Here are characteristics of unchurched people that I’m seeing today.

1. They don’t all have big ‘problems.’: If you’re waiting for unchurched people to show up because their life is falling apart, you might wait a long time. Sure, there are always people in crisis who seek God out. But many are quite content with their lives without God. And some are quite happy and successful. If you only know how to speak into discontent and crisis, you will miss most of your neighbours.

2. They feel less guilty than you think. They don’t feel any more guilty about not being in church on Sunday than you feel guilty about not being in synagogue on Saturday. How many Saturdays do you feel badly about missing synagogue? That’s how many Sundays they feel badly about missing church.

3. Occasional is regular. When they start coming, they don’t always attend every week. Giving them easy, obvious and strategic steps to get connected is important. Disconnected people generally don’t stick. (I wrote more about the declining frequency of church attendance here.)

4. Most are spiritual. Most unchurched people believe in some kind of God. They’re surprised and offended if you think of them as atheists. As they should be.

5. They are not sure what “Christian” means. So you need to make that clear. You really can’t make any assumptions about what people understand about the Christian faith. Moving forward, clarity is paramount.

6. You can’t call them back to something they never knew. Old school ‘revival’ meant there was something to revive. Now that we are on the second to fifth generation of unchurched people, revival is less helpful to say the least. You can’t call them back to something they never knew.

7. Many have tried church, even a little, but left. We have a good chunk of people who have never ever been to church (60 percent of our growth is from people who self-identify as not regularly attending church), but a surprising number of people have tried church at some point — as a kid or young adult. Because it wasn’t a good experience, they left. Remember that.

8. Something is generous. Because even giving 10 percent of your income to anything is radically countercultural, the only paradigm of giving they have is a few dozen or hundred dollars to select charities. I hope every Christian learns to live a life of sacrifice and generosity, but telling them they are ungenerous is a poor way to start the conversation. They are probably already more generous than their friends.

9. They want you to be Christian. They want you to follow Jesus, authentically. Think about it, if you were going to convert to Buddhism, you would want to be an authentic Buddhist, not some watered down version. Andy Stanley is 100 percent right when he says you don’t alter the content of your services for unchurched people, but you should change the experience.

10. They’re intelligent, so speak to that. Don’t speak down to them. Just make it easy to get on the same page as people who have attended church for years by saying, “This passage is near the middle of the Bible.” You can be inclusive without being condescending.

11. They hate hypocrisy. Enough said.

12. They love transparency. When you share your weaknesses, everyone (including Christians) resonates.

13. They invite their friends if they like what they’re discovering. They will be your best inviters if they love what you’re doing.

14. Their spiritual growth trajectory varies dramatically. One size does not fit all. You need a flexible on ramp that allows people to hang in the shadows for a while as they make up their mind, and one that allows multiple jumping in points throughout the year.

15. Some want to be anonymous and some don’t. So make your church friendly to both. Also see the previous point. This is huge.

Hatching, Matching, Dispatching

While catching up on the hidden rules of English behavior, especially religion, sadly I read the following,

“religion is largely irrelevant to the lives of most English people nowadays” “marriage, death, and to a lesser extent birth, are now the only contact point the Church of England has with parishioners” “Some might attend a service at Christmas, and even smaller number at Easter, but for most, church attendance is limited to weddings, funerals, and perhaps christenings.” Hatchings, matchings, and dispatchings. “In practice only about 15% of those in England calling themselves Christians actually go to church on a regular basis.”

“Most in England are not christened and only about one half get married in church, but almost all have a Christian funeral of some sort.” “The church of England is the least religious church on earth.”

The writer went on to say, “We are not a nation of explicit, unequivocal atheists. Nor are we agnostics. Both of these imply a degree of interest in whether or not there is a deity–enough either to reject or question the notion. Most English people are just not much bothered about it.” “We are not only indifferent but, worse, we are politely indifferent, tolerantly indifferent, benignly indifferent. “Other people are very welcome to worship Him if they choose–it’s a free country–but this is a private matter, and they should keep it to themselves and not bore or embarrass the rest of us by making an unnecessary fuss about it.” “To mention one’s faith would be very bad form.”

“Our benign indifference remains benign only as long as the religious, of any persuasion, stay in their place and refrain from discomforting the nonpracticing, spiritually neutral majority with embarrassing or tedious displays of religious zeal.”

