Socialism's Inherent Contradiction

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," July-August 2010

Ever since March 23, 2010, when President Barack Obama penned his signature on "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"—known by its opponents as "Obamacare"—the political landscape in the United States has been in turmoil. The Tea Party, a grassroots conservative movement determined to see Constitutional government restored to America, has fielded candidates across the nation in hopes of sweeping spendthrift, elitist members of Congress out of office in order to overturn the mountain of socialist legislation that has conferred crushing debt on Americans for generations to come. As of this writing, polls project that it will succeed in returning control of the U.S. House to Republicans, and a majority in the Senate is not out of reach.

Socialist policy—like that seen in universal healthcare, welfare, the many bailouts of banks and corporations, and the stunningly ineffective stimulus packages—appears to be so good and helpful that no one should want to oppose it. It provides money and other assistance to the old, poor, infirm, and disadvantaged, giving them a helping hand in their time of need. If that were all that it did—and sadly, this is all that a majority of the public think that it does—it would be admirable. Scripture is full of injunctions to aid the helpless (see, for instance, Deuteronomy 15:11; Proverbs 31:9; Galatians 2:10; etc.).

However, behind the mask of good intentions, socialism is a blood-sucking, whip-wielding monster, a fiend that wants nothing more than to pillage, enslave, and exercise increasing power over whole nations. Behind its claims to advocate for the "little guy" and its lofty rhetoric about "social justice," socialism is all about social, economic, and governmental control. Rather than give the individual liberty to make choices based on what is best for himself, his family, and his nation, socialists demand that an elite group of knowledgeable "experts"—usually members of the government, often faceless bureaucrats—should make those decisions for the people.

Noted libertarian economist Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the author of many books, writes in a recent opinion piece:

The primary goal of communism and socialism is government ownership or control over the means of production. In the U.S., only a few people call for outright government ownership of the means of production. They might have learned that government ownership would mess things up. Instead, they've increasingly called for quasi-ownership through various forms of government regulation, oversight, taxation and subsidies. After all, if someone has the power to tell you how you may use your property, it's tantamount to his owing it.¹

In America, then, a "pure" form of socialism is not in play, but the progressive policies of the political Left are achieving the same ends by covert means. Some have called it "stealth socialism." It has been sold to the American people as a more compassionate and even "Christian" alternative to the rugged individualism of traditional American capitalism. In this way, it is easy to see that it promises to replace "selfish" and "unequal" self-reliance with reliance on the state under the guise of sharing and equality.

Due to this incremental advance, which has shifted into high gear under the Obama administration, Americans have a fading opportunity to recognize where full-blown socialism has led in other places where it has been tried (and been found wanting). While U.S. socialism is nowhere near this point, the following examples of twentieth-century socialism show that the accumulation of power and control by the state inevitably leads to its use and abuse, as Lord Acton's well-known dictum—"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"—warns.

Despite progressives' denials of a link, Nazism was a form of socialism—just note that its real name was the National Socialist German Workers' Party. It promoted a dictatorship that started and prosecuted a devastating World War and a holocaust that took the lives of nearly 21 million people. The former Soviet Union was officially named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—shortened to the acronym U.S.S.R. During its 70-year reign of terror, it was responsible for killing just under 62 million of its own citizens! Communist China, however, committed the worst atrocities, causing the deaths of an estimated 76 million people between 1949 and 1987.²

Thus, the inherent contradiction in socialism is exposed. While promising a better life to the less fortunate through the redistribution of wealth and the opening of opportunities, it takes a death-grip on the lives of its citizens. Control tightens and liberty disappears. The promised wealth and opportunity never materialize except to those few selected to join the ruling oligarchy. Want and misery spread, producing hopelessness, shortening life spans, and stirring revolt, which is put down with devastating force. What begins with soothing words and wonderful promises ends on the point of a bayonet.

