Next Week’s Election and ‘The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium’

What do our elections in the U.S. next week have to do with Evangelicals and Catholics Together? More than you might think.

First off, consider Ben Zeisloft’s reporting for The Daily Wire, and how he begins his October 24th article:

“The United States has less than one month’s supply of diesel fuel, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.”

This is the lowest level since 2008, even as, by one metric – the four-week average of distillates supplied – demand is the highest it’s been since 2007. So what is the U.S. government doing about it?

President Biden, for his part, has a few predictable responses which we have seen him deviate from very little in the past two years.

• Tell gas stations to artificially lower their prices, and criticize oil companies for making money right now.
• Ask foreign countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to produce more to bring down prices, thereby proving that he understands the way supply and demand work in relation to costs.
• Release barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
• Pitch Americans buying electric vehicles and investing in renewable energy.

But if EV’s and renewable are so cost-effective, then they shouldn’t need so much promotion and protection by the Biden administration. And at the same time, you can’t just tell gas stations to lower their prices without doing something about the supply of gasoline relative the demand for it.

As someone who has provided for his family for over a decade via gainful employment in the O&G industry, there is no question in my mind that we should be producing more of our own oil and gas here in the U.S., nor that we easily could be self-sufficient in that regard, rather than relying on hostile foreign countries which use our dependence as leverage when they want to do bad things internationally. See also Putin and the European Union and the war in Ukraine.

In case you haven’t noticed, we may be on the verge of WWIII with Russia and China. And our military equipment, to my knowledge, does not run on solar panels. Sure, there may be some experimental one-offs here and there. But in the main it fuels up on diesel and jet fuel. So what is Biden thinking, depleting our Strategic Petroleum Reserve even as we are trying to stare down Vladimir and Xi? Precisely when we run out would be the time for them to throw down, and we are exceedingly naïve to assume otherwise.

Concerning Taxes, Votes, and the Undesirability of Audits

By the way, another thing that stood out to me about the California gubernatorial debate Lauren and I watched on Epoch TV Sunday night: Brian Dahle, the Republican candidate, is proposing lower gas taxes in California to bring down the cost of fuel at the pump.

Gavin Newsom, and the moderators of that debate, challenged Dahle on how he could guarantee lowering taxes wouldn’t just result in gas stations raising their prices by that much. And this is a rather rich question, in light of EV tax credits leading to EV manufacturers raising their prices in 2023 by roughly the amount of the Biden administration’s federal tax credits.

Dahle briefly pointed out, before the moderators changed the subject to protect Newsom’s re-election chances, that neighboring states have much lower average fuel prices compared with California. And it’s worth noting a report by CBS 8 San Diego on October 7, which indicates that taxes and fees in California account for $2.50 more per gallon in the Golden State. California’s average is $6.39 compared with the national average of $3.89. In fact, literally every other state in the U.S. – including Hawaii and Alaska – have lower average fuel prices than California. And this is due to taxes and fees, which is another way of saying it is due to taxes upon taxes in that state.

By way of reminder, the 2020 Election was a supposed landslide for Joseph R. Biden who is said to have won 306 electoral votes to Donald J. Trump’s 232. Yet it’s a curious thing to have this repeated so often by certain contingents. Like the promotion of electric vehicles and renewable energy, it is an odd look, like watching a hypnotist. But speaking personally, I think it serves rather to undermine the credibility of the position stated again and again, over and over. The more often it is promoted and defended, the weaker and more desperate it sounds.

But if it’s true that Democrats won so much in 2020, why should Katie Hobbs, the current Attorney General of Arizona, who is also currently the Democrat candidate for Arizona governor, threaten legal action to prevent a hand-count audit of ballots in Cochise County?

To be clear, the votes would still be counted first by machine; all Cochise County Supervisors are considering is an audit of the machine count. But it’s an odd look for the Democrat candidate. Yet, again, it undermines the credibility of the claim that we have free and fair elections that an audit of the ballots is not desired. At a minimum, it’s highly suspicious.

Reproductive Rights, Fracking, and January 6th

Speaking of, a moderator recently asked the Democrat governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, point-blank, during her debate with Lee Zeldin: “Are there any restrictions around abortions you would approve of?”

Predictably, Hochul said ‘No,’ but not in so many words, or few, by dodging the question.

And what was that about her daughter and granddaughter not having access to abortion anymore, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned at the Supreme Court? Neither of them would be here if Hochul had aborted her daughter. And I think that’s something to ponder, that these future generations of Hochul females would not be here if there were no restrictions on abortion whatsoever.

But here I am talking about the internal restraints of conscience, or maternal instinct, or affection, which hold back a mother from terminating her child when and where she could have.

Then there’s John Fetterman, Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate. He’s apparently Schrodinger’s cat on the question of fracking, saying in 2018 that he absolutely does not support fracking. But then in his debate with Dr. Oz the other night he said he’s always supported, and he does support fracking. And he will stand and support fracking.

Can Fetterman account for why he changed his mind, or the disparity between his comments four years ago and his comments now? No, indeed. He cannot. Nor will he be forced to in any meaningful way. But the simple solution is for Pennsylvanians to not vote for him.

Though MSNBC is predictably doing all it can to distract from Fetterman’s lack of either integrity or mental fitness to serve in this capacity. In a panel discussion with Pittsburgh area Trump voters, they ask ‘What about January 6th?’ And this they hope will torpedo Doug Mastriano, and pull attention away from his position on school choice in light of the abysmal condition of public education, both in Pennsylvania specifically and across the U.S.

What is Upstream and Downstream of Unity

Yet all of this brings us back again to Evangelicals & Catholics Together, and their initial statement in 1994. ‘The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium’ says, in part, “legitimate diversity… should not be confused with existing divisions between Christians that obscure Christ and hinder the one mission.”

Yet neither is Rome ready to retract, so far as I know, it’s anathematizing of Protestants from five centuries ago at the Council of Trent.

The trouble with all of the above is that truth and goodness are seen as downstream unity. But they’re not, and it couldn’t be more important for us to distinguish between the goodness that can come as a result of legitimate unity on the one hand, and the truth and goodness on which unity depends where legitimacy in the first place is concerned.

Moreover, the same thing can be said of the ecumenical movement’s oft-repeated calls for theological unity as can be said for mantra-like promotions of electric vehicles, or denouncements of questioning election fraud in the U.S. – all of the above speak to the weakness of the fundamentals of the position the more repetitive they grow while remaining nevertheless superficial and lacking details, or dismissing out-of-hand questions that get into the specific costs of what is being proposed.

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