Vaughnshire Farm

I’m curious as we look at the recent events in America, how many realize the foundational belief system these things are tied to?  When we discuss Palin and the feminist / egalitarian nature of the modern evangelical, do we realize that it is Marxist theology that most evangelicals are spouting when they defend their position?

When we talk about the economy; both the troubles and the foundation of our system, do we see that it has been, since it’s inception, a move towards a socialist world order, based on Marxist ideology?

I wonder how many evangelicals have ever read the short Communist Manifesto to understand the ideas Frederick Engels and Karl Marx outline as their vision of the world economic system.  I must recommend it to everyone who, on one hand claims the name of Christ, and on the other is not self aware concerning their beliefs.  Epistemological self-consciousness is a requirement for Christians.  We are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.  In other words we must know why we believe what we believe and where those beliefs come from.

Understanding that Karl Marx and Engels where against the industrial capitalism put forth by America, I would recommend a review of their short manifesto as a means of understanding where much of the modern evangelical thought has its roots.  The capitalist are the bourgeois they rail against.  But these are not the same capitalist that we have today.  The capitalist of today as you will see looking over the points below are very much in line with Marx and Engels.  The original capitalist would be the ones who believe in free market economics.  The capitalist of today, believe in government bailouts and the illusion of free market economics.

It is interesting to review the points quoted below from the Communist Manifesto and then watch some of the recent media about Palin or about the Economy.  You will see there is very little difference in the modern capitalist, political leader, or media pundit and Marxist thought.  Of course the greater tragedy is that there is very little difference between today’s evangelical church leaders and Marxist thought.  Here is a link to the entire manifesto, which is a short read and highly recommended as we seek to understand the challenges our nation faces.  The quotes below should be enough to encourage a thorough study of the material.

The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism.

…Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production…

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

When you hear our leaders talking about the government taking over the home mortgage industry or the banking industry you are talking about a move towards the Marxist vision for the world.  It has been stated here that this was part of our system from the foundation.  When the government sanctioned corporations and trading pools they took production and wealth out of the family structure and placed it, by means of regulation, into the hands of the civil government.  This is a departure from Biblical thought where the example is production exists in the family, and a move towards Marxist thought where production resides in the hands of the state.

Bush will be addressing the nation live in about 20 minutes; 9:25 CST.  You can watch it here on Fox News. 

Here is a more direct link: http://www.foxnews.com/video2/live.html?chanId=4&openAIR=true

or launch it from the Live Desk

I expect an announcement that we will no longer be a free market nation, but in fact will move further down the socialist road, similar to what we saw in Iceland yesterday.  The government will seize control of the banking industry and the people will sigh a sigh of relief not realizing the noose just got tighter around our necks.

But perhaps I’m wrong.  Perhaps President Bush as the leader of our nation will repent of the unjust and wicked laws we live under and will call for a national day of prayer and fasting and then announce that our economic system is a sham and we are going work towards putting the United States back on a Gold standard.  Of course this is a physical impossibility as a) we have sold most of our gold reserves, and b) we have way too much paper currency floating around the world to call it in.

It should be an interesting press conference; historical to say the least.

The Dow ended the day at its lows, finishing down 678.91, or 7.3 percent, at 8,579.19. The blue chips hadn’t closed below 9,000 since June 30, 2003, and haven’t closed at this level since May 21, 2003.

The Dow’s 2,271-point tumble over the last seven sessions is its steepest seven-day point drop ever. Its seven-day percentage decline of 20.9 percent is the largest since the seven-day plunge ending Oct. 26, 1987, when the Dow lost 23.8 percent. That sell-off included Black Monday, the Oct. 19, 1987 market crash that saw the Dow fall nearly 23 percent in a single day. Ref Yahoo

This quote is from Thursday and Friday has started with a heavy downward bounce of 600 from yesterday’s low.  It is currently trying to pull itself back from the edge of oblivian, and appears to be recovering some only down by 140 points as I write.

