Monday, March 31, 2025

Part I

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A Devastating Tragedy in Myanmar: A Massive Earthquake and Its Aftershocks Leaves Devastation, Kills Nearly 1,700 with Many More Missing

A massive earthquake hit the nation of Myanmar on Friday and the death toll is already reaching about 1,700. It is almost assuredly going to grow far larger, and that’s because this is an extremely powerful earthquake. 7.7 on the magnitude scale. Now, recall we used to talk about the Richter scale, which dates back to the middle of the 20th century. More accurate measurements have led to an updated scale, so we don’t put a name on it anymore. It’s simply 7.7 in magnitude.

Remember that every number represents the power of 10, and so an earthquake that is a 6 as compared to a 5 is 10 times more powerful than the 5. So a 7 is 10 times more powerful than a 6. That’s a massive increase in magnitude and scale, and 7.7 means almost 8. 8 is really about the strongest magnitude that is commonly recorded when you look at the scale because as you go at the magnitude, you also have fewer and fewer earthquakes that qualify. The bottom line is that 7.7 is absolutely devastating. And so you’re looking at the collapse of many buildings and you can say, “Well, maybe they should have built it to, say, a more adequate scale.” And that’s true, a more adequate standard when it comes to earthquakes, but in most places those scales go up to about 6.

In other words, building codes assume that a building should be able to survive a magnitude 6 earthquake, but 7.7 is beyond that, especially in this part of the world. Other parts of the world have higher standards when it comes to earthquake preparedness, but there are few parts of the earth that are more susceptible to earthquakes than the nation we know as Myanmar now. That’s what it calls itself now. The story behind that we will get to. This is what was ancient Burma and was known as Burma during the time of the British Empire and throughout most of the 20th century until it was actually a military government that changed the name to something they considered more indigenous.

They wanted to associate Burma with the legacy of imperialism and we are talking about the epicenter of this earthquake being very close to Mandalay, a very large city. Of course, very well known. Its name is just a part that evokes the symbolism of the East and very much the history of the 20th century as well as the 19th. And we’re talking about a city of about 1.5 million in population and a center of Buddhism. Mandalay was the last royal capital of Burma before the nation became a part of the British Empire.

It is also a center of Buddhism. And even when you’re looking at historic Burma, now Myanmar, about 80 to 90% of the population being Buddhist. Simply because this was at one time a royal capital–the last of those royal capitals–it is highly infused with Buddhism and there are some Christians, but Christians are a tiny minority of the population there. Myanmar, by the way, has 135 different ethnic groups in it, but one ethnic group claims about 68% of the population. And so you really are looking at a contested history. You’re looking at a government that really represents military rule and has for decades there in Myanmar.

There have been some interruptions such as the period just a few years ago when there was an elected government in place. At that time, the leader of the government was Aung San Suu Kyi who had been honored of course as a great heroine of peace. Once again, she and her government were toppled by another military coup. It’s just a succession of one it seems after another, and there have been very serious human rights allegations against just about every government in place there in Myanmar or Burma ever since the nation gained its independence.

The military leaders who are holding onto power there and seized power once again in 2021, interestingly identified not only with Buddhism but to certain practices of Buddhist astrology. And it appears that the government itself and government leaders going all the way up to the top generals are very, very, very devoted to and interested in astrology. And thus one of the big questions in that country is what does it mean that such an earthquake has come?

Even a newspaper like the New York Times run a headline saying “After Shattering Quakes, Some See Political Omen.” The Times tells us, for instance, that an astrologer for one of the top officials in the military junta, “Said that the top brass’s belief in star signs has not waned. If anything, they’re hanging on even more to faith as their grip on the country diminishes.” The astrologer who did not want her name used because of the sensitivity of speaking about her high profile military clients said that the general in charge, “Relies heavily on Buddhist talismans to stay in power.”

Okay, this gets really interesting, even more interesting. “On Saturday morning, a military intermediary called her [that is the astrologer] and requested help in protecting the junta’s chief and his hold on Myanmar.” “She advised a Buddha amulet to be worn at all times, but the astrologer said she thought the earthquake was an ominous sign for the general.”

When you think a lot of this has simply going back into history, one former spy chief of The Times tells us, collected white elephants, and in this case what it means is elephants who are white, “The real live kind to burnish his power.” “An earlier Junta leader was so superstitious about the number nine that he denominated the currencies of the country by it including 45 and 90 basically dollar notes,” the currency of the country in denominations of nine.

The current military chief we are told, “Has consecrated temples of a giant Buddha to burnish his reputation. He has collected white elephants too.” Of course, Christians recognize that in the Scriptures there are many indications that the shaking of the earth is associated with divine judgment and God makes this very clear going back even to Mount Sinai where the law was given, where there was the shaking of the earth and also signs in the heavens and smoke of course on the mountain.

