Let's end this nonsense: Reagan's military buildup did not cause the Soviet Union to collapse

Let's put this to rest now. The idea that Reagan caused the Soviet Union to collapse has been said so many times over the years but the facts just don't back it up.

The idea goes something like this:

Ronald Reagan increased US military spending. He introduced the "Star Wars" technology to protect the USA against enemy missiles. In response to this, the Soviet Union increased military spending dramatically which, in turn, caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.

No, Sorry. Wrong.

Of course Reagan DID spend up big, no doubt about that.

And he DID introduce the "Strategic Defense Initiative" (SDI) which created some huge problems for the Soviet military and the politburo

But did the Soviets increase military spending? The data says no.

The above graph comes from Arming America: Attention and Inertia in US National Security Spending by James L. True (1998). Link here. Graph is on page 17 of 42 of the pdf file. (Edited 2015-08-14)

. Things to note:

• This graph measures spending in comparative dollars. Since the US had a larger economy than the Soviets, we can assume that if a 1:1 comparison between the two was made in terms of percentage of GDP, the Soviet Union would have a higher result. If you compare 1985 levels, for example, the US is probably spending around 6-7% of GDP on defence while the Soviets were spending around 13-14% of GDP.
• The Soviets passed the United States in the early 70s and peaked  around 1982.
• The US increased spending dramatically under Reagan, with a peak around 1985 and greater than the USSR.
• Soviet defence spending plateaued between 1981 and 1988.
• Soviet defence spending collapsed from 1989 onwards.
• Much ink has been spilled over the years by economists and defence analysts in trying to determine reliable Soviet defence spending figures. If you want to complain about the standard of Soviet data, remember that experts have been dealing with this for decades. In short, if your argument against my position involves attacking the reliability of the statistics in question, please complain to the thousands of experts over the past few decades who have made it their business to work out reliable stats. Appeal to authority? You bet.

The graph clearly shows that, in real terms, the Soviets did not increase military spending much in response to Reagan. In fact the opposite appears to be the case: Reagan was responding to the Soviets. Soviet defence spending in the 1970s was pretty big and Reagan obviously did spend up big in response. But did the Soviets respond to Reagan's spending by increased spending? No they didn't.

Of course the idea that Reagan defeated the Soviets has been around for years. This 1994 article in The Atlantic - only three years after the collapse of the USSR - already contains the facts I am re-stating here:

The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense.

If American defense spending had bankrupted the Soviet economy, forcing an end to the Cold War, Soviet defense spending should have declined as East-West relations improved. CIA estimates show that it remained relatively constant as a proportion of the Soviet gross national product during the 1980s, including Gorbachev's first four years in office. Soviet defense spending was not reduced until 1989 and did not decline nearly as rapidly as the overall economy.

So what did cause the USSR to collapse? In short: the economic stupidity known as Perestroika, a policy so bereft of common sense that it caused factories to produce less and less industrial goods. From 1987 onwards, the economy of the Soviet Union began to collapse with severely reduced output and hyperinflation. The downturn was so severe that birthrates declined - an indication of the personal stresses that Russian households were being subjected to. The economy shrunk significantly for around 4 years before communism was abandoned and the economy collapsed even further. By the mid-90s GDP was probably half of what it had been in 1987. There are more details about this in a previous post I have written.

What caused the Soviet Union to collapse?

I'm writing this as an adjunct to some fascinating study I did recently into the Soviet Union. It's not often I do historical studies here at my blog, but I think I have discovered the reason for the economic collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. This collapse, in turn, was followed by the collapse of Communism itself and a period of about ten years when Russia collapsed even further. David Christian, my Russian history lecturer at Macquarie University, mentioned that Russia lost about half of its Gross Domestic Product in this period.

At present I'm only going to focus on the economic issues involved. Gorbachev, when he instituted Glaznost, essentially created a monster that turned the Russian people against the Communist party. The collapse of communism in Russia itself may have been prevented had an economic collapse not preceded it.

What we need to remember is that in the years before communism collapsed, the Soviet economy collapsed. Economic output decreased alarmingly and inflation turned into hyperinflation.

The first inkling I had of this problem was when I looked at Russian/Soviet birth and death rates from this article at Wikipedia:

What you can see here is that birthrates in the USSR dropped dramatically before the collapse of Communism. It was only after the collapse of Communism that death rates shot up and the population began to shrink. But certainly in the period before 1987, birth and death rates were healthy.

So the question is, why did birth rates drop so drastically from 1987 onwards?

