A Christian's Information Filter

We live in the Information Age. News hits us from the four corners of the earth, making the journey in mere minutes. Images flash before us on the screens of televisions, computers, and phones. The Internet hums and thrums in and out of our lives many hours every day, bringing us data on a million subjects, major, minor, serious, absurd, useful, and useless. We have access to more timely information than we know what to do with.

It is becoming harder to remember what it was like before this incessant glut of information enveloped the world. Children and even some young adults have lived their entire lives "plugged in" to the digital universe, facts and figures and fun at their fingertips at any time, day or night. To them, using all the new gadgets and gizmos is as natural as running and jumping. How many grandparents call their grandchildren to help them when the computer or DVR "acts up"? Today's technology is intuitive to them, almost organic and simple.

Even so, it was not very long ago when we were doing things with paper and pencil. Perhaps the big corporations and learning institutions had mainframe computers to crunch heavy data and store important information, but most of us were still using rotary phones and real card catalogs. Many older folks have had a difficult time making the transition from analog to digital. Some refuse to conform at all, conceding only when they have to and only as much as they have to (some may have given up the corded phone but refuse to touch a cellphone). In any case, while the computing and communications industry giants urge us to purchase the newest and fastest technologies, not everyone is so eager to join the information revolution.

And it is no wonder. The level of information inundation is already higher than most people can handle. While the human brain is far superior to any computing device ever made or even imagined, because it is part of a conscious, critical, organic entity, it easily overloads. Unlike a computer, which uncomprehendingly stores all data as strings of ones and zeros, the human mind is aware to some extent of the value, ramifications, and usefulness of the information it receives. People make judgments—sometimes consciously, but probably more often unconsciously—about what goes into their minds, and this has an effect on them over time.

Speaking of good, helpful information—particularly, God's instruction—Solomon advises us about this in Proverbs 4:20-23:

My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.

Other proverbs bring out a similar thought, along with its opposite:

• "The mouth of the righteous is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked" (Proverbs 10:11).
• "The words of the wicked are, 'Lie in wait for blood,' but the mouth of the upright will deliver them" (Proverbs 12:6).
• "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit" (Proverbs 18:21).

The principle that derives from such scriptures is that good words—good information, truth—has a beneficial effect, while bad words cause problems. The Bible, then, supports the well-known catchphrase, "Garbage in, garbage out." We have to make sure that the information we allow into our minds is true and good, while filtering out and rejecting what is false. This has probably never been more critical for Christians to do than in this information-heavy age of the world.

One reason that this is so vital to do is because we are required to make moral and ethical choices on a daily basis, and we make such decisions based on the information we have at hand—or, more correctly, in our minds. If we make a decision—a judgment—based on faulty data, it is probable that our decision will itself be flawed. If we are constantly hearing from the world that 2 + 2 = 5, and we have allowed that information to pass uncritically into our minds and thus into our daily life, then it will not be long before 2 x 2 = 10 and fifteen apples make a dozen.

Such a flawed judgment has happened in the recent mass murders in Newtown, Connecticut. A troubled young man, said to have been a social misfit and prone to rages, gunned down his mother with her own weapon and then proceeded to the local elementary school to kill six adults and twenty students. Hearing of this terrible and tragic event, the nation poured out its sympathy and its desire for justice. In the aftermath, the news has been full of debate about the Second Amendment to the Constitution and the need for stricter gun-control laws. Social media have been inundated by advocates on both sides of the issue, many of them stridently pushing their views on their friends.

It is clear that the American Constitution gives citizens the right to own and bear arms. The Second Amendment was specifically included in the Bill of Rights to allow citizens to fight against, and if successful, overthrow a tyrannical government. The Founders believed that an armed citizenry was the best deterrent against overreaching federal power. Of course, citizens could also own firearms for hunting, shooting, and collecting.

Into this fray have plunged a good many members of God's church, almost all of them on the side of gun and self-defense rights. Christians have the right and freedom to own guns, and many do, using them for hunting and shooting. There is no problem with that. However, some church members have no qualms about owning guns for self-defense, and it is at this point that some serious moral questions arise. If a Christian has a weapon for self-defense, and he and/or his family were attacked in some way, would he use it and would he be justified in doing so? How would God judge his actions, whether he killed the attacker or not? Is killing in self-defense willful murder? Unpremeditated murder? Voluntary manslaughter? Involuntary manslaughter?

Perhaps to begin answering these questions for ourselves, we first need to ask, "Have we ever truly considered what God thinks on the matter, or have we just absorbed what the world says about it?" On questions like these, we need to filter out all of the world's chatter on the subject and find out what information God has provided to us in His Word that reveals His mind on it. If we fail to do this, can we be sure that we have reached a godly decision? As God says in Isaiah 8:20, "To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." There we will find true words to steer us right.

The Specter of Transhumanism

Maximum Ride is a popular science-fiction/action-adventure series, ultimately to be eight books, written by novelist James Patterson. These books, aimed at teens, are loosely based on two novels for adults, When the Wind Blows and The Lake House, also by Patterson. The central conceit in all ten books is that a secret biotechnology laboratory, after many horrible failures, successfully “created” several human-bird hybrids through some sort of genetic engineering. The resultant children—highly intelligent, exceptionally strong, and able to fly due to their having wings—are neither truly human nor truly birds. They are presented as beyond human, better than human. Modern bioethicists would call them posthuman or transhuman.

This idea of evolving or transforming beyond humanity is on a great many minds these days. It is suffused throughout popular culture in books, movies, and television shows. Whether it is accidental enhancement giving Peter Parker spider abilities, succumbing to the bite of a vampire, or growing the next super-race in a test tube, imaginative minds are dreaming about the next step in human development. No matter what the source of the enhancement, there always seems to be an underlying admiration of the resulting superpowers.

We could just laugh these matters off as far out manifestations of the minds of sci-fi writers who drink too many Red Bulls and get too little sleep. Unfortunately, the idea of transhumanism has reached beyond the imagination to the potentially practical, and highly placed and influential people are taking it seriously. Dr. Thomas R. Horn writes in “The Hybrid Age”:

An international, intellectual, and fast-growing cultural movement known as transhumanism supports this vision, as does a flourishing list of U.S. military advisors, bioethicists, law professors, and academics, which intend the use of genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology (Grins technologies) as tools that will radically redesign our minds, our memories, our physiology, our offspring, and even perhaps—as Joel Garreau, in his bestselling book Radical Evolution, claims—our very souls.

The Brookings Institute, a leading Washington, DC, policy think tank, has published a book, Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, in which the authors tackle various issues that “by the year 2025 could stress current constitutional law. The resulting essays explore scenarios involving information technology, genetic engineering, security, privacy and beyond.” The American government, specifically the National Institute of Health, is planning for that day, granting $773,000 to Cleveland’s Case Law School to begin developing guidelines for policy on “genetic enhancement,” as they call the next step in human evolution. Even National Geographic speculated in 2007 that the world would witness the advent of “human non-humans” within a decade. A website, Transhumanist Resources, provides an idea of how extensive transhumanist ideas have permeated today’s world.

Back in 2004, the editors of Foreign Policy asked eight foreign policy intellectuals, “What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?” Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, author of Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, and a former member of the George W. Bush’s President's Council on Bioethics, chose to write about transhumanism. He classifies it as “a strange liberation movement” that seeks “nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints.”