And those who saw this were warned not to touch the mountain even not to let a beast touch the mountain. In the New Testament, this has continued with the shaking of the earth associated with divine judgment, even all the way to the reminder in the New Testament that we must be thankful for a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And this is the situation in which as no doubt, some are reflecting upon there in Myanmar, in the situation like this, with the shaking of the earth, a white elephant won’t help you nor will for that matter an army of white elephants.

It should also be chastening to Christians to recognize that Myanmar was, as I say, Burma and in terms of many from that land, they still refer to it as Burma refusing to give any acknowledgement to the current military government or a succession of military governments. But it is humbling to us to recognize that Burma was one of the first nations to which missionaries were sent in the dawn of the modern missionary movement. So even as you had someone like William Carey, one of the first, if not the first missionaries in this modern missionary movement being sent from the missionary society there in London to what we would call India.

At the same time, Adoniram Judson was eventually sent originally from the United States to Burma and thus Baptist in one way have a very direct relationship with many of the Christians who are there. One of the buildings on our campus here at Southern Seminary Boyce College is Judson Hall named for Adoniram Judson as a model of missionary commitment. 

Our hearts go out of course to the people there in Myanmar and our prayers are for the recovery of as many as possible, the rescue of as many as possible. But we also recognize that with the earthquake having happened on Friday, that with just about every passing hour, the expectation of survivors goes down. And that’s one of the sad things that follows just by any kind of natural disaster on the scale, but particularly it follows earthquakes simply because of the difficulty of getting help to so many of these regions.

That’s especially true in Mandalay where the airport is closed and it’s going to be very, very difficult to get rescue forces and rescue equipment in and time is fleeting. We will continue to track this story with you.

Part II

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Tuesday’s Special Elections: Very Much is at Stake in the Elections in Florida and Wisconsin Tomorrow

Meanwhile, coming back to the United States, very interesting story this week, something we ought to talk about right now, and that is to say talk about it now before we will have to talk about the results later in the week, and that is of special elections that are going to be held on Tuesday. Tuesday, April the 1st, 2025. And some of you are thinking, “We just got passed an election in November. We’re facing an election again?”

Well, probably not where you are, but at least many voters in the United States are facing decision day again on April the 1st, and that’s two congressional districts in Florida. More on that in a minute. The most important race, almost assuredly when you’re thinking about focal impact from one election is the Supreme Court election in the state of Wisconsin. As is so often the case, you have the courts now as the arena of some of the fiercest political conflict in the United States. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. And I’ll go ahead and blame the left progressivists for going to the courts in order to try to push issues they could not get by legislation.

And that goes back to the middle, especially the 20th century. I guess a classic example of that would be the Roe V. Wade decision in 1973. There’s no way that they could have gotten abortion rights through Congress in terms of an adequate vote to approve abortion by legislation. So instead they went to work at the courts where they’ve been working on contraception, birth control, just so many issues before.

And so the courts had turned into a rather activist mode at the national level and eventually that simply gets shifted down to the state Supreme Courts and that’s exactly what has been going on. And Wisconsin is in many ways ground zero of much of this battle. And one of the reasons is that Wisconsin is a so-called swing state. And so at times when you look at the politics of Wisconsin, you have this election won by Republicans, the next by Democrats. It goes back and forth. But in so many of these states, conservatives only really got busy say in the last 20, 25, 30 years in a lot of the state politics and understood that the state supreme courts were so very important.

Now, those courts in terms of how they’re composed, how justices are appointed or elected, that differs state by state. In Wisconsin, it is a statewide election and at the last count there was a one justice liberal majority, and under that set of conditions, you had Wisconsin move in some very liberal directions because all it takes is a majority vote. So when you have a majority and you have even just one seat in that majority, you can continue to win. You can basically just steamroll all of this through.

Now, the liberal side will say that conservatives did that after they took over the court, and thus when liberals regained the court, they claim they’re just doing the same thing all over again. But the point is that the court is now nakedly political. There’s just no doubt that it is political. And by the way I said liberal and conservative because that is the official language that is used about the candidates. It’s supposed to be nonpartisan, so you’re not supposed to say Republican and Democrat. That’s not the way they are identified on the ballot, but the mainstream media and political insiders there in Wisconsin refer to the candidates nonetheless as liberal and conservative because that’s exactly what is at stake here.

Brad Schimel is the conservative candidate. Susan Crawford is the liberal candidate, and so you’ll either have conservatives regain a one seat majority or you’re going to have liberals hold onto a one seat majority and boy is it going to make a difference. And that’s because so much has been just basically assumed by the courts and frankly, legislatures have often incompetently just left many things to the court. That’s true, by the way. The United States Congress, which has been inept at passing so much legislation on so many issues, the energy is just gone to the courts.

