The American Vision

Culture Through the Lens of Scripture

Trumped-Care: if at first you don’t fail, try, try again

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We previously discussed the fraud that has been “repeal and replace” ObamaCare. That fraud was rightly killed by the more conservative members of the House. Now Republican leadership has tweaked the fraud enough to convince enough of the holdouts to go “yea.” Now the House has passed a slightly modified version of the last slightly modified version of ObamaCare. A few comments:

First, it’s easy to see why some Republican vote-gatherers changed their tune: this will make it easier for them to do not much about ObamaCare and say they did, and still gather votes. More on that in a minute.

Second, there is little difference from the first attempt. The difference is that House leadership pulled and an idea or two that was a roadblock to some of the more hardcore conservatives. Now they could vote yes. But this made some moderates uncomfortable. So, they stuck the same principle back in under a new name. Same bill as before, but now both moderates and hard conservatives who were on the fence can pretend they got what they want and then either play dumb or righteously angry when the results come in later (some of which are not slated even to begin until 2019 by the way).

But even the most momentous changes in the bill are little more than a smokescreen. For example, the end of tax penalties is here! Yay! Well, not really. Instead of having the government take our money and then give it back to us once we prove we have enrolled in a health insurance program administered in conjunction with the IRS, we now have the government take our money and then give it back to us in conjunction with the IRS once we prove we have enrolled in a health insurance program.

Not a huge change at all, really; but it can be pitched like a huge change. Under ObamaCare, the money came back through a subsidy. “Subsidy?! That’s socialism!” My own family, for example, qualified for a subsidy that would have saved us about $320 per month in premiums. I declined, because I did not want to be dependent upon the socialism that is the ObamaCare exchange.

Under the new plan, however, the stigma of a socialistic subsidy is gone; you can now get your money back as a tax credit when you file your returns. A guy my age, in my county, and in my situation will receive a nice $3,000 tax credit for having health insurance (see the pic below, based on this website). That’s a sweet deal, and it looks no different to the average person than receiving child tax credits or any other tax credits. No “socialism” here! Right?

Er, um, right?

Of course, we know that anytime government is in any way involved in taxation and interference in the marketplace, requiring the purchase of goods or services, you have socialism to some degree—call it whatever you may. Here, the government gives you back tax money as long as you spend it how the government wants. The money comes from and goes to the same places, without freedom; there are just a few tweaks to the middle processes.

This bill, if it passes, is going to fool a lot of people, and will win the affection of many conservatives, who have in typical American voter fashion already long forgotten about all the vehement protests against socialized health care and T.E.A. etc., etc. If this bill passes, you will soon see countless conservatives defending this system like they now do Social Security, MediCare, MediCaid, and public schools.

On top of this measure, the bill does something even more socialistic. It creates an additional $8 billion (to start) fund to help states fund high-risk people. The new bill essentially took away the feature of making insurance companies accept preexisting conditions. So, upon objection by some moderates, this fund was created; but it has major problems, practical and theoretical.

The practical problem is that $8 billion is a pittance of what will be needed. If this provision lasts, look for it to skyrocket, or at least listen for the yelps from the states that need and demand more money.

The theoretical problem: this fund hanging out there on the side of the system is nothing less than what some leftists have already identified as a single-payer system. The Nation writes,

This is single-payer for dummies. In a single-payer system, the government picks up the health-care costs for the population, paid for through progressive taxation. The market power of having one insurance payer can work to lower overall health care costs, making the system sustainable. In Trumpcare’s single-payer for dummies, the fragmented private-insurance middleman remains intact. But taxpayer dollars still pick up the health-care costs for those who cannot afford it. Instead of acquiring market power, they just give those taxpayer dollars to the private middlemen, which tells the private middlemen they can charge whatever they want and always get paid.

After all, if the paltry $8 billion doesn’t work to prevent massively increased costs for those with pre-existing conditions, the public will cry out for more protection. And since Obamacare created an expectation that the sick would be protected in America, that would lead to more taxpayer dollars put to this use, leading to higher prices, and more money, and so on, in a death spiral. That’s why it’s single-payer for dummies: It has all of the logic of the government stepping in to make sure everyone has health-care coverage, with none of the efficiencies that should create.

They are substantially correct in spotting the socialistic nature of this program, just not on the idea that a true single-payer system creates “efficiencies.”

