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Helicopter government – Part I – A Nation of Wimps

Posted by :admin On : May 29, 2015
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Category: Archives, Government, Socialism

Back in the late 1980s the term helicopter parenting came into vogue to describe a style of parenting in which overprotective parents discourage a child’s independence by being too involved with the child’s life. In other words, a helicopter parent hovers over a child like a helicopter, ready to swoop in at the first sign that their child may face a challenge or discomfort.[1] According to Dr. Robert Hudson, a clinical professor of pediatrics and co-director of the Center for Resilience at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, there are four ways helicopter parenting manifests itself: overprotecting, overpraising, overindulging, and overprogramming. Each of these types of parenting has serious consequences for the child.[2]

A nation of wimps

Bad things happen to everyone in life, and children must learn through experience including bad experiences while growing up. Psychology Today’s Editor-at-Large Hara Estroff Marano described the consequences resulting from parents who overprotect their children from experiencing failure and discomfort: inability to adapt to the difficulties of life, psychologically fragile (depression and anxiety), risk-averse, loss of identity, loss of meaning and a sense of accomplishment, lack of self-control, and lack of perseverance. These consequences can last into adulthood. Quoting one child psychologist, “Kids need to feel badly sometimes. We learn through experience, and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn to cope.” According to Marano, “Whether we want to or not, we are on our way to creating a nation of wimps.”[3] As these overprotected children move into adulthood, American government and its bureaucracies have willingly assumed the role of surrogate parents of this nation of wimps.

It appears that unhealthy consequences of helicopter parenting for children are strikingly similar to the pathologies resulting from a nanny-state government increasingly involved in its citizens’ lives and which we might also label helicopter governing by a helicopter government. Government involvement with the details and intricacies of the lives of American citizens has grown dramatically commencing with Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Judiciary’s exceptionally expansive re-interpretation of the Constitution’s general welfare clause in the 1930s. This involvement was greatly exacerbated by the Great Society programs of the 1960s and continues under the socialistic policies of the current Obama administration.

Under modern judicial, legislative, and executive branch interpretations, the general welfare of American citizens has come to mean far more than those fiercely independent and self-reliant Founders ever imagined. In the twenty-first century, America’s helicopter government stands ready to swoop down and fix, mend, change, smooth-out, correct, adjust, or repair any problem, difficulty, or perceived injustice that may arise. No aspect of its citizens’ general welfare is too large or too small to escape our helicopter government’s attention and involvement, be it the size of our sugary soft drinks or the kind of cars we are permitted to drive.

Before we examine the consequences of a helicopter government, we must understand the driving forces behind it and how these forces have changed America over the last 75 years. America has changed because the worldview of much of the leadership of the institutions of American life and the organizations they represent have changed. A worldview is a person’s belief about things, an overall perspective or perception of reality or truth from which one sees, understands, and interprets the universe and humanity’s relation to it and that directs his or her decisions and actions.

The collective worldviews of a nation’s citizens becomes its central cultural vision, and in America there are two worldviews contending for dominance in its central cultural vision. One is the Christian worldview which reflects the central cultural vision of the colonial Americans, the Founders, and the nation for 150 years following its founding. The Christian worldview rests on the universals reflected in God’s creation and the biblical revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians. Humanism is the competing worldview that contends that Nature is all there is and that man is a product of a long, developmentally progressive period of evolution. For humanists, there is no God or life after death, and all truth is negotiable and determined by the current needs of society.

The best way to contrast the two worldviews is to look at two fundamental differences that stand at the heart of the conflict. The first centers on the purpose for which man was created. For Christians, the fundamental purposes of life center on an eternal relationship with God and earthly relationships with his fellowman. For the humanist, the ultimate purpose is happiness through the exaltation of self. From these basic differences flow a whole myriad of conflicts which we call the culture wars.

The second major point of divergence relates to the nature of man. Christians view man as having been created by God but subsequently having a fallen nature because of his disobedience that resulted in a broken relationship with God. Consequently, man is in need of redemption. Humanists believe that man is basically good and therefore not fallen nor in need of redemption. Hence, humans are masters of their own destiny, and reason and science alone point the way to an ever-progressive improvement of mankind.

Because the humanistic worldview does not present a true picture of reality (truth) as it relates to the purpose and nature of man, the tenets of its faith are flawed and from this flawed perception of truth we see pathologies develop as humanism fails to adequately address the basic questions of life.

