Three Months to Go

July 28th, 2012

We now have about three months before the November 6th elections.  These will obviously be highly consequential elections for the future of our country.  On November 7th you and I will not be able to go back and “do more” to affect the outcome.  That means we all have to put our money where our mouths are right now and as often as we can between now and late October.  I have created a page on the ActRight website that will allow you to make credit card contributions to a number of candidates and ballot issues while only having to enter your information one time.  You can pick and choose who to give to and how much.  Please take advantage of this and pass the link on to your friends.

I have put the four Protection of Marriage initiatives on top for a reason.  Same Sex Marriage cases are headed to the Supreme Court right now.  Big wins for these popular initiatives this November will make the Court think twice about “discovering” a right to same sex marriage in the Constitution.  Ambiguous results will encourage them to do what I think they are inclined to do, which is impose same sex marriage on the whole country by fiat.

A Republican victory in the Presidential, Senatorial, and Congressional races is critical to halting and possibly reversing the downward spiral of our nation.  We are rapidly approaching moral and economic collapse, dramatic military decline, and the creation of a much more dangerous world.  Even if you are lukewarm about Romney and other Republicans they are infinitely better than the alternative.  As former Secretary of defense Rumsfeld might say, you go to war with the Republican Party you have, not the Republican Party you would like to have.

The root cause of our decline is not the weakness of the Republican Party.  It is the weakness of the Church and her teaching.  The Church and her pastors must rediscover the full gospel of the comprehensive Lordship of Jesus, laying aside compromise and the fear of man.  Only then will we see a reversal of this baneful decline.


 

Posted in Current Politics | No Comments »

The Aurora Shootings and the 2nd Amendment

July 20th, 2012

Bodies were still warm following the horrific mass killings in an Aurora Colorado theatre on July 20th when pundits right and left started opining on the Second Amendment and gun control.  It has become a predictable event for the same opinions and arguments to be put forth almost instantly whenever one of these spectacular criminal acts occurs.  The left begins calling for more gun control while the right points out the need for citizens to be armed to protect themselves from such criminals.  The political forces more or less balance and nothing much comes of it.

This might be an occasion to review the words of the Second Amendment and think about them a little deeper than we usually do.  The Second Amendment says,

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The right wing tends to focus on the second phrase about the right of the people to keep and bear arms not being infringed.  The left wing counters by noting that the first phrase puts this right in the context of a “well regulated militia,” which they equate with the National Guard.  The right wing comes back by pointing out that the law establishing the National Guard specifically says it is not the militia of the Second Amendment.

The left’s reading in effect changes the amendment to say that “the right of the government to be armed shall not be infringed by the government.”  The right’s reading practically says “the right of individuals to keep and bear arms shall be unregulated.” 

Now I am a Millennial Life Member of the NRA and generally define the right end of any political spectrum, but I must say that neither of these readings seems satisfactory and neither rings completely true to the text.  The left’s view tends toward tyranny while the right’s view tends toward anarchy.

Let’s focus on the idea behind the first phrase, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.  The idea seems to be that a state needs an ultimate armed power to secure itself against internal and external threats, and that a free state must rely on a citizen militia rather than a standing army or large militarized police force for this power.  If the state must rely on its citizens for the power it can hardly use the power to oppress the citizens.

None of our fifty states has a “well regulated militia” in this sense.  All rely on large militarized police forces and semi-professional National Guard for their security.  If a well regulated militia is in fact necessary for the security of a free state, then none of our fifty states are free as the Founders understood the term.  I think this fact is a symptom of our underlying departure from the kind of “free people” the founders had in mind.