For this world, on the other hand, the Kingdom of God will begin with Christ returning with power and a rod of iron to put down the perverse rule of ungodly men (Revelation 19:11-21), and as God's way is taught and implemented, will bring to pass all the wonderful promises of true peace, freedom, and prosperity found in Scripture (see Isaiah 2:1-4; 9:6-7; 65:17-25). While some would see divine monarchy as the ultimate in dictatorship and control, the exact opposite is true. God's government is based, not on power, but on love and service (Luke 22:25-27), and its citizens freely submit themselves to its rule and reap the blessings (James 4:10).

The prophet Jeremiah writes: "O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). Human forms of government are not the answer. Only those that incorporate godly principles have any hope of success in a world governed by satanic human nature, and even these eventually fall into corruption. Man's only true hope is God's Kingdom, which we pray comes quickly.

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Endnotes

1 Williams, Walter E., "Leftists, Progressives and Socialists," Townhall.com, October 20, 2010 (http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/10/20/leftists,_progressives_and_socialists).

2 Rummel, Rudolph J., "20th Century Democide," Death by Government (revised online), New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers, 1994 (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM).

Is This How to Fix a Broken Economy?

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," March-April 2009

Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, a key economic adviser to President Barack Obama, told a Congressional hearing in January that "the economy is broken." Does anyone else find this a bit extreme? The economy is certainly performing poorly but "broken"? It may be in recession, but the American economy has climbed out of recessions many times before, even a Great Depression.

Perhaps we need to start at the beginning and relearn what an economy is. Webster's Dictionary defines economy as "thrifty and efficient use of material resources: frugality in expenditures; also an instance or a means of economizing: saving." The fourth definition listed provides "the structure of economic life in a country, area, or period." Economics is "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." Blending these together, a sound economy would be "a thrifty and efficient structure and means of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in a country or area."

These days, such a thing sounds as rare as a dodo bird.

Most nations want to be peaceful and prosperous. Peace usually occurs when a nation has good relations with its neighbors and, in a dangerous, violent world, a strong enough military to deter any potential adversary. Prosperity also usually requires peaceful relations with neighboring countries along with the aforementioned "thrifty and efficient structure and means of production," etc. However, this seems not to be the aim of the United States under the Obama Administration, as it has not been the aim of a majority of European nations for more than a generation.

No, America no longer seeks to maintain its military and economic power as its prime directives, but according to the words and actions of the President, to be loved abroad and to achieve fairness at home. These are the goals, not of a confident, optimistic, growing nation, but of a guilt-ridden, self-absorbed, declining state whose rulers hope that righting all the perceived wrongs will grant them a measure of self-respect and an echo of the nation's former glory. As we are witnessing, such goals do nothing more than to earn further contempt internationally and a bottomless pit of debt domestically.

To these ends, the Obama administration has opted to compound former President George W. Bush's final mistake, as he put it, "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." The young administration has abandoned the free market entirely, plunging the country into socialism at break-neck speed. Socialism is defined as "a system or condition of society in which the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the state." In Marxist theory, by the way, socialism is the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.

Thus, over the last few months, the nation has taken on trillions of dollars of debt to "rescue" banks and automobile manufacturers, to try to put millions of unemployed people back to work, to shore up the mess that government-mandated relaxed rules made of the housing industry, and finally, to reward liberal groups and constituents with billions of dollars of "pork" projects. In so doing, the President has become the de facto head of banks, financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and two of America's "Big Three" automakers. In addition—as he promised to do during the Presidential campaign—he is engaged in redistributing the nation's wealth, not along the lines of merit based on hard work and diligence, but by handpicking the winners and losers based on "righting past wrongs" and "evening the score" for the downtrodden.