America’s helicopter government is the product of a humanistic worldview that has gained ascendency in America during the last seventy-five years. The required method of organizing society under a humanistic worldview is socialism. As the humanistic worldview has advanced, so has America’s tendency toward socialism of which a helicopter government is its heart and soul.

In this series of articles we shall examine the four types of helicopter governing (overprotecting, overpraising, overindulging, and overprogramming), the pathologies associated with each, and the impact on American culture.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “helicopter parenting,” Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/helicopter+parenting (accessed March 24, 2014).
[2] Jason Ashley Wright, “Nurturing in Excess,” Tulsa World, March 24, 2014, D1.
[3] Hara Estroff Marano, “A Nation of Wimps,” Psychology Today, November 1, 2004. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200411/nation-wimps (accessed March 31, 2014).

Would Jefferson label the modern Judiciary as the “Despotic Branch”?

Posted by :admin On : May 22, 2015
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Category: America, Archives, Constitution, Government

George Will is one of the brightest and most articulate columnists on the national scene (Washington Post Writers Group). I normally savor every one of his appearances on the opinion page. This is why I am disturbed by Will’s false and malicious criticism of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (“Huckabee’s ‘appalling’ crusade for nullification”).[1] Will is a huge fan and student of baseball and occasionally writes a column on the subject. Using a baseball analogy, Will must know that his column’s pitches at Huckabee were not only far outside the strike zone but that they were intended as bean balls meant to injure and harm Huckabee. This disappoints because Will has not lowered himself to such levels in past columns that I have read.

Will claims to be “appalled” by Huckabee’s recent remarks that deal with the question of judicial error and overreach with regard to the Constitution, an issue that also concerns a great number of Americans. Will takes Huckabee to task for rejecting “judicial supremacy” and suggesting that a ruling by the Supreme Court does not make its ruling the “law of the land.” In doing so, Will incorrectly links Huckabee’s remarks with the pre-Civil War doctrine of nullification which arose in 1830 during Andrew Jackson’s presidency.

The doctrine of nullification evolved from resolutions initially adopted by the South Carolina legislature in December 1828 and which opposed certain tariffs imposed by the federal government. In opposition to President Jackson with regard to the tariffs, Vice President John Calhoun authored a lengthy essay on state government which supported the Southern position of state sovereignty and minority rights. According to the doctrine of nullification, individual states did not have to follow a federal law and in effect could “nullify” the law. By 1830, the nullification debate had evolved to the larger questions of origin and nature of the Constitution. Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster defended the federal position by “…attempting to show that the Constitution was not the result of a compact, but was established as a popular government with a distribution of powers binding upon the national government and the states.”[2]

It is misleading for Will to accuse Huckabee of crusading for nullification of federal laws at will because the Constitution was merely the product of a compact. Huckabee’s concern is with modern judicial efforts to create legislation as opposed to interpreting the law. What is interesting and lends authority to Huckabee’s position on interpreting the Constitution is Andrew Jackson’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s view of the constitutionality of a re-charter of the 2nd Bank of the U.S. Although the Supreme Court viewed the legislation passed by Congress as constitutional, Jackson did not and vetoed the legislation. The bank charter debate became the major issue of the 1832 presidential campaign.[3] In defending his veto, Jackson made a noteworthy description of the duties of the three branches of government with regard to interpreting the Constitution.

The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others…The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both.[4]

In the first seven decades following the writing of the Constitution in 1787, the Supreme Court ruled only twice that a law created by Congress was unconstitutional, and both times the ruling was ignored by Congress and the President.

Marbury v. Madison

In the last hours of the presidency of John Adams, he made several Federalist judicial appointments in the District of Columbia in an attempt to further load the bench with Federalist appointees. Under President Adams, John Marshall was both Adams’ Secretary of State and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. As Secretary of State, it was Marshall’s duty to deliver President Adams’ legally executed appointments, but he failed to do so. When James Madison became Secretary of State under newly elected President Thomas Jefferson, the president refused to have the appointments delivered. The disappointed appointees sued, and in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice Marshall and the Supreme Court at first ruled that the Court had no judicial authority over the case. Then with a surprisingly contradictory action, the Chief Justice ruled that President Jefferson should deliver the appointments. Jefferson and Madison ignored the ruling and received virtually no condemnation voiced by Congress, the Supreme Court, or the public. Jefferson called the Court’s attempt to interfere with the business of the Executive decision a “perversion of the law” by attempting to strike down the Judiciary Act of 1789 in which on two occasions the Supreme Court had found no objection or fault.[5]

Nineteen years later, Jefferson affirmed the general view of the Founders that any of the three branches could interpret the Constitution.

