Anyway, please be in prayer as I look for the right permanent job. There are a ton of different directions I could go, which is a nice problem to have.

America is an experiment started over 200 years ago by a group of revolutionaries intent on ridding their lives of governmental oppression. We are unique in that we have a Constitution guaranteeing rule of law, individual liberty, and representative government. We inherently distrust government, or at least we used to. Why are democrats in this country so lauded over by those in Europe? Simple. Democrats (and RINOs) represent the nanny state of big government that plagues European nations, whose citizens live in a bubble wrap of governmental entities intent on depriving them of the most basic of individual personal responsibilities and individual liberties.

Those in Europe despise us and misunderstand us. Why don’t we provide free health care for citizens (there’s no such thing as free)? Why do we allow citizens to own and possess “deadly assault weapons” (the term assault weapon is a misnomer at best)? Why do we elect a President that the world hates? Why don’t we provide free education to all (we do)?

Americans see ourselves differently than Europeans see us because we believe in our Constitution and we believe in the freedoms we’ve fought for many times over. Call it what you will, but as we progress toward the future, the global neighborhood of nation states becomes more and more hostile to a free America. As soon as the liberal elite on the left here and abroad understand the symbolic interaction at play in America and in Europe will there be renewed respect for a document that is being sorely forgotten these days; The Constitution.

After a long spiritual dry spell, God has been doing some neat things in my life lately. The ‘theme’ seems to be gratitude — I keep realizing just how blessed my life really is, despite my complete unworthiness of any regard. That isn’t false humility. The whole ’sinner saved by grace’ thing applies to me in spades. And yet. And yet. God has blessed me so much.

Driving home tonight, I realized how much I look forward to talking with all of you here. I am so grateful for all of you. Anyway. . . /mush

Let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?  If possible, I’ll do several posts about Japan in the next little while. For now, let me give you some photographic scene-setting.

I’m showing you a college festival for a fairly simple reason:  the first thing you should get used to about Japan is fusion.  Almost any way you try to analyze the experience of being a foreigner in Japan (and in Japan, you will definitely experience being an alien!) will fall flat on its face if you begin from “modern Japan” or “traditional Japan.”  The Japanese cultural genius, malady, and mystery is relentless fusion; a marvelous curiosity about the foreign, an intense need to label it as foreign, and a surprising way of turning foreign elements into “Japanese culture” before you know it. (more…)

Normally, this would be an event on the scale of the annual World Mountain-Bike Bog-Snorkelling Championship in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales. But in a year where the GOP nominee can only get about 75% of his own party’s primary vote, the right third-party candidate can cause some mischief. If you’re still voting for Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee at this point, you’re interested in sending a message.

In some ways, Bob Barr looks like an attractive alternative for disaffected Ronulans and Huckabites — he’s small-government, pro-gun rights, and was a pit bull against Bill Clinton. On the other hand, he’s an ACLU guy who is representing a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage party. That SHOULD be a real deterrent to Huckabee supporters, but there’s no guarantee it will be. For many people, anti-McCain hatred stopped being about reason a long time ago and turned into something visceral and reactive.

As for Bob Barr, it will be interesting to watch the Strange New Respect he’ll garner from liberals and the media (but I repeat myself) now that he’s acting the spoiler.

Boy, did The Conservative Intelligencer’s true self (I am certainly more alter than idem) ever jump into the middle of a good one, this time!

When Joe Carter begins detecting “echoes of neo-Fundamentalism” in the words of Phil Johnson, it’s time to get out the popcorn, because something’s bound to go down. These are some very vocal and active fellows, not only but definitely also in blogging, and while Phil carries quite a bit more weight in the Christian ministry world, especially where writing and publishing are concerned, Joe’s got some serious cred among social conservatives and many Christians.

I just entered the argument, didn’t I? Yeah, I guess I did. I am posting on a blog about this, after all. Pretty hard to avoid exposing my views when I start writing “social conservatives and many Christians,” as though these were not one and the same group.

After all, from Joe’s perspective, the State can and should be used to cultivate “moral ecology“; and for a Christian to espouse libertarianism with regard to the State is nonsensical. That would make conservatives who have opted out of Christian identity politics, while retaining the privilege and demonstrating the capacity for informed commentary and critique for the good of the church, and of the nation, roughly equivalent to conservative “race traitors” like The Honorable Justice Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell. Joe graciously declines to say that, which is one of many reasons he is at least a dozen times more worth agreeing with, or arguing with, than many of his closest “Religious Right” associates (and his favorite candidate for President).

But it’s not at all clear to me that identity politics is a good thing. It’s not at all clear to me that being regarded as a “voting bloc” and a “market” within a particular civil society reflects either the understanding or the witness of Christ’s Body, of the embassy of the Kingdom to come into this world’s nations. It’s not at all clear to me that teaching the People of God to dwell “among the nations” is more important than teaching them to live as aliens.

It is certainly clear to me that when an organization committed to political ends and objects, organized for the use of political means, organized within one of the nations of this world and for its betterment, which swears allegiance to a kingdom other than Christ’s, calls itself “Christian” and even dares to conflate itself with Christ’s Body, that something has gone dramatically wrong. Something has been fouled up that we were only just beginning to get straight after centuries of error. This is true even if those ends and objects are informed by or designed to appeal to a social vision espoused by many Christians; and sometimes especially so, as that very appeal can be subversive of the Gospel.

I try to stay informed, and to comment well. But I cannot wish that evangelicals were any more the political constituency they already are, being courted and appealed to by salesmen and demagogues because they behave along the same lines as any other “identity group.”

I can only pray for His coming who will put an end to this, soon enough, when His Body finally assembles in the newly-renovated Earth.

They really are reminiscent of Communists (for good reason, considering the history of the Left.) Leftists make lovely noises about academic freedom, but in the end they use their power to curtail free inquiry. Warming skeptics are blackballed within academia or are threatened with the loss of their jobs if working outside the university system. Believers denounce warming skeptics as frauds, liars and tools of Big Business in the tones of a Soviet apparatchik attacking capitalist running-dog lackeys. Consider for a moment the pure viciousness of the label most often used by believers to describe the skeptics – “Deniers.” This is, of course, a naked attempt to equate global warming skeptics with Holocaust denial. Given the abuses of power warming believers have already committed, does anyone doubt they would criminalize “global warming denial” if they had the chance?

The totalitarian single-mindedness of the global warming lobby looks even uglier when you consider just how tentative and ever-changing are their conclusions. For example, the latest news is that we’re headed for a period of global cooling until at least 2015. Those of you who lost sleep over the plight of the drowning polar bear can rest easy now – in March of this year, ice cover in Alaska and the Bering Sea were at their highest levels ever recorded. The penguins are also okay, as Antarctic ice was 30% above normal and also at its highest levels ever.

In a sane world, such data would be a cause for humility on the part of warming advocates. Instead, they press blithely ahead, assuring us that temps will rise according to their models after this unforeseen little excursion into global cooling.