Winning the Argument – The Left’s Cult of Death: Part One

EDITOR’S NOTE: I spent a considerable amount of time this past weekend putting this series of posts together for release beginning Tuesday. However, due to the tragic bombings in Boston Monday afternoon, I made the decision to hold off on the posts because it seemed inappropriate to point out how the left uses death to drive policy decisions during a national tragedy. However, that changed yesterday during the President’s and Vice President’s response to the gun control legislation that was narrowly struck down on the Senate floor.

Vice President Biden: “The United States Senate let down an awful lot of people today, including those Newtown families. I don’t know how anybody who looked them in the eye could have vote the way they did today.”

President Obama, who was introduced by the father of a seven-year-old killed in the shooting: “I’ve heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby for this legislation was somehow misplaced. A prop, somebody called them. Emotional blackmail, some outlets said. Are they serious? Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don’t have a right to weigh in on this issue? Do we think their — their emotions, their loss is not relevant to this debate?” (The full statement from the President is worth its own analysis as it reveals quite a bit about how the President operates and how he views our system of government.)

As I note in the series, this administration is not the first, nor will it be the last to prop up an argument for policy change with death. My point is that they’re obsessed with death – except in the case of abortion where apparently they refuse to make any statement even regarding the horrors surrounding the Gosnell trial. It’s this duplicity that one begins to wonder if death really is the issue at all. Or is it really just about the progressive policies.

-          Art Wilson

In the Beginning…..

The Obama administration and progressive left is obsessed with death and there’s not a body count in the country that’s high enough or too personal when it comes to making their argument. If you can’t win an argument on common sense and the constitution, drag out the dead and call it common sense solutions. The tendency for the Obama administration to play the death card to make an argument was probably first noticed prior to there even being an Obama administration. An excerpt from then Senator Barack Obama’s Oct. 7, 2008 appearance with “Republican” rival John McCain in Nashville, Tennessee:

“In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

 And again during the debate leading up the passage of the 2010 affordable healthcare act:

“I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment. And by the way, this was because the insurance company was arguing that somehow she should have known that she had cancer when she took her new job, even though it hadn’t been diagnosed yet.”

 Who wouldn’t be sympathetic about a President’s mother dying of cancer, fighting with her evil insurance company trying to get the bills paid? Something’s got to be done about this system right? Except for one thing. It was a lie. It was a lie that the President and Vice President were more than happy to continue perpetrating until the healthcare agenda became official. At that point you had to wonder what an administration and its party would be willing to do to push their agenda if the leader of that party is willing to mislead the public about his dead mother. Apparently anything, as long as it involves dead bodies.

Death sells. Dead people make a compelling argument. If you’re backed into a corner and can’t sell an idea based on its own merits, drag out the dead. In today’s media driven culture, emotion trumps real thought virtually every time. We have a generation or more of people that have been asked all of their lives, “How does that make you feel?” And we’ve convinced that same generation that they shouldn’t ever have to feel bad. Death makes people feel bad so they rally around it. They’re counting on the government to fix it for them. And boy doesn’t the left understand this. Let’s look at a few recent examples of how the left is counting on the dead to push their agenda – especially in light of the assault on the Second Amendment.

The “Personal Death”: Harry Reid Cites Father’s Suicide in Gun Control Plea – 4/9/2013

Much like the President did regarding his mother during the healthcare debate; Harry Reid has no issue bringing up the tragic death of his father, in 1972, in order to push an agenda that is completely antithetical to the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights. This was the statement from the floor of the Senate calling for the Republicans to drop their promises of a filibuster:

“In Nevada, if you purchase a handgun you have to wait three days to pick it up. And it’s believed, that alone has saved the lives of many people. Sometimes people in a fit of passion will purchase a handgun to do bad things with it, Mr. President, even as my dad did, killed himself. Waiting a few days helps.”

 I don’t know all of the facts surrounding the death of Harry Reid’s father but his statement would indicate that his father, in a fit of passion, went down to a gun store, bought a gun and killed himself. If only there had been a 72 hour waiting period in Nevada 41 years ago as there is today, his dad would have lived much longer. Except that Senator Reid is, by his own words and not his actions, a gun man. He and his three brothers grew up around guns. So even if his father had committed suicide as Senator Reid indicates, I doubt very seriously a 72 hour waiting period would have made any difference. Then again, this is a man who’s already proven he will lie to push an agenda – just ask Romney’s tax accountant. But then, who’s going to argue with such a personal tragedy?

