the 60's was not the beginning... it was merely the point where the under-currents became more readily visible. Or perhaps in more biblical language.. it wasn't the sewing, it was the beginning of the reaping.
In terms of God leading and a nation being considered Godly... Israel was lead of God, they were God's chosen, the apple of his eye.. and yet they did things far worse than anything americans (as a people) have ever dreamed of. I don't mean to lessen the failures we have had as a people, but when was the last time you saw Americans, as a people, burning their own children alive to worship a demon?
Abortion can be sort of equated to this because it does kill infants, but even that doesn't match the sheer wickedness and horrific nature because in abortion the victim is invisible. People can do it without being confronted by the evil they are doing. That doesn't make it less sinful.. but it is a commentary on the people I think. How much worse would we have to be to go beyond abortion, to the point where we actually burn children in front of our eyes, and not only be ok with it, but consider it a holy act.
So.. to be real honest, the whole line of reasoning "we have never been a Christian nation because of slavery" or because of this sin, or that sin, just doesn't hold weight with me. Being Christian doesn't mean perfect.
The reality of history is that all of western civilization from Late Rome down to the 20th century was Christian. The US was merely one expression of that Christendom.
This in no way means the west was perfect, but the fact is our society believed in God, and in Christ and did its best, despite many flaws and many failings, to glorify God and live rightly.
We don't need to make saints of our national heros or our cultural heros.. Christianity already has its own saints. But neither should we buy into the self loathing and hatred of our own heretige that liberalism has endevoured to foist upon us.
Now, back to the actual topic of the thread.. the bailout.
What I've learned in the last couple days is pretty interesting. First, the bailout has been used by the congress to load up on Pork. That in itself is typical, and yet also damning in what it reveals about the character of most of our elected leaders. They don't give a crap about the well being of the country or the people, they care about their own power (getting re-elected) and are willing to sell the future of the country for their own short term interests. This is pretty much true across party lines.
Secondly, the situation we are facing now, which supposedly necessitated the bailout was itself caused by congressional interference in the free market. After the sub-prime and real estate drop about 2 years ago, the credit markets tightened up as a natural market correction, making it more difficult for people to get loans, especially people with bad or no credit. Had this been allowed to simply run its course, we would have been fine, and the present situation would probably not even exist.
However, congressional liberals would not allow that to continue and they began to put pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other lenders to get them to increase the ease of getting credit artificially beyond what the Market would support. Essentially, because of the real estate drop, and the resulting crash in the sub-prime mortgage industry, the lower income people, and people like illegal aliens etc, were unable to get loans because lenders were essentially self regulating.. saying "nope its too risky to make these loans because we have no surity so we could lose our shirt".
Well then the government stepped in and began pressuring the lenders to go ahead and make those loans.
Up until that time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were regarded as some of the safest and most stringent loans around.
Now, the reality is that lenders were only too happy to go along with the urgings of congressional liberals, because hey, they are all about making money. So this really was about like dangling beer in front of an alcoholic.
So now, all of this has come crashing down. What do we have.. people blaming it all on those greedy bankers and lenders, blaming it on de-regulation of the market etc... when in reality the market did self regulate and did tighten up the credit markets in response to changing conditions. It was the GOVERNMENT, specifically congressional liberals, that created this issue by pressing financial agencies to artificially force easy credit availability to unqualified borrowers.
If our elected leaders had simply let the economy run its course in the first place, we wouldn't even be here.
Now that we are here.. we made the mistake of turning to the very people who created the problem and asked them to try and solve it. The best thing that we could do is simply do nothing and let the market run its course. The likelihood is that if we continue to try and force the market as we have been doing, it will only make the issues worse, and make the resulting crash worse.
The 700 Billion dollar bailout, of which 20% was useless special interest money, was increased to 850 Billion by the time it was finally passed (again by adding on useless pork and special interest money).
In addition to that the Fed already had disbursed 600 Billion to the banks before the bailout even passed. They are scheduled to loan out another 900 billion shortly.
Mussolini once said that Fascism should be called Corperatism because it was the merger of the state with corperate business power. Now we are in a position where our government is buying out banks. Not to mention that the meeting of the G7 to deal with this crisis and try to cooperatively control the global economy is perhaps an ominous foreshadowing of global economic government.
Of course all of this is done at the expense of the people, who are essentially being robbed blind by the government through inflation and devaluation of our currency.
