The King and the Kingdom

Well, the wedding's over, and presumably everyone survived. I suppose it's to be seen if Harry lives through the after-party.

I've never been much of one for the Royals -- I thoroughly avoided the Charles/Di debacle thirty years ago. It seems to me that the hype this time around was much less, possibly because Pr. William has not bandied about for fifteen years as an eligible bachelor like his father. I also have detected more cynicism about this wedding, which shouldn't be surprising from my seat here in the U.S., and I think it's political in nature.

Since the royal wedding thirty years ago, a lot has happened in the world besides the royal blowup, namely, democracy is rampant. The Eastern Bloc and even (for Pete's sake) the Soviet Union have fallen apart, majority rule came to South Africa, de facto representative governments stuck their heads above water in Afghanistan and Iraq, who-knows-what is trying to overthrow dictators in the Middle East and North Africa, and even China has granted economic freedoms. Monarchies and other authoritarians are becoming more and more of an anachronism.

Which poses a question for Western Christians -- how ready are you to bow to the King? Does it seem odd to think of being under absolute authority? Even decisions in most of our protestant churches are made by committees or direct election, not by elders as scripture directs (and the U.S. is definitely a protestant nation in nature.) The church in the West has no inkling of what it means to fall to your knees before one you call Lord. Something to think about.

Oh yeah. Buy my book.

Politics 101

This is about politics. I'm pretty conservative, so if you think you might be offended, turn away now.

The president is in South America right now, and I ran across this story about what he's doing there. Bear in mind that he's put a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, in spite of a court order to lift the moratorium. Apparently deep-water drilling is OK, even to be promoted in other countries, but not in the United States. The author of the article makes a good argument why Americans should shake their heads over this policy.

But why? Why is drilling off Brazil's coast and buying their oil OK, but we have to keep our oil reserves in the ground? The Gulf is not the only area off-limits to U.S. oil companies -- the eastern seaboard, the coast of Florida, the coast of California, ANWAR, federal lands in the western desert, etc., etc., etc. The list goes on and on of U.S. oil reserves that must remain in the ground. So why?

Cal. Rep. Maxine Waters tells us why:

(Tennesseans will enjoy seeing Stephen Cohen smirking in the background.) Waters let it slip. The major tenet of socialism is all industry and business being owned and run by the government. Her stated desire here specifically is to take over the oil companies. Why would the government want private industry to profit from oil reserves when some day it wants to profit from oil itself? It's just an investment. Liberals are so sure they will be getting all the money one day, they want to be sure there's plenty there to get. And that's what politics is all about, folks: money.