Economic conditions do affect birth rates. Birth rates dropped considerably during the Great Depression. While a 1:1 causal relationship does not exist, a sudden change in birth rates are always the result of some change occurring in society. It's well proven that the experience of continual hardship amongst animals results in lower birth rates, and humans are actually no different in that regards.

So the seeds of destruction were sown in 1987. What happened?

I was inspired to write this article because I read the 1991 IMF working paper Forced Savings and Repressed Inflation in the Soviet Union by Carlo Cottarelli and Mario I. Blejer. In that article, written before the collapse of communism, the two authors analyse the economic situation of the Soviet Union in the 2nd half of the 1980s. Their conclusion was that the Soviet Union was experiencing what is known as Monetary Overhang, a peculiar economic situation experienced historically only by communist states. Monetary Overhang meant that there was not enough goods and services for the economy to purchase for the money available, which led to ever increasing levels of savings. This, in turn, led to hyperinflation. In a market economy, an overabundance of savings has a deflationary effect but in a communist command economy it has an inflationary effect. This is because the flow of money is not determined by a market made up of many independent actors, but by the determination of bureaucrats acting as part of central planning. This meant that as production dropped off, income remained the same. Enterprises that were producing less goods and services were still receiving government money and paying their employees their wages.

But enough of the monetary conditions - what was it that caused a drop in production? Something happened from 1987 onwards which led to Soviet Enterprises producing less goods and services - and not just a small drop, but a considerable drop which led to scarcity and social and economic hardship amongst ordinary Russians.

It is popular to assume that the collapse was due to Soviet inability to cope with American rearmament under Reagan. The idea behind this was that the Soviets increased military spending and military output whilst simultaneously reducing the production of consumer items and things such as food. Certainly there was an increase in military spending by the Soviets in response to Reagan's military spending increases, (edit 2017: this was actually not the case, see my follow up article) but such an increase in production would not have led to monetary overhang. This would be because any change in production (moving from consumer goods to military goods) would have had a neutral effect upon the money supply. Certainly if such a huge swing had occurred the Russian people would've suffered, but they would've suffered without the effects of a monetary overhang. The presence of a monetary overhang indicates beyond doubt that from 1987 onwards, the total production of goods and services in the Soviet Union dropped. Military spending may have increased, but total levels of production changed.

I believe the cause was due to an edict made by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in June 1987 - the Law on State Enterprise. Under the short reign of Yuri Andropov, the Supreme Soviet had been radically altered to include younger, more reform minded individuals. By 1987 and with Gorbachev leading the forefront of reform, a decision was made to further improve economic performance. In hindsight, this State Enterprise law caused a drop in production, an economic collapse and, subsequent to it, conditions ripe for another revolution.

I'll let Wikipedia say it for me:

The law stipulated that state enterprises were free to determine output levels based on demand from consumers and other enterprises. Enterprises had to fulfill state orders, but they could dispose of the remaining output as they saw fit. However, at the same time the state still held control over the means of production for these enterprises, thus limiting their ability to enact full-cost accountability. Enterprises bought input from suppliers at negotiated contract prices. Under the law, enterprises became self-financing; that is, they had to cover expenses (wages, taxes, supplies, and debt service) through revenues. No longer was the government to rescue unprofitable enterprises that could face bankruptcy.

From an economically liberal point of view you can see what the Supreme Soviet was trying to do: It was trying to use market forces as a way for enterprises to determine output and encourage surplus production. Moreover it would be assumed that these enterprises would have to, at the very least, be capable of paying its own expenses rather than having them covered by the state. Laudable, yes. But the reform was fatally flawed for one very good reason: prices were still determined by the state. As each enterprise began to reform itself to become more profitable, costs needed to be covered. Since it was likely that the enterprise could neither retrench its workers or reduce their pay, the only choice they had to become profitable was to spend less on purchases. This meant that enterprises, with no other solution available, were forced to buy less materials for their production. Because the law applied all over the Soviet Union, one enterprise's decision to stop buying goods resulted in a reduction in another enterprise's demand which, in turn, forced that enterprise to reduce supply even further. Obviously these enterprises were not even meeting targets set by the Supreme Soviet, which was problematic, but, forced to balance their own books (which was failing), Soviet industrial production entered what could be termed a negative feedback loop: any attempts to solve the problem ended up making it worse.

By 1991 the economy had collapsed. Conditions were ripe for a revolution, and one arrived. It's only been in the last few years that Russian household wealth has returned to pre-collapse levels.

