Thomas Brewton

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Connectedness

February 21, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Modern life isolates each of us. The church community unites us and gives meaning to our lives.

Sunday’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (non-UCC) in North Stamford, Connecticut, was delivered by the Reverend Mark Scarlata.

An old Jewish proverb, he said, summarizes the condition of human life: “We can be either like a single letter of an alphabet, or part of a greater meaning.”

From one perspective, the whole Bible is the history of drawing people together into an ever larger community, beginning with the family of Abram/Abraham, and widening under Moses into the twelve tribes constituting the Israelite nation. The unifying force was submission to God’s command, which gives meaning to individual life and to the community.
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Society as Clay in Liberals’ Hands

February 18, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

An enduring society is not a random assemblage of people drawn together, like pigs around the feed trough, waiting for welfare-state handouts.

The liberal paradigm recognizes no spiritual dimension to human nature or to human society. In the liberals’ atheistic and materialistic world, humans are merely animals a notch along the evolutionary scale from the apes and, like them, motivated only by material factors: water, food, sex, and shelter.

Societies, in that paradigm, are held together by whatever may be the currently reigning regulations governing those material wants. A political society theoretically is a lump of clay that intellectuals are capable of shaping anyway they wish.

In contrast, Cicero, the great Roman orator and admirer of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic philosophers, observed in the Republic:
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Enjoy the Ride

February 16, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

We can trust God completely to see us through adversity.

Sunday’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (non-UCC) in North Stamford, Connecticut, was delivered by Reverend David Newberry. His texts, from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, were examples of humans’ weakness and doubt that God would, or could, sustain them in times of peril.

Exodus 3 in the Old Testament is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. A young Moses is shepherding his father-in-law’s sheep on the desert edge, when he sees a bush that is burning, but is not consumed by the flames, symbolizing that God is existence itself, the source of all energy and matter, neither becoming nor ending. From the burning bush God tells Moses:

Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. (Exodus 3:16)

Then God makes a promise:
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Contentment: God Will Provide

February 9, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Where socialism fails, the Judeo-Christian tradition succeeds.

Sunday’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (a non-UCC congregation in North Stamford, Connecticut) was preached by the Reverend Jason Pankow. His principal text was 1 Timothy 6:3-10.

If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-5)

The inverse relationship between wealth and contentment is a frequent theme in literature and theatre. Likewise the sense of emptiness, the lack of fulfillment that characterize so much of our hectic lives today. Hillary Clinton, in an article published in the New York Times Magazine, noted this early in the first Clinton administration. Despite the sincerity of her concern, she was mocking dubbed ‘St. Hillary’ by liberal intellectuals.
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00Publius Contributor - Economy/Finances - Media Bias - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

The Times Dishes It Out, But Can’t Take It

February 8, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The Sulzbergers, the New York Times controlling stock-holders, are miffed at criticism of their poor business performance.

In a February 3, 2007, article in the New York Times, reporter Katharine Q. Seelye wrote:

The Ochs-Sulzberger family, which controls The New York Times Company, said yesterday that it was withdrawing most of its personal assets, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, from Morgan Stanley.

“Custody of the majority of the assets of the Ochs-Sulzberger family are being moved from Morgan Stanley to another institution,” said Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for the Times Company.

Through a spokesman, the family also declined to comment.

The withdrawal was apparently first reported online by CNNMoney.com, which suggested that the move was in retaliation against one of Morgan Stanley’s fund managers, who has been critical of the company’s ownership structure and performance.
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Labor Controls the Liberals

February 5, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

American labor unions are pushing candidates for the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination toward expansion of the welfare-state and massive inflation of the sort that the Great Society spawned.

After both World War I and World War II, the British Labour Party led England into its destructive liaison with socialism that destroyed British industry and reduced England to the “sick man of Europe.”

Harold Meyerson’s January 31, 2007, column in the Washington Post describes the behind-the-scenes power exerted by labor unions, especially the government employees unions. Their immediate goal is imposition of universal, socialized medicine, of the sort championed in 1993 by Hillary Clinton.

If labor unions succeed, two results are inevitable.
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00Publius Contributor - Family - Health - History - Religion - Society/Culture - The Law - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

The Importance of Families

February 2, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Why is preservation of traditional marriage, between a man and a woman, vital to preservation of a good political society?

Malachi, a prophet who probably ministered in the 60 years after the first groups of Israelites returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, gives us God’s Word on the subject.

Having endured the Babylonian captivity for 70 sears, few of the returning Israelites had ever experienced the proper religious life of the pre-captivity period. Moreover, the Jerusalem to which they returned was a desolate ruin that had been destroyed and plundered by Judah’s enemies.
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Boson Bozos

January 31, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Scientists seeking ultimate answers to the origin, nature, and future of the cosmos have pursued a long series of mutually exclusive, speculative theories. Liberals embrace these speculations as scientific truth, even though they have less basis in verifiable fact than 5,000 years of faith in God recorded in the Bible.

Every attempt to date to unify cosmological and nuclear particle theories has foundered on newly observed, unreconcilable, opposing sets of facts. Seeking to bridge these gaps, cosmologists, nuclear particle physicists, and mathematicians have drifted far into the realm of abstract speculation.