The real problem

The problem with all of this is that the real problems with health care in America go so much deeper than any current discussion of them. We can blast ObamaCare as “socialized health care” all we want. We can pretend that even a full repeal of it with no replacement would be better in principle, even if we could get over the practical, emotional hurdle of eliminating coverage for 24 million poor people. We could pretend that by doing this we have eliminated socialized health care in America—and yet we would not even be close.

The government is, and for a long time has been, so entrenched and entangled in health care that you can hardly take an aspirin without participating to some small degree in socialized health care. Researching just a little for this article, I came across an old dead stem of a blog post of mine from 2009. Read this:

Since Obama, Orszag, and the rest of the left have targeted the skyrocketing costs of healthcare as a reason for more government control, I think we should be open about the reason for these continually increasing costs. In addition to some obvious factors (a rapidly aging population), we should note the effects that ever-increasing government control has ALREADY had so far. And we want more of this? This from economist and author Tom DiLorenzo:

Some years ago, the Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman studied the history of healthcare supply in America. In a 1992 study published by the Hoover Institution, entitled “Input and Output in Health Care,” Friedman noted that 56 percent of all hospitals in America were privately owned and for-profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsidies for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10 percent. It took decades, but by the early 1990s government had taken over almost the entire hospital industry. That small portion of the industry that remains for-profit is regulated in an extraordinarily heavy way by federal, state and local governments so that many (perhaps most) of the decisions made by hospital administrators have to do with regulatory compliance as opposed to patient/customer service in pursuit of profit. It is profit, of course, that is necessary for private-sector hospitals to have the wherewithal to pay for healthcare.

Friedman’s key conclusion was that, as with all governmental bureaucratic systems, government-owned or -controlled healthcare created a situation whereby increased “inputs,” such as expenditures on equipment, infrastructure, and the salaries of medical professionals, actually led to decreased “outputs” in terms of the quantity of medical care. For example, while medical expenditures rose by 224 percent from 1965–1989, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44 percent and the number of beds occupied declined by 15 percent. Also during this time of almost complete governmental domination of the hospital industry (1944–1989), costs per patient-day rose almost 24-fold after inflation is taken into account.

The more money that has been spent on government-run healthcare, the less healthcare we have gotten. This kind of result is generally true of all government bureaucracies because of the absence of any market feedback mechanism. Since there are no profits in an accounting sense, by definition, in government, there is no mechanism for rewarding good performance and penalizing bad performance. In fact, in all government enterprises, exactly the opposite is true: bad performance (failure to achieve ostensible goals, or satisfy “customers”) is typically rewarded with larger budgets. Failure to educate children leads to more money for government schools. Failure to reduce poverty leads to larger budgets for welfare state bureaucracies. This is guaranteed to happen with healthcare socialism as well.

And the truth is, the problem is far worse that even this describes. There is tons of crony capitalism on top of this bureaucracy and regulation. This includes not just health insurance, but hospitals, pharmaceuticals, medicine, and vaccines, therapies, physician and nursing education, medical supplies across the board, medical devices and technology, lab work across the board, and research and development for all of these fields across the board, and more. All of it is big corporate, has powerful lobbies on capitol hill, and this drives all facets of the problems: crony “capitalism,” hidden subsidies, unfair tax advantages, and the regs and bureaucracy.

If you’d like to talk about real health care reform, you need to set a goal for walking all of this back to a truly free market.

But what about all those sick and poor who would be left out? Let’s start solving that problem with a couple simple definitions:

1) Paying money for the promise of funding future bills in the unlikely event of a major sickness: That’s called “insurance.”

2) Paying money to cover the bills of someone who is already sick and cannot afford their bills and could never afford insurance either: That’s called “charity.”

Long before the government takeover of health care DiLorenzo described above, there used to be such a thing as charitable hospitals, mostly run by churches. There may still be a few. However many there are, there could and should be a lot more. But this would require churches to stand up against government encroachment, speak out against government, resist government, and in general start health care programs and hospitals once again.

As usual, a good bit of blame can righteously be laid here at the feet of the American evangelical pulpits, church leadership, and seminaries.