[E]ach of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the Constitution without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.[6]

Jefferson specifically rejected the belief that the Judiciary was the final voice and described the damage to the Constitution of a contrary opinion.

[O]ur Constitution…has given – according to this opinion – to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others; and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation…The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.[7] [emphasis added]

Jefferson and the other Founders would be greatly alarmed with the modern view of the Judiciary that it may prescribe rules for the other branches of Government.

Dred Scott v. Sanford

Dred Scott was a Negro slave, a household servant for Dr. John Emerson who had taken Scott to various areas in the North where slavery was prohibited. Scott eventually sued for his liberty in Missouri courts and maintained that he was free because of his stays in a free state and a free territory. In March 1857, the Supreme Court ruled (Dred Scott v. Sanford) that Scott (and all other slaves) was not a citizen of the U.S. or the state of Missouri and therefore not entitled to sue in the federal courts. For Scott and all other slaves, the effect of the ruling reinforced the status quo of slavery and made it impossible for slaves to gain their freedom through the courts or legislation.[8] Effectively, the Supreme Court had declared that Congress could not outlaw slavery and that slaves were not citizens but property.

Several of Abraham Lincoln’s remarks in his first Inaugural Address were prompted by the Dred Scott decision.

I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court…At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made…the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having…resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.[9] [emphasis added]

Like Jefferson’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Marbury v. Madison sixty two years earlier, both Lincoln and the Congress ignored the ruling of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. Not only was the ruling ignored but directly disobeyed. On June 9, 1862, Congress prohibited the extension of slavery into free territories and in 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery.[10]

Jefferson, writing to Abigail Adams in 1804, said of the Supreme Court, “[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”[11] [emphasis added] But this is what the Supreme Court has become in 2015 America. Thoughtful judicial interpretation of laws in light of the Constitution is the courts’ proper role. But through judicial activism by liberal judges usurping the role of the legislature in making laws, the courts have appropriated unto themselves a law-making role never intended by the Founders and breaches the coveted separation of powers.

Will is not only incorrect in his spurious charge that Huckabee was crusading for nullification, he crudely disparages Huckabee’s Christian faith because of his call for prayer for the Supreme Court justices considering the fate of same-sex marriage (See: 1 Timothy 2:1-2). He also belittles Huckabee’s well-founded concern that the nation is moving toward the criminalization of Christianity which is amply demonstrated by the growing trend of the judiciary and bureaucracy to punish Christians for practicing their faith.

In the age of the “living” Constitution, the Judiciary has made it pliable in order to accommodate the whims of a humanistic society unhooked from mores, norms, traditions, and voices of the past. In Jefferson’s words such a Constitution becomes, “…a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” Combining the words of Jefferson and Lincoln, such a Judiciary would become a “despotic branch” and “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] George Will, Huckabee’s ‘appalling’ crusade for nullification,” Tulsa World, May 15, 2015, A-15.
[2] Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1953), pp.167-168.
[3] Ibid., p. 173.
[4] Ibid.
[5] David Barton, Original Intent, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), pp. 275-176.
[6] Barton, p. 271. Quoting: Thomas Jefferson, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh, ed., (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XV, p. 213, to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Morris, pp. 221-222.
[9] Barton, p. 272.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Barton, pp. 271-272. Quoting: Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, ed., (Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1830), Vol. IV, p. 27, to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804.

Why are democracies unraveling around the world?

Posted by :admin On : May 14, 2015
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Category: Archives, Government, Worldview

There are few columnists with which I disagree more on almost all issues than E. J. Dionne (Washington Post Writers Group). In a recent column titled “Is democracy unraveling around the world?” Dionne implies that many of the world’s democracies are dysfunctional and unraveling.[1] However, his conclusions as to “why” this is happening and the solutions offered are not only wrong but are oblivious to the real cause of societal dysfunction in democracies.

Dionne points to a 2013 survey in which “…63 percent of Americans said government should be doing more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, but 59 percent also believed government had grown bigger because it had become involved in things people should do for themselves.”[2] Dionne believes that the world’s democracies are beset by a peculiar set of contradictions. He states that there is a decline of trust in traditional political parties but also a rise in political partisanship. But the larger picture escapes Dionne as he attempts to gloss over big government’s systemic failures by blaming political parties that engage in divisive partisan politics. A second observation was that people want the government to reduce levels of economic insecurity and expand opportunity while at the same time they do not believe government has the ability to do so.[3] Here, Dionne fails to see that mistrust of government extends far beyond its perceived failure to provide economic security and opportunities as demanded. Rather, in the larger perspective, people have been conditioned to expect the government to accomplish the impossible task of providing an ever expanding array of wants, rights, and wishes while at the same time limiting government involvement in their lives.