When removing God from society and doing everything possible to make a country and its society, secular, the downward spiral begins affecting every segment of life and society. As Nietzsche said, “If there is no God everything is permissible.”

Anti-Semitism: The Church of Scotland Takes the Low Road

My wife and I have Christian friends and family living in Europe. They are ashamed of their anti-Semitic governments. With the current administration in Washington DC, the country of my birth is heading in the same direction, and I am ashamed of my government being anti-Semitic, as well.

The Church of Scotland Takes the Low Road

May 14, 2013 By Bruce Bawer

Even if you’re in the habit of thinking a lot about Europe, it can be easy to forget about Scotland. This is curious, perhaps, given that Scotland arguably played at least as significant a role as England in shaping the culture of the thirteen colonies and of the early American republic. The Western world owes a major debt to such seminal Scottish thinkers as Adam Smith and David Hume (not to mention that great theorist of liberty, John Stuart Mill, who, while born in London, was the son of a Scotsman). Scotland was a hub of the Industrial Revolution, and the homeland of some of the most beloved writers in English, from Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott to Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Yet the recent history of Scotland, like that of Quebec, has been dominated not by great authors or thinkers or businessmen but, rather, by mischief-makers who have kept themselves busy agitating for Scottish independence. Although it could be argued that modern capitalism was born in Scotland, today it’s a firmly socialist country, where the Parliament currently includes 41 Labourites and only one Tory, and where the welfare state is even more comprehensive than in England.

Then there’s the Church of Scotland. Unlike the Church of England, which was shown off, in all its glory, at the Margaret Thatcher funeral – and which is, of course, the Mother Church of the Anglican Communism, to which to the American Episcopal Church belongs – the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian. It is, moreover, one of those churches that have taken it upon themselves to be very active in international leftist activism. For years, its longstanding habit of expressing poisonous hostility toward Israel and mindless sympathy for the “Palestinian cause” didn’t distinguish it significantly from any number of other left-leaning ecclesiastical bodies around the world. That changed a few days ago, with the publication of a report – intended to be discussed and voted upon at the Church’s general assembly, which begins on May 18 – that was so blatantly anti-Semitic that it truly separated the Church of Scotland from the rest of the Israel-bashing pack.

Indeed, “The Inheritance of Abraham: A Report on the Promised Land” proved to be an instant classic of the most reprehensible kind – a brand-new core text in the annals of Christian Jew-hatred.

The report takes on supporters of Israel – both Jewish and Christian – who justify their Zionism by citing passages from Genesis in which God promises the Holy Land to Abraham’s descendants.  It challenges these biblical arguments from many directions – arguing, for example, that they’re irreconcilable with the warnings by prophets against the “pursuit of power and wealth” and that Israel has betrayed the justice that “is a major theme in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.” Quoting a famous line from Micah – “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” – the report essentially maintains that Israel isn’t living up to the mandate of Jewish scripture, and that the Jewish state doesn’t deserve the support of Christians who seek to live up to the mandate of Christian scripture. For good measure, the report mocks the very idea that the creation of modern Israel is a “miracle,” sneering: “What is meant by ‘miracle’? Was Al Nakba a ‘miracle’ – driving people from their ancestral land and property with no right of reclaim; the creation of the Gaza Strip; all the refugee camps; the occupied Palestinian territory with the destruction of community life; and the impoverishment of the Palestinian people?”

The thrust of the report is crystal clear: “To be critical of Zionism is not anti-Semitic.” It quotes Christian theologians who oppose Israel – and one Jew, Mark Braverman, who rejects Zionism.  Obviously because the report’s authors think that by citing a Jew they’re insulating themselves from the charge of anti-Semitism, they place Braverman front and center in outlining their core argument, noting, in short, that:

Braverman is adamant that Christians must not sacrifice the universalist, inclusive dimension of Christianity and revert to the particular exclusivism of the Jewish faith because we feel guilty about the Holocaust. He is equally clear that the Jewish people have to repent of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. They must be challenged, too, to stop thinking of themselves as victims and special, and recognise that the present immoral, unjust treatment of Palestinian people is unsustainable.