What I have learned from this? Simple. An economy will experience inflationary decline whenever production drops before demand does. As a corollary, an economy will experience deflationary decline whenever demand drops before production does. My views on Monetary policy thus remain fixed upon the idea that stable prices are essential whatever condition the economy is in, and that other policy tools need to be used by governments to boost economic growth and/or reduce debt levels.

We can also assume that inflation will be the norm whenever supply problems in an economy persist, and will be experienced by Peak Oil, as well as food production once Climate Change begins to bite.

Additionally, you could argue quite easily that economic collapse can lead to political and social collapse.

Nazism and book burning

One way to check on the various beliefs of German Nazism is to look at the books they banned and/or burned. Thanks to someone at Reddit, a link has been provided to a site which translates the original German book-banning guidelines into English. What we find is interesting:

1. "The literature of Marxism, Communism and Bolshevism." Well I guess that pretty much confirms the idea that Nazism and Communism are NOT the same thing.
2. "Pacifist literature", which means that anyone morally against war cannot be described as a Nazi.
3. "Literature with liberal, democratic tendencies and attitudes", so anyone slightly interested in, say, progressive policies cannot be described as a Nazi.
4. " Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism", which means that Nazis were not Darwinists or Evolutionists when it came to Eugenics, and which pretty much proves that Darwinists are not Nazis.
5. "All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk." which means that atheism was certainly not a Nazi ideal and that atheism is not associated with Nazism (BTW, Hitler was not an atheist).
   

So what can we conclude?

• Nazis hated Marxism and Communism.
• Nazis hated Pacifism.
• Nazis hated Democracy and progressive politics.
• Nazis hated Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.
• Nazis hated Atheists.
  

Jonah Goldberg and Ben Stein need to check their sources.

---

Myths of the Marshall Plan

Just checked the Marshall Plan at Wikipedia. Some interesting facts are:

1) The country with the most money given for reconstruction was Great Britain ($3297 million).
2) The next highest amount was given to France ($2296 million).
3) The third highest amount was given to Germany ($1448 million)
4) No money was given to Japan. Not one cent.

I always thought that the Marshall plan was responsible for the economic giants that both Germany and Japan have become. In reality, Germany and Japan pretty much became economic giants through sheer hard work and good economic policy. The fact that Britain got the bulk of the money but lagged behind both France and Germany up until the 1980s indicates some pretty poor policies being put into place.

Japan was, of course, reliant upon the US for its national defence and its post war constitution, so we need to acknowledge them for that.

AAAAAAAAA

A blog post with every single category marked (I'm doing this for scribefire)

Hurricane Katrina - who was to blame?

From the department of there-is-something -deeply-wrong-with-America:

Instead of supplying relief to the city, Rove had devised a scheme whereby he could blame the failure of government to take action on someone besides Bush. "They looked around," Landrieu says, "and they found a Democratic governor and an African American Democratic mayor who had never held office before in his life before he was mayor of New Orleans -- someone they knew they could manipulate. Ray Nagin had never held public office and here he was the mayor of New Orleans and it was going underwater."

In short, Rove was going to blame Blanco for the failure of the response in Louisiana, and to do that he was going to use Nagin. He had already set the plan in motion on Tuesday with Nagin, who, even though he was a Democrat, was so close to the Republican Party that some members of the African American community in New Orleans called him "Ray Reagan." In 2000, Nagin had actually contributed $2,000 to Bush's campaign when he ran for president.

...

Rove sold the story, as he had in the past, through the media. On Wednesday, while Blanco was trying to get help from the White House, her staff began receiving calls from reporters questioning her handling of the disaster, almost all of them citing as their sources unnamed senior White House officials.

"One story," Blanco aide Mann recalls, "would say the governor was so incompetent she had not even gotten around to declaring a state of emergency when she had actually done so three days before the storm. It was obvious to us who was behind this attack based on inaccurate information that was being shoveled to Washington reporters who were identifying their sources as senior Bush administration officials." Blanco adds, "People at Newsweek told me the White House called them to say I had delayed signing the disaster declaration. The assumption was that their source was the political director -- Karl Rove." Not only was the attack on Blanco in print, it was also on television. "All of a sudden," Blanco says, "a whole lot of talking heads showed up on television repeating the misinformation over and over, making it the truth."

Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

From the department of yes:

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment (after witnessing the destruction of the World Trade Center), she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

Of course this problem isn't confined to the US - there are plenty of countries around that have ignoramuses (ignoramasi?). But, and you know that I'll say this, I think that there is a higher percentage of anti intellectualism in the US than in the rest of the world (at least in the industrialised world).

