At Ease in the Land of Moloch

Suppose for a moment that the sky were falling. Now while you have your imagination engaged, imagine that Chicken Little was actively trying to sound the alarm, not that the sky is falling, but that a rat has successfully broken into the feed bin. Rats in the feed bin, that’s not such a good thing. Raising the alarm, all things being equal, would be a good thing. But if the sky were falling, concerns about rats and feed bins would be not just misguided, but dangerous, a genuine distraction of a truly calamitous event. Now suppose that Chicken Little suddenly hatched a bevy of baby Chicken Littles, all of whom became conservative pundits.

There we are. The danger of the day is war with Russia. Last month it was inflation. Before that it was vax mandates and before that, COVID itself. Talk radio is all abuzz with the awful things the President is doing to our economy. The ghost of inflation present is haunting us. Doom and gloom is everywhere. It is true, terribly true, that the Biden administration is spending us down the river at rates far more rapidly than his predecessor did. Socialism is a dreadfully dangerous and destructive practice. Who could have guessed that money for nothing and checks for free would prove to be a disincentive to work? It is more horrible than even the pundits know.

There are, however, two things that are far worse. The first is our relative indifference to the second. That is, that Christians, and the radio talkers and social media mavens who lead us, are up in arms, running about like Chicken Little over the President’s handling of the economy is shameful. For we have forgotten the real tragedy of our day. Today, nearly three thousand mothers will murder their own children. Tomorrow it will be the same. Under President Trump, every day three thousand babies were intentionally murdered, even when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Murder.

I believe in liberty. I long for limited government. I believe in fiscal wisdom, in hard money. But assaults on these things are so many rats in the feed bin while the sky is falling. Babies are being murdered while I type. Billboards advertise these services. Salesmen visit these offices, hoping to land an account. Landlords rent to these grisly customers. Policemen are standing guard at the door. Nurses are scrubbing implements of infanticide, and medical school graduates are putting on surgical gloves. Moms and dads have paid their cash, and wait. And Christians are listening to Fox News complain about the economy. Sadly, because the sky has been falling for forty-nine years, we no longer seem to notice. We are comfortable with murdered babies, at ease in the land of Moloch. I understand that we cannot look too closely at this horror. It is too terrible. But we need to look more closely, more often, more honestly, and with more repentance. We need to stop allowing ourselves to be distracted and outraged by the rats. The sky is falling, and the blood is rising.