Politics
Wake Up Left Coast!
I recently had lunch with a Washington State businessman who’s run a successful company for nearly forty years. He has fought many battles over those decades with county inspectors, state regulators, and cultural trends. He’s had his share of family problems, including some dark days when one of his children was far from God.
But I’ve always known him to persevere. He wants to make a difference in our world and is one of the greatest givers to God’s work that I’ve ever known. He’s a fighter, a scrapper, a man of his word that does not give in easy.
So I was surprised during the meal when he looked me in the eye and said that he was considering moving his entire family to another state for their spiritual and economic health.
He wants to get off the Left Coast.
I’m beginning to understand what he means.
Left Coast is a political term implying that the west coast of the United States is politically left-wing. This means the population is more secular and thus hostile to Judeo-Christian values. The implication is that the states of California, Oregon, and Washington (particularly, the coastal counties and cities within those states) vote predictably for the Democratic Party, or that the people who live there have a generally more liberal attitude than the rest of the country. The phrase plays on the fact that the west coast of the US is found on the left of the contiguous 48 states when looking at a map.
I would include the state of Hawaii as a part of the Left Coast. They have become another bastion of liberalism, including the 2010 election of Neil Abercrombie (D) as governor with a 58% vote and the defeat of many conservative Christian candidates around the state.
In the 2010 elections, many secular-liberal politicians were swept away in most parts of the country. Conservative Republicans picked up over sixty seats in the US House, but few of these were on the Left Coast. The governors map changed radically in the center, south, and east of the nation where conservatives won the states of New Mexico, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even Maine. Overall, the Republicans picked up twelve governorships to the Democrats two (California and Connecticut)
If you need a visual, imagine a significant amount of “red” being added to the 2008 map that is shown above–but not on the Left Coast. In governor’s races, Jerry Brown won by twelve points in California and John Kitzhaber eked out a one point victory in Oregon. Washington’s governors race will take place in 2012, but liberal Democrats have controlled all aspects of Olympia for twenty years.
What does that matter, you ask? Well the secular-liberal stranglehold on the Left Coast brings some serious consequences.
Taxes. Left Coast states produce big spending governments that overtax and overburden their people. Hawaii is the number one taxed state (per capita) at $3,050 per person per year. California is number nine at $2391 and Washington is number thirteen at $2238. Washingtonians had the good sense to reject an income tax proposition this fall, but the Evergreen State’s gas and sales taxes are among the highest in the nation.
Jobs: Whereas states like Texas keep churning out jobs due to its conservative policies, Left Coast States are in the lower half of job growth due to their anti-business climates. Washington has an unemployment rate of 9.0 percent though it sports some of the great entrepreneurial companies in the nation (Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon.com etc.) Boeing has moved its headquarters to Chicago due to the bad business climate. Oregon has a 10.6 percent unemployment rate which ranks it 8th in the nation.
But California, which just re-elected Governor Jerry Brown has a whopping 12.4 percent unemployment rate, and for the first time in fifty years, more people and businesses are leaving California than arriving. California may face default this coming year due to a mind-boggling 500 billion dollars in unfunded pensions. That liability around its neck won’t create many jobs.
Morality:It’s hard to place a rank on these categories, but it’s beyond question that the sexual mores of San Francisco and Seattle have made them a hot-bed of immorality and the push for gay marriage–which would totally unravel the moral fabric of America. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is being challenged in California (of all states), and two of the three states in the nation that allows its people to kill themselves with the help of doctors (physician assisted suicide) are Oregon and Washington. The third is Montana–which is almost a bed-room community to the Left Coast.
This list of the consequences of secular-liberalism could go on–but I think you get the point. The liberal worldview does not create prosperity or strong families. It leads down a road to tyranny, poverty, in-ability to economically compete, and moral confusion.
So, with much of the nation in 2010 turning back to Judeo-Christian principles and conservative applications in government, why is the Left Coast still stuck in the grip of liberalism?
That’s the million dollar question–and I don’t profess to have the answer. I do have some hunches that might be contributing factors.
First, the independent spirit of the West fosters a tendency to reject God and his principles for living. The cowboy mentality can easily morph into a spirit of rebellion that displays itself in humanistic laws and sexual dysfunction. On the Left Coast, I believe that demonic powers have been given a stronghold that impacts the lives of our people and political leaders (Ephesians 6:12).
I remember flying out of the Soviet Union in the 1980s while it was under communist oppression. On one flight, the experience of leaving “tyranny” and heading into “freedom” caused spontaneous applause on the aircraft! You could “feel” the leaving behind of demonic dominions and traveling into “freer space.” It was a tangible experience, undoubtedly related to the reality of spiritual warfare.