NRA types think individuals having guns is a necessary and sufficient condition for maintaining freedom.  As Christians we understand that the true necessary condition for legal, economic and political freedom is spiritual freedom in Christ.  Spiritual freedom in Christ comes from dying to our petty self-lives and living in His purpose and calling for our lives.  Today we are very much into a do-it-yourself kind of pick and choose Christianity.  We select a Church to “go to” the same way we may pick a restaurant.  This consumer style “Christianity Lite” becomes an aspect of our self-lives like our house or our car.  It is culturally weak as evidenced by our nation’s drift away from Christian norms.  It produces a spiritual atmosphere in our communities where crazy things like today’s shooting happen with greater frequency.

As a result we are not free on the inside, and as evidenced by the fact that the militia is now a dead idea, not what the Founders would call free on the outside either.  Before we look to gun control or packing heat as the path to peace and safety we should look to re-centering our lives on Christ.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Legal Positivism on Steroids

July 4th, 2012

Comes now a proposed law by the energizer bunny of mischief, California

Mark Leno

Mark Leno

 State Senator Mark Leno, speeding its way through the legislature; a proposal that would allow judges to assign more than two people of any gender as the legal parents of any given child.

The linked article quotes one Ellen Pontac, a Davis gay-rights activist, who said she and her wife, Shelly Bailes, each had two children when they began their relationship 38 years ago. She understands how someone can function as a child’s parent but accrue no legal rights. Government should accommodate changing times, according to her. “I just think that people should be able to create their own lives,” she said.

This desire of rebellious man to redefine God’s created order in their own terms, to act as the de-facto “god” of their own little universes is not new.  It has been going on a long time under a theory known as “Legal Positivism.”  It’s just that now the folly of legal positivism is finally taking us into Bizarro World.

Legal Positivism is the theory that there is no cosmic right and wrong, no Natural Law to be discovered, no Law of God for us to obey.  There is only whatever law man invents through his political processes.  And I do mean “whatever.”  Each of us has our own little private exceptions we want to take to God’s Law.  The problem is, so does everyone else.  This way lays anarchy and its twin sister, tyranny.  If there is no limit on what individuals can do then there is no limit on what government can do to individuals either.

The reason legal positivism has become the underlying theory of our legal system is the abandonment of God’s Law by the Church.  The liberal Church views the New Testament as having done away with the moral requirement of the Old Testament Law in favor of softer values like tolerance and equality.  The conservative Church is similarly uncomfortable with any favorable mention of God’s Moral Law because they identify it with “legalism,” the doctrine of salvation through law instead of grace.  But in fact the moral Law of God and the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ are not in conflict.  Rather they are in complete harmony if properly understood.    As Romans 8:4 puts it, “the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Supremes Sign off on Obama’s “BFD”

June 28th, 2012

Today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) a.k.a. “ObamaCare” has elicited a variety of responses.  Rick Santorum calls it “the worst of all outcomes.”  He points out that the same self-aggrandizing principle with which President Obama ignores the Court’s Arizona ruling is one he will use to stretch the law even further by regulation and Executive Order.  The law Joe Biden famously called a “BFD” is indeed a major move of America in the socialist direction.

GOPAC Chairman Frank Donatelli, Dick Morris, Michael Reagan and others point out that this will energize Republicans to fight even harder for a victory in November.  We shouldn’t have to rely on the Court to save us from ourselves.  The Constitution may not be a suicide pact, but neither can it save a suicidal people from themselves.

On the business front, small businesses will face additional costs and unknown impacts as regulators in HHS fill in the blanks in the law.  The economy, already struggling, should experience this as another hit and further weaken between now and November.  This of course should help Romney.

The issueof the HHS mandate that requires Church related institutions to provide abortion drugs, sterilization, and birth control benefits now remains a big campaign issue.  Had the court struck down the law it might have become moot.

Here is a commentary by Hugh Hewitt. 

John Eastman of Chapman University was highly critical of Chief Justice Roberts’ reasoning in justifying the AHCA as a “tax.”  He wrote:

“Also critical to this line of reasoning is that the tax is not a direct tax.  Otherwise, it would be unconstitutional because not apportioned according to population, as the Constitution requires for direct taxes.  Chief Justice Robert’s argument on that critical point is conclusory–only about a page or so–and confused.  If it is not a direct tax, it must be an excise or an income tax, and it quite obviously is neither.  But Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t explain what it is; he just asserts that it is not a direct tax.”