Despite capitalism's downsides—greed, exploitation, competition—it is a far-superior economic system to socialism. Within the bounds of Christian ethics, it not only permits but also encourages growth and prosperity. For example, while the average American gave at least lip service to Judeo-Christian principles, capitalism was responsible for the growth of U.S. per capita gross domestic product from $1,048 in 1820 to $18,317 in 1989 (using real 1985 dollars). In other words, an individual in 1985 produced 17 times more for the economy than his ancestor in 1820—growth that was mirrored in income.

Because it is based on the ownership of property, capitalism functions properly only under conditions of individual liberty. With land comes the ability to produce a product—whether vegetation, livestock, lumber, ore, etc.—a craft, or a service based on those raw materials. The product, craft, or service can then be bartered or sold to someone who needs it. Using his own labor and talents, a person can succeed as much as he desires; he has the ability to choose his own level of effort and income. In this way, each individual has ownership and control over his destiny.

Yet, socialism demands that freedoms be curtailed or removed. While advocates of socialism extol it in terms of "equality" and "fairness," socialist societies are always governed by a ruling elite that accrues power, wealth, and privilege to itself. Everyone else is forced to share what little remains. Already, Americans' power and control—the choices and liberties of "We the people"—are disappearing quickly, and a command-and-control economy and its attendant nomenklatura are taking their places.
These political, bureaucratic, and corporate "names"—and their allies in media and entertainment—are manipulating the levers of power to regulate and control every facet of government, business, education, energy, healthcare, etc. Ultimately, beyond their personal, individual lusts for power, their goal is to erase sovereignty and join other nations in world government to fulfill their utopian dreams.

So, rather than fix our "broken" economy, they are using it to advance their agenda. Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, cynically told the Wall Street Journal Digital Network on November 19, 2008: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." If it can keep the American people in a perpetual state of crisis, there is no telling what radical change this administration can effect. With only a few months of power under its belt, it has time to turn the American way of life on its head.

So Much for Global Warming

Forerunner, "WorldWatch," January-February 2009

If nothing else, it would be great theater to watch Al Gore and all the other apostles of global warming have to explain before Congress why America should spend billions of dollars on "green" initiatives like "cap and trade" when the data show the earth has not experienced overall warming since 2001. Of course, this will never happen because, as Gore and the mainstream media have already stated, the debate is over. Global warming, caused by human activity, is a fact and here to stay, whether we like it or not and all facts to the contrary notwithstanding.

Other than this "debate is over" statement being an out-and-out lie, it is audacious and tyrannical in its dismissal of the opposing viewpoint and its adherents. The idea of imminent and catastrophic climate change has become so politically correct that any naysaying is summarily condemned as heresy—and the naysayer, be he genius or merely commonsensical, is hysterically tagged as a "climate-change skeptic," a label that will kill any of his hopes for promotion, grant money, or media attention, should he desire it.

But the rest of us, the average Joe and Jane Public, have noticed that the weather patterns over the past few years have not supported all the hot air coming from the global warming crowd. In fact, Lord Christopher Monckton, who once advised British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, reported in his keynote address to the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change that temperatures "have been plummeting at a rate equivalent to 11 Fahrenheit degrees per century throughout the four years since Gore launched his mawkish, sci-fi comedy horror B-movie [An Inconvenient Truth]."¹ In other words, the earth is cooling faster than it was warming!

How has this happened? Clearly, despite humanity's tendency to pollute and corrupt various areas on the planet—a tendency God promises to punish mankind for (Revelation 11:18)—the ability of man to effect drastic, catastrophic climate change, short of a nuclear exchange, is nominal. While many scientists claim that routine human activities like driving automobiles and mowing lawns cause global warming, they have so far been unable to marshal the facts to support this assertion. Even adding bovine flatulence to the mix—an action gaining support among greens worldwide—cannot account for climate change.

David mused, though admittedly on another subject, "What is man?" (Psalm 8:4). Next to the great processes of nature that God designed and that we still do not understand or appreciate, mankind stands puny and weak. It would take a force of far greater energy and magnitude to produce sudden, global climate change. That colossal force is our own sun.