Many people say the same thing about the Left Coast. They feel a heaviness and discouragement here that is not felt in other parts of the nation. It’s not just the clouds (in Washington). The peoples of the Left Coast have attracted the presence of demonic principalities that are affecting this region of the country.
Second, the Christian foundations on the west coast are much weaker than any area in America. Many of the Left Coast states are later entries to the Union. California was 31, Oregon 33, Washington 42, and Hawaii 50. We missed most of the spiritual awakenings in our history; We didn’t have Pilgrims or Puritans to lay our social foundations; Our governing documents don’t contain phrases and concepts that pointed to God’s sovereignty and his natural laws; We were the “younger spoiled kids” of the Republic who did not form our corporate character at Valley Forge or Gettysburg.
Thus, our foundations are not as rooted to the rock of Christ as in others states. We were planted on wild, slippery soil, and our roots don’t go as deeply into the truth of God’s Word.
Third, there is the reality that actions have consequences. For example, Washington is the only state in the nation that legalized abortion via a vote of the people before Roe v. Wade in 1973. Activist judges didn’t send our innocent babies to their deaths. We the people, voted their demise at the hands of abortionists–the only state to do so.
That was a horrendous decision that opened us up to the presence of evil and judgment of God. In many societal realms, are we simply reaping what we sowed? Only God knows, but there is certainly room for state-wide repentance on this and other moral issues.
But there’s another interesting theory that I learned from a respected scholar.
Dr. Gregory Boyd points out in his insightful book God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, that Satanic power and presence have been historically associated with raging, chaotic waters–in particular, the raging seas–especially oceans.
Boyd says, “The authors of the Old Testament shared significant elements of the common Near Eastern perspective that the earth was part of a cosmic war zone. The chaotic waters and sea monsters were demonic creatures against whom God had to fight…The Israelites believed the earth rested upon waters, but that Yahweh pushed back the waters to make dry land appear. ..Something about the cosmic environment of the earth–the waters–was, and still is, hostile toward God and humanity.”
It’s a much bigger discussion (three chapters in his book), but Boyd says that in the Old Testament, water was either a symbol of demonic chaos, or even a place of demonic habitation.
In the New Testament, when Jesus cast out a legion of spirits from a man, the demons specifically asked to not be sent to the “waterless places” but rather into some pigs, who stormed down the bank and were drowned in the water (Luke 11:24-NASB). When the Book of Revelation describes the new heaven and earth, it specifically says “and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1). The only water mentioned is the River of Life whose trees bring healing to the nations (Revelation 22:1,2).
So, in the Bible, large amounts of raging waters are associated with evil. Fertile land is associated with blessing and good.
What’s the point? It’s interesting to me that the regions of our nation near the large raging waters (the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the Great Lakes region) appear most susceptible to liberal influences. The states that are inland–closer to the soil–tend to be more conservative.
And in 2010, the only region that resisted the conservative tide was the Left Coast. Is this just coincidence, or is there something even in our geography that we don’t fully understand?
Regardless of the true reasons for our troubles, what should we do about the secular-liberal stronghold of the Left Coast? Should we all pack our bags and leave for inland havens? Should we follow my businessman friend to greener pastures elsewhere?
God may lead some to go, but many of us must stay and fight for freedom and God’s blessings:
- We must participate in an empowered prayer movement that will bind the principalities and powers that are deceiving and impacting the Left Coast.
- We must mobilize the Church to care for, educate, and encourage our fellow citizens to embrace a new heritage in God.
- We must get involved in the political process, and work for good candidates who can help us change our laws and culture. Reformation is one of the gifts of God. It can come to the peoples of the western states.
Gregory Boyd comes to the same conclusion: “All who name the name of the Lord are called to identify and resist, in the power of God, the structural forces of evil that work to thwart God’s plan for the earth…When we fight, we do not do so in our own power, but God Himself reenacts his primal victory over these destructive forces through us.”
So let’s get to work.
I’m not going anywhere.
Our most important response is to reject discouragment and not give up. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. He can bring it in our individual lives. He can also “wake up” the Left Coast with his grace and power.
Send this article to your friends on the Left Coast. Ask them to pray and act.
Let’s make the Left Coast the “Righteous Coast” of the United States of America.
Why Liberalism Cannot Cure the American Economy
Liberal politicians in Washington, D.C. are very nervous about the upcoming elections. The American economy is stuck in the doldrums–if not headed for a double dip recession–and the people just might vent their wrath against those holding the reins of power.
