Lenders along Highway 153 reflect the end stages of long-term decapitalization of the American economy. I cover the scavenger economy on this website, Nooganomics.com, and pray for your support.
And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.
— Judges 2:14
By David Tulis
An analysis in the New York Times about the wave of U.S. district court rulings in favor of “marriage equality” says the supreme court is going to be swayed by lower level judges ganging up to redefine marriage. “Wave of appeals expected to turn the tide on same-sex marriage bans,” implies this wave of defeats for marriage in court reflect a clamor of public opinion for the gay theory.
When I mentioned this story last night to Jeannette, who was working on a laptop in the front room, she asked me to cease and desist my remarks, to not depress her.
Courts aren’t supposed to base rulings on herd opinions below, especially when a fundamental rule of law is at stake. Among the 50 states, that rule is federalism, protected in the constitution by the 10th amendment. The distinctives of the states forming the federal compact has been repeatedly imperiled by Washington by centralizing innovations ranging from the war to prevent Southern independence, the New Deal, the civil rights act, Roe vs. Wade. One part of the constitution has been used to wipe out the other. Commerce, equal protection and the 14th amendment have despoiled the states.
Regulation of marriage and municipal police powers have always been reserved to the states and their people (sadly, more to the former than to the latter). Egalitarianism is going to be imposed, it would seem, upon marriage. “Our eyes are not only on this marriage spring,” Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry said in the Times analysis prompted by another U.S. district court ruling, “our eyes are on the marriage harvest.”
A rally critical of Tennessee’s marriage law in August 2013 is attended by people hoping to redefine marriage into a void.
Ripe for annexation
I bring up the “biggest gay year in history” in evaluating the prospect of resistance among Christians locally and in my native state. My work the past year and a half has not soared to the heights. You are my reader, and I thank you for the honor of your visit. You are part of a tiny group of thinking people who in some way like what I am doing.
Why am I not popular? Why am I not famous? Why are my numbers dismal? Certainly the great burden of my anonymity is my own fault as essayist and reporter.
I suspect there are other reasons: The atomization of culture, a quietness and passivity and privatization in Christianity that destines me to remain unremarked (or, perhaps, unbookmarked) for a long time.
The book of Judges tells of the vulnerability of the city of Laish.
They saw the people who were there, how they dwelt safely, in the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure. There were no rulers in the land who might put them to shame for anything. They were far from the Sidonians, and they had no ties with anyone (Judges 18:7).
This scene comes to mind because it suggests our own situation in Tennessee and Chattanooga. We are extremely vulnerable, with little inner reserve spiritual in Christ, little financial liquidity, little courage to defy anyone no matter how wicked. Chattanooga seems ripe for a sort of annexation of the marital covenant by national government. Lately Washington has fulminated about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, whose citizens voted for independence and confederation with Moscow. But upon its own people it believes annexation of the states is its right and duty, for the benefit of their citizens.
A defense of your marriage
In the marriage majority report I argue for biblical creation, the claim of God upon His creatures, marriage as a form of capital, fidelity in sexual conduct. I argue for marriage as a sacred union before God, the fount of population and the necessity of marriage in a free market. Many of these points are standard biblical dissents against the irrationality and poison of lugbutt (OK OK, LGBT) theory.
I offer a fresh perspective, however, one that works to my disadvantage as an entrepreneur. That outlook is the reformed faith, the formulation at the heart of the Reformation and Protestantism. Its premise is the sovereignty of God. From that flow sovereign grace, the necessity of the church and of the Lord’s Day, a defiance of lawless power in terms of God’s law, and the concept of capital and equity.
The reformed faith makes me a minority among Christians. I baffle ministers of the gospel and fellow churchgoers with my application of biblical concepts to the marketplace. Clergymen are wary of my work. People in my own church generally disregard it. I am a worldling. I write too little about the Lord Jesus and neglect the office of the Holy Spirit. I am not sanctified enough. I condemn the drug war, and so favor the drug culture. I reject a national pro-life amendment on states’ rights grounds, so I am not prolife enough. I drag their favorite verses about in the marketplace and getting them soiled. I cite the 10 commandments as a vital legal structure, so must be a legalist who thinks we are saved by good works. Somehow, at Nooganomics.com, Christianity is getting scratched. I lurch over a curb and skid to a stop at the plinth of a statue; a backseat Bible pitches to the floorboard.
Media outlet No. 7 in Chattanooga — or No. 2?
I estimate my ranking in the media is No. 7.