In light of all this, the new repeal and replace is just as big a failure as the last—and to be honest, just as big a failure as ObamaCare in principle—and amounts in the big picture to the proverbial rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

But many conservatives are going to see this as a victory. It may help prevent, therefore, the rearrangement of any Republican chairs in Congress come the next election. Or so they hope.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go plan which insurance company to spend my tax breaks with.

How godly society will come to pass: Action plans

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The Bounds of Love: An Introduction to God’s Law of Liberty

Master Table of Contents

Action plans

While we have established that the Great Commission is greater than most Christians have been taught, and we have emphasized the absolute necessity for the Holy Spirit’s power in any theonomic advance, we have also stressed that people will be involved, and that they will be involved in specific works. From reading our vision in the last chapter, you can probably gather what some of those works may be, but since we are in the beginning stages of transition, it is good to review what kinds of practical works we can do as priorities.

The following discussion of practical reforms is taken from the introduction to my book, Restoring America One County at a Time.

Perhaps the first and foremost area of action needs to be, and can be, in the area of education. We are not just talking about educating yourself, we are talking about your children too. Education in a free society can only be private, never government-run at any level. Government schools are at the heart of the problem of government-dominated society. Tax-funded schools cannot be an option if we are to have a free society. This is one area in which you can exercise almost complete control already, now. Regaining liberty here requires no change in existing laws—only one’s lifestyle. Most Christians could implement these changes tomorrow, if not over a few months. It is only a test of desire: do we really want a free society, or do we depend on tax-funded benefits like the liberals and socialists we criticize? This change should be priority number one. And since it requires so little change on the political and social level, we only need to change ourselves. If we can’t accomplish change in this one area, then forget the rest. Nothing about truly restoring America will be easier or more readily obtainable than taking free control over your family’s education.

Second, we need wholesale reform of all welfare services. This means we need to learn about options for securing our own financial futures, privately, while we opt out of Social Security over time. Welfare of all forms should be a privately-funded and privately-insured affair, not supported through taxation, redistribution, and subsidy. Family and charity can replace the Welfare State, but we must learn to refuse the benefits promised by government agencies. Paul directly commands local churches to install private welfare programs to support needy members (1 Tim. 5). It is time to take up this call. Private Christian alternatives to ObamaCare already exist (for example, Samaritan Ministries). Private Christian alternatives to Social Security and MediCare (see examples among the Amish) already exist. There is no reason we cannot take advantage of programs that already exist, and organize to create others in other areas. There is no reason we cannot gain immediate headway here as well.

Third, the real practical solution to big-government intrusion in our lives is a return to localism. This involves returning government and community to a more grass-roots level where it ought to be. Christians must develop a truly local vision—confronting local waste and corruption, focusing on smaller, practical things we can impact now, and learning to break local institutions free from the unnecessary bonds of state and federal government tyranny. This means exposing the areas where the sovereignty of local communities is compromised by receiving Federal and state funds for perceived benefits. We should learn about, monitor, and interact with local authorities, and network with other local Christians to spread a biblical understanding.

Fourth, Christians should understand the nature of state-level activism as well. This means, in part, discussing the roles of nullification and interposition of the lesser magistrates. There is a tremendous opportunity for Christians to have impact on several issues at the state level. We can organize to call state officials to resist federal intrusions of many sorts, and we can influence state officials to be more faithful to biblical laws on certain issues within the state: abortion, arms, spending, free markets, and more.

Fifth, we can begin to work in a variety of ways for tax reform. On the way towards total elimination, taxation of individuals and businesses must be returned exclusively to the local level. State taxation, if any, should only be upon counties, and Federal taxation, if any, should only come from states. Christians should never see a tax they approve of, and should always lead opposition to any and all taxation. Of course, this means they should always also lead the discussion for the replacement of tax-funded programs with private and charitable services. Pick one, join forces, get counsel, get busy, and lead the way.

We spoke earlier about the sanctity of private property and the enforcement of contracts. We certainly need less government coercion and money manipulation. We need to end monetary inflation, legal tender laws, the business cycle, government corporatism, and more. But Christians could have a serious impact if they would simply get more involved in business—local, regional, and even big business. For some Christians, theonomic reconstruction will not mean radical activism or outspoken advocacy. It will simply mean taking your interests, knowledge, and skills, and starting a business to serve your community and be a light of God’s law in action. Godly action is at the heart of Christian reconstruction, and service is at the heart of godly action.