In fact, President Obama’s team is so concerned that they’ve been meeting around the clock to try to come up with a solution. Should they enact another stimulus? Should they unleash a new set of tax credits or incentives? How should the government intervene to get the economy going?
We are told that the president will make a major speech this week about what they plan to do.
There’s just one problem. Liberal solutions to economic problems don’t work. They do not “reckon with reality,” so they are doomed to fail. Liberal politicians and their media cronies just don’t get it.
It’s freedom that we need. Not more government.
As Ronald Reagan once wisely stated: “Government is not the answer to our problems. Government is the problem.”
I recently read a book that opened my eyes to the blindness and bias that exists in both liberal political and media circles. Peter Goodman’s Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy, was given to me by a friend who wanted my opinion on it. Mr. Goodman is an economics writer for the New York Times who previously served for ten years as a Washington Post correspondent.
Reading books like Goodman’s is a healthy thing to do. It helps me understand what the other side is thinking and keeps me honest in my own beliefs. If you don’t read your philosophical opponents, then you must be unsure of your own principles or afraid to have them challenged. I am neither. As a pursuer of truth, I am open to find it wherever it may be found—sometimes in unusual places.
My friend thought I might be helped by a book from the bastion of liberal thought—the New York Times. I was sadly disappointed. Though Mr. Goodman is an engaging and thorough writer, I was amazed at the conclusions he drew from his analysis of where the American economy went wrong and what we must do to right it.
To be fair, Mr. Goodman rightly points out that many American institutions and individuals got hooked on easy money and credit over the past couple of decades. We spent beyond our means because we used the increasing equity in our homes as a cash cow to fund a debt-ridden lifestyle. He is right in this analysis. Americans got careless with debt during the Reagan-led boom that lasted from 1982 to 2007.
So far, so good.
Goodman weaves many personal stories into his narrative to prove his point. All of these people, from many walks of life, over spent, over borrowed and got shellacked when the mountain of debt became due. He discusses how the big banks and financial institutions did the same—apparently motivated by capitalism and greed. There are some elements of truth here as well.
But then the analysis reverts to the liberal bias. George Bush is consistently mocked throughout the book because he was a believer in unrestrained free enterprise. He also takes to task Bill Clinton’s reform of welfare, Robert Rubin’s and Larry Summer’s leadership during the Clinton years, de-regulation policies, and especially Alan Greenspan’s guidance of the Federal Reserve which was too laissez-faire.
The biggest culprit is what Goodman calls “faith based markets.” He says, “The intensity of the recession… was the direct result of a massive abdication of regulatory authority, one that enabled Wall Street and Madison Avenue to get rich by selling the dream of immediate wealth.” In other words—the government wasn’t involved enough. He calls this neglect “living in a fantasy world or Neverland.” He labels the free enterprise proponents as modern day Peter Pans.
Thus Mr. Goodman shares a fond affection for the Keynesian view of economics—that government must assume control of the economy and take the lead. He says, “The government must once again regulate the financial system to protect the economy from investment binges.” His desired direction is the government establishing “seed investments,” especially in bio-tech and renewable energy (he’s really big on wind and solar), and should finance health care through expanding Medicare and Medicaid and promote a “collective enterprise” between government and industry.
Let’s just say it as it is. Goodman is a socialist—or a fascist. They’re the same thing in his Liberal Neverland. He decries Wall Street and Main Street—but he a cheerleader for “State Street.” Goodman wants the government to control it all.
That’s why he is admiringly pro-Obama and his liberal economic ideas in the book. There is not one negative or cautionary word about the president’s policies. He lauds the fact that the president declared on inauguration day, “We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the re-making America.”
This re-making included the massive federal stimulus bill which Goodman applauded because it “took the edge off the worst economic fears and raised hopes that the suffering would diminish. It would generate needed paychecks. It would provide relief to those laid off. It would spare jobs that otherwise would have been lost by sending aid to cash-strapped states.”
Talk about Fantasyland. The so-called stimulus was a trillion dollar failure. And normal Americans don’t agree with Goodman’s enthusiasm over the government takeover of health care. They reject it by nearly a sixty to forty margin.
Goodman–and the Obama administration–believe that Big Goverment with its massive income re-distribution priorities are the best masters of the free enterprise system. What they fail to realize is this: It is government intervention that is the problem. Centralized governments always grossly misallocate currency and capital resources that are better guided by individual market decisions. The choices of millions of consumers provide much better checks and balances than a few bureaucrats do.
