Government

Sea to Shining Sea?

Barry Mahler Borders, Government , , ,

INTERNATIONAL BORDERS: PART FOUR

Few issues raise the ire of more people more quickly than the issue of what nation has the right to call what land their own at any given time, and so any series of discussions regarding international borders would not be complete without treatment of it.  Nations and peoples have long been overrun, enslaved and/or ruled by others, leaving no one’s ancestry unstained by the tint of it, causing national and ethnic rage to burn in many a heart and soul from memory of the issue. Continue reading →

Rules of Engagement

Barry Mahler Government, War , , , ,

It is with both sadness and a growing degree of anger at my national government that I must break away from my series on international borders to address the issue of the way our government is wasting the lives and blood of our military personnel.  Earlier this week, as a law enforcement chaplain, I had the somber duty of responding to the apparent suicide of a Marine who lived in my neighborhood.  By all accounts, he was an amazing man: motivated, highly intelligent (he spoke at least five languages) and brimming with common sense.  He had also in his relatively young life already done seven tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Continue reading →

When Gods Collide

Barry Mahler Borders, Government , , ,

INTERNATIONAL BORDERS: PART THREE

We now move into a more serious discussion of the idea of culture, for culture is fundamental to a people and nation, and is the thing that is most meant to be protected by the existence of an international border.  Our first stop in this discussion must therefore be to discuss the idea of cultural superiority and inferiority, for whenever there are notable differences between cultures such judgments must be made, however loudly the multiculturalists may howl at the notion. Continue reading →

Language, Law & Culture

Barry Mahler Borders, Government , , ,

INTERNATIONAL BORDERS: PART TWO

With the necessity and legitimacy of international borders now established by God (as we have seen in PART ONE), it is a logical next step to conclude that international borders are also a moral idea, as strange as it may seem to some.  Yet despite its seeming strangeness, this is not a hard or difficult thing to conclude, for since God is perfectly holy (Isaiah 6:3), anything He establishes has moral authority behind it. Continue reading →

Divine Separation

Barry Mahler Borders, Government , ,

INTERNATIONAL BORDERS: PART ONE

So profoundly muddled is today’s thinking regarding the issue of international borders that I find it necessary to bring some Scriptural firepower to bear upon it, and so today I launch a four-part series dedicated to the subject.  Our first look into the fog will be to discuss the need for many separate and sovereign nations. Continue reading →