It might be worth noting that Michael Moore appeared on Piers Morgan March 19, 2013 to make the point that if a gunman had killed Harry Reid’s grandkids, he wouldn’t be so quick to drop the assault weapons ban. The death argument doesn’t get much more personal than that.

The Administration’s Assault on Home Schooling: Part Two

In my previous post we already established the fact that despite the sequestration, having to release over 2,000 illegal aliens from holding for non-violent criminal activity and a myriad of other issues engulfing our nation, this administration and the Justice Department finds it necessary to go after a German Christian family living in Tennessee that has already been granted asylum from a federal immigration judge. If you believe as I do that this has nothing to do with the Romeike family, you’ll have to draw some conclusions as to why this particular case is so important. I believe this case has everything to do with precedent: An earlier event or action regarded as an example or guide to be considered in subsequent similar actions. That is, there is something compelling about this case that the Justice Department would like to establish in the court system so as to have it on record for a basis of argument in future cases. So what exactly is the government’s position on the Romeike case?

A lot of this information comes directly from HSLDA Founder and Chairman, Michael Farris. He’s the gentleman who wrote the brief for the Romeike family. In his summary of the government’s position, the Justice Department is making three arguments to support sending the Romeike family back to Germany with the possibility of having their children taken away from them.

First: The government isn’t violating anyone’s rights if homeschooling is banned altogether.

Second: The Romeikes failed to show there was discrimination based on religion since not all homeschooling families are Christian, and not every Christian believes they have to homeschool.

Third: The Romeikes did not meet the standard of being part of a social group with “immutable” characteristics that can’t change and should not be required to change.  They said the Romeikes could choose not to homeschool and send their children to public school and then teach from home since their children would have only been in school for 22-26 hours during the week.

Michael Farris already makes some well thought out compelling arguments regarding the fallacy and potential dangers of the government’s position and I strongly encourage you to read his take here. It is not my intention to just reiterate what has already been stated but I want to look at the government’s arguments through the backdrop of Common Core or any other federally mandated educational system. And it’s important to point out that once your state turns over its educational sovereignty to the federal government under the banner of Common Core, it’s a federally mandated educational system. You may continue to have your “state” Department of Education, but that department will continue to morph into an enforcement arm of the “federal” Department of Education reporting directly to the United States Secretary of Education, currently Arne Duncan.

The government isn’t violating anyone’s rights if homeschooling is banned altogether.

According to the Justice Department, there is no fundamental right to homeschool your children. Put another way, the government is the arbitrator of the right to homeschool and as long as the government applies equal treatment in the way it pursues rights to homeschool, or not to homeschool. This is a shocking revelation by the Justice Department. Currently it is your decision whether or not to homeschool your children. You may decide to do so for religious reasons. Or you may decide that the scholastic standards in your district aren’t what they should be. Maybe the school your child attends isn’t safe. For any of these reasons, you currently have the right to educate your child the way you see fit. But only because the federal government is permitting you to, currently. If the government should decide that homeschooling is not in the best interest of your child for, say, not being able to keep up with the Common Core standards, the government has every right to institute compulsory education for the benefit of society as long as it applies equal treatment across the board.

The Romeikes failed to show there was discrimination based on religion since not all homeschooling families are Christian, and not every Christian believes they have to homeschool.

Again, Mr. Farris makes an excellent argument regarding the government’s lack of understanding that religious freedom is an individual right and it should be read. However, I don’t think this is as much a lack of understanding individual rights as it is a major push for collectivism. This philosophy is so firmly entrenched within this administration, whether it be collective salvation or children belonging to the communities, I believe the Justice Department is looking to win this case to set the precedent that there is no individual religious thought and unless all Christians are homeschoolers, no Christians have the right to homeschool. I personally believe this government understands individual rights perfectly and this government absolutely does not subscribe to this philosophy.

The Romeikes did not meet the standard of being part of a social group with “immutable” characteristics that can’t change and should not be required to change.  They said the Romeikes could choose not to homeschool and send their children to public school and then teach from home since their children would have only been in school for 22-26 hours during the week.

This is, in my opinion, the “media” argument. This is, and will be the “common sense solution” for compulsory government mandated education. It’s already being used in defense of Common Core! “Well the states get to choose what they want for 15% of the curriculum.” In fact, I love Mr. Farris’s take regarding this third argument from the Justice Department:

“This argument necessarily means that the United States government believes that it would not violate your rights if our own government banned homeschooling entirely. After all, you could teach your children your own values after they have had 22-26 hours of public school indoctrination aimed at counteracting religious and philosophical views the government doesn’t like.”