The idea, he admits, is intriguing and attractive. Who would not want to be better, stronger, faster, smarter, and/or healthier than we are now? And is not the story of humanity—under the evolutionary way of thinking—one of change and progress for the better? He writes:

The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnology's tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.

Fukuyama concludes his article, “If we do not develop [a humility concerning our humanity] soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.”

There is also a fear that the public will have little or no say about “progress” in transforming humanity. A June 9, 2008, article in Wired, “Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes,” suggests that military expediency may drive research on these lines:

There’s concern in some corners of the U.S. military about “enemy activities in sleep research,” neuro-pharmaceutical performance enhancement, and “brain-computer interfaces.” And it’s not coming from the Pentagon’s scientific fringe, or from some tin-hat kook with a Defense Department badge. The celebrated scientists on the Pentagon’s most prestigious scientific advisory panel, JASON, are the ones worried about adversaries’ ability “to exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security.”

In other words, some see a kind of arms race heating up—not over nuclear, chemical, or biological weaponry, but over creating better soldiers, ones that can stay awake longer, perform better, and directly interface with weapons technologies. Who can tell what kind of being will be unleashed upon the world as a result?

While these advances may still be years away, the potential for them is becoming more likely all the time. How long until cloning and genetic engineering are done on human beings—or are secret labs or the proverbial mad scientists already experimenting on these things? Will some pharmaceutical corporation come up with a pill that will enhance strength or agility or the ability of one or more of the senses? Will engineers find a way to meld computers or robotics with human tissue to make a cyborg of sorts? People are working on projects that may lead to these kinds of “advances.”

God does not tell us whether He will allow such things to happen or not, but when He saw what was happening at Babel, He said, “Indeed the people are one . . . and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (Genesis 11:6). Even back then, He had to take drastic action to keep mankind from “progressing” to today’s potential and beyond. Perhaps this time, He will send His Son to stop the madness.

Nonsense and Senselessness

When did the world stop making sense? Perhaps it has not made much sense for a long while, but lately it seems to have taken a definite turn toward the nonsensical, especially here in the United States. We Americans pride ourselves on being grounded and self-sufficient, full of practical know-how and a can-do attitude that can solve any problem or overcome any obstacle to our ambitions. Four centuries of history on this continent chronicles the efforts of a nation of pioneers and achievers in just about every area of endeavor. We filled a continent, fed the world, split the atom, and put men on the moon, not to mention our building the world’s most powerful military and becoming the world’s lone superpower. Much of this occurred because men and women used sound knowledge and reason to find ways that work.

Such soundness of mind appears to be rare these days. Unlike the overhyped swine flu, America’s loss of her senses seems to be a true pandemic. All over the country and in many different areas of life, people are making foolish choices, based not on facts and outcomes but on hopes and fears ginned up by Madison Avenue blitzes and eloquent hucksters. All it takes is a pretty or handsome face, a bit of enthusiasm, some flash and sizzle, and the average person is hooked.

The so-called solution to this crisis—healthcare reform, Obamacare—is itself mindboggling in its absurdity. On his August 20, 2009, radio show, Rush Limbaugh, never shy about saying what he thinks about liberal policies and initiatives, commented insightfully:

Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose head, John Conyers, says he doesn't understand it. It'll be passed by Congress that has not read it, signed by a president who . . .smokes, funded by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, his comment does not even consider the details of the massive reform bill passed by the House of Representatives, many of which will radically alter the way Americans will receive and pay for healthcare. In short, the proposed bill will take healthcare choices out of the hands of patients and doctors and give them to government bureaucrats and appointees. Clearly, its proponents eventually want to drag Americans into a single-payer system along the lines of Canada’s or Britain’s government-run healthcare monopolies.

What seems to be lost in all of the dickering over details is the fundamental matter of constitutionality. Does the Constitution of the United States even allow the federal government to run a healthcare system? Instead of being ignored, this should have been the first question America’s elected leaders—sworn to uphold the Constitution—asked themselves, but they are willing to let their negligence pass quietly unnoticed because healthcare reform will accrue far more power to government and its allies than just about any other scheme. In fact, the present hullaballoo created in these town hall meetings does not concern them, as it only deepens and widens the confusion and exasperation among the electorate and validates the idea that healthcare reform is legitimate, necessary, and urgent.

Could this senselessness and confusion be a fulfillment of Bible prophecy? In the blessings and curses chapter, God promises to send a kind of foolish madness upon Israel when the people fail to obey Him:

The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. . . . The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you. (Deuteronomy 28:20, 28-29)

His spiritual people, however, His church, can be spared this plague of irrationality: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7). “We have the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16), giving us the ability to see, ponder, and choose the right with wisdom and foresight. We can expose the nonsense of this world and provide the proven answers from God’s Word (Ephesians 5:11-13).

The apostle Paul advises, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:15-17). As the confusion and nonsense mounts in the world, Christians must make no delay in seeking God and His Word for what makes eternal sense.

The Face of Identity Politics

This week, the country witnessed the heavily televised confirmation hearings on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Besides the rather galling partisan support (read: fawning infatuation) that she received from the majority Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee before whom she appeared, the "wise Latina" from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, obviously intently coached by the Obama administration, deflected and sidestepped most questions concerning her controversial statements, rulings, and associations. While she in no way did this deftly—her comments and answers were often rambling and occasionally non-sequiturs—she did it well enough to avoid causing any fatal harm to her nomination.

However, her answers were disingenuous at the very least. Commenting on Sotomayor's second-day testimony, Georgetown law professor Mike Seidman, an avowed liberal, said: "I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor's testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified." In this instance, he was reacting to one of her answers that obviously contradicted a core belief and practice, that a judge cannot just simply apply the law to the facts of a case—in other words, that a judge must use his or her beliefs, background, and presuppositions to come to a conclusion on a matter. In essence, this is the "empathy" argument that has been so hotly debated since Obama announced her nomination. She went so far in her denial as to say, "I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the President does."

Even early supporters like the Washington Post's Eva Rodrigues wrote: "I'm surprised and disturbed by how many times today Sonia Sotomayor has backed off of or provided less-than-convincing explanations for some of her more controversial speeches about the role of gender and ethnicity in judicial decision-making." She even claimed that she had never read—more, was unaware of—the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund legal arguments in Ricci v. DeStefano, otherwise known as the New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters case. From 1980 to 1992, Sotomayor sat on the board of directors of this nonprofit law group, where she was a top policy maker. Since she had herself ruled on the case—and was later overturned by the Supreme Court—it is almost impossible to believe that she was unaware of what her former organization had argued about it.

This particular case has become the poster child, as it were, for the brand of political and judicial activism that Sonia Sotomayor endorses and practices: identity politics. The case involved a test given to firefighters who wished to be promoted. As it turned out, only whites and one Hispanic achieved the required grades to earn promotion, so New Haven's powers that be decided not to certify the results, claiming that the test was unfair to blacks and other minorities. The lawsuit, by the firemen who passed the test, claimed that New Haven had discriminated against them racially—what is commonly called reverse racism. Sotomayor, along with a small panel of other Second Circuit judges, upheld a lower court ruling that found for the city. Her ruling is one among many in which she decisively favors minorities regardless of the merits of the case.