One of the greatest areas of need is in judicial and police reform—the justice system itself. Without rehearsing the litany of ills and abuses in these areas, the remedy to recover freedom is the decentralization of courts, localized and separate jurisdictions, and private courts (perhaps especially), all with only local law enforcement by mainly deputized volunteers and strict accountability. Paul directly instructs Christians to settle their disputes among each other in private courts (not ecclesiastical courts necessarily, but private Christian mediation and arbitration) (1 Cor. 6:1–8). Such measures and organizations for them already exist, but they are little known and less adhered to. We also have a dire need for transparency and accountability among police officers, prosecutors, and judges (of both the establishment and liberal activist varieties). Just a law imitating the biblical laws against malicious witnesses would go a long way in this need for accountability. We need tremendous work to be done in spreading awareness about jury nullification and the unfortunate right of judges and prosecutors to lie about it—a right they readily and frequently exercise. There is a gargantuan amount of work to do in this area, and there is also a large amount of it that can be initiated through awareness and education already.

Another of the most important areas—and perhaps that in which Christians are most deceived—is in regard to our military. We must support and demand a decentralized defense system instead of the national standing army and empire we have allowed, and even promoted, for over a century.1 We need to take seriously the biblical rules for military and warfare. Patriotism does not mean militarism. Patriotism does not mean empire. Being patriotic and conservative does not mean always supporting everything the military does. Anti-war is not anti-American. We should be aware how our military was originally decentralized and strictly defense-oriented, and how it was transformed incrementally to become a powerful centralized force designed to serve the interests of a central government in prolonged international conflicts. There is a great deal of education and awareness that can be spread here already. We should educate and motivate ourselves about biblical views of militia, defense, and the right to bear arms.  We should also train ourselves in these areas as well.

In reality, you can take any single aspect of the theonomic society outlined in the last chapter (or the law itself) and concentrate on it as a project for reform. This may or may not involve change in the civil realm, but it will almost certainly involve social change in a more general scope—family, church, corporation, or state. Whatever it may be, pick something, and become the person who thinks it through in a detailed fashion. Master it. Then become the person who networks with others interested in that issue and begin to plan and fashion agendas for change. You may be surprised how many people you inspire and recruit.

Conclusion

They key lessons we have learned in this chapter are that Christian social change will only be wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that this power is exercised through people in concrete, but decentralized, ways. Christians should not seek the reins of power, but nevertheless work in every area of life (wherever they may be called and gifted) to bring about awareness, education, change, and reform. We must get busy, however, and work to influence such changes where we can.

How will a theonomic society come to pass? It will come to pass by the Spirit working through people who stand boldly for truth and justice. It will come to pass as the message influences a hard core of the faithful to lay the foundations of godly freedom in every area of life. It will come to pass as the Holy Spirit brings revival and people seek biblical solutions to the ills of every area of life. It will come to pass when Christians take the Great Commission seriously, and the Holy Spirit blesses that effort. In the meantime, we fight to bring faithfulness among Christians wherever they are at already, and in what limited spheres are available.

Purchase The Bounds of Love.

Next section: What is not Theonomy

Notes:

 

  1. The full facts are that since the Jamestown settlement in 1609, Americans have been involved in some form of war around 139 times. In the intervening 400-plus-year span, we have been “at peace” for only 90 years, with a majority of that coming in the colonial era.(↩)

On “feeling the Bern” in their own pockets

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The results of a recent poll reveal once again the classic truism: socialism is a great idea until you run out of other people’s money. In this case, the socialistic Bernie Sanders supporters tell you up front: they want universal health care and free college, but they’re not willing to pay for it. Big shock, huh?

The poll, conducted by the liberal website vox.com, asked two questions: “Are you willing to pay more taxes for his proposals, like nationalized health care and free public college tuition?” and, “How much more?” The results were probably shocking to the liberals themselves because they fancy themselves inherently good and charitable people. What is socialism, after all, but “charity” and philanthropy in action? The poll results say otherwise:

About 66 percent of Sanders supporters said they wouldn’t be willing to pay more than an additional $1,000 [per year] in taxes for universal health care.

An uptick to a mere $2k/year and that figure jumps nearly to 80 percent.