How is it that America has arrived at this paradox after almost 250 years of democracy? There are two parts to the answer. One is loss of the concept of limited government. The other is the incompatibility of human nature and loss of freedom. We shall deal with the loss of the concept of limited government first.

Limited government

Traditional ideas of limited government were part of the American psyche even before the Founders designed the American system of governance. These ideas prevailed until the rise of the humanistic worldview in the early twentieth century and converged with the economic and societal upheavals caused by the Great Depression and World War II. Under the humanistic worldview there was a seismic change in how mankind and justice were viewed. Man was not fallen but basically good. Therefore, all injustice and inequality in society are the result of defective institutions which the government must correct.

Three generations after this convergence, many Americans now view government as primarily responsible for dealing with an ever expanding array of societal problems. Politicians became the power brokers for providing solutions to a host of newly found social and political demands. However, funding government and the growing list of wants, rights, and wishes of the populous has become a major hurdle because government cannot do everything for everybody. Samuelson called this “the politics of overpromise…the systematic and routine tendency of government to make more commitments than can reasonably be fulfilled.” For decades the irrationality of the politics of overpromise has been glossed over by a misplaced faith in an ever expanding economy that would provide all the income necessary to meet the growing list of demands.[4]

Government became the provider or guarantor of happiness as opposed to making possible the pursuit thereof. After decades of an ever increasing institutionalization of synthetic rights purported to be due to the great majority of the populous, progressive politicians and bureaucrats must find someone to pay for the costs associated with a benefactor government. Because government cannot do all things for a people, it is held in deep distrust.[5] To maintain governmental power in the face of dwindling resources, there is a steady progression towards socialism.

Dionne attributes much of this mistrust of government to the growth of special interest groups he claims have too much influence on government. He quotes one study by a political scientist who wrote of the rise of negative partisanship among the electorate, “…supporters of each party perceive supporters of the opposing party as very different from themselves in terms of their social characteristics and fundamental values.” Dionne states that, “…our current form of partisanship leads us to dislike not only the other side’s politicians but even each other.[6]

Dionne cites Stanley Greenberg who says that this hostility among not only the politicians but the electorate as well is a result of special interest groups having too much hold on government.[7] But Samuelson correctly argues that the growth of special interest groups is merely a result of growth of government.

When government is limited, it can be more easily influenced through elections. Voters can get a sense of where there representatives stand on major issues, and legislators can judge their constituents’ general feelings. As government activities proliferate, this is harder for both voters and legislators.”[8]

In other words, big government begets special interest groups. For years liberal big-government politicians welcomed special interest groups. But now campaign finance reform is always popular with proponents of big government. Until the advent of the Internet, talk radio, and a proliferation of cable TV companies, the proponents of big government weren’t too concerned with campaign funding because by default the bully pulpit was monopolized by the big government-friendly news media, academia, government bureaucracies, big business, and the entertainment industry. But even with the loss of the liberal monopoly over the media to influence public opinion, they are happy to give up campaign funding and go back to the good old days. It is not that the liberal monopoly wants to eliminate special interest groups; it is that such legislation will dry up funds for conservative political action committees, limited-government candidates, and issue-oriented campaigns. Funds for conservatives to access new media outlets are dried up by so-called campaign finance reform, and this leaves the no-cost liberal media monopoly and their government funded emissaries and yes men to spread their big government orthodoxy.

Incompatibility of human nature and loss of freedom through big government

The second part of our answer as to the paradox regarding the unraveling of democracy deals with the incompatibility of human nature and loss of freedom because of the impositions of big government.