In another case, Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education (1999), the parents of a black student sued, claiming that their son had been harassed due to his race and that the school had discriminated against him by demoting him from first grade to kindergarten without their consent. The parents maintained that white students in the same situation were treated differently. Due to the lack of evidence of harassment, Sotomayor was forced to agree with the dismissal of that claim, but wrote that she would have allowed the discrimination claim to go forward because the grade-demotion was "contrary to the school's established policies." This, she said in her dissent, along with the school's typical treatment of white students, "supports the inference that race discrimination played a role."

In testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, columnist Linda Chavez urged the Senators not to confirm Sotomayor, saying, "It is clear from her record that she has drunk deep from the well of identity politics." Later in her testimony, she said:

Judge Sotomayor's offensive words [the "wise Latina" statements] are a reflection of her much greater body of work as an ethnic activist and judge. Identity politics is at the core of who this woman is. And let me be clear here, I am not talking about the understandable pride in one's ancestry or ethnic roots, which is both common and natural in a country as diverse and pluralistic as ours. Identity politics involves a sense of grievance against the majority, a feeling that racism permeates American society and its institutions, and the belief that members of one's own group are victims in a perpetual power struggle with the majority.

Chavez went on to cite many instances of Sotomayor's involvement in identity politics, from her undergraduate days to her time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and to her well-known views that the death penalty and English-language requirements are racist. She concluded her remarks with:

Although she has attempted this week to back away from her own words—and has accused her critics of taking them out of context—the record is clear: Identity politics is at the core of Judge Sotomayor's self-definition. It has guided her involvement in advocacy groups, been the topic of much of her public writing and speeches, and influenced her interpretation of law.

There is no reason to believe that her elevation to the Supreme Court will temper this inclination, and much reason to fear that it will play an important role in how she approaches the cases that will come before her if she is confirmed.

The U.S. Constitution, along with its amendments, is a document that recognizes certain rights as granted to Americans regardless of race, origin, religion, creed, gender, and social station. Although it has been used as one, it is not a club by which minorities can beat concessions out of the majority. In both its wording and its intent, every citizen is supposed to receive equal treatment under the law. And the nation's judges all the way up to the Supreme Court are to rule under this principle, taken directly from the Bible:

Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great; you shall not be afraid in any man's presence, for the judgment is God's. (Deuteronomy 1:16-17, emphasis ours)

It is curious that this "wise Latina" cannot understand that, if she fought for impartiality, we would truly have a "color-blind" society, the purported goal of intellectual progressives for decades. Yet, it is naïve to say so, since that is not what they want at all; they want power, not equality. And Sotomayor, the new face of identity politics, will now be in a position to wield it.

Biblical Finance

All the news that is fit to print these days seems to revolve around our hobbled economy. The constant drumbeat of bad financial news is so heavy and insistent that it has become oppressive and, frankly, excessive. Once again, the media are taking every opportunity to scream at us that the sky is falling—or perhaps more descriptively, that our civilization is plunging into a bottomless pit of debt—and the government has responded by going into full crisis-mode. Wall Street investors are behaving like lemmings, running en masse over the nearest cliff every time another bad report comes out. So much for the buy-and-hold strategy.

A few economists and pundits are not as gloomy as the media, the government, and Wall Street. For the most part, these more optimistic observers are of a conservative stripe, faithful to the tendency of markets to correct themselves over time. They believe that the government should keep its nose, fingers, hands, and arms out of the private sector, and stick to its Constitutional role to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." As for promoting the general welfare, the Founders would vehemently deny that they meant bailing out the banks and auto industry.

Obviously, Americans are caught between two rival and irreconcilable schools of economic thought. One side believes in increased governmental regulation, massive infusions of public monies, increased taxation, and a command-and-control economy commanded and controlled by Washington politicians and bureaucrats. The other side counters with decreased regulation, incentives for markets and businesses, decreased taxation, and allowing millions of consumers to choose how they will spend (or save) their hard-earned money. The former is essentially a European-style socialism, while the latter is trickle-down capitalism.

Neither approach is God-ordained, by any means. Both are human-devised systems of economic thought, but they begin with different premises. Socialism starts with the assumption that wealth should be divided equally among all but that the means of production and distribution of that wealth should be a function of the state. Capitalism, on the other hand, is founded on the principles of a person reaping—and keeping—what he has sown and of individual liberty. In the real world, socialism—especially its extreme form, communism—has failed every time it has been tried, while capitalism is responsible in part for the burgeoning economies of the British Empire, America in its heyday, the Asian Tigers, etc.

To repeat, neither of these systems has God's stamp of approval. What capitalism has going for it is that it incorporates several biblical principles into its basic structure, and further, it makes the most of certain elements of human nature. For instance, people like to win, to be "King of the Mountain." Capitalism unleashes the human competitive spirit, making the pursuit of wealth into something like a game—and may the best man or woman win.

However, it has downsides too. For example, perhaps its most egregious failing is that it inspires greed. Many supporters of capitalism fall for the well-known Gordon Gecko line, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good," and they pursue the accumulation of wealth at all costs, leading to all sorts of grievous crimes in the name of profits.

This sin is certainly a factor in the present financial mess we are living through right now. Green-eyed investors gambled on bad home loans leveraged at 30 to 1. Corporations continued to expand beyond their means, even buying out struggling companies to pad their bottom lines. Thinking that the good times would never end, consumers continued to purchase whatever their hearts desired, maxing out their credit cards, signing on to new consumer loans, and taking out second mortgages. Now the piper must be paid, and the money is just not there.

What is God's take on all of this? Obviously, because of the sins involved—greed, dishonesty, theft, oppression, to name a few—He is not pleased, and in fact, we could say that the crisis itself is a predictable, inevitable judgment on the nation for breaking God's law in these areas. When men contravene a law of God, a penalty automatically goes into effect, and the only unknown factors are when and how hard it will fall. America's economic situation—not to mention what the rest of the world is experiencing too—is eliciting comparisons with at least the crisis in the early 1980s, and for some it resembles the Great Depression of the 1930s. Time will tell how severe it will be.

What does the Bible instruct us in these matters? Of course, the Bible is not an economic text, but it does include financial principles that all Christians should know and follow as well as they are able. Here are a few of them:

• God commands that we tithe (Leviticus 27:30; Deuteronomy 14:22). Contrary to the worst aspects of capitalism, God's system is based on giving, not getting. Learning this principle, a part of God's very character, begins with giving Him one-tenth of our income to fund the work of His church. Doing this also helps us to realize what is most important.
• In addition, God commands that we support the needy (Acts 20:35), particularly the widows and orphans, the disabled, the unemployed, and those who, due to circumstances out of their control, need a temporary hand up. This starts with our families, fellow members of the church, and as we are able, others in the world around us.
• God instructs us to avoid debt. "The borrower is servant to the lender," counsels wise King Solomon (Proverbs 22:7). Debt makes us subject, not just to the lender, but also to misfortune and to the unscrupulous. If we have debts, we should have a plan to pay them down as soon as possible and resolve not to incur any new ones.
• The Bible tells us to save so we can pass our wealth to our heirs. Solomon advises, "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children," (Proverbs 13:22). While this is not always feasible, it should be a goal nevertheless, inspiring us—contrary to our fellow American's spendthrift ways—to put a little money aside as often as we can.

The Bible contains other principles, but these are all that space allows. In times like the present, it would make a good Bible study to search the Scripture for them and meditate on their applications to our lives. Perhaps then, we can avoid the worst of the ongoing financial crisis.