Recent observations of the sun, compared to historical records of sunspot activity, tell us what is actually happening. John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, states in a January 1, 2009, letter to then-President-elect Barack Obama's nominated science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, and nominated NOAA administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco: "[G]lobal warming is over; a new cold climate has arrived."

Casey's letter explains that our instruments are detecting no significant sunspot or solar flare activity. Solar activity is a measure of the sun's overall power output, which varies in cycles of 11 years. Yet, in this cycle, the sun has been alarmingly quiet—so quiet that some scientists wonder if we are entering a new Maunder Minimum, a climate event that signals frigid winters and cold summers and that can last as long as a century. Writes Casey:

According to national and international sources that monitor the Sun, what is happening on and in the Sun is nothing short of record setting, astounding, and at the same time worrisome. The solar wind is at its lowest level in fifty years. The surface movement on the Sun has slowed to record rates and according to NASA's previous announcements is "off the bottom of the charts." Most telling is the current prolonged lack of sunspots between the normal 11 year solar cycles 23 and 24 which is about to set a one hundred year record for time without sunspots. NASA also has long since forecast that cycle 25 will be "one of the weakest in centuries." All of these events in combination leave little doubt that a "solar hibernation" lasting several decades delivering the coldest weather in over two centuries has in fact arrived.²

The unfortunate—and perhaps ultimately tragic—reality is that these scientific facts make no difference to those pushing the global warming agenda. The reason for this political shrug of the shoulders is that for a long time the environmental movement has been less interested in nature than in money and control. Its adherents have rather used nature to their advantage to extort money from both the public and private sectors and to wrest political control to force draconian changes on governments, particularly the United States. That nature is not cooperating by cooling instead of warming has forced the environmental movement cynically to change its focus from "global warming" to "climate change."

This means that its aims to legislate "cap and trade" rules will move forward. Its insistence on often unreliable³ compact fluorescent light bulbs—which due to containing five milligrams of mercury are themselves hazardous if broken, and thus they cannot simply be thrown away⁴—will continue. Though on-site measurements show the opposite, its hysterical claims that sea levels are rising and that various Pacific islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu will succumb to the waves will still be brought forward as "proof" of catastrophic climate change.⁵ And most famously, pictures of polar bears on supposedly shrinking icebergs will still be used to tug at our heartstrings (of course, data that the polar bear population is actually holding steady or even rising slightly will go unmentioned).⁶

In the meantime, we might do well to buy a good coat.

Endnotes

¹ Lord Christopher Monckton, "Great Is Truth, and Mighty Above All Things," Telegraph.co.uk, March 12, 2009 (http://www.heartland.org/full/24881/Great_Is_Truth_and_Mighty_Above_All_Things.html).
² John L. Casey, Space and Science Research Center Press Release, January 8, 2009 (http://www.spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcpressrelease12009.doc).
³ Leora Broydo Vestel, "Do New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don't Work?" NYTimes.com, March 27, 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/energy-environment/28bulbs.html?_r=2&hp).
⁴ Joseph Farah, "Consumers in dark over risks of new light bulbs," WND.com, March 16, 2007 (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55213).
⁵ Christopher Booker, "Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told,'" Telegraph.co.uk, March 28, 2009 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html).
⁶ Juliet O'Neill, "Canada not holding back on polar bear protection: Prentice," Canwest News Service, March 19, 2009(http://www.canada.com/Technology/story.html?id=1406966).

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.

A Day of Inconvenient Truths

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Former presidential candidate and senator from Tennessee, Albert Gore, Jr., spent the first half of 2006 jet setting throughout the United States and Europe to tout his new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. In it, he proclaimed the end of the world as we know it, but despite his Bible Belt origins, his apocalyptic vision does not include even a whiff of biblical prophecy. He is a proponent of sudden, disastrous, worldwide climate change due to global warming, the kind imagined in another recent movie, The Day After Tomorrow. So, any day now—perhaps even as soon as this coming Sunday—everyone north of the Tropic of Cancer or thereabouts will either be frozen solid or huddled, shivering and blue, in their own custom igloos.