Here’s what Goodman amazingly missed in his research. He says that banks and other greedy financial institutions lent money they shouldn’t have. They were careless, reckless, and this is why the housing bubble inflated. There was too much money floating around with people abusing it via their home equity loans and re-financing schemes to get rich. He says there wasn’t enough regulation (government control) of the money supply.
But where did they get the money? Private companies cannot print money. Only governments can. It was short-sighted government regulation, through Richard Nixon, in 1971, that removed American finance from the gold standard, allowing trillions of dollars to be printed in the last thirty years that are backed by nothing. In 1971, gold was at $35 an ounce and the dollar was “pegged” to it for stability and strength.
In 2010, gold is over $1200 an ounce and the dollar remains incredibly weak. Bad government regulation has “inflated” our financial institutions with too many dollars. They simply used what they were unwisely given.
You can’t blame the Monopoly players when bank (the Government) is at fault for circulating all the funny money. If the government had left the money supply pegged to gold, there would have been no inflated home prices and no crash. The central planners messed up the system.
Goodman and his liberal friends are also disingenuous about other government agencies that heavily contributed to the financial meltdown. In Past Due, Goodman discussed the giant mortage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He calls them “private companies” and places no blame at their feet for the collapse of the housing market.
But they are not private entities. They are government subsidiaries that tried to regulate people into homes they couldn’t afford, breaking all the normal laws of wise lending practices. Freddie and Fannie are in bed with the liberals and contribute heavily to their campaigns.
Here’s the bottom line: The US government bears the major responsibility for screwing up the American economy by grossly inflating the money supply and then lending it to unqualified buyers. If the government had stayed out of the markets, they would have been far more stable and self-correcting.
They didn’t–and set us on a course that looks an awful lot like sinking Europe, depressed Japan, and the disgraced and fallen Soviet Union.
Peter Goodman and his ilk now want the Federal Government to lead the American renewal with what? More controls! This is not only dumb–it is suicidal.
Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy is a propaganda book with a ludicrous conclusion. I think it should be re-titled: Past Due: The End of Liberal Dis-Information About the Virtues of Big Government.
America’s economic engine runs on the fuel of faith and freedom–characteristics that liberal thinkers neither understand nor promote.
Fortunately, the American people are seeing the light and will be voting for freedom in November, not for more government regulations. They know that liberalism cannot cure the economy because it puts its faith in the wrong thing–the Almighty State–instead of Almighty God who dwells in the hearts and minds of a self-governing people.
Another Failed Presidency
I’ve been wanting to write this article for months, but now it’s not necessary.
Geoffrey P. Hunt has really put his finger of the problem of the Obama presidency. In the following article he give great insight into why the Obama presidency, which began with such hope and promise, has become such an abysmal national failure.
Hunt’s conclusion is simple: Barack Obama is not one of us.
Apparently the American people are starting to agree. This week President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to an historic low.
The following article is loaded with insight on what makes an American leader. Hunt is correct that Barack Obama is failing because he is not a real American–a person whose life has genuinely intersected with God, faith, character, hard work, and the principles of liberty. Because he is not truly one of us in his personal story, he cannot lead us into a future filled with hope.
By-the-way: The main reason the secular press has gone out of its way to dismiss and discredit Sarah Palin is because they know that she is one of us. That’s what they’re afraid of.
Another by-the-way: Woodrow Wilson’s failed presidency and Barack Obama’s poor leadership have one major commonality. Both men are radical secular progressives. If you don’t know what that means, then start paying attention to Glenn Beck.
American is an exceptional nation precisely because we were built on the reality of “In God We Trust.” Our national narrative rests of that unique foundation. If, as president of the United States, you’re not a part of that “house,” you won’t make us feel at home and will not be able to guide us.
Let’s pray in 2010 and 2012 for a true rebirth exceptional American leadership.
Another Failed Presidency – Geoffrey P. Hunt, American Thinker
(http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/another_failed_presidency.html)
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we’ve seen several failed presidencies–led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait– they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr didn’t fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate — thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them.
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What’s going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn’t have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn’t connect with us. He doesn’t have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us.
All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don’t align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
But not this president. It’s not so much that he’s a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task– all contributory of course. It’s that he’s not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn’t command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don’t add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don’t make sense and don’t correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we’ve been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he’s dissed just about every one of us–financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: “For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn’t give me enough time; if only I’d had a second term, I could have offended you too.”
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state–staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there’s always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them.
The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
[Editor’s note: The author is not the not the same person as Geoffrey P Hunt, who works at the Institute for Scientific Analysis as a senior research scientist.]