That isn’t healthy for our society. It’s not healthy for the state of Wisconsin, but the state Supreme Court there will make decisions, for instance, this is really important on apportionment and congressional districting. That turns out to be crucially important. How you draw those congressional districts has everything to do with whether or not it makes Republicans or Democrats more likely to gain in terms of congressional seats at the national level from the state of Wisconsin.

And so a lot is at stake here. And of course you also have abortion issues, religious liberty issues. You just go down the list, size of government issues. And so this is a bellwether. People are going to be watching very carefully the election that will take place Tuesday in Wisconsin between Brad Schimel is the conservative candidate, and Susan Crawford, who is the liberal candidate, an awful lot of money is being poured into this.

Now, the mainstream media is going nuts because Elon Musk has poured his own money into this race. Now, here’s something interesting. Let’s find out what money is going on the Democratic side because the Democratic candidate is also spending unprecedented amounts of money. And the fact is that big national interests have been pushing money into these elections. That’s true on both sides. Elon Musk doing so very visibly and Donald Trump spoke into this election over the weekend, which just might help Brad Schimel in terms of traction on the ground.

But hold that thought for a moment. We need to go from Wisconsin to Florida. In Florida, the big issue, all the energy is concerned with two special elections for the United States Congress. That is in the 6th district and the first district there in Florida. And in both cases it is because incumbents and in the case of Matt Gaetz, someone who just won the election, they resigned because they anticipated being named two top positions in the Trump administration.

When it comes to the first district, that was Matt Gaetz. He resigned thinking he was going to be named attorney general. He was not, but you remember all that controversy. In any event, a special election now has to be held to elect his successor. When we talk about the 6th Congressional District, we’re talking about Michael Waltz, who has become national security adviser to President Trump, thus resigned from this seat. By the way, a little footnote here. Current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held that seat for several years before running for election successfully as governor of the state.

But let’s look at the first district and the 6th district. They are both overwhelmingly Republican as is in so many ways the state of Florida. But when you’re talking about the first district, you’re talking about the Westernmost congressional district in the state, you’re talking about the most Republican district in the state. It includes Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach, what is known as the Emerald Coast.

Again, Matt Gaetz was the member of Congress from that district, but we’re about to find out who the new member of Congress is going to be in the first congressional district. You have a Democrat, Gay Valimont running against Republican, Jimmy Patronis. Once again, it should be a clear Republican victory, but it is running closer than had been expected, partly because of the fact that it is an off-year election.

It’s an off-cycle election, and that usually favors in more recent years Democrats rather than Republicans. In the 6th District, we’re talking about an area south of Jacksonville. It includes North St. Augustine, all the way down to South Daytona Beach. It’s also very Republican, a lot of Volusia County. And as I say, it was held by DeSantis and it’s expected there as well that the Republican, Randy Fine is likely to win over the Democrat, Joshua Weil. On the other hand, you can’t take anything for granted. That’s part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this on Monday rather than even to wait until tomorrow, which is election day at least to remind some people that there are elections with a lot at stake in Wisconsin and in Florida in particular with these two congressional seats.

Just look at how close the house is right now. Two congressional seats, that amounts to a lot. And it also raises a larger political pattern that has significance. And as we’re trying to think through these things, we recognize that when you are looking at this pattern, it used to be that massive turnout favored Democrats. Now massive turnout favors Republicans. That’s a very interesting switch. And it had been that the Democrats called the Republicans the elitist party because the more voters turned out, the more likely it had been for cycles, many cycles going back for decades, that it was a democratic advantage. But it is very interesting. It’s very telling that the game has switched.

Now, when you have a massive turnout election, it’s more likely to favor Republicans. You have a lower turnout election is more likely to favor Democrats. Why? Why? Why? Well, it is because, well, one answer is Republicans tend to be busy doing Republican things. That is Republican voters. That’s what we’re talking about here. Not party registration, but voting patterns.

Republican voters tend to be very busy doing the things Republican voters do. And the democratic side, especially when it comes to political activists, the labor unions and an awful lot of organization, they have generally traditionally done better in this kind of election. And there is an off-year advantage to the party that is not in the White House. The opposition party tends to do better in terms of a differential in an off-year election. This is awfully fast to be called an off-year election, but it is a special election.

And the fact is conservatives better turnout. When it comes to the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, I want to be clear, it’s not just important for Wisconsin, it’s a bellwether for the whole country. But when it comes to redrawing those congressional districts, it can change the entire composition of the United States House of Representatives in terms of which party is able to gain a majority. And that’s exactly what is at stake in the two races there in Florida.