The irony of the Gore movie's title is delicious, right alongside Bill "The Gambler" Bennett's Book of Virtues and the late Sam Walton's Made in America. An Inconvenient Truth purports to marshal the facts on global warming and predicts the dire consequences of ignoring them. Yet, the movie itself turns a blind eye to the mounds of scientific evidence that contradict its premise. They are themselves rather inconvenient.

For instance, the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels has written two well-documented books, The Satanic Gases and Meltdown, both of which conclusively explain that, while there has been some increase in global temperatures over the past few decades, the warming trend has been quite gradual and natural—and certainly will not produce catastrophic results. In fact, temperatures rose much more rapidly in the decades before 1940, and there were no adverse effects then. Michaels' offerings are just a few of the many books and studies published in the last few years to balance the environmentalist left's Chicken Little scenario.

That is exactly what it is: a fake crisis, based loosely on debatable science, promoted to advance a political agenda. As Michael Crichton explained in his book, State of Fear, movers and shakers of all stripes have learned that manufacturing crises, producing doubt and fear in the populace, opens the electorate to suggestion and manipulation. Although these influential members of society and advocacy groups assert the truth is on their side, they really care little about it. Their first rule is "the ends justify the means."

In the past few weeks, another issue has moved forward in the face of inconvenient facts. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, a Democrat and soon-to-be powerful House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, has pledged to introduce a bill to reinstate involuntary conscription to the U.S. military—the draft. The crisis he has created, along with willing abettors in the mainstream media, is that of class warfare. He claims that the poor and disadvantaged comprise a disproportional percentage of the armed forces. In other words, the wealthy and elite in this country do not contribute their fair share to the nation's defense in terms of manpower.

What are the inconvenient truths that Rangel ignores? The Heritage Foundation's Dr. Tim Kane has engaged in an exhaustive study of the composition of U.S. military recruits since 1999. He and his associates have found that Representative Rangel has reached the exact opposite conclusion to the facts. For instance, Kane's "Who Are the Recruits? The Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Enlistment, 2003–2005" relates:

The current findings show that the demographic characteristics of volunteers have continued to show signs of higher, not lower, quality. . . . Those who have been so quick to suggest that today's wartime recruits represent lesser quality, lower standards, or lower class should be expected [to] make an airtight case. Instead, they have cited selective evidence, which is balanced by a much clearer set of evidence showing improving troop quality.

. . . For example, it is commonly claimed that the military relies on recruits from poorer neighborhoods because the wealthy will not risk death in war. This claim has been advanced without any rigorous evidence. Our review of Pentagon enlistee data shows that the only group that is lowering its participation in the military is the poor. The percentage of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods (with one-fifth of the U.S. population) declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 14.6 percent in 2003, 14.1 percent in 2004, and 13.7 percent in 2005. . . .

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) support the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight differences are that wartime U.S. military enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on average than their civilian peers. (Emphasis ours.)

What is Representative Rangel up to? How can he ignore such obvious facts? He is advancing a political agenda to punish the wealthy and privileged, as he imagines them, and to extort money and benefits for his poor and downtrodden constituents, as they are only in his own mind. Stripped of all its rhetoric, his proposal is sheer socialism, arbitrarily redistributing wealth and advantage to those who have shown no inclination to earn it for themselves. But then, socialists have never let the truth weigh them down.

As Christians, as keepers of the Ten Commandments, we are bound to the truth. Whatever kind of truth it is—religious, scientific, political, social, financial—we must give it its due regard. Yet, we live in a nation—in a world—in which the pursuit and respect for truth is waning and almost gone. God says through Jeremiah: "'And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me,' says the LORD" (Jeremiah 9:3).