So there it is. While the Common Core issues are being played out by the states, behind the scenes the Justice Department, at the behest of the Obama Administration, is working to ensure judicial precedence is set to force homeschoolers to comply with compulsory federally regulated government education. We can’t have all of these parents pulling their kids out of school because of Common Core can we? It’s what the left hand is doing while the right hand is showing. That’s my opinion. If you’ve got a better explanation as to why the Federal Government is so interested in a Christian German family living in Tennessee, I’d love to hear it.

Romeike v. Holder – The Administration’s Assault on Home Schooling

Part One

Budget deficit, sequestration, common core, immigration,

Obamacare, second amendment, carbon tax, marriage defendant……

Never in my lifetime has there been so many headline stories regarding the federal government and its’ affect on our lives all at one time. It is, and some would say by design, inundating. If you disregarded all other news, local, sports, weather or entertainment, an entire hour could be devoted every single day reporting on how what’s happening at the federal level is affecting everything we do in our day to day lives. And it is under this backdrop that critical stories with potentially huge implications get glossed over if they’re even mentioned at all. One of those stories is the Romeike v. Holder case. If it’s even mentioned in the mainstream media at all, it’s usually given with little if any context and without understanding what is at the heart of this case and the potential future implications of the ruling, who can blame the general populace for sympathizing with the family,  shrugging their shoulders and continuing to fret over the bigger headlines? Today I will begin to make the case that home schooling, and maybe even certain private schools – specifically Christian – will soon be a thing of the past. And this will happen most definitely in any state that accepts federal control over their education system – specifically Common Core.

First a brief synopsis of what the Romeike v. Holder case is all about. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are evangelical Christians from Germany who, in 2006, took their five children out of the state-run German schools and homeschooled them. The family claimed their children were being taught things that were against the family’s religious beliefs. (NOTE: I pulled my son from the Chicago Public School System for the same reason. Homeschooling was not a viable option for me at the time so I put him in a Christian school). Sending your children to the state-run school system is the law in Germany with very few exceptions and homeschooling has been illegal since it was banned by the Nazis in 1938. Parents running afoul of this law can be fined, imprisoned and have their children taken away from them. Apparently the Romeikes had already racked up $9,000 worth of fines and Germany was threatening to take their children away from them so they fled to the United States in 2008 where they applied for asylum. Asylum can be granted under American law if the claimant can prove fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

With the help of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, (HSLDA), the Romeikes became the first family ever granted asylum in the US for the protection of their homeschooling rights on January 26, 2010. Memphis federal immigration judge Lawrence Burman granted the Romeikes political asylum based on the reasonable fear of persecution for their beliefs if they were to return to Germany. Again, Germany had threatened to take the Romeikes children away. In his ruling, Judge Burman questioned the motivation of the government noting that it appeared the German government was more concerned with stamping out parallel societies than the actual welfare of the children. He went on to state that this particular policy of persecuting homeschoolers is “repellent to everything we believe as Americans”.

In a normal world, there would never need to be another reason to mention the Romeike family again past celebrating the fact that we live in the freest of all Western democracies and that the United States is the standard bearer for freedom of religion, expression and individual choice in the way we want to raise our children. At the very worst, we’ve got a German Evangelical Christian family living in Tennessee raising their children. But we live in President Obama’s world. And Eric Holder and the Justice Department plan to send this family back to Germany. We might do well to give this story the attention it deserves and we might begin by asking ourselves why.

Why is the Justice Department spending the time, effort and resources to go after this one Christian German family living in Tennessee? On March 14, 2013 ICE director John Morton stated the agency released 2,228 people from immigration detention centers across the country for “solely budgetary reasons.” Mostly illegal aliens facing financial crimes, drunken driving offences, misdemeanor crimes and traffic offenses, per Morton’s statement. The backlog of immigration cases across the country has the courts so clogged that immigration judges are being told to close the cases, even without consent from government prosecutors. But we’re going to send the Romeikes back to Germany? The Justice Department doesn’t have the time or resources to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation violations but they have all the resources they need for this case? A Christian family living in Tennessee wanting to homeschool their children? Remember, in 2011 there was a policy introduced to give the Department of Homeland Security discretion which deportation cases to pursue. They picked this one.