AIG (American General Life Insurance Companies) took $85,000,000,000 in tax money as compensation for their lucrative get rich quick business practices that contributed to the international market failure currently ravaging families around the globe.  I say lucrative as all those involved in the leadership of the corporation seem to have pocketed a fortune by their position in the company.  Now when their practices are exposed as wicked and unjust the government takes our hard earned money through taxes, by threat of jail, and gives it to the unscrupulous “leaders”.  What did they then do with that money?

To add insult to the injury of rape and theft, they spent $440,000 on a posh retreat for many of the leaders of the company.  Fox news has the article and the receipt for the “retreat”.

 Does anyone see anything wrong with this system? 

As reported on Fox News…

NEW YORK - In these uncertain financial times, one thing remains certain - the ever-expanding national debt. But it’s growing at such an accelerated rate, the clock that has kept track of the deficit since 1989 has had to add a digit.

The National Debt Clock switched its digital dollar sign to a 1 on Monday to accommodate the nation’s ballooning deficit, now past the $10 trillion mark, thanks to Congress’ $700 billion bank stimulus package.

Few passersby looked up at the billboard Wednesday afternoon, as the clock tallied each American family’s share of the debt at just past the $86,000 mark. But one man on a cell phone stopped to tell the person on the other end just how much they owed….

Over the weekend, David Nicklaus wrote a revealing article on the economy in the St. Louis Times.

I wrote in this series about the symbiotic relationship between big government and big business.  While David does not mark greed as the cause of this crisis he does point out that greed is a fundamental requirement for our markets to operate.

My least favorite piece of mythology, heard on both sides of the political aisle, is the charge that this crisis was caused by greed.

This one is actually true, after a fashion. Without greedy bankers and house buyers and investors, we wouldn’t have had a housing bubble. We also wouldn’t have an economy, because the capitalist system is based on greed. The market will always need self-interested human beings.

Building on that honest statement concerning the foundation of our economic system, David is able to give a reasonable assessment of our current economic crisis.

If we can’t blame this crisis on deregulation or derivatives or speculators or greed, then what are the real bogeymen? I’ll offer two: excess liquidity and crony capitalism.

What we’re living through is the bursting of a bubble. In response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unusually low throughout 2002, 2003 and 2004. It was essentially injecting money into the banking system to keep the economy’s gears moving, even though the economy emerged from recession in November 2001.

Much of that excess liquidity, we now know, went into house mortgages. In part, the rapid increase in house prices was classic, myopic bubble behavior. House prices hadn’t fallen in more than a generation, so people began to believe that they could only go up.

The housing market also had some key players who weren’t subject to normal market discipline.

The hotbed of crony capitalism was in Washington, where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hired legions of lobbyists to ensure that they could take on a lot of debt, expand like crazy and pass the real risk on to taxpayers. If these giant companies had been regulated like private banks, today’s mortgage mess would be much less severe.

The crony system operated on Wall Street, too. The masters of the universe who created the subprime mortgage market were compensated for volume, with no consideration for the risk they were creating. Boards of directors signed off on this pay, and then watched their companies be destroyed.

The boards need to be made more accountable, either by allowing shareholders to vote on pay packages or by making it easier for them to throw out directors.

In short, what we need isn’t less greed or more regulation but a purer form of capitalism. If we can root out cronyism wherever it exists, the free market may yet stand a chance.

$700,000,000,000.00 is child’s play for those serious about destroying our nation.

We use to call folks who betrayed our nation traitors and saw them hangin on the end of a rope.

Now we joke about their betrayal and we see them dangling in the funny papers.

No one believed Rome could fall,
but now her fall is a proverb among the nations.
What will America’s epitaph be?

“American Empire - so long, we hardly knew you. But good riddance! We liked the old Republic much better.”