I'm surprised, for example, whenever I occasionally debate an American online about their own history, that they are quite unaware of many things about their own past and have a rather jingoistic and blinkered view of their own country - American readers of and commentators on this blog excepted, of course!

Australia's tallest mountain

Australia's tallest mountain is an unimpressive mound named Mount Kosciuszko. In years gone by, people could drive their cars up to the summit, it is that unsteep.

Australia's second tallest mountain is Mount Townsend. Both of these mountains have an unusual joint history.

Back in I don't know when - perhaps in the early 1920s or 1930s - someone did a precise measurement of the two peaks and discovered, to their horror, that Townsend was actually the taller peak.

So what happened? Why is Kosciuszko still touted as the tallest mountain? Well, it is because the NSW Lands Department, in their infinite wisdom, decided to simply swap the two names around. Thus the original Mount Townsend became Mount Kosciuszko, and the original Kosciuszko became Mount Townsend.

But, then again, as any anally retentive know-it-all will tell you, Australia's tallest mountain is actually Mawson Peak on Heard Island.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

It never happened.

China shot down two US jets during the Vietnam War

It's amazing what you can find hidden in Wikipedia:

On 21 August 1967 four A-6 Intruders from the carrier USS Constellation (Squadron VA-196) attacked a railway in North Vietnam, one A-6 piloted by CDR Leo Profilet and LCDR William Hardman was hit by a surface to air missile (SAM), their aircraft cartwheeled, and both crewmen ejected, becoming POWs. The three other A-6s continued their mission, then suddenly two of the three Intruders became separated from the third aircraft, and possibly due to the thunderstorms and low clouds, headed directly across into Communist China. They were attacked and shot down by Red Chinese Mig-19s (J-6s). LTs(JG) Dain Scott and Forrest Trembley, and LCDR Jimmy Buckley did not survive. LT Robert Flynn became a POW, and was repatriated on 15 March 1973.

Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and Christmas

There's no doubt that the religious festival of Christmas has pagan origins.

No, it's not a result of Saturnalia being Christianised by the early church (though it probably did influence Christmas in some respect, such as the exchange of gifts), but rather it is the inevitable syncretism of Christian and pagan beliefs.

Christianity grew in the Roman Empire much more slowly than Kudzu, but, once established, it was impossible to eliminate. From being the butt of persecution in the early days (Nero, Domition, the lions and all that), Christianity was inevitable thrust into the mainstream of Roman politics after the conversion of Emperor Constantine and the eventual law under Theodosius that made Christianity the official state religion (the same law made traditional paganism illegal).

When two religions co-exist, there is no doubt that elements of one would end up in elements of another. It was in 274 AD - before Christianity was fully accepted into the Roman empire - that emperor Aurelian instituted the worship of the Sun God. The idea was simple - the Sun God essentially became the main pagan deity at the time and was probably seen by many pagans as the god above all gods, which, in turn, would have encouraged some form of monotheistic understanding amongst pagans. The Sun God could not be conquered, even in the midst of winter.

And that, of course, leads us to the winter solstice. At the winter solstice, the day is the shortest of the year in terms of sunlight. It was, in many ways, the weakest the sun gets on any day of the year. But still the sun shines. Even when it is diminished, the sun is "never conquered".

Back in those days, the Winter Solstice was celebrated on December 25th. To encourage worship of the Sun God, Roman paganism held a festival on that day. This festival increased in importance as the years went by.

When Theodosius made Christianity the state religion in 391 AD, the annual Winter Solstice celebration was not halted. Despite it being a pagan festival, and despite paganism now being outlawed, the December 25th festival continued to be celebrated. Why? Well, it was because the original deity - the God of the Sun - had been replaced with Christ. The pagan festival had been slowly Christianised as Christianity became more prevalent in the Roman Empire.

The yellowy image you see above is an example of this syncretism. The image is a mixture of paganism and Christianity and was made during the 4th century AD (it is located under St. Peter's Basilica ). The image is of the Sun God, unconquered as he rises in the sky. Yet the face of the God is that of Jesus Christ.

Of course, many things have been added to our understanding of Christmas over the years, such as Santa and sleighs and all that nonsense. It isn't wrong for us as Christians to celebrate Christ's birth, since it is one of the most wonderful events in all of history. But as we celebrate this Christmas, we must remember that there is nothing really at the "heart" of Christmas that is somehow originally Christian. Even though the birth of Christ has been at the centre of Christmas celebrations for over a millennia, we can't forget its pagan origins. It's certainly nothing we should "fight" over, it isn't something that we should feel we "own", and it isn't something that unbelievers can't interpret for their own sake.