The Truth About Earmarks

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If we have heard or watched the news over the past two years or so, it is likely we have caught the word "earmark" in a reporter's mouth at some point. A strange word, certainly, but an earmark is not all that difficult to define once we get beyond its purposely obscure label. Originally, an earmark was just that: a mark made on an animal's ear to identify its owner. Yet, the word's etymology has only a slight connection to its political and financial usage today.

Congress' own definition, a quintessence of legalese, obscures the meaning even further:

"[C]ongressional earmark" means a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, or Senator providing, authorizing or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or Congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula-driven or competitive award process.

The generic definition is far clearer: "funds specified or set aside for a particular purpose." Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to direct appropriations of money drawn from the treasury, including earmarking funds to be spent on specific projects. A member of Congress can use earmarks to take credit for funneling federal monies toward a project in his district. Committee chairs make use of earmarks to negotiate the passage of favored bills or to reward support for them. Another advantage of earmarking is that earmarked funds bypass normal government-agency regulations, and thus they reach their recipients sooner and bound with less red tape. One can see why they are so popular.

The latest furor over earmarks began with the so-called Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere." In 2005, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, a Republican, earmarked $223 million to build a bridge from a town of less than 9,000 to an island inhabited by only fifty people, saving these constituents a short ferry ride. Due to the controversy, the earmark was removed, but the money still went to the Alaskan government, which may still use it for the same purpose.

Earmarking is not a sin of one party or another. Also in 2005, Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii earmarked $574 million for his home state, which is a paltry amount in comparison to the year's total earmarks of $19 billion, which was divvied among 13,496 approved requests, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. (However, the Congressional Research Service says there were 15,877 earmarks for all federal appropriations, totaling $47.4 billion, a significant disparity that may be explained by the use of different definitions of the term.) In 2005, when Republicans had the majority, 35,000 requests for appropriations were made in the House, and by mid-year 2007, 32,000 earmark requests had yet to be considered under the Democrats' control. Obviously, the party in power has the advantage in earmarking, but this does not hinder the minority party from requesting and using earmarks to get what it wants. Earmarking is an equal opportunity practice.

Earlier this year, both houses of Congress passed bills to bring modern fiscal earmarking closer to its agricultural roots. Recall that farmers or ranchers used physical marks on an animal's ear to identify it as theirs. Now congresspersons must attach their names to their earmarks and certify that they have no financial interest in the measure. The law requires members of Congress to own up to their pork!

Earmarks are a touchy political issue. First of all, neither party wants to touch earmarking because doing so would, , eliminate an individual politician's ability to "bring home the bacon" for his district, making reelection more difficult. Second, restricting earmarks would diminish the majority party's arsenal of power-politics weaponry. Thirdly, despite stating that they receive no financial benefits from their earmarks—and perhaps they personally do not receive any—their families often do. In his "Evans-Novak Political Report" on July 25, 2007, Robert Novak exposes the dirty little secret:

In fact, family members of senators and congressmen from both parties and in all regions of the country have for years benefited directly from the "Washington economy" of lobbying firms and government contractors, many of which would not even exist without the infusions of taxpayer money that earmarks provide each year. . . . This has never been considered improper, but few Americans know that a very small number of Washington-connected families negotiate, appropriate and benefit from large expenditures of taxpayer money on a small number of companies through the earmarking process.

Hence the reluctance on the part of most members of Congress to support any kind of earmark reform. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican, is probably fighting a losing battle to make earmarking more transparent, as even his party leadership has decided to let him go it alone. DeMint wants full identification and disclosure of spending requests, the detailed posting of earmarks on the Internet, and the elimination of secret committee earmarks that cannot be challenged in open session. His party leaders, however, are willing to let Democrats—who want these restrictions no more than Republicans do—take the public heat for failing to pass meaningful reform legislation.

What is earmarking then? It is legal plundering of the public treasury for both public and private purposes, a kind of above-the-board payola that Congressmen and –women can use at their discretion to remain in office and to fund their pet projects. As Novak writes, "This has never been considered improper," but only because the Constitution "allows" it and everyone does it. The morality or ethicality of the way this Congressional power is used is rarely discussed.

Scottish jurist and historian Alexander Fraser Tytler is credited with observing:

A democracy . . . can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

This, along with God's promise of coming with a rod against those who gain "treasures of wickedness" (Micah 6:9-16), should brace us for a tumultuous future.

What's Best for America?

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Not long ago, President George W. Bush made one of the most elitist, most egotistical statements in modern American political history. On Tuesday, May 19, 2007, speaking at the nation's largest law-enforcement training center in Glynco, Georgia, he said, "Those determined to find fault with this [immigration] bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don't like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don't want to do what's right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it." Essentially, he equated opposition to his and Ted Kennedy's immigration bill to wanting to destroy America.

Observers of the recent American political scene have been witnesses to many examples of such "I [or we] know better" rhetoric coming from politicians lately. If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not informing us about the need for ethics reform in government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is giving us a good scolding about what is best for the United States in Iraq. Senator Trent Lott recently opined, "Talk radio is running the country, and we have to do something about that problem." And not too long thereafter, a gaggle of politicians—most of whom are admittedly left-of-center—decided that what this country needs in order to do what is best for America is to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, the law that supposedly grants "equal time" to opposing political beliefs.

Beyond the particulars of any political opinion is the underlying philosophy of the politician or citizen. Usually, with a little bit of rumination on a person's stance on an issue, one can deduce at least the outline of his or her philosophy. The philosophy itself, rather than a person's various positions on issues, is more determinative of his ideas about what is best for America. Figure out a politician's philosophy, and his aims become plain.

For instance, how about George Bush and his immigration policies? What do we know about him? What drives him? We can tick off a few points that help us to understand his position:

• He is a political blue blood, that is, his family is among America's political elite and has been since at least the Hoover Administration.
• His family is wealthy, having made its money in West Texas oil and other subsequent ventures. He and his Vice President Dick Cheney have many close ties to Big Business, to the point that they have been accused numerous times of allowing business interests to shape their policies exclusively.
• His father's politics were centrist rather than conservative, and though George W. Bush ran his political campaigns as a "compassionate conservative," he has governed very much like his centrist father. His foreign policy, overshadowed by the Iraq War and the War on Terror, has been resolutely pro-American, but his domestic policies have earned the praise of liberal Democrats.
• His career has been guided by Karl Rove, a political genius whose main idea has been to expand the Republican Party into a "big tent," that is, able to include many ideas and diverse types of people and thus expand the voter base. "Compassionate conservatism" was an idea designed to change the perception of the Republican Party from hard-line conservative, in the Ronald Reagan mode, to welcoming and sympathetic, which, frankly, is the façade of none other than former President Bill Clinton, who made such an "I feel your pain" image work twice.
• As a former governor of Texas, and having grown up in a state with a large Hispanic population, he seems to have a soft spot in his heart for their "plight."

From these few points, we can begin to understand his pro-amnesty stance. First, he thinks he knows better what is best for America because he and his family have been part of the machinery of government for nearly a hundred years. As average Americans, we do not have either the perspective or the experience to make an informed decision on such a momentous issue.

Second, developed nations everywhere are crying out for laborers, and we have a ready pool of cheap labor aching to come here and work. What businessman would not leap at such a gift?