Dionne ends his article with a remarkably revealing statement as to what he believes is the first task of politicians in democratic countries—the aggregating of sustainable majorities. He quotes Daniel T. Rodgers’ 2011 book Age of Fracture which proposes that, “…if the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were a time of political and social ‘consolidation,’ the dominant tendency now is ‘disaggregation’ which is a big problem for self-government.”[9] If Dionne is correct, then our elected representatives are not to be primarily concerned about the opinions and wishes of the electorate but to merely aggregate sustainable majorities. It appears that much of the elected leadership has been following Dionne’s prescription since the 1960s. Could this be the cause of the electorates’ anger and mistrust of government which is “…undermining faith in the public endeavor and unraveling of old loyalties”?[10]

The conflict between big government and limited government as well as the frustrations and anger expressed by the electorate are merely a microcosm of a larger conflict of worldviews in America. On the one hand we have the biblical worldview upon which the nation was founded. The biblical worldviews of its citizens collectively became the central cultural vision of the nation and reigned supreme until the first part of the twentieth century. In a society built upon the biblical worldview, men join together and voluntarily limit their freedom. But the imposition of limits comes from a group of like-minded individuals whose central cultural vision reflects the biblical worldview of freedom (lack of coercion) resonates with the nature of man. By the mid twentieth century, those of the humanistic worldview had risen to leadership levels in all institutions of American life, and their humanistic policies, laws, and initiatives are being imposed (coercion) on a nation whose citizens still cling to the biblical worldview of the Founders. This is the essence of the culture wars—the conflict for supremacy in the American cultural vision between those holding the humanistic and Christian worldviews.

To answer the “why” of Dionne’s question regarding democracy’s unraveling around the world we must look to John Adams, Founder and second president of the United States.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.[11]

In other words, democracy cannot be sustained without a moral populace. Morality in government must flow upward from the morality of its citizens. By morality and religion Adams meant Christian morality. Without a moral citizenry, there is no hope for a sustained moral and just self-government. However, in Dionne’s world, morals are a matter of interpretation and decided by man and not God. Self-government flows downward from the humanist elite or, as C. S. Lewis called them, the “conditioners” of society which are more interested in aggregating sustainable majorities to maintain their power rather than representing the wishes of the people. But such a government eventually erodes into a totalitarian state and a loss of freedom so essential to man’s nature.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] E. J. Dionne, “Is democracy unraveling around the world?” Tulsa World, May 2, 2015, A-16.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Robert Samuelson, The Good Life and Its Discontents, (New York: Vintage Books, 1995, 1997), p. 143.
[5] Ibid., p. 188.
[6] Dionne, A-19.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Samuelson, p. 193.
[9] Dionne, A-19.
[10] Ibid.
[11] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: Fame Publishing, Inc., 1996), pp. 10-11.

Criminalizing Christian beliefs and behavior

Posted by :admin On : April 10, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, Equality, Government

As Liberals see it, some people are just more equal than others.

Barronelle Stutzman is a florist and owner of Arlene’s Flowers in the State of Washington who is in peril of losing her business, personal assets, and retirement. Because of her religious beliefs and her faithfulness to those beliefs, she was sued by the State of Washington and the ACLU in 2013. Her crime was telling Rob Ingersoll that she would not provide her services as a florist for his upcoming marriage to his same-sex partner because it was a violation of her belief that marriage was to be between a man and woman. In February 2015, a Washington judge ruled that Ms. Stutzman had broken the law by discriminating against Ingersoll. The court said that while recognizing her religious beliefs are protected by the Constitution, her discriminatory actions were not.[1]

On March 13, 2014 William Jack went to Denver’s Azucar Bakery and requested two Bible-shaped cakes that were to be decorated and inscribed with Bible verses. Marjorie Silva refused to accept his order but agreed to bake the cakes and supply Jack with the necessary icing and decorations so that he could decorate the cake as he pleased. Jack’s requested design offended Ms. Silva because one cake was to have the image of two groomsmen holding hands in front of a cross with a red “X” over them. The cake was to be inscribed with a Bible verse: “God hates sin. Psalm 45:7.” On the second cake, Jack requested the image of the same two groomsmen with the red “X” but inscribed with the verses: “God loves sinners” and “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.” Following a complaint against Silva for discrimination, the Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled in March 2015 that Silva did not discriminate against Jack by refusing to make the cakes because the customer’s requests included “derogatory language and imagery.”[2]

Ms. Stutzman and Ms. Silva withheld their personal services because the provision of those services would have been in direct violation of their beliefs. Ms. Stutzman’s beliefs were based on her religious convictions protected by the First Amendment. Ms. Silva’s beliefs were based on her personal opinion as to what constituted “derogatory language and imagery.” The Colorado Civil Rights commission ignored Silva’s overt discrimination against Jack while the Washington State judge convicted Stutzman of exercising her First Amendment freedom of religion.