Why this is so important is compounded by the facts of what Sanders’s proposals will actually cost. The article explains:

What Sanders supporters are willing to pay isn’t enough for his health care plan

In 2015, the average person on an employer-sponsored health plan paid a little more than $1,000 annually in premiums. . . .

In other words, even Sanders supporters are saying they don’t want to pay as much to the federal government for health care as they are paying right now in the private sector.

But Sanders’s plan to pay for universal health care coverage would increase taxes on most voters by more than $1,000. He wants to:

  • Add a 2.2 percentage point surcharge on individual incomes. This means marginal tax rates go up for everyone. (After a standard deduction, about a quarter of households won’t have to pay this surcharge.)
  • Add a new 6.2 percent tax on earnings, which employers pay — but will bepassed on to workers over time in the form of lower wages, according to the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams.

But it gets worse. These estimates are actually quite modest in Sanders’s favor: “Some analysts believe Sanders’s plan will cost twice as much as his campaign estimates.”

The article doesn’t draw enough conclusions about all this, but it is clear on a couple things:

But the majority of Sanders supporters in our poll (much less all voters) aren’t willing to pay enough to actually support those nationalized services.

This isn’t a question of whether Sanders’s ideas are valid. This is a question of how voters are thinking about Sanders’s revolution, which is a radical increase in the scope of what government is responsible for, versus the private sector.

When even liberals are realizing that socialism can’t pay for itself, you know there’s a problem with the system.

What you need to understand, however, is that this obvious problem is far more legion than just paying for proposed universal health care and free college. It’s endemic in every service government takes over and provides. It is in education, health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc., etc.

It is for such simple economic reasons that we have massive government deficits and national debts, as well as continual monetary inflation. The system is based on covetousness and theft: people wanting “free” services for themselves for which they have no intention or means of paying. So the money is taxed, borrowed, and printed at the expense of other workers and savers, present and future.

Workers who don’t agree with the corrupt system lose because they are taxed for other people’s  benefit. Savers especially lose because their hard work, sacrifice, and thrift are rewarded with savings that are devalued over time by inflation. In the long run, some people’s short-term gains are other people’s losses.

And the truth is, it’s not just Sanders. Clinton supporters polled very similarly, and conservatives would poll with similar numbers if you target their pet socialisms as well.

It’s time to break the socialist delusions in which so many are blindly, and in some cases simply ignorantly, complicit. A good place for Christians to start is God versus Socialism.

Planned Parenthood is at the heart of the “violence”

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As Planned Parenthood condemns the “violence” of this weekend’s attack, let us not forget that Planned Parenthood is by far the most systematic and widespread perpetrator of violence in this nation. For every single murder committed in this nation, there are hundreds of babies murdered, literally ripped apart, and their body parts harvested and sold at market by the abortionists.

A statement by Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains decries “an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns” which “breeds acts of violence.” This is almost certainly a reference to the activism generated after the “Planned Parenthood videos” in which the market for child body parts was exposed to the world in graphic detail.

Those babies are murdered out of convenience for the mother. They are then dissected to harvest livers, brain tissue, and other valuable parts. These are sold for medical research.

Abortionists and their accomplices in political offices, the media, education, health care, and more, are not only perfectly OK with this, they encourage it and fight to protect it. They fight to suppress the knowledge of it. They hope the general public never knows how graphically violent abortion and the body part trade truly is.

If the murdering, hacking, and selling were not occurring, there would be no exposé, there would be no “Planned Parenthood videos” in the first place. But there are. The violence is real, it is widespread, and it is now public.

Let’s be clear: there is no “hateful rhetoric.” There are no “smear campaigns.” There are documented facts. The facts show that the most widespread systematic violence in this nation occurs at the hands of abortionists and their clients. Child murder is unbelievable routine in this country. Parents sacrifice their children in bloody rituals on the altar of convenience, sometimes even hoping to assuage their own guilt. Abortionists provide the altar, and they sell the human meat in the market afterward.

Let’s be absolutely clear: the culture of violence in this nation can be laid at the feet of the abortion industry. There will be no hope of stopping violence in this nation without stopping it in the abortion mills first.

There is no doubt that shooting innocent people to death is murder. There is also no doubt that abortion is murder. Both are taking innocent life, and both are taking life without due process.