Third, his domestic policies tell us that he believes the socialist lie that America is a tossed salad, a diverse, multicultural nation that can only be enhanced by the addition of millions of immigrants. Is that not how America became great—by the influx of millions of immigrants? So he argues that America should open its arms wide to admit this new wave from the south to enrich its culture with its vigor and dreams.

Fourth, he hopes that, in gratitude for his compassionate stand on this issue, many of these new citizens will register to vote as Republicans, giving the next generation of Bush protégés a leg up in their future elections.

Finally, he can return to Texas as a hero of Anglo-Hispanic relations after his second term, build his presidential library at the University of Texas, and become the kingmaker of the Republican Party for the next few decades. Perhaps my analysis is a bit cynical on this point, but it cannot be too far off the mark in terms of his aspirations. As for reality, the bill's defeat this week makes such a fantasy coming true less likely.

What is best for America? In terms of Constitutional government, exactly what happened this week. The Congressional switchboard had to be shut down because it was receiving too many calls from concerned citizens. Talk radio was wall-to-wall talk on the immigration issue. Pundits and bloggers all gave their opinions. The will of the people became clear, despite the machinations of politicians to ram their destructive bill through. As Abraham Lincoln said, the American government is supposed to be "of the people, by the people, for the people"—not of, by, and for politicians and their elitist cabals.

Of course, what is best for America would be for all Americans to turn to the God of the Bible and begin to follow His ways (Ezekiel 33:10-11). If only they would!

Apologies and Hypocrisy

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Over the past week or so, we have witnessed several examples of a consequence of present-day America's inclusive, diverse, multicultural society. Perhaps we should call our time the "Age of Apology," as it appears that everyone has something to apologize to someone else for. It is as if we are all sitting at the hot-seat end of Oprah Winfrey's couch, sweating under the intense glare of the lights and forced by media scrutiny and public disapproval to confess our trespasses against those we have wronged.

Call Dr. Phil! We need to talk this out.

The apostle Paul writes in Romans 3:10, quoting Psalm 14:1, "There is none righteous, no not one." A few verses later, he paraphrases Psalm 5:9, "Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit" (Romans 3:13). His accusations are just—human beings as a whole and as individuals are guilty as charged. James writes in his epistle, "For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. . . . But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison" (James 3:2, 8). He concludes, "Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so" (verse 10). Offensive speech is unjustified.

However, under America's founding principles, offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . ." Essentially, the Founders severely limited the government's ability to censor speech, writing, or activity that expresses contrarian views. They depended on the overall morality of society to keep such expressions within decent, ethical parameters. A quick look at modern American culture exposes their Pollyannaish trust in the innate goodness of their fellow man.

In a way, then, the public outcry over Don Imus' thoughtless and demeaning "joke" at the expense of the Rutgers women's basketball players fills the role that the Founders hoped would help to rein in offensive speech. Yet, unfortunately, this view is a bit simplistic. Imus is reaping what he sowed, surely, but others who regularly say far worse things—and ultimately far more damaging things—about black women receive a free pass.

As Michelle Malkin has chronicled in a recent column (*offensive language warning*), top-selling rap "artists" verbally abuse black women in their crude, hateful lyrics. Rapper Snoop Dog, a man with an extensive rap sheet of his own, claims that the double standard is warranted:

It's a completely different scenario. [Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about [women] that's in the 'hood that ain't doing [anything], that's trying to get a [black man] for his money. These are two separate things. . . . We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel.

In his illogic, Snoop Dog thinks it is entirely justified to demean young black women in song after song, accompanied by memorable lyrics and a catchy beat because rappers see women as money-grubbing opportunists and because it is "relevant" to the artists' feelings. How this affects the attitudes, self-perceptions, and aspirations of both young black men and women never enters the equation. Yet, if a white man imitates the same "urban" phrases in a foolish attempt at humor, he should be at least publicly excoriated, deprived of employment, and perhaps sued and stifled for the rest of his natural life—and perhaps beyond. While what Imus did is wrong, what the rappers do in hit after hit is pure evil. It is indefensible as "real," as art, as culture, as anything.

Amidst this farce, another major apology became news when Durham, North Carolina, District Attorney Mike Nifong apologized to the three Duke lacrosse players whom he accused of raping a hired exotic dancer a year ago. Nifong, a liberal Democrat running for reelection at the time, made this a high-profile case even though the early evidence cast serious doubt on the accuser's story. Meanwhile, the three young men—though certainly not saints, by any means—were exposed to intimidation (by the Black Panthers), calls for their castration (by feminists at Duke), calls for their expulsion (by a cabal of Duke professors), and general defamation of character (by too many to list). Jesse Jackson, ever eager to denounce racism and capture another fifteen minutes of fame, embroiled himself in the controversy, promising to pay for the accuser's college education.

The lacrosse players lead defense attorney, Joe Cheshire said that Nifong "appealed to the racial divide" and "so-called community activists" agitated the public into a frenzy despite a lack of evidence. "Both sides, white and black, need to turn themselves away from community activists and [those] who see race in everything, . . . [who] see hate. Everything is not racial, everything is not class, . . . everything is not politically correct." On the strength of this concerted agitation, Nifong was reelected—beating a law-and-order black Republican!—and continued his prosecution of the Duke student-athletes.

It is no wonder that they do not accept Nifong's apology as genuine. In their eyes, he is merely trying to save his own bacon and salvage what he can of his professional reputation. He faces almost certain disbarment by the NC State Bar Association, which took the unprecedented action of instigating the procedure itself (normally, it is petitioned by others). It is unlikely to rule against its own ethics violations charges.

And where are the apologies of the Black Panthers, the Duke feminists and teachers, and Jesse Jackson? Where are the apologies of the media outlets who hounded these young men for months? Where is the apology of the false accuser? The air surrounding this travesty of justice contains more than a whiff of hypocrisy. Only certain ones have to apologize, and even then, it is insincere and self-serving. Today, a public apology is meaningless, a mere show of contrition.

The ninth commandment (Exodus 20:16) forbids bearing false witness, and its spirit includes every kind of deception and hypocrisy, however expressed. Jesus teaches in Matthew 12:34-37:

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

The Lord proclaims in Hosea 4:1, "There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land." If we put these scriptures together with the present state of American hypocrisy, we can only reckon that the day of judgment cannot be far off.

Shifting American Values

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Fifteen years ago, the subject of "values" was on everyone's lips, reaching its crescendo during the political campaigns of the time. While the hubbub surrounding those national debates has died down, the importance of the subject to American life has become more critical as society has continued to coarsen and deteriorate in the intervening years. At the time, topics like homosexual unions, partial-birth abortions, ubiquitous Islamic terrorism, global warming, and illegal immigration were barely blips on the radar, while front-and-center were single-motherhood, AIDS, a desultory economy, whether Bill Clinton had inhaled, and George H.W. Bush's "read my lips: no new taxes" promise. To put it another way, in 1992, Americans were glued to the tube to watch Roseanne and Murphy Brown, and in 2007, they watch Desperate Housewives and Two and a Half Men with equal fascination. Plainly, our values have not improved.