By judicial and bureaucratic edicts across the nation, the First Amendment protection of religious freedom is being dismantled by separating religious belief from actions in support of those beliefs in order to achieve humanistic definitions of equality and political correctness. Without the ability to exercise one’s religious beliefs, the First Amendment protections of religious freedom are rendered meaningless.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Because of legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic actions that compromised the First Amendment protection of religious freedom, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 was unanimously passed by the House, and the Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill by a 97-3 vote. On November 16, 1993, President Clinton spoke to those gathered on the south lawn of the White House on the day of the signing of the bill. One particular statement from his speech is significantly applicable to today’s debate on the government’s efforts to curtail religious freedom.

The free exercise of religion has been called the first freedom, that which originally sparked the development of the full range of the Bill of Rights. Our Founders cared a lot about religion…They knew that religion helps to give our people the character without which a democracy cannot survive. They knew that there needed to be a space of freedom between Government and people of faith that otherwise Government might usurp.[3] [emphasis added]

In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the federal RFRA not because of the “compelling interest test” but because it ruled that Congress could not require the test be used by states in cases involving religious freedom.[4] This was followed by new federal legislation that reinstated protections of religious freedom from governmental interference.

Subsequently, a number of states passed RFRA legislation that closely followed the original federal law and its successors. On March 26, 2015, Governor Mike Pence signed into law a Religious Freedom and Restoration Act passed by the Indiana legislature. The heart of Indiana’s protection of religious freedom act is found in Section 8.

Sec. 8. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), a governmental entity may not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability. (b) A governmental entity may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if the governmental entity demonstrates that application of the burden to the person: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.[5]

Irrespective of the approval the President and almost universal approval of Congress in 1993, as well as most Americans twenty-two years earlier. These eighty words have created a blistering firestorm of protests, threats, economic blackmail, and character assassination against states, legislators, and other RFRA supporters across America by the homosexual lobby and other supporters of the homosexual agenda. These supporters include the media and cultural elites, CEOs of major corporations, and liberal politicians and bureaucrats.

Is religious freedom decided by the First Amendment or the Chamber of Commerce?

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has called RFRA legislation in the various states as very dangerous and would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Cook lambasted the various RFRA supporters and linked them to segregation and discrimination in the south of the 1960s and 1970s.

America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all forms, is bad for business…These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear. They go against the very principles our nation was founded on…This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings.[6] [emphasis added]

In spite of Tim Cook’s assertions to the contrary, restrictions on the practice of one’s religious beliefs is a religious issue and protection of religious freedom is a political issue. Although Cook believes RFRA laws go against the very principles upon which the nation was founded, the real violation of those principles occurs when the full meaning and protections of the First Amendment are ignored and/or violated by a government that forces people to disobey their religious beliefs in order to achieve some arbitrary standard of equality.

Even pop star Miley Cyrus, not known as a paragon of moral virtue or for her intellectual gifts, vilified Indiana’s RFRA supporters while giving an interview to Time magazine about the future of music and youth culture.

They are dinosaurs, and they are dying off. We are the new generation, and with that will come so much…People are trying now to make the Indiana law look like something that it’s not. They’re trying to make it look like it’s not discriminatory. It’s confusing for my fans, so I’m happy to [speak up about it]. They won’t listen to Tim Cook, maybe. But they’ll listen to me, you know? And people are starting to listen, I think.[7]

To help alleviate the confusion of Ms. Cyrus and her fans, RFRA laws are not discriminatory because they apply to everyone.

Interdependence of the Constitution and moral virtue of the people

The primary reason for the loss of religious freedoms in America is not to be found in any supposed defects of the Constitution’s plain wording or the Founders’ clear meaning and intent. Rather, the reason for loss of religious freedom can be discovered in the words of two of America’s most illustrious Founders.

We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.[8] [John Adams, signer of the Constitution and second president of the United States] [emphasis added]

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they more need of masters.[9] [Benjamin Franklin, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution] [emphasis added]

The assault on religious freedom is occurring because there is a shortage of virtuous, moral, and religious leadership at the helms of the institutions of American life. Like Esau, Tim Cook and many other Chamber of Commerce types have despised their heritage and sold their birthright of religious freedom for a pot of stew. [Genesis 25:29-34] Ignoring the wishes of the people and the safeguards designed by the Founders, the liberal bullies and their cultural lackeys are now the masters—the new experts at determining what constitutes religious liberty but who are not to be bothered with the First Amendment’s plain language.