I am left with this thought, which also applies to a lot of arguments about whether Obama is Constitutionally qualified to be President and a host of other questions.  If the Constitution is dead in the hearts and minds of the American people then it doesn’t matter what it says.  People will just ignore its provisions whenever they have enough office holders in the right positions in government to do so.  Clearly abortion and sodomy are not rights to be found in the written document, but that did not prevent the court from willfully “finding” them hidden between the lines.  Neither same sex marriage or any marriage for that matter is mentioned in the written document.  But we all know that will have nothing to do with the Court’s ruling on that subject.

The Constitution is dead in the hearts and minds of most Americans because so few preachers understand the relationship between God and human government, and how thinking about that relationship led to the Constitution in the first place.  I cover this history and thinking in some detail in my book.  For now, the possibility of turning America around from its path of destruction and of making the first step in that direction this November is in the hands of those few Americans who know their God and their own history.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Some Remarkable Developments

May 9th, 2012

The past 24 hours have seen some remarkable developments.

First Senator Lugar, a “moderate” Republican, lost to a Tea Party hard liner by something like 20 points.

Second, North Carolina passed a state constitutional amendment outlawing both gay marriage and civil unions by 61 to 39%.

Third, the Colorado legislature adjourned without passing a civil union bill after a raucous session involving extreme filibustering by the Republicans.

Fourth, President Obama finally came out and endorsed gay marriage.

Wasn’t this election supposed to be all about the economy?  Weren’t social issues supposed to be off the table?  Has the November election been transformed into a plebiscite on gay marriage?  What’s happening?

Here are some thoughts:

Civil Unions are off the Table

The fact that both Colorado and North Carolina rejected civil unions means that civil unions as a possible compromise everyone could live with are off the table.  Now it’s gay marriage or nothing.  Civil unions were always just a stepping stone anyway.  In fact the courts which have mandated gay marriage have cited the existence of civil union laws as proof that withholding the honorable name “marriage” had no basis other than impermissible animus.  Some compromise. Additionally, the recent dust up over the HHS mandate that Church related entities would have to pay for abortion pills has made people realize that the real goal of the abortion and gay rights movements is to silence the Church and force her into the smallest space possible.  In fact he whole gay rights/gay marriage agenda can be interpreted as just a ploy to attack the Church.

The Republican Base is Energized

The results in Indiana, Colorado, and North Carolina, are all manifestations of an energized Republican base.  Meanwhile, the Democratic base is in the doldrums.  Even the President’s support of gay marriage is being criticized for coming the day after the North Carolina vote.

The Black Church is in a Tough Spot

Even with black unemployment going up much worse than for the country as a whole, support for Obama has been unwavering.  But blacks are more anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage than whites by a good measure.  They already have to deal with the tension between their Christian faith and Democratic positions on these social issues.  They usually point to Democratic social spending as Christ-like concern for the poor and oppressed as justification.  But gay marriage is different.  Signing off on gay marriage may be too much for many members of the black clergy.  They especially chafe at this being sold as “just like civil rights for blacks.”  Obama’s nominal opposition to gay marriage had given them a fig leaf, but now that’s gone.  Some may even be realizing that their loyalty has been taken for granted by the Democratic Party which is only interested in catering to rich white homosexuals. Blacks will not vote Republican, but they may just sit this one out.

Obama’s Shrinking Base

Obama apparently decided to write off the independent voters and appeal to the Democratic base a while ago with his class warfare strategy.  Now he has been forced to choose between blacks and gays.  He seems to have calculated that gay money is variable but that the black vote is solid.  Time will tell.  But it sure looks like Obama is playing harder and harder to a smaller and smaller base.  Meanwhile it does not look like the economy is going to help him at all.