The only difference between the victims of this shooting and the infant victims of the abortionists is that our Supreme Court has decreed the unborn infants are entitled to neither life nor due process. Therefore, their murder is not called murder. It is called “health care.” Their murderers are not arrested and prosecuted. They are protected by the State and its willing agents.

Let us never forget that Roe v. Wade hinges upon one word in our Fourteenth Amendment: “person.” Since the Constitution does not specifically define “person” to include the unborn, but only speaks generally of those “born or naturalized,” therefore the unborn are not persons. Therefore, the unborn have no Constitutional protections and therefore have no right to life or to due process.

 

At what point do our own ungodly laws and our own holocaust of infants reveal to us that we are no better than the defendants at Nuremburg? At what point will we see the systematic disemboweling of infants, the crushing of their skulls, the ripping out of their spines, for what it is?

The culture of violence in this land is laid at the feet of the pro-aborts: the abortion providers and doctors, Planned Parenthood, the women and parents selecting abortion knowing it is the taking of an infant’s life, the State and all its agents which refuse to call abortion murder and continue to give it sanctuary, the lukewarm part of the pro-life movement which refuses to call abortion “murder,” the churches that refuse to preach against abortion and discipline those members who support the industry or use it.

And the ultimate sign we’re under God’s judgment is that the flagship of abortion in America, Planned Parenthood, stands up to decry “violence,” and gains sympathy and raises funds. They are the heart of the violence.

What the shooter did was murderous. It is unlawful, and should be so. What Planned Parenthood does is a million times more murderous. It is legal.

Israel goes full Moloch: state-funded abortions opened up

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What will the dispensational, pro-Israel-no-matter-what Christian-Right say now? According to Israeli mainstream news, Haaretz, God’s allegedly chosen-forever-people have just returned wholly unto passing their children through the fires of Moloch—and state-funded at that:

Israel will pay for abortions for women aged 20 to 33 regardless of circumstance starting next year, health officials said Monday, adding that they hope to make eligibilty for state funding universal in the future.

Until now, subsidized abortions for women of all ages were available in medical emergencies or in case of rape and sexual abuse. Women under the age of 20 or over 40 were also eligible for abortion funding even when the reason was personal.

Until now, Israel only funded abortions for women younger than 20 or older than 40 or in special circumstances. (One special circumstance is being a woman in the military. It used to be that parents would fear losing their children in the military during a war. These, however, are subsidized to kill their children in the military themselves.) But this was obviously not enough abortions. As the head of Israel’s version of ObamaCare (there called a “health basket”) put it:

“It was brought to our attention that there is a large group of women between 20 and 40 who for various reasons – financial or reasons of secrecy – do not terminate pregnancies.”

Translation: These women are not terminating their pregnancies. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they know we need more abortions? They must be encouraged to get abortions. Let’s subsidize them.

Therefore, the authorities opened up state-funding of abortions for women 20 to 33 as well, with the ultimate goal of including those between 33 and 40 eventually. “The new rule opens it up for 6,300 more women to have a state-funded abortion next year.”

What a “health basket”! It’s a cornucopia of dead fetuses.

Perhaps you never thought just how liberal and blasphemous Israel’s laws for baby murder have been even until now. Israel currently has 41 “termination committees” by which the state approves abortions. Talk about “death panels”! But these are just a formality. Israelis abort about 20,000 babies a year illegally, without the approval of the committees. That’s about half of all Israeli abortions.

So, it appears that Israeli authorities just expanded their laws to accommodate some of the illegal practice.

So while support-Israel-no-matter-what Christian Right types are at home decrying abortion and ObamaCare, their beloved chosen-forever people are over in the land of promise practicing and state-funding that very same thing to a degree far worse, far more liberal, far-more defiant of God, far more deserving of national judgment, far, by degree, more deserving of hellfire.

And what shall they say? Shall they dare criticize Israel? Shall they dare address her murders and blasphemies? In doing so, would they have to admit they need to preach to Gospel to them, too? After all, we are told that we need to “bless Israel.” And how is the best way to bless a blaspheming, murdering nation? Correct them? Convert them? Or to let them continue in soul-damning sin?

Cut off your hair and cast it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the LORD. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste (Jer. 7:29–34).

If this held true for Jeremiah’s day, and AD70 as well, shall God wink at it today?