Unlike the CEOs of mega-corporations and their humanistic colleagues, the Founders were far more concerned with religious liberty than their bank balances, the egalitarian notions of equality, the humanistic doctrines of French intellectuals, or the ridicule of cultural royalists. The Constitution continues to be unequivocal evidence of the Founders’ strong concern for religious freedom because “… they knew that there needed to be a space of freedom between Government and people of faith that otherwise Government might usurp.”

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Courtney Coren, “Washington Florist: State, ACLU ‘Trying to bully me’,” Newsmax, February 24, 2015. http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/Washington-state-florist-gay-marriage-ACLU/2015/02/24/id/626583/ (accessed April 6, 2015).
[2] Alan Gathright and Eric Lupher, “Denver’s Azucar Bakery wins right to refuse to make anti-gay cakes,” 7NewsDenver, April 4, 2015. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/denvers-azucar-bakery-wins-right-to-refuse-to-make-anti-gay-cake (accessed April 7, 2015).
[3] “William J. Clinton – Remarks on Signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993,” The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=46124 (Accessed April 3, 2015).
[4] “State Religious Freedom Acts,” Home School Legal Defense Association, January 28, 2015.
http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000000/00000083.asp (accessed April 3, 2015).
[5] TEXT: Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act: SENATE ENROLLED ACT No. 101, Senate of the State of Indiana ^ | March 27, 2015 | Government of the State of Indiana. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3272850/posts (accessed April 6, 2015).
[6] Tim Cook, “Opposing ‘religious’ bills requires courage,” Tulsa World, April 3, 2015, A-17.
[7] Eliana Dockterman, “Miley Cyrus: Indiana Religious Freedom Law Supporters ‘Are dinosaurs, and they are dying off’,” Time, March 31, 2015. http://time.com/3766436/miley-cyrus-on-indiana-law/ (accessed April 6, 2015).
[8] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc., 1996), pp. 10-11.
[9] Ibid., p. 247.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part III

Posted by :admin On : March 6, 2015
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

We ended Part II with the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as to the importance of interpreting the Constitution according to its plain meaning and intent of the authors. George Washington also wrote of the importance of adhering to the prescribed methods for changing the Constitution.

If, in the opinion of the people…the constitutional powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; though this in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”[1] [emphasis added]

Joseph Story was the leading Constitutional scholar of the nineteenth century and in 1833 wrote in Commentaries on the Constitution that the Constitution “…was to be understood in terms of its plain, commonsense meaning” and must not be changed by the caprice of men.

The reader must not expect to find in these pages any novel construction of the Constitution. I have not the ambition to be the author of any new plan of interpreting the theory of the Constitution, or enlarging or narrowing its powers, by ingenious subtleties and learned doubts…”[2]

For 150 years original intent was the courts’ coin of the realm when interpreting the Constitution. But that dramatically changed in 1947. The beginning of that change occurred seventy-seven years earlier when Christopher Columbus Langdell became president of Harvard Law School in 1870 and developed the theory of legal positivism which was adopted and applied by other leading lawyers and jurists that followed him including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.[3] Since 1947, legal positivism has replaced original intent as the standard for interpreting the Constitution. The essence of the theory is summarized as follows:

1. There are no objective, God-given standards of law, or if there are, they are irrelevant to the modern legal system.

2. Since God is not the author of law, the author of law must be man; in other words, the law is law simply because the highest human authority, the state, has said it is law and is able to back it up by force.

3. Since man and society evolve, therefore law must evolve as well.

4. Judges, through their decisions, guide the evolution of law (Note again: Judges “make law).

5. To study law, get the original sources of law – the decision of judges; hence most law schools today use the “case law” method of teaching law.[4]

The Founding fathers including those who drafted the Constitution held a biblical worldview. In this worldview, eternal truths were revealed to man by God through his creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians. In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, laws of nature from which it can never depart. However, man was His special creation and was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic and timeless, and are essential elements needed to provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These truths are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms.[5]

These absolutes became the basis for American law and were expounded upon by men such as William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Law of England. Blackstone wrote:

This law of nature…directed by God Himself…is binding in all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.[6] [emphasis added]

The American Constitution’s biblical origins and the Founders’ unbending devotion to original intent in its interpretation were hindrances to the proponents of legal positivism. In his book The New Freedom, Woodrow Wilson disparaged the Founders’ notions of original intent and argued that progressives should be allowed to apply the Darwinian principle in interpreting the Constitution.

