some cases painful."'
(source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7903518.stm).
We must expect more - much more - of the same, and indeed, probably worse. This is the normal way of human society when economic times get hard. In the UK, many thousands have already lost their jobs and a record number of homes are being re-possessed by mortgage companies. We should not expect any early improvement in this situation, rather, the only question is this: How deep will the recession bite before better economic times eventually return?
Both British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and new U.S. President Obama have embarked on what must surely be accounted as a highly risky strategy to lessen the effects of financial recession. The basic approach is to spend huge sums of money (which both the British and Americans, actually, do not even have!) to lessen the burden on all, but especially on the banking system! Much of this has led to huge misgivings being expressed by many experienced commentators. It is, after all, certain areas of the U.S. and U.K. banking systems which have actually caused the problems in the first place! Now, here in the U.K., several of the major banks are part-owned by the British tax-payer who have come to their rescue. But many older and wiser financial experts believe that several financial institutions should probably have been allowed to fail in order to establish a smaller, but more secure foundation.
An attempt to buy oneself out of recession through massive borrowing is very dangerous and, if it goes wrong, to be perfectly frank, it could lead to the British and Americans going into major national bankruptcy. For sure, there will be a huge burden of high taxation and national debt for many years to come. Many believe that to 'tighten one's belt' and to 'take the hit' whilst being prepared for a year or two of high unemployment and very serious economic woe would have been the most wise and sensible short-term treatment for the present difficulty, but it is one of the major pitfalls of democracy that governments are always looking for ways to eventually get re-elected and they tend to fight shy of taking unpopular drastic measures.
The current situation has sorely needed a Winston Churchill who would offer only 'blood, sweat and tears' for the next few years while being prepared to initiate some drastic measures. Unfortunately, we only have a Brown and an Obama who choose to throw 'good money after bad.' The first, surely a failed economics guro who has brought misery to thousands of older Britons by his foolhardy decision to tax pensions, the second, a 'new kid on the block' who is necessarily primarily concerned with maintaining his present popularity in the opinion polls! Let us all hope that the present 'cocktail' of major leaders does not prove to be a recipe for utter disaster.
In his 2006 article, Worrying Parallels Between the Weimar Republic and Modern Western Society, Robin Brace looked at the present paralysing weak and permissive liberalism of the West, compared it to the immoral state of the Weimar republic, and wrote this:
'The lesson of human history is that when economic calamity strikes, civil unrest immediately follows and all conventional, polite Sunday-afternoon tea party politics immediately goes out of the window! I have not even drawn direct comparisons between the Weimar years and modern liberal western society in this article because I think that those parallels are so overwhelmingly obvious. .....(but) here they are:
Feminine "Freedoms"; Moral Corruption; Immoral Entertainment; Homosexual and Lesbian Openess; Weakened Police Authority Leading to Criminals Going Unpunished...
I will close this article with a rhetorical question addressed to the reader:
If economic (or any other) calamity should strike the West, will a strong and charismatic right-wing leader again burst on to the scene in the United States, Great Britain or the European Union who will offer dynamic but dangerous solutions?
If that should happen, then make no mistake that the present Liberalism will have been the cause (just as the weak and immoral liberalism of the Weimar Republic led to the rise of Hitler).
Think that could never happen again? Oh please, my complacent reader, learn the lesson of history: The lesson of human history is that evil can always happen again....'Ever since Robin wrote that article it has never been out of our top twenty or so most widely-read UK Apologetics articles, and for good reason, it has 'struck a chord' as we say, with many people.
The Christian Hawk, February 23rd., 2009.
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