Braverman challenges, too, what he calls “revisionist Christian theology,” more widely known as Western post-Holocaust theology, i.e. theology which takes away Jesus’ radical critique of Jewish theology and practice in order to provide no excuse for Christian anti-Semitism. In this approach, he claims, the Jewish people are and remain God’s chosen. This gives them the right to land, to triumph over enemies and a sense of specialness.

After a while the report sets Braverman aside, but continues along the same lines:

Jesus offered a radical critique of Jewish specialness and exclusivism….If Jesus is indeed the Yes to all God’s promises the promise to Abraham about land is fulfilled through the impact of Jesus, not by restoration of land to the Jewish people. Jesus gave a new direction and message for the people of God, one which did not feature a special area of land for them….Jesus’ vision of the kingdom is not for one limited area of territory, it is a way of anticipating how things can be if people are obedient to God….  Our Church points to the Kingdom, which cannot be tied to any earthly kingdom. Jesus said before Pilate that he was indeed a king but “my kingdom is not from this world.”

There’s much more in the report, but suffice it to say that every single word of it is intended to bolster a theological case for the dissolution of Israel.

In short, it’s a breathtakingly offensive piece of work. Yes, all the stuff about Jesus’ message and vision and so forth is a fair enough representation of the Christian understanding of the New Testament. But as a statement about Israel and Jews in the twenty-first century, it’s beyond offensive. In its blithe, supercilious application of Christian theology to a contemporary Jewish situation, it’s breathtakingly arrogant, and – yes – cold-bloodedly anti-Semitic. Early in the document, its authors make a point of spelling out their opposition to Western colonialism and imperialism; but their smug articulation, in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of the doctrine of supercessionism (also known as replacement theology) – which posits that the New Covenant under Jesus replaces Jehovah’s covenant with the Hebrew people – is offensive in precisely the same way as colonialism and imperialism, only on a far larger scale. Although the report, like most such products of left-leaning churches today, is full of pretty language about mercy, kindness, reconciliation, and “God’s universal, inclusive love,” it resurrects official Christian attitudes toward Jewish people and Jewish belief that one would have hoped were buried with the Holocaust.

Gratifyingly, the Church of Scotland got hammered for issuing this disgusting document. Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Daniel Taub, thundered that it “belittles the deeply held Jewish attachment to the land of Israel in a way which is truly hurtful.” Ephraim Borowski, head of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (there are about 6000 Jews in Scotland), complained that the report “reads like an Inquisition-era polemic against Jews and Judaism….The picture it paints of both Judaism and Israel is barely even a caricature. The arrogance of telling the Jewish people how to interpret Jewish texts and Jewish theology is breathtaking.” Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League called the document “stunningly offensive…an affront to Jews around the world and to the State of Israel.” And the Jerusalem Post said that the Church of Scotland “owes the Jewish people an apology for this incendiary text that is more fitting to the 13th Century than to this one.”

In response to this chorus of outrage, the Church quickly buckled, yanking the report from its website and agreeing to meet with Jewish community leaders. After the meeting, the Church described the dialogue as “very positive,” insisted that its report had not been intended to deny Israel’s right to exist, and promised that “a new introduction” would be added “to set the context for the report and give clarity about some of the language used.” Scotland’s Jews seemed satisfied. They shouldn’t be. No sensible person who has read “The Inheritance of Abraham” in its entirety report would find the mere addition of a new introduction (whatever its contents) sufficient to render this monstrosity inoffensive; the only decent move for the Church would be to withdraw the entire document, apologize for it profusely, and commit itself to an intense examination of its own collective conscience vis-à-vis Israel and the Jewish people. But that, apparently, isn’t about to happen. The stink of Jew-hatred, then, remains – no more fetid in Scotland, alas, than in many other corners of today’s Europe

The Changing Importance of Marriage and Cultural Dysfunction, by Dr. Jim Eckman

The Changing Importance of Marriage and Cultural Dysfunction

May 11th, 2013 | By Dr. Jim Eckman | Category: Culture & Wordview, Featured Issues