But we do know Him, and we have a responsibility to "buy the truth, and sell it not" (Proverbs 23:23, KJV). As liars and deceivers increase (II Timothy 3:13), we must be on the lookout for those who press on with their agendas despite the inconvenient truths of reality. No good end will come on those whose lives are built on lies.

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.

Four More Years

Yesterday, January 20, 2005, witnessed the second inauguration of President George W. Bush, a costly affair to celebrate the continued, peaceful renewal of legitimate, executive power over the government of these United States. Except for a few lame and childish protests by poor-loser leftists, everything seemed to have gone without a hitch. The First Lady even received praise for her designer dresses, unlike 2001, in which the press haughtily panned her taste.

Commercials for financial services companies always include a proviso similar to, "Past performance is not an indication of future results." This is true of chief executives as well. Presidents' second terms have historically failed to live up to expectations, whether because of scandal, stiff congressional opposition, assassination or illness, or lame-duck status. Momentum is lost, "political capital" is squandered, political machinations are hatched and discovered, the President's legacy becomes all important, and soon the electorate is eager to throw him out and fill his place with someone new and different, usually from the other party.

Will Bush follow in the footsteps of other recent second-term Presidents like Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon? Or will he somehow avoid the multitude of potholes and obstacles already strewn along his path? History favors the prediction that he will stumble.

Bush and Clinton provide contrasting styles that end up remarkably similar in their effects. Clinton, a "New" Democrat, campaigned as a centrist and governed to the left. The "compassionate" Republican Bush, on the other hand, campaigned as a rightist and governed to the center. In other words, both were essentially hypocritical in their efforts to gain power, and their governance revealed them for what they are. A New Democrat is simply a Democrat who lies about his liberalism, and a compassionate conservative is a liberal Republican. Either way, America continues on the road to socialism, but with Bush, at a slower speed.

His first-term "successes" prove this to be the case. Bush adopted liberal Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy's education bill as his own, styling it the "No Child Left Behind Act," and now we have, in effect, nationalized schools. The prescription drug fiasco dragged America another step toward nationalized medicine. Finally, the Patriot Act did more to aggregate power to the federal government than any single bill or executive order in generations. These are not the accomplishments of a conservative.

Truly conservative positions on these issues would be:

• Relinquishing all federal control over public schools and returning it to the states and local municipalities.
• Getting the federal government out of the pharmaceutical industry and encouraging free-market competition to drive the price of health care down.
• Confirming and guarding the liberties delineated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Even the War on Terror is not a conservative effort. As a sovereign nation, America has the right to defend itself against aggression both at home and abroad (the conservative position), but the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq, though "noble" in its professed intentions, runs contrary to traditional American foreign policy, which leaned heavily toward non-intervention, even to a kind of isolationism. Obviously, America's status as the lone superpower has changed its abilities and responsibilities, but pre-emptive war, meddling in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations, and shaping behaviors through force are liberalism to its ultimate extent.

The next four years will tell the tale. Mr. Bush has promised to use his political capital, his mandate from the American people, to push through more conservative legislation. However, the country—and the Congress—are still divided, and his chances of ramming a truly conservative political agenda through both House and Senate are slim. The outlook appears to favor four more years of conservative talk and, after the smoke clears in the back rooms of the White House and Capitol, moderate-to-liberal action.

When Israel rejected God and asked for a king "like all the nations" (I Samuel 8:5), God inspired Samuel to "solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them" (verse 9). So Samuel said:

He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots. . . . He will appoint captains over his thousands . . . to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war. . . . He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields . . . and give them to his servants. And he will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your manservants and your maidservants and your finest young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. (verses 11-17, emphasis added)

This is the natural progression of human government. It may begin in liberty, but it ends in slavery. How far along this spectrum the U.S. is remains to be seen, but even our most "conservative" Commanders-in-Chief have only slowed the pace. Keep this in mind over the next four years.