Romeike v. Holder has little or nothing to do with the deportation of the Romeikes – that’s just a casualty. This case is about the parental right to homeschooling. While many great people are out their rightfully focused on fighting to ensure the Common Core curriculum doesn’t get shoved down our states throats, this administration is working to tie up that last loose end to ensuring 100% compliance for students in states that adopt common core. That is, according to Eric Holder, “There is no fundamental liberty to homeschool.” In other words, parents do not have a right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

In my next post, I’ll go over the Justice Departments case for deportation as well Germany’s defense of their compulsory state education program. It is important to understand where this is heading in our country.

All Your Children Are Belong To Us

A lot has been made of Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC “Lean Forward” commercial where she declares that “we need to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents and families” and we need to “recognize that kids belong to whole communities”.

 

According Mrs. Harris-Perry, once we recognize the collective ownership of the children in our community, we’ll begin making better investments in public education. It’s great that it has been brought to the forefront of public discussion but my biggest issue with the discussion is “where has everyone been?” All she’s done is verbalize what’s been going on globally with our children for decades and in the United States at least since the mid-nineties. Make no mistake; this is a Common Core Public Education announcement more than an MSNBC promo for her show. And it sounded the bell for the final chapter in Marx’s ten point plan in the Communist Manifesto – literally the tenth point.

“10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.” (Emphasis added).

And so our free education is brought to you by, with your tax dollars, The Federal Government, Microsoft, General Electric and countless other “industrial producers” that have a vested interest in seeing that your children understand the world as the future they invision and not the God centered family centric individualism you think you have a right to instill upon them. The Melissa Harris-Perry video makes it fairly clear – you may be the baby producer, but the children belong to the community. And the community believes in education as a collective social process where everyone learns from the same exams and believes in the same social order.

You may be teaching God’s justice or equal justice at home but your children are being taught social justice at school. You may teach your children about the second amendment right to bear arms, as the Founders intended, but your children are being taught that guns are the problem with our society – not the lack of faith in God. You may teach your children that salvation is personal, that your salvation is between you and your God. Your children are learning about collective salvation. You don’t believe in global warming? Wait a couple of years and your children will be laughing at your “ignorance”. Evolution. LGBT. Abstinence. Every year my son spent in the Chicago Public School System was a year I spent trying to “un-teach” what he was learning at school until I finally just pulled him out and put him in a Christian School. And I fear that will not be an option with tomorrow’s “community” children. And I fear that option will disappear sooner than you may think.

While we’re focusing on the mostly federally centered Common Core program and whether or not states will reserve the right to maintain their sovereignty with regards to education, we need to keep an eye squarely focused Romeiki v. Holder case. This case will be the sole focus of my next post but the implications of this case the way I understand it and the very fact that the Justice Department finds it necessary to pursue it should be factored into every Federal Education program discussion – whether called Common Core, Race To the Top or No Child Left behind. It’s a case involving a German evangelical family who was granted political asylum in the United States from Germany because they were about to have their children taken away from them for homeschooling them versus Germany’s compulsory education system. Apparently, in Germany the children’s education has belonged to the community since 1938 and our Justice Department feels the need to spend the time and expense getting this family’s children back to their community. Who was running Germany in 1938?

For those of you needing a refresher on Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”, I’ve taken the liberty of presenting an excerpt of some paragraphs that were relevant to Mrs. Harris-Perry’s video. I can’t help that his writing is as painful to read as Mrs. Harris-Parry’s video is painful to watch. Remember, both personalities start with hatred and envy as the foundation of their worldview.

“Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty. But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.”

The Progressive Gospel

In the past few weeks, I have noticed that a few mainstream conservative commentators are starting to recognize progressivism as a religion. They evidently came to this conclusion as the only possible explanation of why progressives continue to cling to failed policies in spite of irrefutable evidence they do not work. This should come as no surprise since the AHA(1) announced in 1933 that they were creating a new religion “shaped for the needs of this age”. Whether called progressivism, socialism, or humanism, the belief system underlying all their agendas is the same. The main doctrines of this left-wing religion are not supported by experience or reason; they are accepted by its followers on faith, and through the political power it has amassed over the years, its doctrines are forced on non-believers through law and the social sanctions of “political correctness”.