And they [the authors of the Constitution] constructed a government…to display the laws of Nature…The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of “checks and balances.” The trouble with this theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin…Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men…Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of Life, not of mechanics, it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development,” “evolution,” “is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.[7]

Wilson’s profoundly humanistic understanding of man jettison’s the Founders’ concern for the universal wickedness of fallen man and therefore dispenses with the need for those pesky “checks and balances” so important to the Founders. The Darwinian understanding of man is that he basically good and ever progressing. Therefore, as men and society evolve, so must their constitutions and laws.

Not content with a fluid interpretation of the Constitution to meet the needs of an evolving society, there is a new breed of activist judges that have gone beyond legal positivism to legal realism. Such realists are using the legal system to promote their own ends while using positivism as the “basis for denying divine law and/or natural law.” Judicial realism is another name for judicial usurpation of legislative power. Legal realists such as Charles Evans Hughes, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during most of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, believe that, “We are under a constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”[8] Put another way, judges don’t just interpret the meaning of the Constitution; they decide what they believe the Constitution ought to say. They become social policy makers who craft decisions based on what they think as opposed the wishes of the people and their elected representatives. Prophetically, Thomas Jefferson warned of such an activist judiciary, “The Constitution… is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”[9]

The basis for liberals’ plea for separation of church and state rest only on eight words taken out of context in 1947, but they are now used to blast any hint of America’s Godly heritage from every facet of American society. Theirs is not a true separation of church and state but creation of an invisible church subservient to the state. However, the history and importance of separation of church and state is far longer and greater than its misapplication to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The separation of the spiritual realm from the secular was instituted by Christ. The separate but complementary roles of church and state were designed and ordained by God. Therefore, the battle is not merely between church and state but just one battle on the far larger battleground of humanism versus Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the renowned German theologian who was martyred for his stand against Nazism, called humanism “the most severe enemy” that Christianity ever had.[10]

The sad state of American jurisprudence with regard to a real separation of the dual realms of church and state occurred because of two major failures by the Christian church in America. We shall call the first failure an abandonment of the public arena which occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the rise of the “social gospel.” The social gospel movement started within the church but was used by secularists for left-wing social reform. Fearing a gospel of “salvation by works,” many conservative and evangelical churches developed a “ghetto mentality,” backing away from society and burying themselves in prayer, Bible study, converting the lost, and personal morality and holiness.[11] But in doing so, they also became the silent church that also buried its responsibility to be salt and light to the government and culture at large. [See: Matthew 5:13]

The second failure of the church in maintaining the dual realms of church and state we shall label as acceptance. Contemporaneous with the abandonment of the public arena by conservative and evangelical churches in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many mainline churches felt the effects of a loss of cultural authority as secular humanism advanced on the coattails of science and rationalism. In order to retain a measure of cultural authority and acceptance in the face of humanism’s onslaught, mainline Protestant leaders began embracing secular human sciences to lend credibility and cultural relevance to the tenets of their religion.[12] But such acceptance brought compromise of its creedal doctrines which resulted in a profane and powerless church that had lost its saltiness, “…no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” [Matthew 5:13b. RSV] And because of the church’s abandonment of society or the compromise of its message, the humanistic worldview reigned supreme and subsequently spread into every facet of culture.

The leaders and many of their bureaucratic subordinates in the institutions of American life now present what appears to be the face of an almost invincible monolithic humanism. In the presence of such a daunting challenge, Christians and others in America may ask how society can return its laws and Constitution to reliance on the original intent of the Founders when the rules for interpreting and enforcing those laws and the Constitution are made up by judges as they see fit to protect and promote their humanistic worldview. Our first priority is to correctly identify our adversary. The Apostle Paul paints a vivid picture of the enemy and his lair. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.” [Ephesians 6:12. RSV]

Even though it is a spiritual battle in this life and the heavenlies, we are not meant to be mere uninvolved spectators banished to the sidelines by a hostile society. In this earthly life, Christians are His “boots on the ground,” and our marching orders are to actively spread salt and light into all arenas habited by a lost and dying world.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution-The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1987), pp. 392-393.
[2] Ibid., p. 393.
[3] Ibid., p. 394
[4] Ibid.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 392.
[6] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1-Book I & II. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1910) p. 27.
[7] Eidsmoe, p. 390. Quoting: Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, (New York: 1914), pp. 44-48.
[8] Ibid., pp. 395-397.
[9] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), p. 195.
[10] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 85.
[1] Eidsmoe, p. 407.
[12] Johnson, p. 252.