That is a quote from Bill Bonner over at the DailyReckoning.  Bill also posted a link to the latest version of the corporate bailout plan.  This could also be known as the “taking money from me and my children by threat of imprisonment if I don’t pay my “fair share” of taxes and then using that money to cover problems caused by corporate greed and prop up a godless economy” bill.  But I digress…

Bill points out some great benefits of the bill like raising the limit on our national debt to $11,315,000,000,000, found in Section 122: Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31 of the US Code.  Yes that number starts with a T.

There are numerous other goodies for corporations and states around the nation.  Check them out if you have the time.  Of course, like most laws, the very size of the document defends it from ever being read completely, but that is another discussion for another day.

As an aside, the Daily Reckoning was also involved in the production of I.O.U.S.A. the movie which is produced by the same folks who put out Supersize Me.  It addresses the trouble in the American economy and is probably a great view, although I’ve not yet made the time to watch it.  I’ll post the trailer below.

 The trail that lead me to The Daily Reckoning article started with a few resources I wanted to share.

First, there is Everbank.  They have some interesting foreign currency money market accounts that are designed to help hedge against the falling dollar.  They also have what seems to be a nice precious metals account.  But the specific piece of information that I thought worthy of posting was found in The Daily Pfennig report from Chuck Butler, the Senior Vice President of EverBank World Markets. 

With all the uncertainty around the huge corporate welfare program on the table again, I could not figure out why the dollar was fairing so well in recent days.  Apparently there is some US Dollar and Euro swapping going on due to a requirement for European Banks to hold cash reserves in US dollar for US issued mortgage bonds.  You can get the whole scope along with the rest of Chuck’s currency report here.  I have subscribed for a few weeks now and have found it a great read.

Of course for all those who are concerned about the economy, let me offer this reassurance.  It will fail, the empire of these United States will fall.  It will not happen overnight, but it is in fact happening right now, and has been happening in earnest for at least a decade.  The question on the table it not if America will fall, but how America will fall.  That is the challenge before us as fathers, and as business men who must learn to provide for our family and future generations in this period of history.  I hope to speak to some of the questions this raises in a future post or two.  Until then remember God is in control and this will not be the first time in history that a great empire has fallen.

The use of the pen can be a powerful weapon.  

We place a high priority on learning the art and skill of the pen.  Writing is an absolute must do in this family.  While we do have structured how to lessons on writing here and there, the majority of our writing consists of letters they write to friends and family all over the country as well as “reports” they write for mom and dad on different topics…such as a summery about a book they just read.  They also enjoy writing plays and stories about knights, princesses and castles.  Another way we get writing practice is taking notes during church and if you are too little to write…you draw pictures of something pertaining to the message. 

Our hope and prayer is that we would raise ready writers who are swift and skilled with the pen.  Writers who will write prolifically, from a Biblical perspective, about the very topics in our culture that need to be addressed. 

The other day, we took a trip to our favorite Amish market to pick up some bulk food supplies.  We haven’t been since the baby was born.  We drove through a portion of a small town that we haven’t seen in over 3 months.  As we were driving, we counted a handful of small local stores that have closed up shop.  We drove past one of the little grocery markets we frequented– lights out and abandoned —and next door…. a busy Walmart Supercenter.  I wasn’t shocked.  When the Walmart supercenter came to that small rural town, I knew it was only a matter of months before this little grocery store closed.  My children on the other hand were horrified that it actually happened.  After listening to their ranting and raving over how they felt about small local businesses closing due to being swallowed up by the big corporate giant, they began to propose solutions to the problem.  My answer was “No, we aren’t turning around and picketing today” and “No, we aren’t taping up posters all over town about what we think about Walmart!” 

Our oldest whipped out his pen and notebook and said he was “going to write about this”.  He spent rest of the trip writing.  He started off like this,

Hello, We’re here to tell you about how bad Walmart is.  First, let’s talk about food.  Let’s start with eggs.  Most hens that lay eggs lay in a battery cage.  A battery cage is a cage that is about 4 square feet and has about 5 hens and is electric and there is about one dead hen every cage.  Speaking of small spaces, let’s talk about chicken mutilation…..”