The breakdown of marriage and its connection to childbearing in American culture is now a given:  In 1980, about 18% of births were to unmarried women; by 2009, it was 41%.  Among whites, the increase was from 11% to 36%; among African Americans, from 56% to 72%; among Hispanics, from 37% (in 1990) to 53%.  Consider, as well, the share of children living with two parents.  Since 1970, it has dropped from 82% to 63%.  Among whites, the decline is from 87% to 73%; among African Americans, from 57% to 31%; among Hispanics, from 78% to 57%.  The causes of all this dysfunction are complex, but Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute in his book,Coming Apart, argues that having children out of wedlock is now more common and acceptable partially because the sexual revolution permitted men to get sex without marriage.  In addition, the waning influence of religious-based ethical standards has undermined the importance of the family.  Further, feminism and expanded welfare dependency have both made it easier for women to survive on their own.  Finally, liberalized divorce laws naturally increased the divorce rate, usually leaving women to raise the children.  Few would argue that these various trends are positive; in fact, a very strong case could be made that American culture is in crisis because of these trends.

What do we know about this significant growth of unmarried moms?  From a recently published article by Kay Hymowitz, W. Bradford Wilcox and Kelleen Kaye, we know these facts:

• By the time they turn 30, about two-thirds of American women have had their first child, usually outside of marriage.  They write: “Indeed, 20-somethings are driving America’s all-time high level of nonmarital childbearing, which is now at 41% of all births, according to vital-statistics data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.  Sixty percent of those births are to women in their 20s, while teens account for one-fifth of nonmarital births.  Between 1990 and 2008, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by 42%, while the rate of nonmarital childbearing among 20-something women has risen by 27%.”

• The shift of unmarried parenthood from teens to 20-somethings is in part an unexpected consequence of delaying marriage.  Over four decades, the marriage age has risen steadily to a new high of nearly 27 for women and 29 for men.
• Delayed marriage does, to some extent, seem to be related to the struggles of today’s working and lower middle class young adults.  They delay marriage, but not childbearing.  Indeed, 58% of first births among this group are now to unmarried women.  However, among college graduates, only 12% of first births are outside marriage.

• Many unmarried mothers in their 20s are living with their baby’s father when they give birth.  But about two-fifths of those couples break up before their child’s first birthday; that is three times the rate for married couples of their age.  The writers also have discovered that “these parents often go on to have another child (or children), with another partner (or partners), creating a family maze of step parents, siblings, grandparents and homes.  As a great deal of research has shown, such instability is one of the greatest risks to children’s well-being.  It greatly increases the likelihood that they will experience academic, social and emotional problems like poor grades, drug abuse and (perpetuating the cycle) unmarried childbearing.”

Within American culture, marriage was once the foundation stone of “adult identity, finances and family.”  No longer.  Research by Hymowitz and her colleagues shows that “children born to stable, married parents are more likely to graduate from high school and from college, well-equipped to thrive in a knowledge economy, and, in turn, more likely to marry and start their own families on a stable footing.  The converse is true for children from homes marked by instability.  Without a stable family, their chances of moving up the education and income ladder are stunted, which—in turn—reduces their odds of getting married as adults.”

The importance of marriage is also changing in American culture.  According to the Pew Research Center, marriage is important today for different reasons.  For Christians, marriage is the most important institution God created.  It is a complementary union between a man and a woman for life.  It is also the means for procreation and the raising and nurturing of children.  It is the foundation stone for human civilization.  For post-World War II Americans, marriage was nothing particularly unusual.  It was respectable and was the only acceptable and decent way to share a home with a partner.  Hence, shame accompanied children born out of wedlock.  But this is no longer the norm.  In a recent summary of some of the Pew research, Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University writes, “Today, marriage is more discretionary than ever, and also more distinctive.  It is something young adults do after they and their live-in partners have good jobs and a nice apartment.  It has become the capstone experience—the last brick put in place after everything else is set.  People marry to show their family and friends how well their lives are going, even if deep down they are unsure whether their partnership will last a lifetime.”

Further, according to the National Center for Family and Marriage, young adults without college degrees are increasingly likely to put off marriage and have their children in cohabiting relationships, sometimes years before they marry.  There is thus a weakening linkage between marriage and childbearing in America.  Cherlin writes: “In a cultural climate in which having children outside of marriage is increasingly acceptable, non-college educated young adults seem to treat reproduction as mandatory or at least axiomatic, and marriage as more of an optional add-on.  Most do eventually marry, although not necessarily to the person they had their first child with.”  In contrast, college-educated women wait until they are married to have children.  They will more than likely cohabit with a partner, or even several during their 20s, but late in their 20s, after graduate school is finished, they get married and begin to have children.  Marriage, if it occurs, is the last thing young adults do, not as the beginning of adulthood, as it was for generations, but rather as the capstone act of becoming an adult.