The Progressive Gospel is the Darwinian Theory of evolution on which all its many-faceted doctrines depend. Few things illustrate the hypocrisy of the left more than their defense of the Progressive Gospel. Academics and scientists lose their jobs, their grants, and are often black listed from their profession for raising any question concerning the scientific basis of evolution. Politicians are ridiculed, labeled as “anti-science” and frequently driven from the political arena by the national media for the mere mention of creationism, no matter how insignificant their comment. If the heretical offense occurs in a private college or university, the charge is denying science. If the offense occurs in a taxpayer-supported institution, the charge is violation of “the separation of church and state”. The teaching of progressive doctrine, however, in these same institutions is defended by the left as “academic freedom” or an appeal to the constitutional protection of “freedom of speech”.

It is easy to buy into the frequently made argument that creationism does not belong in a science classroom until you realize that creationism is the foundation of all real science. If scientific principles depended on random chance, as intellectual consistency requires adherents to the Progressive Gospel to believe, who in their right mind would board an airplane, believing that the laws of aerodynamics and gravity that made their flight possible depended on the fickle whims of chance? True science is the study of natural law. Its truths can be proven by observation and experimentation; otherwise, they are just theories. The very existence of law presupposes a lawgiver, just as the existence of all material objects, whether an automobile or a mountain is prima-facie evidence of a maker.

A number of well-meaning Christians and Christian scientists have attempted to compromise with evolutionists by proposing the theory of “intelligent design”, without identifying the designer. This idea has a number of problems that make it unacceptable to the Christian. (1) It ignores or rejects the biblical story of creation, the only reliable account we have of the origin of the earth and its creatures, including man. (2) It leaves the door open for the rejection of miracles and other supernatural phenomena, including the resurrection of Jesus, the cornerstone of the Christian gospel. (3) It encourages nominal Christians and those that are weak in the faith to view intelligent design as just another version of evolution theory. (4) It undermines the reliability of the entire Bible, the objective standard of morality that underlies the traditional American culture.

Christian Churches, Pastors and laymen alike, should not compromise the Gospel of Christ with the Gospel of Progressivism. Instead, we should take an unapologetic stand against the theory of Darwinian Evolution, pointing out at every opportunity that it is only a theory that cannot be proven by replication in the laboratory. The acceptance of its theories is a matter of faith and not provable scientific fact; hence, it is a religion and should be recognized as a religion. Rather than accepting the party line that creationism is not a proper subject to be taught in science classes, we should demand, as Christians that the theory of evolution not be taught to our children without also teaching the Biblical account of creation.(2) If we continue to allow ourselves to be intimidated by the progressive’s misinterpretation of the First Amendment, it is only a matter of time until Christian Churches in America are forced to meet in secret as they are in so many countries around the world today.

ENDNOTES

1. The Humanist Manifesto I, para. 3

2. Creation science, like evolution science is a combination of speculation, theory and provable facts. There are a number of good sites discussing creation science available on the Internet. One such site is the Institute for Creation Research

Gun Control: Never letting a good crisis go to waste

When Barack Obama first announced his candidacy for President on February 10, 2007, most Americans seemed to think “constitution” only applied to a morning walk in the park and the word “socialist” referred just to European politicians and their Parties. Those few among us who talked or wrote about the Constitution and socialism were considered radicals and right-wing nuts. Attempts to warn the American people about the likely consequences of electing Obama as President were met with accusations of racism, “name calling”, or simply playing politics to divide the country. Politicians considered their Oath of Office to protect and defend the Constitution as merely a quaint ritual they were required to perform before being presented with the reins of power.  Obama’s election to the Presidency changed all that.

More Americans today are reading and attempting to understand the Constitution than at any time since the founding era. A few politicians are even beginning to take their Oath of Office seriously. In addition, citizens, commentators, politicians and journalists are starting to understand the meaning of American style socialism, i.e., progressivism.

Sometime today, President Obama is scheduled to stage a press conference surrounded by the usual compliant, brainwashed members of his constituent group, in this case, “concerned kids” and their fearful parents. He is expected to suggest some nineteen actions he believes he can take through Executive Orders to control gun possession and use without the consent of Congress. After all, he cannot “allow a good crisis to go to waste” just because of Congress’ inaction.

As we evaluate the proposals made by the President, there are some things we should keep in mind. First, Executive Orders that attempt to restrain or regulate the personal actions of individual citizens are unconstitutional for two reasons; (1) they are in violation of the very first sentence of Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution, which vests “all legislative powers” in the Congress. This includes all bureaucratic “rule” making as well. (2) All legislative acts of the federal government that impinge on the freedoms of individual citizens are unconstitutional, as those powers are reserved to the states or to the people, through their local legislative bodies, by the Tenth Amendment.