Science at the outer limits of knowledge, both at the cosmological and sub-atomic levels, has come increasingly to resemble the speculations of medieval scholastic philosophers dealing in doctrinal abstractions.
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Public Opinion: Experts vs Vox Populi

January 28, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Tension between government by experts (intellectuals, bureaucrats, and independent legislators) and the voice of the people (expressed in elections and opinion polls) complicates politics in our Federal republic.

Relying too heavily on opinion polls or elections is a short road to disaster when the government must determine critical policies that involve intricate financial knowledge, broad knowledge of history, economics, and foreign affairs. The general populace can be too easily misled by propaganda and ignorance of the subject.

But looking exclusively to an expert elite opens the path to tyranny, as the history of socialist collectivism demonstrates. Intellectual cadres, working through an impersonal bureaucracy, display, as a comedian once observed, all the sensitivity of the IRS and the efficiency of the Post Office.
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Opinion Masquerading as Reason

January 27, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Nobody is an expert in all areas of knowledge. Yet, from foreign policy to economics, we give undue weight to opinion polls.

This problem was addressed in Can Voters Make the Decision to Pull Out of Iraq?.

No matter what politicians and the media make of them, opinion polls, for example, evidencing very low approvals for President Bush and his Iraq policies are not of themselves a rational basis for pulling out of Iraq. One highly important reason is that the public hears mostly one side of the argument. Politicians, media, and pressure groups urging a troop pull-out have never addressed the follow-on costs to national security, our economy, and our future diplomatic relations with the rest of the world.

As the issue has been presented, it is the equivalent of asking the public if they would like to live a life of ease at the beach, without informing them of the cost to do so.
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Unconditional Love

January 25, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Do we love God, or do we love Him for what we want from Him?

Sunday’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (non-UCC), in North Stamford, Connecticut, was delivered by Rev. David Newberry. His text was from 1 Corinthians 13.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-2)

….And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
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Jimmy Carter: Our Worst Ex-President

January 23, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

To give him the benefit of the doubt, former President Carter may have Christian intentions, but he supports a major swath of the atheistic materialism of liberal-socialist-progressivism.

While Franklin Roosevelt remains, without contest, our worst-ever President, Mr. Carter is our worst living ex-President.

For a scholarly exposition of Jimmy Carter’s place in history, read the article by Joshua Muravchik from the February issue of Commentary Magazine.
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Democratically Elected?

January 22, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Former President Jimmy Carter and presidential candidate Christopher Dodd believe that the mechanics of the ballot box sanitize a victorious dictator.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized, in its January 17, 2306, edition, about the worrisome economic and political coalition of Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

In passing they noted, “All the while, [Venezuelan dictator] Mr. Chávez has had American enablers who excused his growing repression, or blamed it on a reaction to U.S. policy. Foremost among them has been Mr. Dodd, who has defended Mr. Chávez as “democratically elected” despite his clear trend toward authoritarianism. In 2004, the circumstances surrounding a recall referendum were so anti-democratic that the European Union refused to act as an observer. Jimmy Carter nonetheless blessed the outcome amid heavy irregularities, and the U.S. State Department endorsed the process.”

Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party, let’s remember, came to power via the democratic and legitimate process of winning enough votes to gain control of the Reichstag.
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Congress Resurgent?

January 20, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Will we have a reprise of the post Nixon-era Congressional invasion of the President’s Constitutional powers that led, among other things, to eviscerating the CIA?

Congress is reassessing the President’s Constitutional powers, as it did in the aftermath of President Johnson’s Vietnam war and President Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

The new Democratic Congressional majority are challenging the Constitutional powers of the President on the whole sweep of national security measures. They are particularly infuriated by President Bush’s intention to deploy 17,000 or more new troops in Iraq, their ire augmented by the President’s short-term ability to do so whether they approve or not.

Presidential wartime powers are succinctly delineated by the Constitution’s Article II, Section 2: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States…..

Counterbalancing this seemingly absolute Presidential authority is the Constitutional provision that all taxes and appropriations, including those for military purposes, are the prerogative of Congress.

In principle there is nothing wrong with Congress sparring with the President. The question is whether it is for domestic political advantage at the expense of our national security.
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Through the Storm into Sunlight

January 19, 2007 by 1 Comment

-By Thomas E. Brewton

With God’s help we can get through our tribulations.

The Reverend David Smith delivered today’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church in North Stamford, Connecticut (a Bible-based, non-UCC church).

His text was James 1:2-6, Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

That text had special relevance. Rev. Smith is the director of Pivot Ministries, a highly successful group that rehabs men who are victims of alcohol and drug abuse.

All of us have private pains, suffering, anxieties, even terrors. We can’t deal with them alone. But with God’s help can we re-orient our lives and hew to the path of righteousness. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

Rev. Smith then discoursed upon one of history’s most heart-rending trials, recounted in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 21, verses 1-18. The message is put your faith in God and He will provide.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife.

As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Thomas E. Brewton

00Publius Contributor - Congress - Constitution - Economy/Finances - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Stoking the Fires of Inflation

January 19, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The Fed doesn’t need help, but the Democrats already are putting logs on the fire.