Marriage as an institution is no longer logically connected to childbearing in America, especially for those without a college education.  Yet, even for those who earn a college degree, cohabitation before marriage, if marriage occurs at all, is the new normal.  If women with children marry, they usually do not marry the father of their first child.  Hymowitz and her research group have demonstrated the terrible consequences of this dysfunction on children.  There is nothing really positive about this new normal for the children these complex social relationships produce.  God declared at creation that marriage is His foundational institution.  As Jesus said in Matthew 19:4, “from the beginning He created them male and female,” and intended for them to marry, love each other in a “one-flesh” relationship, and have children.  Indeed, He performed the first marriage and declared it His “norm.”  It is the Creation Ordinance standard for all time and all cultures.  Those who willfully reject this Ordinance will suffer the consequences of that rejection:  Witness 21^st century America.

See Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post (14 April 2103); Kay Hymowitz, W. Bradford Wilcox and Kelleen Kaye in the Wall Street Journal (15 March 2103); and Andrew J. Cherlin in the New York Times Sunday “Review” (28 April 2013).

LACON “Many Things in Few Words” addressed to those who think

“Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think,”originally appeared towards the end of 1820 as a series of aphorisms that comprise anecdotes and witticisms on various aspects of human existence. Authored by Rev. Charles Caleb Colton, a man of great intellect and energy. He had a prodigious appetite for knowledge and a driving need share it. Educated at Cambridge, he produced a substantial body of writing, both prose and poetry, which for elegance, grace, and wit, could hardly be equaled. These aphorisms speak with rare truth and wisdom, and often with great humor. They will resonate and ring true as much today as they ever did.

I came across this book while browsing the shops of Reading in England. One of the aphorisms by Rev. Colton, that we all know is, “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.”

In reference to the universe, Rev. Colton wrote, “The farther we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules and regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multi-form operation the Godhead. To Him, indeed, all time is but a moment, and all space but a point, and He fills both, but is bounded by neither.”

I will definitely enjoy reading this book.

Norwegians: Outsiders in Their Own Country by Bruce Bawe

My time of a two years in Paris–spread over eight summers, and now in my second summer in England–the cities of Reading and London–has revealed to me a different view of these countries than I believed existed. Vast migrations of peoples combined with a domestic birthrate that has declined below replacement rate. Now, Western Europeans are becoming minorities in their own countries.

“On April 27, it was the business newspaper Finansavisen,of all publications, that served up a tonic dose of the truth. Reading theheadline, “Life as a Minority,” readers might have expected the usual sob-sister fantasy about how tough it is to be a Muslim in Scandinavia. But this article was something different. It was a searing portrait of the New Normal in Groruddalen, a huge stretch of East Oslo, where the “minority” in question is Norwegian.

The article was based on interviews by Finansavisen‘s reporters, Kjell Erik Eilertsen and Ole Asbjørn Ness, with two teenagers, both ethnic Norwegians. Andreas (a pseudonym) is 16; Marius Sørvik is 19. In grade school, both boys’ heads were stuffed with pretty words about intercultural understanding. Repeatedly, they were encouraged to be sensitive to their classmates with foreign backgrounds. Andreas: “All the teachers said it, the principal said it, that if you come into conflict with them, I was supposed to understand what a bad life they’d had, that they came from countries where there had been war. I thought he was kidding. It was the grandparents who had immigrated from Pakistan. If I hit someone, would nobody yell at me because my grandfather was in the Resistance? But I believed in it.”

Eventually, however, both boys realized that, as Marius puts it, “everything you’ve learned in school is wrong.” For Marius that day came in seventh grade, when seven or eight Somali boys jumped him on a tennis court and beat him to a pulp, knocking his teeth out. Afterwards Marius tried to hold his head up, but he could only take the constant fear for so long. He suffered a heart attack. The producers of Our Valley, an NRK documentary series about life in Groruddalen, interviewed him, but decided not to include him in the program, explaining that his “views” didn’t fit into their “concept.” (The series, as Eilertsen and Ness observe, is “government-financed propaganda” designed to cover up the reality of Groruddalen. Naturally, “views” such as Marius’s aren’t welcome.)