Barak Obama ran as a center-left uniter but has governed as a left-left divider.  In our system that is a formula for a backlash.  It’s beginning to look like Rush Limbaugh’s prediction of a Republican landslide in November may come to pass.

Posted in Current Politics, The Homosexual Political Agenda | 2 Comments »

Smoking, Drinking, and Epistemological Self-Consciousness

March 6th, 2012

Two articles in today’s news got my attention.  First, the Navy and Marines, fresh from celebrating the introduction of open homosexual relationships in their barracks and on their ships moves to crack down on the true moral failings of our times, namely smoking, drinking and thinking.  You will notice that these initiatives tend to go together.  Whenever a jurisdiction, whether San Francisco, Laguna Beach, or the Navy,   decides to take sexual behavior that was previously considered immoral and elevate it to the status of super-sacred right, they also suddenly become hyper puritanical about minor vices like smoking, drinking and putting salt on your food.  This goes along with the whole “diversity” push which requires diversity on the outside (race, gender) but absolute uniformity and conformity on the inside (thoughts, beliefs, expression of opinion).

At first this may seem paradoxical.  If this is all about increasing freedom for everyone, why liberalize in one area while cracking down on others?  This is the libertarian myth that increasing freedom beyond the limits of God’s Law for one group increases freedom for all.  Sort of a rising tide lifts all boats theory.  But in practice we see that the opposite is true.  Increasing freedom for the sexually libertine diminishes freedom for the well behaved who now are required by law to pretend that they also approve of the new “right.”  To keep these dissenters in line, a sort of tyrannical thought control accompanied by the speech police must be instituted.  Thus individual lawlessness (anarchy) always brings with it collective lawlessness (tyranny).  To put it another way, if you thought showing tolerance to sexual deviancy would be reciprocated by a similar tolerance of your own choices, think again.

The second was Howard Fineman’s article in the Huffington Post in which he identifies the Republican Party as the nation’s first religious party.   He notes, I think correctly, the increasing influence of Christians and other socially conservative groups in the Republican Primaries.  Of course, he completely ignores the similar dominance of the militant anti-Christian secularists in Democratic Party, whose assault on the passive, formerly apolitical pew sitters is the cause of their increased activism in the Republican Party.

Nonetheless, his observation butresses my own over the past few decades.  In the past, say pre-1960 and going back to the founding, both major parties and their members perceived themselves to be Christian, (and for that matter, mostly Protestant.)  Even while killing each other in the bloody Civil War, both sides strongly held to this.  But starting in the 60’s and up to the present time the Parties have been slowly sorting themselves into Christian and Humanist camps with increasing consistency and clarity. The idea that the two major parties would become openly Christian and anti-Christian rather than say, Christian-capitalist and Christian-socialist is pretty startling and does not bode well for a peaceful domestic future.  When the country is split 50/50 into parties that do not speak the same language, perceive the same reality, and most importantly, love the same things, then there is no longer really a “country.”

All of this calls to mind an obscure doctrine taught by a theologian named Rousas John Rushdoony.  (Rushdoony is considered a father of a school of thought called Christian Reconstruction, Theonomism, and/or Dominionism which has never claimed more than a few followers in the Church.  But maybe his time has come.)  One of his teachings was that of “epistemological self-consciousness.”  Rushdoony taught that as history moved toward its climax, the godly would become more consistently godly and the ungodly more consistently ungodly.  Sort of like the parable of the wheat and the tares.  The mixture of believers and unbelievers in visible entities like churches and parties would sort themselves out into more consistent visible entities.  So whereas in the 1930’s for example you might not be able to label either the Democratic or Republican Parties as “Christian” or “non-Christian,” in the future you would have to because it would be too glaring.  We are not there yet, but it looks like it’s heading in that direction.