Second, most gun control laws, in themselves, are unconstitutional and prohibited by the Second Amendment which 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.” Many advocates of gun control try to apply this Amendment to the arming of the Militia only. In doing so, they miss the main point of the Amendment. Many of the Framers had first hand experience of the danger of standing armies during the occupation of the city of Boston from October 1768 by troops under the command of British General Thomas Gage, until the militia drove them out, March 17, 1776, over seven years later. The eleven months siege of Boston that led to the withdrawal of British troops was manned by volunteers made up of minutemen and colonial militia, for the most part carrying the personal weapons they had brought from home.

Because of this experience the Framers were wary of standing armies preferring instead, when feasible, that defense of the states should be carried out by citizen militia, trained by the state and under the direction of the Governor as Commander in Chief. Article 1, Section 8 authorizes Congress, “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;” This insures that Congress will review the nation’s military needs every two years. The phrase, “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,” reveals the primary purpose of the second amendment, which is to provide for the defense of the states by an armed citizenry against the possible tyranny of the federal government.

The use of the word “people” in the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”, indicates that this right applies to all the people, not just to those who are members of the Militia. Nowhere is the word “people” used to identify the Militia, either in the Constitution or elsewhere. Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines Militia as, “The body of soldiers in a state enrolled for discipline, but not engaged in actual service except in emergencies; as distinguished from regular troops, whose sole occupation is war or military service. The militia of a country are the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades, with officers of all grades, and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations.” The Militia is drawn from among the people, but the term is never synonymous with the people.

Last week, Governor Andrew Coumo of New York, made the remark, “you do not need ten bullets to kill a deer”, alluding to another common myth concerning the Second Amendment; that it applies only for the purpose of hunting or other gun related sports. That suggestion is ludicrous when you consider that hunting was a primary source of meat for the dinner table of the average citizen of that time. No Congress would even consider infringing on the right of the citizens to feed their families by hunting, therefore the thought that an amendment was necessary to protect that right would not occur to the Congress of 1789. The right to keep (possess) and bear (carry) arms for self-defense is a natural, God given and unalienable right possessed by all citizens. Laws attempting to restrict the amount and kind of ammunition a citizen may use are also unconstitutional because they infringe on the rights guaranteed by the amendment by limiting its efficacy.

Many practicing Christians are somewhat ambivalent about the issue of gun control, referring to the example of Jesus and his admonition to “turn the other cheek”. This ambivalence is not supported by Scriptures. The primary arms for personal defense in the Bible, before the invention of firearms, were swords. The word “sword” is used 93 times in the Old Testament and 10 times in the New. Nowhere in the Bible is a prohibition against the carrying of a sword (arms) for self-defense either stated or implied. In the twenty-second chapter of Numbers, we read the story of the Angel of the Lord, with his sword drawn, blocking the path of the disobedient Prophet Balaam.

Some of Jesus’ Apostles were armed with swords, and in his final instructions to the Apostles at the Lord’s Supper, Jesus advised, “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one”. When the Jews came for Jesus, Simon Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of a servant of the High Priest. Although Jesus restored the ear of the servant, he does not rebuke Peter or any of his disciples for bearing arms for self-defense. At his “trial” before Pilate Jesus replied to questioning with “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”

In the spiritual sense, Christians are subjects of the Kingdom of God, but in the physical sense, while we live we are citizens of our country. In America, where we have enjoyed the blessings of God more than any other nation, partly because of the freedoms secured by our Constitution, it is our duty as citizens, whether as Ministers or laymen, in or out of our churches, to publicly and privately defend and promote the Constitution, the only earthly defense of our liberty. We owe it to our descendents who may have to live here for another thousand years.

For more on this subject, please read the excellent Article by Publius Huldah in the American Clarion.