As for Andreas, it was his well-intentioned but deplorably naïve mother who decided to raise him in Groruddalen, so he’d “get to know the new Norway, to get acquainted with many different cultures.” That he did – mostly through schoolyard beatings. (“They’re a gang. They’re always a gang. They’re dogs. They hunt in packs.”) He was hit, but wasn’t permitted to hit back. At first he responded to the bullying by trying to fit in with the thugs – deliberately making simple grammatical mistakes, limiting his vocabulary, and behaving submissively. He even made a Muslim friend – who started trying to convert him. When Andreas resisted, and persisted in his resistance, his friend threatened to kill him. Seeing no other way of protecting himself, Andreas joined an ethnic Norwegian motorcycle club. “If I hadn’t known them, he’d have killed me,” Andreas says.

It’s a battle – and, as Marius points out, the battle isn’t a fair one. A Norwegian kid who finds himself in conflict with, say, a Pakistani kid, isn’t likely to have anyone on his side, whereas the Pakistani kid will have a whole clan of brothers, cousins, and uncles ready to turn violent on his behalf. Integration, Marius suggests, is a lie: none of these people wants to become Norwegian: “Norwegian is synonymous with weakness.” Nor can Norwegian kids count on support from their teachers or principals – they’re terrified, too, and they do everything they can to accommodate the Muslim kids to avoid trouble. Moreover, while Norwegian boys learn early on to keep their hands off Muslim girls, Muslim boys hit on Norwegian girls with impunity; indeed, “Norwegian girls prefer them….they’re tough, and they have money even though they don’t have jobs.”

One way to avoid the constant warfare, of course, is to surrender: Marius alone knows five people who have converted to Islam.

Since “Life as a Minority” wasn’t published online, and since few people outside the business community read Finansavisen, the article might have come and gone without gaining widespread notice. But excerpts posted by bloggers attracted so much attention that Finansavisen ended up putting the whole text online last Friday. It goes without saying that readers weren’t drawn to the article because it told them anything new; on the contrary, they were drawn to it because they so rarely see the raw, fundamental truths of their own current lives reflected in the mainstream media – at least not without oodles of euphemism and herculean efforts to achieve “balance” and avoid “offense.”

Not everybody in Norway, to be sure, lives in the midst of the kind of hell that Andreas and Marius do. Certainly the people who call the shots in the media, producing pap like Our Valley,don’t reside in the neighborhoods, like Groruddalen, that they’re determined to idealize. They live in pleasant west Oslo districts, where they rub shoulders with their fellow makers of opinion – politicians, academics, and others who share their ardent devotion to multiculturalism but who, like them, don’t have to live with its consequences.

These multicultural elites may be cowards and reprobates, but they aren’t total fools. They have a pretty good idea of how challenging everyday life can be like for Norwegians, especially teenage males, in places like Groruddalen. They’ve seen the statistics demonstrating that while Muslims are settling in such areas in huge numbers, infidels are fleeing in droves. But, quite simply, they don’t care– not enough to change their stripes, anyway. After all, those aren’t their kids having their teeth knocked out of their heads and being made to feel like outsiders in their own country. (Their kids go to safe schools where they feel firmly in the majority.) The country’s leftist elites have a responsibility to kids like Andreas and Marius; but that responsibility is infinitely less important to them, alas, than their determination to keep alive their own beloved multicultural ideology. Never mind that it’s precisely that ideology that’s responsible for the nightmare that is Andreas’s and Marius’s world.

That’s the reprehensible bottom line here: to preserve the Big Lie of a magnificently multicultural Norway, the Norwegian elite is willing to fiercely deny the defining truths of such kids’ lives. And in service to this cause, the mainstream media are a powerful weapon. The newspapers’ readiness to echo official claims about immigrants and Islam is only enhanced by their eagerness to continue receiving official subsidies (Finansavisen, it should be noted, is one of the few sizable Norwegian newspapers that don’t get government handouts). And then there’s state-run NRK, which uses license fees squeezed out of the parents of young people like Andreas and Marius to create programs smearing the likes of them as liars and bigots, while depicting the savages who torment them as the innocent, virtuous objects of nativist prejudice.