Reimagining Judas

From the department of huh?:

Amid much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” — in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”

I only have one question to ask:

What in the world is the National Geographic Society doing involving itself in the translation of ancient coptic texts? They should stick to photographing monkeys sitting in hot springs.

Tunguska event

From the department of hard-rain:

At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara trading post (65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion), facing North. [...] I suddenly saw that directly to the North, over Onkoul's Tunguska road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest (as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up - expedition note). The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire Northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.

This is an eyewitness account of the Tunguska Event, a meteor or comet impact In Russia in June 1908. There are some very good indications that this is a true report. Notice that he heard a strong "thump" first, followed later by a massive explosive sound. This guy was 65 kilometres away from the explosion (which is scary when you consider that it was so hot that his shirt nearly caught fire). Sound travels faster through solid ground than through the air. The impact would've sent a very low frequency sound burst through the ground, reaching the person long before the actual sound did.

Australia's cricket problem

From the department of being-too-good-is-a-problem?:

John Buchanan has called on administrators to consider a franchise system to loosen Australia's vice-like grip on cricket, but his successor, Tim Nielsen, is adamant the game is not suffering during this era of baggy green domination.

With Australia undefeated in Test cricket since the 2005 Ashes series and victorious in its past three World Cup campaigns, Buchanan believes the ever-expanding chasm between his former side and the rest of the world needs to be dealt with and extreme measures implemented.

Chief among those, Buchanan said, was allowing for a greater flow of players around the cricketing globe. With Australia experiencing a surplus of talented cricketers and many other countries faced with a dire shortage, Buchanan implored the International Cricket Council to consider relaxing regulations that prevent players from representing countries other than those of their origin.

That process could be expedited by allowing Test-playing nations to act like franchises, he added, and recruit cricketers from abroad without the restraints of the ICC's current regulations, which stipulate that a player must spend at least 183 days a year for four consecutive years in his adopted country — and only if he has never played for his nation of origin — to be eligible.

"This equality debate keeps bubbling to the surface and means that there is a serious issue there," Buchanan said. "I think it mightn't be a bad thing if the ICC looked at some rule relaxations, which might allow a more even distribution of players around the world.

I think John Buchanan's heart is in the right place, even if his head isn't. Australia's current cricket team is one of the best teams in the history of the game. Australia has not lost a test cricket series in Australia since 1992-93, and its record overseas in the past 15 years has been the best of all international teams. Moreover, Australia has won 74 of its last 100 tests, drawing 13 and losing 13. This is, to put it mildly, a golden age of Australian cricket.

It was not always so. My interest in Australian cricket started in the dark days of 1984/85 when a rampant West Indies thrashed Australia 3-1, who then went off and promptly lost the Ashes to England... again by 3-1. I remember those days, when Australian batting was as fragile as glass, when the bowling was being hit all over the place, and when fielders kept dropping catches.

Legends were made during this period. Allan Border stood like a rock while everything crashed around him. Soon he was joined by the likes of David Boon, Dean Jones, Steve Waugh, Craig McDermott, Merv Hughes and Bruce Reid. The pain of defeat taught these players how much they hated it, and spurred them on to success later. But while the team itself was developing its character, Australian cricket was changing behind the scenes. The creation of the Cricket Academy allowed talented young players to get a head start and, by the early 1990s, almost every State team in Australia had a high scoring youngster in its batting lineup. In short, not only was the team itself improving, but so was the "grass roots".

Australia's success today is due to this process. I still think our fast bowling stocks are not strong enough, and it will be many years before another spinner turns up who can take as many wickets as Warne or MacGill. Nevertheless, Australia's cricket infrastructure is the best in the world.

The problem now, of course, is the lack of credible opposition. When Australia lost the Ashes in 2005 it was seen as a harbinger of change. It is now increasingly looking like a minor aberration. In order for cricket in Australia to retain its massive public interest - and thus remain popular and profitable - the teams which tour Australia must be more competitive than they are now.

Buchanan's solution is, I fear, not the best. Buchanan knows that other international teams need to become stronger but his solution - letting good Aussie players play for other countries - won't work. It will certainly increase their standards (imagine if Matthew Inness played for Bangladesh, or Dominic Thornley for New Zealand, or Ashley Noffke for Zimbabwe) but it won't solve their underlying problem, which is their inability to produce home-grown players (players born in their country) that are of high class.