How he got from Walmart to chicken mutilation in 5 sentences and where he is heading on from there I don’t know yet!  Obviously, we still have much writing instruction we need to cover here at home still.  However, it makes me rejoice when I hear my children pick up the weapon of the pen and seek to use it for good. 

Whenever agrarianism is discussed, people want to point out the things they enjoy from the industrial revolution, such as air conditioning, automobiles, and medical advancements, without regard to the cost of these advancements. Advancements in technology and enhancements to our living conditions are indeed very nice. But everything has a cost and not all advantages are worth what they cost.

The period prior to and during the industrial revolution was marked by a departure in Biblical thinking in many areas. One area where this departure is evidenced is the loss of an understanding of the Biblical definition of labor and of wealth. One of the fruits of this change is a debt based economy that enslaves the masses. The industrial economy brought a departure from the Biblical family patterns where the father works with his family, which in turn has led to an individualistic approach to life and the destruction of the family.

We’ve all heard it said that ideas have consequences. It is more true to say that theology has consequences and as soon as we depart from using the Bible as the standard for our lives, both personally and as a nation we reap those consequences.

As we look at the history of the United States over the last 200 years we can see the evidences of a nation who turned her back on God’s Word and in its place looked to the wisdom of man. As we watch the disintegrating economy, the destruction of the family, and the ever changing social programs trying to patch the holes in this sinking ship, we must reconcile the fruit we see with the roots from which it sprang.

Agrarianism is not “the” answer. The answer is a true reformation where we lift up the standard of God’s Word and apply it to every decision we make in life…and that is the heart of Vaughnshire. The farm is fun and exciting. More importantly it is teaching us important lessons about work and wealth. In addition, it provides a certain level of independence from our current failing economic system. But the heart is not to see a nation of farmers, the heart is to see a nation turn back to God.

Cities are not the problem anymore than agrarianism is the answer. If we look to the Scriptures we see that God will give us “goodly cities”. But what many fail to see is that biblical cities, and in fact every city up until the 1900s, had a local agrarian foundation. The food was grown nearby and the substances of the earth formed the foundation for the economy. Wealth was found in items like livestock, food, dry goods, etc… Has anyone tried to make a living raising livestock lately?  How about in textiles? Farms are failing at an unprecedented rate because our economy is not based on a “just weight and measure”.  A paper economy is not a just weight or measure and therefore is not Biblical.  True wealth, that is to say Biblical wealth, is found in production and in working with the raw material of the earth.

The distinction between agrarianism and city living in today’s world is that our cities are centers of consumption. With the exception of a few artisans who are producing works from material that is shipped from abroad, skilled labor is gone from the cities. Even our food service industry, is precariously dependent upon a transportation line that brings its raw material from afar. The fact that it is called a “food service industry” should be a hint to us.

Gone is the craftsman who worked in his shop at his home. The transportation he once produced through wood and iron works has long ago been replaced by the automobile factory, which itself is now being removed from our suburbs and relocated overseas. Gone is the butcher who processed meat raised in the nearby fields. He has long since been replaced by a factory farm and corporate processing plants. This is not the result of cities. This is the result of industrialization coupled with unsound economic policies. This is the cost we must consider. The wealth of America is being exported daily. We are importing a substaintial part of our food supply and our raw materials.  So what becomes of us, when the rest of the world rejects the US dollar? Tell me again why we should be dependent upon this so called global economy?  Tell me again, why we need to import anything?

Vaughnshire is not about bashing city life and yelling to everyone the sky is falling. But what we desire very much to do is to raise a standard to which the wise and prudent may rally. If Christians, can rightly assess the times in which we live and put forward Biblical solutions to the problems we face as a culture, then we can effect the outward reformation of ideas, laws, and practices, while we cry out to God for the inward revival of His grace to be poured out upon the hearts of our nation.