While most pundits generalize the divide over values as a societal conflict between the Left and the Right—or Liberals versus Conservatives—this is ultimately an oversimplification. Missing from this analysis is a huge group of Moderates or Centrists that bounce from one side to the other depending on the issue. Beyond this, some groups—like apolitical churches—do not fit on this political-cultural spectrum at all, although they are frequently stuck on the extreme right wing by default. These last groups are unfortunately too insignificant (numerically) and too politically impotent (by choice) to make much of a difference to the pundits.

However, the Liberal-Conservative spectrum is instructive as a starting point in analyzing the foundational values of Americans. These labels divide the nation into progressives and traditionalists—or, in other words, those who promote experimentation and change and those who want to maintain the status quo, respectively. In more philosophic terms, left of center are those who are either passionately or unconcernedly eager to enter the brave new world of relativist humanism, while right of center are those who distrust and resist it with varying degrees of rigor.

What most analysts miss is that the entire spectrum has steadily shifted leftward since at least the early decades of the twentieth century. It has been observed, for instance, that Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan's tax cuts were similar to Liberal Democrat John F. Kennedy's twenty years before. Another example is Richard Nixon's impeachment and subsequent resignation as opposed to Bill Clinton's impeachment and subsequent non-resignation. A third illustration is the press corps' hush-hush attitude toward Kennedy's questionable affairs versus the media's indulgence toward Clinton's peccadilloes. In other words, what is considered to be radical at one time becomes mainstream a generation later. While these examples focus on presidential matters, a similar movement is easily seen in dress, speech, music, visual arts, and even religious belief. If unchecked, values tend to slide downhill.

This shift indicates a major weakness in America's values: They are no longer anchored to immovable principle. Beyond the fact that they are no longer fixed in Scripture, American cultural and political standards have only a tenuous hold on the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution! In order to legitimatize progressive rights—read, "demands"—activist judges must either stretch a Constitutional principle to the breaking point, or appeal to non-American sources, such as United Nations treaties or European Union law, to justify their existence in American jurisprudence. This is why liberal politicians advocate considering the Constitution as a "living"—read, "malleable"—document, while conservatives generally support its "original intent," meaning that its principles are "fixed." To this point—and the odds of returning to Constitutional principles are eroding daily—the progressives are sweeping to victory.

It is America's untethering from Christian and Constitutional values that keeps members of God’s church from appearing anywhere on the Liberal-Conservative spectrum. When the nation upheld a modicum of godly or biblical principles, true Christians could perhaps identify with a fair number of their fellow citizens who were also God-fearing. But now, beyond the chasm that separates us doctrinally from mainstream Christianity, we even find few fellow-travelers who desire a free, sovereign, republican America! In short, whether the issue is religious or patriotic, our views do not even register on the chart.

This is reminiscent of John 15:19: "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." We cannot expect to have much of anything in common with this world, even with our fellow citizens—those we play with, go to school with, or work with. Their values are not our values. Their hopes are not our hopes. Their goals are not our goals. We are called to be different, set apart, sanctified by God.

Later, in His prayer before He was arrested, Jesus asks the Father:

I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. . . . Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. . . . I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. . . . Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. (John 17:9, 11, 14-15, 17)

We are both set apart and kept, or guarded, by God's Word, the truth. It is the certain and authoritative bedrock of our values. As long as we hold on to it firmly, the truth will make us very different from those around us, but it will also guide us and preserve us toward God's Kingdom, where our true citizenship resides. In these days of societal degeneration, of values lurching toward Gomorrah, our foundation stands strong, and we will too, if we keep it firmly under us.

Are We Really Free?

Two hundred and thirty years ago next Tuesday, thirteen American colonies defied the most powerful nation on earth and declared themselves "free and independent States." This bold move, accompanied by the Revolutionary War, had its foundations in the writings of "enlightened" philosophers who had reasoned that each individual was endowed by God with certain rights and freedoms. Among these were "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," along with freedoms of religion, speech, the press, assembly, association, and many others enshrined in America's Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Since then, many other rights and freedoms have accrued to the citizens of the United States. Many of these are corollaries of rights already recognized by the founding documents, while yet too many others have been engineered out of the ether. For instance, perhaps the best-known, totally unfounded right is that of abortion. This derives, says its proponents, from the right to choose and the right to privacy, both of which are missing from the Constitution. The Founders certainly did not, and if alive today, would not want the nation's basic law to allow for the selective murder of innocents. They would be horrified to see how their ethical and noble masterpiece of human law has been perverted.

Some of our freedoms have been so curtailed or twisted as to be unrecognizable. The evolution of the freedom of religion is perhaps the most egregious example, which began with the elevation of "separation of church and state" from a phrase lifted from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to constitutional dogma. The Constitution guarantees only that the government would not establish a state religion and that Americans are free to worship as they choose. It says nothing at all about prayer in schools or governmental meetings, Bible passages or references to God on government buildings or grounds, or any interaction between religious organizations and government. Truly, as has often been said, we no longer have freedom of religion but freedom from religion. It has been turned on its head.

The Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right to bear arms, has been similarly violated. It may no longer be politically correct to say so, but in the Founders' minds, this right had three applications: Arms were necessary for 1) hunting animals for food, 2) protecting oneself from predators and hostiles, and 3) defending oneself against the tyranny of the government. Today, there are myriads of laws defining this basic right down to a mere whimper of its former bang. Studies have shown time and again that an armed citizenry makes for a safer society because both criminals and governments have to respect the potential for retaliation. While the sixth commandment certainly forbids aggressive self-defense (Exodus 20:13; 21:12-14; 22:2-3; etc.), in a carnal society the freedom to bear arms actually provides a necessary deterrent to violence.

The Founders would be aghast at the Kelo v. City of New London ruling last year, which essentially allows governments to condemn existing properties in favor of more tax-lucrative enterprises. The right to property was among their highest principles; to them it almost by itself defined a free man. That the Supreme Court of the land would use their writings to justify the outright theft of a citizen's land would be unconscionable to them. On top of this are all the frequently nitpicky statutes and regulations that limit—and sometimes even prohibit—how a person uses his land. In essence, the once sacred right to property has been minimized to a kind of feudal system of ownership, in which the government (the overlord) has the last say in how property is utilized and disposed, plus it demands and takes an exorbitant share of its value in taxes.

Finally, though this does not exhaust the list, we no longer have equality under the law. There are too many examples to name, but maybe the most obvious is the "hate crime." If a man assaults another man, he gets x amount of time in jail or a fine of x dollars. However, if the other man he strikes is a homosexual—that is, a protected minority—he will receive x+ in penalties from the judge. Sometimes, even if the minority status of the aggrieved person is not pertinent to the crime—that is, there is no malice involved—the perpetrator will still receive a heavier sentence. In reality, this means that an injured minority has a higher value than an injured member of the majority. This miscarriage of justice occurred in the landmark case of the 1998 beating death of gay University of Wyoming freshman Matthew Shepard. He was murdered, not because he was a homosexual, but because he had failed to pay his drug supplier! While this is an extreme case, similar inequalities have removed the law's impartiality and restricted the average citizen's supposedly inalienable rights.

These five examples are just the tip of the gargantuan iceberg of lost freedoms and rights—we did not even mention those stripped by the Patriot Act. How free are we, then, if so much has been taken away? What are the chances that these rights will be returned? Although it has happened from time to time, government does not have a good record of willingly returning powers it has arrogated to itself. This is why Jefferson recommended "a little revolution now and then" to restore the proper balance.