This is where England is a good example. In the mid 1990s the England cricket team was one of the lesser teams in the world. Since then, however, they have become a force to be reckoned with. When Australia played England back in 1986-87 (the first time I ever attended a Test match) many saw it as a battle between the "wooden spooners" - the two worst teams in world cricket. Last season, 2006-07, it was seen as a battle between the two best sides in cricket (even though the end result was horribly skewed). England's last 100 Tests have seen them win 45 and lose 30. But if you take out matches against Australia, then they have won 41 (out of 80, over 50%) and lost 16 (out of 80, 20%). Despite losing a few series lately, England remains firmly entrenched as the world's second best cricket team.

The answer to the problem of world cricket is to increase the standard of play and to invest in the "grassroots" in the countries involved. I think that having a World Test Cricket team made up of players from non-test playing countries should be seriously considered. I also think that English county cricket should open its playing ranks to any and every player they want without having to worry about qualification periods.

But the most important thing that Australian cricket should do is invest in international cricket itself. Cricket Australia should begin to invest more money in grassroots development in other cricket playing nations. Expanding the size of the Cricket Academy by taking in young players from Bangladesh or Zimbabwe or New Zealand - and then letting those young players play cricket in Australian conditions for a time - will strengthen domestic cricket in these countries. Another solution may be to have an annual tour by a team from Bangladesh or Kenya to compete in our domestic cricket competition. Having a Trans-Tasman domestic cricket competition would help New Zealand far more than it would help Australia.

Buchanan sees merit in exporting Australian players to other teams. An interesting idea but, as I said, it won't work because it doesn't address the issue of developing grassroots cricket. I would prefer to export money and ideas and people to other countries to ensure that these nations can compete solely on merit.

Hitler was not an Atheist

From the department of exposing-urban-myths:

Author Doug Krueger notes that "so many Germans were religious believers that Hitler, if not religious himself, at least had to pretend to be a believer in order to gain support." He adds, "If the [Christian] message won converts, it would seem that most Nazis were probably [Christians] too. After all, would appeal to divine mandate win more theists or atheists to the cause?" He also points out that "Even if Hitler was not a [Christian], he could still have been a theist. Or a deist". Remember that being a non-Christian is not equal to being an atheist.

When all is said and done, Krueger says that anecdotal evidence from those close to him near the end of his life suggests that he was a at least a deist, if not a theist. Krueger concludes: "So here's what evidence we have. There is a certain worldview, Nazism. Its leader, Hitler, professes on many occasions to be religious, and he often states that he's doing the will of god. The majority of his followers are openly religious. There is no evidence anywhere that this leader ever professed to anyone that he is an atheist. He and his followers actively campaign against atheism, even to the point of physical force, and this leader allies himself with religious organizations and churches. This is the evidence. So where does atheism fit in?" As Krueger notes, there seems to be no real evidence that Hitler was an atheist. On the other hand, since one could never be sure when he was speaking his real thoughts and when he was simply riling up the masses, it's difficult to say for certain.

I still believe that the fool says in his heart that there is no God. But equating atheism with Hitler? I don't think so.

Hitler did say, however:

So it's not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there's no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds - perhaps inhabited worlds like ours - then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.

This, of course, just makes him opposed to Christianity. It doesn't mean he is an atheist. In fact, such a statement is consistent with Deism.

Update:
I propagated this myth in a sermon I preached on 1 John 1.5-7.

Turkey, Armenia and the US Congress

As much as I believe the notion that there was an Armenian Genocide, why was it so important for the US Congress to pass a bill condemning it?

These days, post "Mission Accomplished", any sort of action from US Politicians condemning things like Genocide is hollow and hypocritical.

For Turks, raising the issue of the Genocide is very touchy. No one likes it when another nation tells them off for doing something wrong, even if it is true.

Turks, like the Japanese, have to eventually come to terms with their nation's past. Acknowledging the Armenian Genocide is certainly part of this. However, it is not going to happen overnight, and it is certainly not going to be helped by the US Congress passing a bill condemning it.

Personally, I would love it if the Turkish Government issued statements condemning America's invasion of Iraq, as well as their invasion of Haiti, their meddling in Guatemala, Honduras and Chile and, of course, the shameful way Americans treated Native Americans during the 19th century. These stains on America's history are as Genocidal as anything Turkey could manage, and killed more people as well.