Posted in Current Politics, Spiritual and Philosophical Questions | 1 Comment »

Proposition 8 Ruling

February 8th, 2012

On Tuesday February 7, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Walker’s mysterious discovery of the right to same sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution.  Some people who have read the Constitution wonder about this since marriage is nowhere discussed there any more than privacy, abortion, sodomy or the right of local governments to take private property to deliver it to other private parties.  Such people may have missed the news that we no longer have a written Constitution, but rather a “living” one, which is to say an imaginary one that exists only in the minds of a committee of nine lawyers called the Supreme Court.  This situation has been going on for decades because the U.S. Constitution is dead in the hearts of an overwhelming majority of Americans.  When asked about the Constitutionality of Obamacare, Nancy Pelosi replied “Are you kidding?  Are you kidding?”  This is a reasonable response from her point of view since no one has cared about the Constitution for a very long time.  That is what also makes the question of Obama;s eligibility seem farcical.  Why do you care about the Constitution now?  Must be racism since you haven’t cared about it forever.

This same sex marriage ruling comes at the same time as a large number of other brazen assaults on the Christian community which is finally showing some signs of realizing their peril, albeit possibly too late.  Secretary Sebelius has issued orders for Catholic institutions to participate in what they consider to be mortal sin.  General Boykinis not allowed to speak at a West Point prayer breakfast because the U.S. arm of the Muslim Brotherhood calls him names.  The federal courts uphold New York’s policy of not renting school space to churches while renting them to everyone else.  The Supreme Court refuses to take up the case.  It all reminds me of a Tee Shirt I saw a pro-abortion demonstrator wearing at an Operation Rescue event in 1989: “Christians Are Asswipes.”

This morning’s OC Register covered the Ninth Circuit Ruling with a picture of a typical pastor looking shocked, but still unsure of his position.  “I don’t want to see people discriminated against, but this goes against Biblical morality.”  No Scat Sherlock.  Here we have Christian leadership on display.  “I never took a stand against abortion, gay civil unions, gay sex clubs in schools or any of those violations of God’s Law, but now I want to take a half-hearted stand against this one.”  Is it any wonder we are losing?

Still, one must hope.  Faith, hope, and Charity are, after all, what always remain. Perhaps the devil’s disciples are going too far too fast.  Perhaps a few segments of the sleeping Church will wake up.

If nothing else, this is good timing for me.  I just bought my first ad for EMPIRE on the Christian Examiner online edition.  It should go up in a few days.  Maybe some frustrated Christians will buy a copy and start thinking about these things before they are thinking about them in a gulag somewhere.

Posted in Constitutional Issues, Current Politics, The Homosexual Political Agenda | 18 Comments »

Declining American Airpower

February 6th, 2012

An article in the Washington Times discusses concerns of Air Force pilots over the gutting of the Tactical Air Force under the current budget cutting.  Air power has been the key to America’s easy (if not always wise) exercise of military strength around the world, so its diminution is a serious matter.  One thing I would like to point out from the article is the saga of the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II.  The Raptor was supposed to be the replacement for the F-15 almost 15 years ago.  It is widely considered to be the best fighter on earth, but at $130 million a copy was considered too expensive.  So they stopped production at some modest number after all the R&D costs had been incurred, which of course makes the unit cost even higher.  They proposed the smaller, less capable single engine F-35 as the replacement at half the cost, supposedly.  Now, after years of new R&D costs and delays the F-35′s are close to coming on line…at $130 million a copy.  Meanwhile, heroic (and costly) effort is required to keep our current jets flying.

The buget woes accompanying our welfare state are only compounded by such false economies in weapons procurement.  It reminds me of when I was in the Navy in the 1970′s.  The Aegis missile system was coming out, and it looked like putting this first class system on our first class nuclear cruiser hulls would push the price tag for a cruiser over $1 billion, which in those days was considered real money.  So they put the first class missile system on the second class hulls of Spruance class destroyers and called them Aegis cruisers.  They put the second class missile systems on the nuclear cruisers (you know, the ones that can keep up with the nuclear carriers they are supposed to protect).  So the total dollar spend was the same while the sticker price of each ship was kept under $1 billion.  Now we have oil powered Aegis cruisers to protect nuclear carriers (that they can’t keep up with) and have scrapped all the nuclear cruisers we built since they don’t have Aegis.  This kind of short sighted decision making is common enough in business, but in government it appears to be the norm.