True Christians, whose "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20), have an advantage over the unconverted citizen of an earthly nation: We can feel free—and actually be free—despite the encroaching bondage to national government. Jesus discusses this in depth in John 8, saying that true freedom resides paradoxically in submission to Him and to His truth (see verses 31-32; see Romans 6:15-23). In fact, one is never truly free until he comes to this point, no matter what his political circumstances!

Every individual is enslaved to his own nature and so to the deceptive whims of the god of this world, who is the father of that nature (II Corinthians 4:4; John 8:37-44). Thus, to be free, one must overcome both his own nature and the influence of Satan, which is mimicked in the cultures of this world, and this is only possible through belief in Jesus Christ and, as He put it, "abid[ing] in His word" (John 8:31). So a Christian is called to liberty (Galatians 5:13), one of loving self-control and outgoing concern.

This is the only true way to be free.

The Frustrations of Good Men

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Within this past week, I finally finished David McCullough's 2001 bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner, John Adams, a book I have been wading through since sometime in 2004. My slow progress was not for lack of interest, since the book is a well-written, informative, and insightful account of the life of one of the nation's founders, who has, sadly, not received the credit he deserves. No, I simply neglected it during busy times and allowed other interests to interfere, something that seems to happen all too often these days.

From the book's earliest chapters, McCullough shows that John Adams was a breed apart. He was not just intelligent, but diligent, thoughtful, and incisive. His parents reared him to hold firm principles of personal conduct and public responsibility, and he embraced them with little variance for the rest of his long life. He read the classics in their original languages, studying deeply into the ideas of great men down through the ages, yet he never wavered from his understanding of God's sovereignty in the affairs of mankind and of individuals (unlike many of the Founders, Adams was not a Deist).

One instance will illustrate his pugnacious adherence to his principles. As a young lawyer, he courageously defended the British soldiers indicted for killing colonists during the Boston Massacre because he believed in everyone's right to a vigorous defense and a fair trial. He managed to have six of them acquitted, while two received manslaughter sentences (under the law of the day, these last two should have hanged, but they were instead branded on the thumb). Throughout his life, even during his presidency, he would continue to act against popular opinion in order to remain steadfast to principle. Such principled stands played a substantial role in his loss to Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election.

Several times in his life, he complained to his wife, Abigail, of the corrupt, degenerate nature of humanity, which he observed daily while practicing law or in his political dealings. He sometimes despaired because of man's duplicity and thirst for power. During his long political career, his foremost worry was that the fledgling country would dissolve into bickering, petty parties that would elevate partisan gains over the common good. In fact, his chief criticism of Jefferson—an on-again, off-again friend over the last fifty years of his life—was that the tall Virginian played party politics, which Adams considered low, brutal, and contemptible (so much so that, as a point of pride, he never campaigned or even asked others for their votes).

Through his early training in God's Word, his immersion in the classics, and his own shrewd observations of men, Adams held that human nature was not intrinsically good, as others of his time believed, but that it was corrupt, deceptive, grasping, ambitious, cruel, greedy, and susceptible to all sorts of evils. For this reason, he included and insisted on a clear separation of powers, along with checks and balances, in the Massachusetts state constitution, which he wrote (James Madison, by the way, used Adam's constitution as one of his templates in his drafting of the U.S. Constitution). Adams argued that man must be restrained by law, or else in his "liberty" he would selfishly take advantage, corrupting the government and ultimately the nation.

Nevertheless, despite such constraints founded in the bedrock of the Constitution, Adams felt frustrated by the open corruption of men. He had done his best to enshrine noble principles in the nation's founding documents, but even his strident efforts proved ineffective in curbing humanity's predatory nature. The no-holds-barred political brawls (and even one physical brawl on the floor of the House of Representatives) between the Federalists—advocates of a strong central government—and the Republicans—believers in states' and individual rights—during both Washington's and his own term in office provided proof to him that men, even those he at one time considered to be patriots, would use every means at their disposal to win. He could only conclude that "victory at any cost" is the norm among human beings.

If he bewailed the situation then, when the first signs of corruption in American government were hatching, what would he think of the situation today, when it is in full flight? Were he transported by time machine to our day, he would rejoice and wonder at our power and prestige but weep over our spiritual, cultural, and political condition. He would surely wail, "What have you done to our noble nation?"

This attitude is one of which God approves. Notice Ezekiel 9:4-6:

. . . and the Lord said to [the angel], "Go through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it." To the [other angels] He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple.

We live in a time of great abominations, of terrible transgressions of God's perfect standard and way of life. We see our culture degenerating daily before our eyes. We hear of corruption in politics, business, and just about every other area of life. Our children are growing up in an era of great affluence poisoned by mounting rejection of authority and truth. Our society is swiftly devolving into the kind of which God says, "[E]veryone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).

Does this frustrate us? Does this sadden us? Does this make us yearn for the second coming of Jesus Christ in power to solve the mess mankind has made? Yes, it should, but while we grieve, we need to keep faith and hope strong because we have God's promise to act in justice.

Then [Jesus] spoke . . . to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: ". . . And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:1-2, 7-8)

Teaching Respect for Property

From last week's essay, it is apparent that Constitutional protections of private property ownership have been eroded over the past several decades, not just by major Supreme Court decisions, but also by the steady encroachment of socialism into American culture. At the ends of the day, socialism is about state control, if not outright ownership, of the wealth-producing mechanisms of a country, and as the axiom says, all wealth ultimately comes out of the ground. When government begins to confiscate private properties and businesses in order to nationalize huge sectors of the economy, socialism is entering its final stages. The United States is, thankfully, not there quite yet.

Nevertheless, the groundwork has been laid. This is seen, first, in the general acceptance of governmental powers, particularly federal power, in areas that the Founders of this nation would be aghast to discover. Originally, federal power was severely limited to three major areas: defense, justice, and foreign policy. Beyond these, Congress was given the power to make necessary laws, coin money, and collect taxes. It was thought that the separation of powers and the various checks and balances would inhibit the growth of the government’s power. However, we now see the government regulating everything from car seats to cold medicine. The U.S. has so many arcane laws—federal, state, and local—that every citizen is a lawbreaker in one way or another.

The basis for full-blown socialism is also seen in the attitudes of the average citizen, especially young people, toward private property. One of the most visible manifestations of this attitude is the proliferation of insular, planned communities in which powerful homeowners’ associations police property owners on such “vital” matters as flagpole and fence heights, paint colors, and yard décor. Does a person really own his property if he can enhance and maintain it only according to the directives of an oversight committee? This is socialism in action.

It is becoming more obvious that children are not being taught to respect private property. Perhaps this is a failing on the part of parents and/or a product of government schooling, which was set up in the early- to mid-1900s by socialist educators like John Dewey. Whatever the cause, children no longer recognize boundaries between, say, public roads and private yards. Back in the day, parents taught their children that a neighbor’s driveway was his property, and that they should not use it unless they had a specific reason to be there and had the owner’s consent. They were also taught not to use neighbors’ yards as a short cut to somewhere else. It was also a given that a neighbor’s yard was not to be regarded as a trash dump for their candy wrappers, drink cans, and other assorted litter, nor was it a community garden in which they could dig holes, take topsoil, and remove mulch, flowers, leaves, branches, and fruits and vegetables at their whim.

Why are so many parents not teaching their children these basic principles?