If Congress could also pass a bill condemning American actions in the 19th and 20th centuries I would probably take this current bill more seriously. As it stands, however, no government that heads a nation with a checkered past has the right to publicly condemn the checkered past of another nation - and that includes my own country, Australia, and their treatment of Indigenous Australians in the 19th century (a treatment that was essentially genocide by omission, rather than commission, but still, in effect, the same thing).

Certainly scholars and historians, as well as Armenians and informed Turks should come out and continue their criticism of early-20th century Turkey. Historical records and proof of the event needs to be disseminated amongst Turks to show them that their history is not as wonderful as they think. Turkey will eventually agree that the Genocide did take place, but that will not happen now, and nor will it happen in the next ten years. Moreover, having the US Congress condemn the Genocide will do nothing to convince Turks - in fact it will make them even less likely to believe it.

Why are American Conservatives such idiots?

From the department of I-am-annoyed-the-South-lost:

Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom, goodness and human dignity invariably focus on America’s bloody past as a slave-holding nation. Along with the displacement and mistreatment of Native Americans, the enslavement of literally millions of Africans counts as one of our two founding crimes—and an obvious rebuttal to any claims that this Republic truly represents “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” According to America-bashers at home and abroad, open-minded students of our history ought to feel more guilt than pride, and strive for “reparations” or other restitution to overcome the nation’s uniquely cruel, racist and rapacious legacy.

...

1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.

2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.

3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.

5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

And the response to this?

1. American didn’t invent slavery. Lots of other countries did it too. Yes, but by the mid-19th century the practice had been pretty much run out of Europe, as well as the northern states, for being barbaric and immoral.

2. Slavery existed only briefly – 89 years from the Declaration of Independence to the 13th Amendment. It probably didn’t seem all that brief to the persons who were enslaved. And, of course, it had been going on for some time before the Declaration of Independence. Medved figures that only about 5 percent of today’s Americans are the descendants of slave owners. That may or may not be true, but I’m not sure why it’s relevant to anything.

3. Slavery wasn’t genocidal. Dead slaves brought no profit, Medved says. Of course, about a third of the people captured in Africa to be sold into slavery died in the ship voyage to America, but Medved says the slavers didn’t intend the slaves to die, so it doesn’t count. “And as with their horses and cows, slave owners took pride and care in breeding as many new slaves as possible,” Medved writes. No, really, he actually wrote that. I am not making this up.

4. It is not true that the United States became wealthy through slave labor, Medved says. Many “free soil” states were more prosperous overall than the slave states. That may be true, or not, but those cotton plantations were cash cows for the plantation owners. In 1855 raw cotton amounted to one-half of all U.S. exports, valuing $100 million annually in 1855 dollars. (Source: Encyclopedia of American Facts & Dates [Harper & Row, 1987] p. 255.) There was huge income disparity in the slave states; the plantation-owning elite hoarded the wealth.

5. The United States deserves special credit for abolition. Huh?

6. “There is no reason to believe today’s African-Americans would be better off if their ancestors had remained in Africa. ” Actual quote. Who says conservatives are insensitive? Well, me, for one.

Medved once wrote a book about movie flops. Sounds like he needs to write a book about himself.

Reform, not revolution, is what works

With Myanmar now having political protests, it is tempting to yet again side with democratic revolutionaries as they aim to change their government for the good of their people.

We all watched with gladness the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the death of Communism in Russia, as well as with horror as the Chinese put down their own fledgling democratic movement. Moreover, even the most anti-Iraq War individual secretly felt pleasure at the toppling of Saddam's statue in 2003.

But allow me to go out on a limb and say that I think in many cases these revolutions have often done more harm than good. When Communism collapsed in Russia, the resulting power vacuum caused the nation's economy to severely contract. The result was terrible levels of poverty and hardship endured by post-communist Russia. It is only now, some 16 years later, that Russia's standard of living seems equivalent to the Soviet Union in its prime.

I remember when Ferdinand Marcos was kicked out by the 1986 EDSA Revolution in The Philippines. I remember the joy on the faces of ordinary Filipinos as they rejoiced in the elevation of Corazon Aquino as the new president. Yet since then the nation has hardly progressed much. Their economy has grown, to be sure, but the standard of living amongst ordinary citizens remains too low.

Whenever a regime is overthrown - either by its own people or by an outside force - the collapse in the rule of law can be so great that the nation ends up worse off than it was before. This is what the French Revolution taught us, and what the current situation in Iraq tells us.