Andreas says his grandfather was a member of the Resistance – a brave band of brothers who risked their lives to deliver Norway from the Nazi invaders. Can you imagine what that man would think if he could see what has happened to the nation he served – and to his grandson, who no longer even feels that that nation is his own?”

Mises on the Social Security System, by Gary North

Mises on the Social Security System, by Gary North - May 04, 2013

Ludwig von Mises was resented by several generations of economists, 1912 (Theory of Money and Credit) until his death in October 1973.

They had had reasons for this resentment. First, he held to a rigorously free market-based explanation of economic causation. They were statists. Second, he kept predicting things that kept coming true — events which his critics had denied would ever happen. This made him look good. It made them look bad. They resented this.

They wanted to bring him down a notch — more notches, if they could. This is always the motive of envy. Some of his critics were green with it.

Recently, I wrote an article on the decision of Yale University Press in 1963 to issue a grotesque edition of Mises’ masterpiece, Human Action (1949). It is a forgotten story, even within Austrian economics circles. You can read my article here: http://www.garynorth.com/public/10958.cfm.

Mises was resented. The extent to which he was resented can be seen in this scurrilous incident. It showed the petty vindictiveness of obscure, resentful men against a truly great thinker. It was pure envy at work. The editor of Yale University Press was willing to issue an ugly, amateurish looking book. He was willing to suffer the embarrassment of overseeing an incompetent typesetting job. Why? Because he was able to bring Mises down a notch, or so he thought. He was wrong.

Today, Mises is known around the world. The Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website has five times the traffic of the website of the American Economic Association, the premier organization of academic economists.

The petty men who sought to bring him down a notch were not known by many people in their day. Mises was. Today, they are not even long forgotten. They were never known by enough people to have become long forgotten. Mises is better known today than he was in his lifetime. This almost never happens to anyone, and surely not someone in academia, where fads come and go, and so do reputations.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Late in the 1949 edition of Human Action, which is online for free, he offered an analysis of the political foundation of the Social Security System. This program has been described as the crown jewel of the American welfare state. He exposed this jewel as made of glass — and not Steuben glass. It is more like the glass used in mirrors, as in “smoke and mirrors.”

In the process of government interference with saving and investment, Paul in the year 1940 saves by paying one hundred dollars to the national social security institution. He receives in exchange a claim which is virtually an unconditional government IOU. If the government spends the hundred dollars for current expenditure, no additional capital comes into existence, and no increase in the productivity of labor results. The government’s IOU is a check drawn upon the future taxpayers. In 1970 a certain Peter may have to fulfill the government’s promise although he himself does not derive any benefit from the fact that Paul in 1940 saved one hundred dollars. Thus it becomes obvious that there is no need to look at Soviet Russia in order to comprehend the role that public finance plays in our day. The trumpery argument that the public debt is no burden because “we owe it to ourselves” is delusive. The Pauls of 1940 do not owe it to themselves. It is the Peters of 1970 who owe it to the Pauls of 1940. The whole system is the acme of the short-run principle. The statesmen of 1940 solve their problems by shifting them to the statesmen of 1970. On that date the statesmen of 1940 will be either dead or elder statesmen glorying in their wonderful achievement, social security (pp. 843-44).

Today, the present value of the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare exceed $222 trillion.

Mises fully understood in 1949 what the program was producing: government-issued IOUs that cannot be paid off. His academic peers denied this when they mentioned it at all, which was rarely. Their spiritual heirs also do not mention it. But the numbers keep growing relentlessly. The red ink is like a lake behind a dam — a government-built, government-insured dam with cracks in it.

The Social Security program was only a decade old when he wrote this brief critique. He was an immigrant from Austria by way of Switzerland. His critics asked: “What does he know?” He was not taken seriously by critics, but his readers took him seriously. They still do.

The Social Security/Medicare programs are the biggest Ponzi schemes in history. They are imitated throughout the West. They will all produce the same result: default. When this happens, Mises will be seen as prophetic. He was not prophetic. He merely (1) understood economic causation and (2) followed the logic of his reasoning. But in an intellectual world governed by  the man of economic understanding looks like a prophet.