Perhaps the primary reason is that they do not consider it all that important because they themselves do not have a great deal of respect for others’ possessions. In the great game called “keeping up with the Joneses,” diminishing the neighbor’s property increases one’s own. Envy and competition, hallmarks of rabid American materialism, can cause normally good neighbors to exhibit less-than-stellar attitudes and behaviors, which children are quick to mimic.

Another reason stems from the quickening pace of life; there is just so little time anymore to pass on these necessary principles. Parents are harried from the time they awaken to the time they fall wearily back into bed at night, and much of their time in between is spent away from home, not with their kids. Many parents likely justify this neglect by saying, “Who has time to take little Johnny aside and teach him the wisdom of the ages? Aren’t they supposed to be doing that at school?” But just the opposite of this latter question is true: Public schools, heavily influenced by “social studies” and liberal policies advocated by the teachers’ unions, push social values that sound as if they come from the Communist Manifesto rather than the Bible, the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence.

Yet a third reason, perhaps the most elusive to define, may be a nagging feeling among many adults that they do not really control anything, even what they supposedly own. This malaise arises from a multitude of factors present in American society: the aforementioned ubiquitous government power, oppressive personal and national debt, constant and fruitless bickering among politicians, the constant drumming of the media on bad news, increasing awareness of crime and terrorism, frequent and deadly natural disasters, the looming specter of recession or unemployment—in a word, a kind of hopelessness. Why teach Jimmy to take care of the car when the bank is just going to repossess it anyway? Why scold Sally about defacing her school locker when the government has billions of our dollars to fix things just like that? Why get all hot and bothered about passing on such values when life is worth so little and it may be snuffed out tomorrow? Too many believe that events are spinning out of control, and they are fatalistically just along for the ride.

Despite these purported reasons not to do so, teaching our children to respect the property of others is a righteous activity. The eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15), acts as the underlying principle of this responsibility, for trampling another’s rights of ownership is essentially stealing from him. At its mildest, it is abrogating his privilege to say how his property is treated. At its worst, it is downright robbery.

In the Gospels, our Savior says a great deal about stewardship, the overarching concept regarding the maintenance, use, and development of property, either one’s own or another’s (see, for instance, Luke 12:35-39; 16:1-8; 19:12-27; also, from the apostles, I Corinthians 4:1-2; Titus 1:7; I Peter 4:10). It is our duty as Christian parents to instruct our children about proper stewardship of first our and their possessions, and then the treatment of other people’s belongings. This will lay the right foundation for the more important stewardship of God’s gifts and blessings that leads to great reward in His Kingdom (Matthew 24:45-47).

The Obsolescing Right

Thursday, September 29, 2005, the Cato Institute’s “Daily Dispatch” ran this item concerning the debate over President Bush’s choice of John Roberts, Jr., as the seventeenth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court:

In “The Key Issue for the Court Isn't Abortion,” Edward H. Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute, writes: "[A]bortion is a serious issue. . . . But the fact that the abortion debate so controls the debate over judicial philosophy is unfortunate. There are more important issues out there, such as federalism and private property rights, the cornerstones of our liberty."

The Cato Institute is a libertarian or “market-liberal” organization, stressing Constitutional freedoms along with a laissez-faire economic philosophy. As such, it tends to uphold individual rights as understood by the more conservative, constructionist jurists, though not exclusively (for instance, its support of medical marijuana runs counter to many conservatives’ positions).

It is in this light that we should see Crane’s comments regarding the “right” to abortion versus private property rights. That a woman should be free to kill her fetus was never even remotely contemplated by those who attended the Constitutional Convention, while property rights were front and center, since many of the representatives were wealthy landowners. They were there to embed basic rights and protections regarding property ownership in the very bedrock of American government. They understood that private ownership of property, particularly of land and of businesses, was a bulwark against tyranny and autocracy.

However, over two hundred years later, private property rights in the U.S. are slowly being abridged and are creeping toward obsolescence. Perhaps the greatest blow to this essential freedom occurred just a few months ago, as Crane notes, in “Kelo v. City of New London, where in a 5-to-4 vote the Supremes ruled it was fine for a local government to use the frightening power of eminent domain, not for public use as stated plainly in the Fifth Amendment, but for private gain that would generate added tax revenues for the city.” In response to the groundswell of opposition to this foolish decision, perhaps Congress, in concert with the states, will soon act to reverse Kelo.

Beyond this singular decision, property rights have been increasingly eroded as long as socialism has expanded in American government and culture. On its face, socialism—the, to some, outwardly beautiful, natural child of communism—emphasizes the larger group, in this case, the state, at the expense of the individual. It engulfs a person under wave after wave of restrictive laws and social programs that make him both increasingly subject to and dependent on the state, since his wages are confiscated through heavy taxation and government services are proffered in return.

As the socialist state approaches outright communism, it further curbs private ownership and simultaneously nationalizes both land and critical business sectors (utilities, communications, transportation, etc.). Though the U.S. has not reached this point—and fortunately the American psyche is highly sensitive to restrictions on private ownership—the process is underway, as growing federal holdings, extensive environmental building restrictions, and numerous centrally planned “growth” schemes indicate.

While some try to see a biblical basis for socialism in the experience of the early church (for instance, Acts 2:44), the overwhelming perspective of the Bible upholds private property rights. As early as Abraham (Genesis 23:17-18), God’s people are shown buying and selling all manner of property. Moreover, the laws God gave to Israel concerning property assume individual ownership—indeed, one could say that the tenth commandment (Exodus 20:17: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house,” etc.) makes property ownership a sacred right. Each person is to be satisfied with what God has blessed him and not crave what his neighbor owns.

Bits of biblical property law appear throughout the Old Testament, as in Deuteronomy 19:14, “You shall not remove your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land. . . .” Simply put, each individual or family owned specific plots of land whose boundaries were not to be violated. God later promises terrible retribution on Judah for doing just this: “The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark; I will pour out My wrath on them like water” (Hosea 5:10).

A main feature of the Jubilee was the repossession of land by its original owner, even if he had been forced to sell it due to debt in the intervening years (Leviticus 25:13-17). God set down rather strict rules regarding the sale and purchase of family lands so that Israelite society would have its base in individually owned properties that remained within families through inheritance. For example, when Ahab pressures Naboth to give him his vineyard, the Jezreelite responds, “The LORD forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers to you!” (I Kings 21:3). After Naboth is dead through Jezebel’s machinations, and Ahab has taken possession of the vineyard, God harshly condemns their blatant abuse of authority, cursing them to ignominious deaths (verses 17-24).

In the New Testament account of Ananias and Sapphira’s sin, Peter voices the basic, biblical principle of private property ownership: “While it [their land] remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it [the profit] not in your own control?” (Acts 5:4). Even while the brethren “had all things in common” (Acts 4:32), private property rights were not set aside. The entire New Testament operates under this view, to the point that the Mark of the Beast involves abolishing true Christians’ right to buy and sell (Revelation 13:17).

God believes in ownership: “For the world is Mine, and all its fullness” (Psalm 50:12). He allows us to own things under Him to teach us wonderful lessons pertaining to stewardship and authority so that we can learn to be more like Him and eventually exercise great responsibility in His Kingdom (see the parable of the minas in Luke 19:11-27). Sadly, the ever-weakening right to property in this nation is another state of affairs that exposes just how far America has drifted from God and biblical principles.