How the Left uses the First Amendment to destroy our liberty and our culture

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” U.S. Constitution, Amendment I

When the Constitution was presented to the states in 1787 for ratification, it was quickly noted that while it only delegated certain limited powers to the Federal Government, there was no clear language preventing it from exercising powers beyond those delegated. Some states demanded the addition of a Bill of Rights as a condition of ratification. After a long public debate carried out in the newspapers of the day —the eighteenth century equivalent of the Blogosphere— it was agreed that a Bill of Rights would be presented to the states for ratification by the first Congress. The result was the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

In the post-constitution America we live in today, both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are routinely ignored by the Federal government. To add insult to injury, it is not enough that they are ignored by the progressive politicians populating Washington today, over the past century, activists have increasingly learned how to use the Amendments to the Constitution to undermine the historical American Culture and silence opposition. The most egregious distortion of the Constitution is the progressive’s use of the First Amendment to stifle religious liberty and promote its own religious doctrines through legislation, coercion and psychological manipulation. The ultimate purpose is to destroy the Biblical values that are the foundation of the American culture and replace them with the humanistic values that are the foundation of progressivism (American socialism) and other left-wing “-isms”.

Civil laws presuppose moral values and moral values presuppose a religion. At the time of its founding, the prevailing religion of the United States was Christianity; therefore, our Constitution reflects biblical values and civil laws based on the Constitution will reflect those same values. The prevailing religion of modern America is Humanism and thus, civil laws proposed and passed by our progressive legislatures reflect the moral values of Humanism. Progressivism, and the Humanist value system underlying its existence, is antithetical to both the moral values and the political values enshrined in our Constitution. For that reason, it is necessary that the Constitution be overthrown and Christianity be suppressed in order for progressivism to thrive.

The core doctrines of Humanism are based on the principles inherent in the theory of Evolution as expressed in the Humanist Manifestos.

“FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
SECOND: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process.
FIFTH: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.”
~ From Humanist Manifesto I (1933)

“SECOND: Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. They distract humans from present concerns, from self-actualization, and from rectifying social injustices. Modern science discredits such historic concepts as the “ghost in the machine” and the “separable soul.” Rather, science affirms that the human species is an emergence from natural evolutionary forces. As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body. We continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our lives have influenced others in our culture.” ~ From Humanist Manifesto II (1973)

All social and political activities of organized Humanism emanate from the fundamental principle of Evolution. Without it Humanism could not exist. This explains why Humanists panic and become hysterical whenever Creationism is mentioned by an educator or politician. The famous Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925, a publicity stunt dreamed up by George Rappleyea, Manager of a local coal and iron company, to generate publicity for the town of Dayton, Tennessee, drew world wide attention to the controversy between Evolution and Creation. Since that time, Humanist, with the aid of the ACLU and the AHLC have instigated a virtual avalanche of well planned lawsuits, selected for their propaganda value, to promote Humanist values and purge Christian values from our educational, political and societal institutions.

The primary instrument for the suppression of Christian values in education and other institutions has been a perverted interpretation of the First Amendment. Even the most trivial reference to Christian values, or any display of Christian symbols, such as crosses, the Decalogue, crèches, or the wearing of clothing or jewelry containing Christian symbols can result in a student, educator or educational institution being hauled into court, charged with violating the doctrine of “separation of church and state”. The cost in money and time to defend against these allegations has caused many educators to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent any expression of Christian values in an educational settings. This, of course, is the primary objective of the lawsuits in the first place.

On the other hand, Humanist doctrines of situational ethics, LGBT equality, multi-culturalism, open borders, radical environmentalism, wealth redistribution, “reproductive rights”, etc., are routinely taught in lectures and textbooks under the rubric of “social justice” and science. Any protests on behalf of Christian values are routinely met with cries of “freedom of speech, freedom of the press or academic freedom” and the claim of protection under the First Amendment. At the same time protestors are labeled as bigots, racists, homophobes, and religious fanatics, and accused of attempting to “ram religion down the throats of others”. The continual onslaught of litigation and “politically correct” demands by the left against Biblical and historical American values has resulted in the corruption of our culture and the erosion of our liberties. An apt description of the twenty-first century American culture was written by the Apostle Paul two thousand years ago in the Book of Romans.

“…Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

“Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator , who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet .

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient ; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”  Romans 1: 18-32

Freedom of conscience is a psychological reality, not a “constitutional right”. The conscience cannot be affected by coercion, threats, or violence, as the blood of millions of martyrs over the past two thousand years attests. It can, however, be dampened by constant exposure to an immoral environment, well timed propaganda, social pressure, the opinions of others, and misguided teachers of Humanist values. Christian Churches, Pastors and laymen must take a stand against the Humanist values that have permeated our culture over the past century if we are to save our republic and continue to enjoy the blessings of God on our nation. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12