Still first in scale and influence is the fading Chattanooga Times Free Press. Next are three TV stations, followed by Chattanoogan.com and Nooga.com. Until recently I was the latest serious contender for a public notice as a media voice. The newest is the Benwood Foundation community voices blog at benwood.org, an effort in nonprofit social action opinion and analysis. Eventually that platform could become a standalone operation and turn a profit.
With the decline of national government and the concept of the nation-state going into receivership, we are thrilled at the world being turned upside down, thanks largely to the Internet. Matt Drudge takes on the New York Times and the Washington Post. David Tulis, a poor editor and homeschool dad, sets his own writing agenda amid established corporate media in a Southern city.
While I guess I am No. 7 arriving on the media scene, I suspect Nooganomics.com ranks better by another vector. Which platforms make detailed specific legal, political, social and moral arguments daily. Which platform stands in a camp, faction, theory or perspective? The TFP editorial pages do. So do I. Nooganomics.com might fairly be understood to be the No. 2 opinion/analysis site for Chattanooga.
Radio is God’s ordained rescue from the economic black hole of the Web. Nooganomics.com is a radio show 1 to 3 p.m. at Hot News AM 1240 (formerly the Copperhead). On website and show your editor provides in-depth analysis from a libertarian, free market and explicitly Christian worldview.
Everyone on the Internet expects material to be free. I can deal with that debilitating dynamic by making every effort to connect with you, my reader.
This relationship is not based on a subscription fee, but is all of grace. I am available to talk with you on any useful subject every Friday in Chattanooga. I attend Panera Posse in Hixson at 6:45 a.m. at the Panera bread store. Several men and I enjoy coffee and bagels. Personal relationship is the “value added” to our dealings. It transcends commerce. It is better than tips in a PayPal tip jar. I am waiting for you to join me.
Hamilton Funeral Home in Hixson challenges national players. Our site explores the power of the “locally owned and operated” concept.
Should you support my platform?
I would like you to identify with me and my argument, whether on marriage or on the deconstruction of public schools (if only city and county mayors could see it coming).
If you think I am working in the right direction, become more than just a reader. Become a paying subscriber, the terms of which you decide. The affinity model of journalism is ideal in service of a lococentric website in a city of 170,000 residents. I don’t pretend to care about the whole world; that is in God’s hands. Rather, I care for my hometown, as you do, connected to its people by the providence of geography, space and time. If you want me to care about this smaller group rather than humanity in general or “the United States” or “America,” please consider investing in my work.
Send me an email. Refer a potential advertiser to AM 1240 radio. Tune in to my show. Pay for a spot to promote a favorite charity. Send me a link. Friend me on Facebook (yawn).
I am not asking you to be a part of my team. I am asking to become part of yours. Your team. Let me make on your behalf these arguments for Christianity and the free market. I want to help you. I write to make you a better person and a better Christian. I write and talk to make myself a better person in your service, working out my salvation unto God. When you support me at Nooganomics.com you are supporting not a corporation, not a mere business, but a flesh and blood person.
Encourage a Christian friend to patronize my website and my station. Many thanks, sir, for your consideration.
The bad always drives out the good. It is because of the kind of world we have created for ourselves. Everywhere you look the bad is driving out the good. A glaring example; our whole economic system has been turned up side down and wrong side out. The federal reserve money system has destroyed our money. Our economy system no longer operates based on a sound money.
It has driven out real money and replaced it with a note. Read it for yourself. It is printed right on the fake dollar bill. You could call it fictive capital. It is only paper and the only value it has is its exchange value. That is as long as someone is willing to exchange something they have for your federal reserve note.
One time I ask a businessman, What is the secret of being in business. His simple reply was, having something somebody else wants.
That note is only paper. It could disappear overnight (and it is headed that way) and no one will know what happened to it. This would be impossible with real money. Real money represents wealth. Fake money represents debt. The bad drives out the good.
Just look around you. Every where you look bad things have driven out good things. Socialism has driven out Americanism. At this point in time we have so-called voluntary socialism. People volunteer for it. Never do they know what they are doing. Till one day that voluntary socialism becomes mandatory socialism. Voluntary socialism operates on the ignorance of the people.
Mandatory socialism operates from the end of a gun barrel. It is called communism.
I’ll leave it at this. You can find out for yourself. If these two examples don’t open blinded eyes a hundred more examples would not cure this blindness. Wake up, people. Oh one more example. God is being driver out of every thing. Our schools, our churches, our government, our homes, and yes even our law.
It is called the separation of God’s law from man’s law. Let us drive out some bad for a change. Try God’s law it works.