Shocked that the man who ran as a post-partisan candidate seeking the middle ground is being post-partisan and seeking middle ground, these people are blasting Barack Obama's early, centrist decisions.

What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. They are the ballast that stabilizes two better-known Rs from the world of free markets: risk and reward. Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of "Merry Christmas." It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. ... Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. ... Here's how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They'll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we're hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities' most pressing needs (pp.61-62).

Obama's service plan is just as troubling. He wants to mandate 50 hours of community service per year for middle and high school students. And he's offering a $4,000 federal-funded tuition credit in exchange for 100 hours per year from college students. For most students, the latter will become a mandatory part of getting a degree, as colleges will merely raise their tuition to compensate for the vouchers. So who gets to decide what constitutes "community service"? Who gets to decide which causes and organizations will be credit-worthy, and which ones won't? Something tells me that you'd be more likely to get one of Obama's vouchers by going door to door for one of ACORN's living wage campaigns than, say, volunteering for a libertarian nonprofit organization that advocates against things like government-mandated community service.

I would hope than service through one's church, or through a para-church organization like Youth With A Mission or Campus Crusade for Christ, a summer mission trip for example, would fulfill the requirement. But I suppose we'll be talking about that.

The summer between high school and college is a good time to get the obligation out of the way. Most graduating high school seniors need a maturing experience before college anyway. The $4,000 tuition credit makes up for the lost income the student would have made if he or she had worked all summer. If this were a full time commitment of thirty-five hours a week for twelve weeks, $4,000 works out to about $9.50 an hour. That's reasonable. But if the commitment is only for a total of 50 hours distributed over three months, as Reason.com indicates, that works out to $80 an hour, a handsome wage indeed, leaving students lots of time to do what they would normally do for summer earnings.

Under such terms, the program is a universal college tuition give-away with a token amount of civic-minded service required in exchange. This is perhaps the link between Emanuel's goals of universal civilian service and universal access to college education regardless of one's ability or the suitability of college education to what one wants to do in life. Granted, $4k will not carry you through a degree program, not even at a public university. But it's another step in the direction of transforming college education into what high school education once was and is supposed to be. Where is the gain in that? Instead of fixing education at the high school level, universal access to college education merely extends the problem into the post-secondary academic world, flooding the college system with unmotivated illiterates even more than it is already.

Do I have it all wrong? I'm working from indirect glimpses into the new administration. In his July speech on Colorado Springs, Obama himself spoke only of volunteerism, expanding AmeriCorps from 75,000 spots to 250,000, doubling the size of the Peace Corps, and expanding USA Freedom Corps. We elected Barack Obama to the White House, not Rahm Emanuel. But as eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, it will be wise for citizens to keep this range of ideas in view, and the larger issues they involve, as they emerge from the new administration and take legislative form.

The Greek words translated "principalities and powers" are better rendered here by "rulers and authorities," as the word "principalites" is used occasionally in the English version for an "order of angels." The terms include all constituted governors and officials, Roman and otherwise, in the island [Crete] (comment on Titus 3:1).

A prominent element in Paul's thinking about the nature of the old age is the conviction that it is in the grip of evil supernatural powers. Paul conceives of both good and evil spirits. Angels are viewed as spiritual beings engaged in the service of God. ... The archenemy of God, however, is an evil spirit who is sometimes called the devil (Eph. 4:27; 6:11; 1 Tim. 3:7), but usually Satan. ... Satan's main objective is to frustrate the redemptive purposes of God....

Paul refers not only to good and bad angels, to Satan and to demons; he uses another group of words to designate ranks of angelic spirits. The terminology is as follows: [rules, authorities, powers, thrones, lordships, etc.]. That this terminology designates spiritual beings is quite clear from Eph. 6:11ff., where the believer's struggle is against the devil and against principalities, authorities, world rulers of this present darkness, spiritual hosts of wickedness. Usually they are conceived as being evil and opposing the Kingdom of God. Sometimes, however, these spiritual powers are not cast in an evil light but are represented as created beings who apparently exist to serve the divine glory (Col. 1:16). Christ is the head of all such rule and authority (Col. 2:10); the divine purpose will display to these principalities and powers in the heavenly places the manifold wisdom of God through the church (Eph. 3:10) (pp. 440-441).

Colorado Springs, CO; July 2, 2008: [As] president I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots [from 75,000] and make that increased service a vehicle to meet national goals, like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that citizens see their effort connected to a common purpose.

People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve. Because when it comes to the challenges we face, the American people are not the problem – they are the answer. So we are going to send more college graduates to teach and mentor our young people. We'll call on Americans to join an energy corps, to conduct renewable energy and environmental clean-up projects in their neighborhoods all across the country.

We will enlist our veterans to find jobs and support for other vets, and to be there for our military families. And we're going to grow our Foreign Service, open consulates that have been shuttered and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy. We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set.

We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. We need to use technology to connect people to service. We'll expand USA Freedom Corps to create online networks where American can browse opportunities to volunteer. You'll be able to search by category, time commitment and skill sets. You'll be able to rate service opportunities, build service networks, and create your own service pages to track your hours and activities.

This will empower more Americans to craft their own service agenda and make their own change from the bottom up. (FactCheck.org)

• The so-called "Employee Free Choice Act", which is actually intended to discourage free choice in voting in union representation by discarding secret ballots; Democrats are for this? Oh wait, we're talking about the Stalinist wing of the party here...but as Thayer says, "Thank heavens that unions have no history of violence, intimidation, corruption, or deception. Because if they did, the potential for the abuse of this system would be instantly realized"

• Proposition 8 in California, where for the second time, those bigoted, hard core conservative Californians voted to preserve the ancient definition of marriage under their Constitution. Prominent supporters are being targeted now for revenge--with what we have been instructed are hate crimes when done unto homosexuals and other favored groups. Interestingly too, in this Alice in Wonderland world abuilding, the "n" word is absolutely justified when spewed by gay rights advocates. The people of California who dared to exercise this particular opinion must be made to pay, and be made an example of for any future move not to the liking of the newly ascendant "rulers."

• The Norm Coleman/Al Franken Senate election, being stolen right out in the open for all to see. Al Franken? What are you people thinking? Democrats, in the wake of the elections of 2000 and 2004 have worked to capture as many Secretary of State offices as possible--these are the officials, like Catherine Harris in Florida, who certify the votes and decide discrepancies. The massive fraud we already know about in this case makes it hard to believe this is happening in America, but there is only more of the same brown shirt shredding of state and the federal constitutions in store for us.

The New New Left is constrained, it appears, only by the limits of their own audacity, because as it happens, way too many state and federal benches are held by radical sympathizers for there to be much of a judicial backstop for the rule of law-our law. So, as the rule of law goes by the boards, the rule of the Rulers oozes into its place, and we will see what a government paid for with hundreds of Soros millions looks like.

As Bob Dylan saw in a moment of twilight clarity, It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

-- Harold Kildow, associate blogger at the Blogger version of Principalities and Powers.