China, for all its wrongdoings in 1989, has reformed its economy to the point where its people are richer and better off than at any time in their history. Despite their comparative lack of freedom, ordinary Chinese people have benefited from their pro-market undemocratic government. This does not mean that China shouldn't change - on the contrary, China desperately needs to embrace democratic reform if it is to avoid its own past mistakes. Yet I would argue very strongly that such change needs to be undertaken gradually and that we westerners, who have a fetish for sudden revolutionary change, need to "cut them some slack" when it comes to political reform.

The worst thing to happen in Myanmar at the moment is not a bloody clampdown by the government but a revolution against them. If history is to be our guide, then any successful overthrow of this undemocratic government by its people will undoubtedly result in a greater suffering of the people than any potential "putting down" of the revolution by the government.

This is not to defend the government of Myanmar, but to ensure that we in the West who desperately want a free and democratic Myanmar have a realistic level of support for the people of that country. Slow reform, in which economic and political changes are made slowly and carefully, should be the main goal of Westerners at the moment. Moreover, this would mean explicitly discouraging the Myanmar protesters from revolutionary activity.

Is the US Constitution a Christian document?

From the department of the-devil-is-in-the-lack-of-details:

Most Americans believe the nation's founders wrote Christianity into the Constitution, and people are less likely to say freedom to worship covers religious groups they consider extreme, a poll out today finds.

The survey measuring attitudes toward freedom of religion, speech and the press found that 55% believe erroneously that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. In the survey, which is conducted annually by the First Amendment Center, a non-partisan educational group, three out of four people who identify themselves as evangelical or Republican believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. About half of Democrats and independents do.

One of the most important events in my young Christian life was reading Roman Catholicism, a polemic against the Roman church by Reformed theologian Loraine Boettner. Although I found some of his arguments interesting, I eventually became bogged down with his arguments based upon the US Constitution. Not being American, and not being in America, I found his arguments quite hollow.

The easiest way to find out how "Christian" the US Constitution is is to do a word search throughout the document. If you're willing, click here for a copy of the US Constitution.

• Number of times the word "God" appears: zero
• Number of times the word "Creator" appears: zero
• Number of times the word "Jesus" appears: zero
• Number of times the word "Bible" appears: zero
• Number of times the word "Church" appears: zero
  

But what about the Declaration of Independence? Surely that document is important too in determining whether or not the founding fathers were believers:

• Number of times the word "God" appears: once
• Number of times the word "Creator" appears: once
• Number of times the word "Jesus" appears: zero
• Number of times the word "Bible" appears: zero
• Number of times the word "Church" appears: zero

Here are the passages in the declaration of independence that mention God and the creator:

When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of course, there is nothing else within either document that indicates who exactly this God or creator is. Moreover, the specific phrase "Nature's God" is quite Deist in its tone (Deism is incompatible with Orthodox Christian belief). The arguments that many Christians have is that these people were believers so therefore these references exclusively mean the Christian God. Yet I have to point out that the basic ideas of Democracy and a Republic are more Athenian in their roots than Judeo-Christian. Moveover, I cannot remember any passage in Scripture that outlines either implicitly or explicitly the idea of a Democracy. Yet are we to believe that the founding fathers of the United States were born-again Christians who saw Democracy as the natural outworking of the Christian faith? The founding fathers certainly believed that a Creator God led them to revolt against colonial rule and establish their own independent nation - yet this idea is nowhere found in the US Constitution later on.

What I would like to do is examine the Federalist Papers in more detail to see what the framers thought of Christianity. I would also like to see a quote from one or more of the framers that shows their understanding and acceptance of the Gospel. Of course people in that era spoke about their devotion to God, including the framers of the constitution... but which, if any, explicitly explained the message of Christ crucified?

Why am I, an evangelical Christian, disagreeing with my brethren on this? Firstly, Jesus said My kingdom is not of this world, which indicates that Christ did not attempt any form of political takeover of either the Jewish state at the time or their Roman masters. Secondly, I think that Dominionism as a belief is unbiblical (the idea that the Church should take over political institutions and enforce Christian laws in a nation). And thirdly I believe that the idea of American Exceptionalism (a belief that America is somehow predestined by fate to be greater than other nations), which has no biblical basis and which came from a worldly philosophy, has been syncretised with Evangelical belief.

If American Christians took both the Bible and their own nation's history seriously, they would come to the inevitable conclusion that America was never founded on Christian principles.

Thousand-yard stare

This is a real picture taken during World War I in an Australian First Aid station somewhere on the western front in Europe. Check out the guy at the bottom left - he has the Thousand-yard stare. He looks spooky too.