Posted in Military | No Comments »

Late to the Game

January 15th, 2012

As the coils of secular government begin to tighten on the Church, the clerics are finally beginning to notice.  Here Francis Cardinal George lists some of the encroachments and sounds an alarm.  Elsewhere, a group of pastors were arrested in New York for protesting the City’s decision, upheld by the federal courts, to rent public space to any and all groups except churches.

For 39 years abortion has been “legal” in this country, and for 39 years 99% of pastors have been virtually silent on the issue.  The government has used the public schools to indoctrinate children from Christian homes and churches into atheism and immoral sexual practice and the pastors have been similarly silent if not supportive.  Now, in the final stages of the radical secularization of the country, when the government feels strong enough to just go around shutting churches down outright, the pastors notice.

Better late than never I suppose.  Although God might well say as He does in Isaiah 1:15 that He will not hear the prayers of those whose hands are full of blood.  How can a Church that has stopped its ears and turned its eyes from the littlest victims of injustice now cry to God for justice?  It may even be that the only hope for the Church in America today is for the government to shut down all the existing compromised, man-pleasing church enterprises so we can try again.

Speaking of games, the whole world is flipping out over Tim Tebow violating the Constitutional separation of Church and Football by taking a knee in prayer and thus confessing his faith in the public square.  The public square is reserved for things like Gay Pride parades and defecating on police cars, not shameless demonstrations of faith in Jesus.  When will the courts take action against this transgression?

Pay no attention to that man “Tebowing” in the snow.

Posted in Abortion and Life Issues, Constitutional Issues | 10 Comments »

Thoughts for the New Year

December 31st, 2011

First, here is an interesting link to the story of how Santa Claus saved Christmas, actually an account of the real St. Nicholas at the Council of Nicaea.  The links on that page are also interesting.

The big issue immediately ahead of us is who will win the Republican nomination and run against President Obama.  I think the common view of it being Romney versus the many anti-Romney candidates is pretty accurate.  The majority of Republican voters want a strong, consistent conservative who will fight Obama and the Democrats hard and effectively, and they don’t think that’s Romney.   The whole field of Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum, Perry, Cain and others seems flawed, and none have been able to emerge as the conservative champion.  Romney stays at 25% and is running a disciplined, well financed campaign.  I supported Romney against McCain in 2008, but now I am deeply troubled by him.  The reason for this is his support for the homosexual political agenda.

At a time when the threat of legalized gay marriage looms as the next great step on destroying our country’s moral foundations, Romney’s history and shifting positions on this give us little reason to hope he will actively oppose it.  He has also said on a number of occasions that he supports the idea of gay rights.  What this means is unclear, but it certainly means he won’t spend any political capital opposing the homosexual political agenda.

The extreme danger posed to our society by the homosexual political agenda is not understood by many people.  A group that does seem to get it is the Rabbinical Alliance of America which has issued an excellent statement opposing the homosexual agenda and another calling for the Mormon Church to sanction Romney for promoting this agenda.  (It’s a sad day when the fate of Christianity in America depends on Orthodox Jews and Mormons fighting for decency.)   Here is a link to my previous postings on this subject.

The smart money is betting Romney will win the nomination.  Others think no one will have enough delegates and the nominee will be chosen in the Convention.  We need to support whoever seems to have the best chance of getting enough delegates to prevent Romney from having it locked up before then.  If Romney is the nominee careful consideration may even have to be given to supporting Obama in order to prevent the Republican Party from joining the Democratic Party as a mindless tool of the enemies of God’s moral law.

Posted in Current Politics, Spiritual and Philosophical Questions, The Homosexual Political Agenda | 7 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »