Panicked Yet?

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" cried Chicken Little.

"Wolf! Wolf!" yelled the shepherd boy in Aesop's fable.

Both tales are cautionary and highly applicable to America and the world right now. Believing that the nation's economy will cave if it does nothing, the U.S. government is about to commit $700 billion dollars, at last estimate, to a bailout scheme for quasi-governmental mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At the moment of this writing, the details of the plan are sketchy—in fact, in flux, as nothing has been agreed upon—but among the speculated results are a massive governmental takeover of America's financial sector, or at least the housing market; limited oversight of the Treasury Secretary, who will ramrod the effort; and very little blame for the political and financial actors who caused this mess in the first place. When the sky is falling, who cares about free markets, oversight, and responsibility?

We should beware when our leaders urge us that some action must be taken "immediately" to fend off some looming crisis. Every blue moon, there is an actual crisis that must be handled expediently, but most of the time, the crisis is either not as dire as advertised or entirely contrived. Such is the case with our health care "crisis." Candidates for office wring their hands and tell us how terrible it is that some forty million Americans do not have health insurance and that government should step in and give it to them for free.

While the U.S. Census Bureau reports that there may be forty million among us without health insurance, at least twelve million of them are illegal aliens, another ten million or so are young and healthy people who have voluntarily chosen not to buy health insurance, another few million are in some way self-insured, and a significant number are between jobs and only temporarily uninsured. In actuality, it is estimated that only 29% of this forty million figure are involuntarily uninsured, thus about twelve million people, a number that is in no way critical.

As mentioned above, the politicians say this government health insurance would be free. Free to whom? There are no free lunches. Someone must pay for the care given by hospitals, doctors, nurses, and other caregivers. That "someone" is the American taxpayer. Politicians often point to Canadian, British, or Nordic national health systems as models, but they never tell the voter how much the citizens of those nations pay in taxes for their "free" medical care. According to a March 2005 CBS News article, the average Canadian family spends about 48% of its income in taxes, and in Ontario, for instance, about 40% of that is used to fund health care. If an American "free" health care system followed Canada's lead, the taxpayer could see what he pays in taxes jump by as much as 20%. Suddenly, "free" health care is quite expensive!

This is not to mention the horror stories about long waiting lists, even for what might be considered critical care. Certainly, many of these are isolated anecdotes, but it has been shown that both service and quality of care diminish after a government takes over a health care system. Care becomes rationed, and even more than by HMOs, procedures are frequently denied on the basis of age, weight, or some other supposedly disqualifying factor such as alcohol, nicotine, or drug use. In addition, care is often sacrificed to pay for the huge bureaucracy needed to handle the new system. Beyond that, public sector agencies are notorious for creating an environment of conformity and lethargy, discouraging quality service and innovation (just go to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles to see this at "work").

Now, we need to think about the current economic crisis in these same terms. Is it truly a crisis? What is hiding behind the statistics that the media are throwing at us? What are the politicians not telling us? What are the hidden costs? Will lawmakers load the bill with political "extras," adding yet more debt and overregulation? Can the government really provide better oversight than the market? Will this bailout create another monster bureaucracy run by unelected and essentially untouchable executives? Do the American people really have any say in the matter?

Let us assume that this particular "crisis" is all about sub-prime mortgages and nothing else. What is the best way to solve this problem? Long-time mortgage expert Roger Schlesinger, in a recent column titled "What Am I Missing?" makes the case that this is actually a banner opportunity for moneyed investors to buy up foreclosed homes on the cheap. The fly in the ointment, however, is that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have restricted investors to a small number of loans, required large down payments, and tacked on punitive points, all of which discourages those with money from coming to the rescue of the housing market. In the end, Fannie and Freddie are actually extending the housing crisis rather than helping to solve it. This is government at its finest.

Time will tell if this financial mess is a true crisis or a manufactured calamity designed to amass governmental power, benefit a particular Presidential candidate, sell out the nation to the international system, shield the responsible parties from prosecution, or all of them combined. What is evident is the stirring of fear among the populace that could build to a fever-pitch—from concern to worry to alarm and finally to hysteria and panic. The rhetoric of fear is increasing with each news cycle.

While Franklin Roosevelt's famous dictum resonates in these unsettling times just as it did during the Great Depression ("[L]et me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance"), perhaps we really need to fear, not the illness, but the cure. If the politicians and the media are so eager to sell Americans this bailout, we should be worried about what is in store for us on the other side. As the saying goes, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know."

The resurrected Christ tells the church of Smyrna, "Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer" (Revelation 2:10). If we are faithful and fear God rather than the distressing circumstances swirling about us, He will see us through them (Ecclesiastes 8:12).

Crisis? What Crisis?

Probably everyone has heard and used the tired cliché, "He can't see the forest for the trees." The Dictionary of Clichés asserts that some form of this cliché has been making the rounds since at least the mid-sixteenth century. It means, of course, that a person is "unable to grasp the broad meaning of a situation or the point of an argument because of an excessive attention to details." One gets the picture of the proverbial absent-minded naturalist so busy inspecting the beautiful striped rope that he fails altogether to observe the tiger's fangs on the other end.

Christians can fall prey to the same misfortune in watching world news for signs of the times. It is easy to read so many news articles and watch so many news programs on this or that topic, becoming saturated with the nitty-gritty minutia of a story, that one can forget to step back to see it in context. Many pundits have made similar comments regarding this week's targeted killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by Coalition Forces in Iraq. Sure, it was a victory for the good guys, but in the larger order of events, it is not necessarily earth-shattering. Good can come from it if the Iraqi government can use the opportunity to contain the insurgency and stabilize the country, but as with the capture of Saddam Hussein many months ago, this event will probably not turn the tide. Someone will likely step in to take his place, and who knows if he will be more or less effective?

Along a similar vein, Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), a global intelligence-gathering and forecasting service, made a striking comment on June 6 about China's mounting economic woes. Stratfor CEO George Friedman writes: "We have been writing about this problem for several years now, and people keep asking when the crisis will come. Our answer is simple: If this isn't a crisis, what would a crisis look like?"

His comment should make one think.

The church of God has been writing and speaking about "the crisis at the close" for many decades now. In fact, Herbert W. Armstrong, who died twenty years ago, often used this phrase as a synonym for the prelude to and the actual Great Tribulation. More recently, we have taken cues from William Strauss and Neil Howe's generational studies as found in The Fourth Turning. They predict, based on historical cycles keyed to the character traits of generation after generation of Britons and Americans, that we are just about due for a major Crisis. They have found that major crises descend on the English-speaking peoples with regularity, about every 80-100 years, once in every four generations. Since the last Crisis occurred during the Depression and World War II, we are on the verge of another in just a few short years.

We would recognize something as horrible as the Great Depression, right? We would surely realize we had plunged into another World War! We would know if we had entered the Crisis! Would we?

Perhaps, yet most people fail to realize that they lived through World War III. We know it better as the Cold War, but historians are now writing, with the benefit of hindsight, that the dangerous political games and arms races of the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties constituted a real war, despite the fact that American and Soviet armed forces did not pummel each other to bloody bits on battlefields. We admit that each side had the ability to annihilate all life on earth multiple times over (appropriately called "MAD," mutually assured destruction), but we are still reluctant to assign the term "war" to this tense, uncertain time. Nevertheless, each nation was for all intents and purposes on a war footing for about 45 years. Ronald Reagan gets a great deal of credit for winning the Cold War for the West through economics—he essentially forced the U.S.S.R. into the ground by outspending it on arms and research.

With this in mind, how certain are we that we have a firm handle on world affairs? Maybe it is a good time to take a few steps back to look once again at the big picture, which should give us a new perspective on what is happening in the world. Fresh eyes often spark fresh ideas. While we are taking in the view, we should ask ourselves a few politically incorrect questions:

• Where are the real points of conflict in the world? Who are the antagonists? What are their aims?
• What kind of character do current world leaders have? Would we buy a used car from any one of them? Are they politicians or statesmen?
• How vital is economics in the grand scheme of things? Are the industrialized nations really as prosperous as they are said to be? How stable is the world's economy?
• How are the major alliances in the world configured? Are they shifting? Do the world's international institutions have any power or prestige to bear on conflict resolution? Could they be counted on in crunch-time?
• What affect does migration have on world affairs? Births? Aging?
• Is multiculturalism and diversity helpful or harmful to a nation? Socialism? Religion?
• Finally, what is the true spiritual, cultural, political, and financial condition of the nations of Israel? Just where are they in the biblical and historical cycle of liberty, backsliding, war/captivity, and deliverance (Judges 2:11-23)?

A look at the great expanse of the forest should help us regain our bearings as we move toward the coming Crisis and, beyond that, our goal.

America's Imminent Perfect Storm

As spring turns toward summer and the fall elections march ever nearer, winds of change are blowing across this nation, auguring a critical moment in American history. Once, this nation had farsighted leaders who could grasp the reins in a time of crisis and guide the country through its peril to a better, brighter future. The Founding Fathers led the newly independent nation through revolution and its first toddling steps. Though we may not agree with the means they used or the political perspectives they espoused, men like Jackson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Wilson, and others brought the United States to prominence, power, and prosperity despite the doughty forces arrayed against it.

Is there a leader in the wings who will have the fortitude to face the coming crisis? Perhaps there is, though it appears that he has not shown his face in public. It is reminiscent of the prophetic thought in Isaiah 3:1-7, in which all the real leaders of the nation are gone, and of those who remain, no one wants to step forward and take responsibility to correct the sorry state of affairs. Verses 8-9 explain why they are in such a mess:

For Jerusalem stumbled, and Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of His glory. The look on their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought evil upon themselves.

Over time, the cumulative sins of a nation's people pile so deep that their weight drags down the whole nation. Everyone becomes caught in the crisis, and the prudent person, seeing calamity on the horizon, hides himself (Proverbs 22:3; 27:12). This means a person takes precautions to survive the coming storm, yet the downside of this survival mentality is that few want to take on the additional burden of responsible, positive leadership. As the man in Isaiah 3:7 says, declining the offer of rulership, "I cannot cure your ills, for in my house is neither food nor clothing; do not make me a ruler of the people."

There is a perfect storm gathering strength and whirling into position over America. According to Wikipedia, "A perfect storm is any only-remotely-possible disastrous confluence of singly innocuous events. In such a situation, it is clear that if any one element had been displaced in time or space the result would have been far less powerful, but because just the right things were in the mix and with just the right timing, the situation ballooned." We are witnessing the thunderheads building on at least six fronts: cultural, social, religious, political, military, and economic. Any one of them is bad enough, but as a powerful, wealthy nation, we could probably handle it. However, the convergence of all these factors—and perhaps more—makes a truly successful outcome doubtful.

Culturally, this nation is wallowing in filth. We sell sex and its paraphernalia as if they were cars, furniture, or soap. Pornography is rampant in magazines, television, adult stores, and on the Internet, bringing its purveyors billions of dollars. Our streets are full of crime and drug use. We kill a million unborn children each year through abortion. Our music, language, fine art, and dance have degenerated into perverse imitations of their more beautiful ancestors.

Socially, we are on the brink of coming apart at the seams. The white majority is split along political and economic lines, while large numbers of Blacks and Hispanics are seething at their often-perceived and sometimes-real inequality. Allowing in millions more immigrants over the next several years will only exacerbate this growing divide.

Religiously, America is adrift. In fact, it is far more accurate to say that America is almost entirely secular and humanist, not religious. There is little religious conviction left in most people, and what is left cannot muster the energy to do more than mount a milquetoast protest.

Politically, the country is divided along partisan lines, while a few moderates or centrists swing back and forth to garner votes to ensure reelection. None of the major politicians in America has the intestinal fortitude to do what is right and good for the country because such solutions are difficult and may not produce visible results before the next election. Even when no-brainer legislation comes across their desks, they fail to act in the country's best interests (for example, yesterday's downing of legislation in the House to allow offshore drilling in order to become more energy-independent; Congressmen whined that it would scare away tourist dollars).

Militarily, America’s armed forces are too few, stretched thin, and exhausted. They may be doing a fine job, but the United States is not prepared to defend itself or its principles on another front. It is not clear how well-supplied our forces are with materiel, but the fact that up-armored vehicles and Kevlar vests are not ubiquitous among our frontline troops is troubling. Besides this, the latest sniping at the Commander-in-Chief by several retired general officers suggests a deep morale problem among its leadership.

Economically, we live in Bubble Land. We have enjoyed a sustained, positive economic wave for many years, and each year that it continues bodes darkly that the crash, when it comes, will be jarring. Debt, personal and public, is piling up as never before. The government runs continual deficits. The housing market is due for a downturn (though the Federal Reserve Chairman promises it will be a "soft landing"). Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements are not going to be solvent much longer. Finally, we have lost much of our manufacturing base, which in the past has helped us through the hard times.

Sadly, few, if any, of these problems are being addressed, much less solved. Everyone moans that his hands are tied, which may be code for, "I'm not going to be the one who has to take the fall for this!" Many people are sniping and sneering at the other side, criticizing them for doing nothing and having no ideas, while doing nothing themselves. There are no leaders on the scene or on the horizon.

Perhaps I am just being overly pessimistic. I hope I am. Yet, I keep repeating in my mind the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that [H]is justice cannot sleep forever."