Democrat Barney Frank, the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has served notice that he won’t tolerate efforts by the Federal Reserve Board to forestall inflation, if such measures might curb employment numbers.

The Wall Street Journal, in a January 13, 2007, article by Greg Ip, reports, When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testifies on monetary policy next month, he is likely to get far more scrutiny than usual……… Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who took over the House panel this month, said he plans to hold an additional day of hearings in which witnesses, such as economists and labor experts, will give their views on what Mr. Bernanke said.
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Statistical Virtue

January 19, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Liberal social justice is based on statistical averages relating to an abstraction called “humanity.” Individual morality is not an element in that liberal cosmology.

One of the first legislative acts of the newly ensconced Congressional liberals was increasing the minimum wage. Countless studies have demonstrated that the legal minimum wage is counter-productive. But it sounds good and it can be applied at one shot without the tedious process of arriving at fair wages in individual cases.

The minimum wage is an example of the sound-good, feel-good statistical virtues of liberal-socialist-progressivism. Another is Al Gore’s championing the Kyoto Protocols that would eliminate millions of workers’ jobs in the Western world to reduce greenhouse gases, a statistical virtue that state-planners hypothesize will prevent the current high-point cycle of sun spot activity from warming the earth.
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Cultural Momentum

January 17, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Will enough traditions and customs of civility and decency survive long enough to keep the United States from internal disintegration and conquest by Islamic Jihad?

Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., often referred to his father’s theory that political standards follow a thirty-year cycle, first conservative, then liberal, and back to conservative, and so on. There is some truth to that observation, but the problem is that meanwhile the underlying social standards trend downward as a nation becomes more prosperous and life becomes easier. People vaunt their own intellects and come to believe that they no longer need God, that they are sufficient unto themselves for all matters.

After the United States emerged from the fiery furnace of the Civil War, on the road to becoming the most powerful economy in the world, liberal secularists in the 1880s believed that, having shed religion, they were directing us along the path of progress toward social perfection.
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Can Voters Make the Decision to Pull Out of Iraq?

January 14, 2007 by

By Thomas E. Brewton

If voters are well enough informed to make the complex decision about pulling out of Iraq, why do we need liberal-socialist-progressive government to tell them how to live their daily lives?

Liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats say that the American people voted in the latest Congressional elections to pull our troops out of Iraq, sooner rather than later. Is that the whole story, and is it a valid basis for forming life-or-death foreign policy?

On the one hand, liberals are, in effect, adopting Ross Perot’s idea that all voters should have computers and internet connections that would permit continuous referenda on every policy matter before Congress.

On the other hand, liberals’ stock-in-trade is the firm conviction that voters need to be protected from their follies and must be coddled and comforted by government, from cradle to grave. Why does government have to keep such purportedly well informed voters from eating the wrong things, driving the wrong automobiles, and borrowing money on terms they can’t meet?
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Proclamation of God’s Word

January 13, 2007 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

In this new year, we must live to show that the word of God is full of living power.

The Reverend Jason Pankau preached today’s sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (non-UCC; in North Stamford, Connecticut). His text was Psalm 90:1-17:

A prayer of Moses the man of God.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn men back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, O sons of men.” For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning- though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan.
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Book Reviews - Constitution - Founders - History - Patriotism - Society/Culture - The Law - Thomas Brewton - Uncategorized

Nock on Shaw’s Socialism

January 9, 2007 by

-By Thomas Brewton

Celebrated libertarian analyst Albert Jay Nock’s 1945 review of George Bernard Shaw’s Everybody’s Political What’s What exposes the fundamental flaw in socialism and its American liberal-progressive doctrine. As we begin a new Congress dominated by liberal-socialist-progressives, it is useful to have Mr. Nock’s perspective.

The Mises.org website posting titled The Socialism of Mr. Shaw is a reminder to us elderly, and a notice to the young, that however delightful Shaw was as a playwright, he was very far out in left field with regard to politics and economics. Not surprisingly, just as is true today of the media and theatre today, Shaw’s plays project pro-socialist views.

Most people today who know of Shaw at all probably acquired that acquaintance indirectly via the hugely successful Broadway musical My Fair Lady, which was an adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion. To appreciate Shaw’s role outside the literary field, it’s necessary to understand a bit more about the late Victorian period in England and its impact upon political and economic doctrine in the United States.
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John Kerry: Latest Perspective on Iraq

January 6, 2007 by

-By Thomas Brewton

The ever-changing (aka flip-flopping) Senator Kerry gives us his latest straight scoop on Iraq.

In a December 24, 2006, Washington Post article, Senator Kerry shares his insights after literally having been on all sides of the question in the past. His latest thoughts originate in the visit that he and Senator Christopher Dodd made recently to Iraq.

The Senator’s conclusion is: The only hope for stability lies in pushing Iraqis to forge a sustainable political agreement on federalism, distributing oil revenues and neutralizing sectarian militias. And that will happen only if we set a deadline to redeploy our troops.

We’ll look at that in a few paragraphs down, but first let’s indulge in the fun of a few pot-shots at an easy target to hit.
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