Let’s just state the obvious. It matters a great deal, which party is in leadership in the House of Representatives. It matters a very great deal. So all right, we’ll watch this, but just from a worldview perspective, it just underlines the fact that everything is at stake. We have a responsibility. There’s a stewardship, and it’s not equally shared at this point. It’s not a national election. It’s not even an off-year election, a by-year election such will happen in 2026 in which you have congressional elections every seat in the house, but you also have about a third of the Senate and a lot of governorships up for election.

That’s not at stake Tuesday. Tuesday is a very focused special election day, and yet the consequences could be really massive. The stewardship should be very, very clear. If you are in Wisconsin or in Florida and the first or the 6th districts, you’ve got a job to do Tuesday.

Part III

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Can Leviathan Be Tamed? Citing National Security, President Trump Goes After Collective Bargaining Rights for Thousands of Federal Employees

Okay. Other big news over the weekend. Let me just talk about the fact that President Trump has announced an executive order that will eliminate collective bargaining and basically labor union organizing when it comes to a large number of government employees. He’s doing so under congressional authorization in which he can say as a matter of national security, that these sectors of federal employment should not be subject to collective bargaining or basically the establishment of a labor union or the functioning of a labor union.

I think that’s very important. I think it is a huge problem that in 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order basically allowing for collective bargaining on the part of government employees. So just think about that. That means people working for the public can now organize against the public. In any weight and measure of this, that just doesn’t make sense. Of course, there’s going to be legal action about this. You’re going to have the labor unions and you’re going to have people who say they’re representing the government employees sue over this.

No doubt the Trump administration is ready for that. The headline in the New York Times, “Federal Unions Gird for Fight After Order to End Collective Bargaining.” By the way, that executive order, John Kennedy, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, president of the United States in 1962 was followed by legislation including civil service law reform in 1978. I will just state, again, I think it’s a big mistake to allow federal employees to basically use labor collective bargaining and other labor actions against the taxpayers who are employing them.

And there is a distinction in working for the government. It’s one of the reasons why the president is empowered to declare certain sectors of employment outside of the collective bargaining because of national security. President Trump intends to offer a very expansive vision of how many federal employees are covered by that exemption.

I’ve stated over and over again that I think when it comes to, say, education in the United States, some of the most pernicious forces are the teachers unions. And I am ready to document that right down to the detail. And when it comes to government employee unions much the same. And for one thing, the party registrations overwhelmingly Democratic. And the Democratic Party is seen as the protector of these federal jobs. Obviously with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump administration is trying to do the opposite to trim these government jobs, but also to redefine it so that the employees are not in an oppositional collective bargaining stance over against the taxpayer and their elected representatives.

There is something else that’s very interesting here, and this is raised by USA Today with a headline asking the question, “Why Do Many Americans Love to Hate Federal Workers?” I think this is in general, not specifically. And I think for one thing, there are many federal workers who are members of our churches, wonderful, faithful Christians. It’s a class of employment that is generalized, that is often the problem. So all you have to do is go to a place like Washington, DC or the counties around Washington, DC especially in Maryland and in Northern Virginia. And you go there during a recession, you go there during a time of, say, economic constriction in the country.

The government just keeps rolling along and there is only one direction for the government, and that is towards ever more expansive spending. And the Trump administration, it is at least taking actions to try to see what can happen, to try to cut not only the growth, which quite frankly would be an incredible achievement in itself, but to actually cut some net spending. And that means cutting net jobs. There’s no way around it. And yet when you have a reduction in jobs and it’s in a political context and they are working for the government, you have people who will go and say, “This is horrible because the effect it is having on X, or Y, or Z.”

But you’ll notice that no one says that when a major American corporation decides that it has to cut its employment. And quite frankly, one of the things that comes up in this article is you have many people in the private sector who say, “I have had three or four of these experiences, and it shouldn’t at least be impossible or unprecedented when it comes to federal employment.”

Now, obviously, we want as many of the right people doing the right things for truth and righteousness, and justice, and efficiency, and it’s impossible, impossible and actually wrong to think we want a government which is no government with no employees. That’s just simply not true. But it’s also true that the development of the ever omnivorous giant leviathan state, it is the enemy of freedom. It’s also the enemy of common economic sense.

But it is very telling that you can see a pattern and the pattern is this. You have the voter saying, “We want a cutback on government spending,” and that’s going to mean a cutback in the size of federal bureaucracy. But when someone says, “Well, that means that this job will be eliminated,” they say, “Well, I don’t want that.” Well, it is insane to say you want the general pattern, you just don’t want anything specific to happen. No one said this was going to be easy, but we’re about to find out if it can even be done. But we do need to understand there are big issues at stake here. If the government does end up being the blob that simply cannot be corrected, then our experiment and constitutional self-government is effectively at an end.