Category: Government

Two Major Faults Of The US Constitution

“To return then, to the American Constitutional Order and System itself, we recognize that its two components had a touching point. Both the proponents of Locke’s natural rights thesis and those who perpetuated that which remained of the holy commonwealth idea believed that government should be limited in power. That was their point of agreement.

Dr. Glenn R. Martin
By far the greatest scholar ever to teach at Indiana Wesleyan University

Martin’s point of course was that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were dualistic documents that could be interpreted either through the lens of Enlightenment Rationalism or through the lens of Biblical Christianity, depending on one’s beginning presuppositions.

Of course the failures in the US Constitution, from a Biblical perspective, was the failure to explicitly recognized Jesus Christ as the Sovereign of the Nation and the failure to require a explicitly Christian religious oath. On the failure of the Oath part it can be argued that since the founders viewed the office holding of Federal officers to be likely drawn from those who were previously holders of political office at the State level there would be no necessity to require a religious oath since the charters and constitutions at the Colonial level were explicitly Christian in so many cases, and did require oaths or professions of Christianity.

A brief overview quickly makes the point,

The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 restricted public office to all but Protestants by its religious test/oath.

The Delaware Constitution of 1776 demanded an acceptance of the Trinity by its religious test/oath.

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 had a similar test/oath.

The Maryland Constitution of 1776 had such a test/oath.

The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 had a test/oath that restricted all but Protestants from public office.

The Georgia Constitution of 1777 used an oath/test to screen out all but Protestants.

The Vermont state charter/constitution of 1777 echoed the Pennsylvania Constitution regarding a test/oath.

The South Carolina Constitution of 1778 had such a test/oath allowing only Protestants to hold office.

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 and New Hampshire Constitution of 1784 restricted such office holders to Protestants.

Only Virginia and New York did not have such religious tests/oaths during this time period

Still, the fact that the US Constitution did not include something similar to what we find above makes it a derelict document and the absence of a Christian oath and the acknowledgement of the Lordship of Jesus Christ is one reason that explains the evaporation of our undoubted catholic Christian faith in this country and the corresponding rise of malevolent faiths and behaviors in this nation.

As to why we have surrendered the joint conviction with the Rationalists of the idea of limited government this can be explained by the simple fact that if man will not bow to the God of the Bible and His Christ, who alone has unlimited government, then man will seek to vest unlimited government somewhere else; most usually the State. Americans have abandoned God and in abandoning God they have abandoned His design for Biblical limited Government and the result is Statist Tyranny.

Only repentance and a owning of our sin of rebellion against God can return us to God’s favor and provide solution for Statist tyranny. Men who are in bondage to sin, can never build social orders characterized by liberty.

Connecting the Dots Between Malthus, Sanger, R2K, and Agenda 21

“All children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons…. Therefore … we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use.

Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlement in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they are doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.”

Thomas Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population

1.) Keep in mind that R2K teaches that it would be morally wrong for a Minister to speak against this kind of agenda from the Pulpit because a Malthusian worldview is a matter for the common realm and not the Church realm.

2.) If you go to youtube and look for “Agenda 21” you will see that this kind of ideology is being pursued by the United Nations in terms of their official policy. They have written position papers that echo this Malthusian approach.

3.) Clearly the whole Planned Parenthood enterprise, beginning with Margaret Sanger, and right up until today has more than a whiff of this Malthusian worldview. It is a not much discussed fact that Sanger began her campaign with the goal of keeping Blacks and Jews from breeding successfully.

In the April 1933 issue of the Birth Control Review, Sanger said that “[Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are] human weeds … a deadweight of human waste … [Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a] menace to the race. … Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”

Sanger advocated a program that would;

“… hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

When liberal clergy support Abortion they are supporting the same racial population control that Margaret Sanger supported.

4.) Of course this is part of the anti-Christ worldview where evil is called good, and good is called evil. For Malthus, charity and philanthropy would be to help reduce the surplus population of the earth by doing the good works of insuring that people die. The solution for the “problem” of too high of birth rates would be to abort the babies and sterilize (and maybe even kill) the Mothers.

Answering Bernard Lewis

“For the modern Westerner, religious freedom is defined by the phrase “freedom of worship” and means just that. But the practice of Islam means more than worship, important as that may be. It means a whole way of life, prescribed in detail by holy texts and treatises based on them. . . . It is not enough to do good and refrain from evil as a personal choice. It is incumbent upon Muslims also to command and forbid — that is, to exercise authority. The same principle applied in general to the holy law, which must be not only obeyed but also enforced. Thus, in the view of many jurists, a Muslim not only must abstain from drinking and dissipation, but also must destroy strong drink and other appurtenances of dissipation. For this reason, in any encounter between Islam and unbelief, Islam must dominate. . . .

There are some who followed this argument to its logical conclusion and maintain that an authentic Muslim life is possible only under a Muslim government. There are other who reject this extremist view and admit the possibility of living a Muslim life under a non-Muslim government, provided that that government meets certain specific requirements.”

Bernard Lewis,
Islam and the West, 52-53

1.) Here we see an error in Lewis’ thinking because it simply is not the case that “freedom of worship is just that.” For example, Justice Antonin Scalia, in a Supreme Court case about Native Americans who were fired for smoking peyote as part of their religious practice, wrote the majority opinion upholding the firing, saying that if religious beliefs were superior to the “law of the land,” it would make “every citizen a law unto himself.” So, Lewis is just wrong that “freedom of worship” is just that.

2.) So, the R2K Enlightenment “Secular” State does the same thing that the Muslim State does in as much as it restricts “freedom of worship.” The question between Islamist states and Religiously Secular Enlightenment State is not one of “freedom of worship” vs. “lack of freedom of worship,” but rather it is a question by what standard will worship be restricted? For the Islamist the standard is the Koran. For the Enlightenment R2K fan-boys the standard for restricting worship will be humanist positive law that marches under the banner of “Natural law.”

3.) The texts that give guidance are present for both the Islamist and the Enlightenment liberal. If one were to examine the Humanist Manifestos one would see the text that the Enlightenment liberal has been guided by. Now you won’t find the Enlightenment liberal waving the humanist manifesto around like a Islamist waves around the Koran as their authority, but an examination of the humanist manifesto indicates that the principles there are just as guiding for the Enlightenment liberal as the Koran is guiding for the Muslim.

4.) If Lewis thinks that the Enlightenment Liberal Theocratic State, in terms of commanding and forbidding, is any different then the Islamist state he must be smoking peyote. NYC forbids drinking sodas larger than 16 ounces. The Liberal Enlightenment state is working on forbidding private gun ownership. The Liberal Enlightenment State will be commanding and forbidding all over the place once Obamacare is in place. Again, the difference between the commanding and forbidding is not in terms of kind but only in terms of standard.

5.) This brings us to understanding that just as in any contest between Islam and unbelief finds the Islamic State dominating, so in any contest between the Liberal Enlightenment State and unbelief in the Liberal Enlightenment religion, the Liberal Enlightenment State must likewise dominate. Just try finding a soda for sale in NYC that is over 16 ounces. The Liberal Enlightenment Theocratic State that R2K supports requires a way of life just as much as the Muslim theocratic State.

Only in a Christian State does this kind of dominating suffocating Government find itself held in check. It is held in check because in a Christian civilization there is a understanding that the Government has a limited jurisdiction and beyond that jurisdiction it may not tread. In a Christian civilization, civil Government is diffused and Government as a whole is located in different jurisdictions (Guild, Family, Church, etc). This prevents what Lewis notes about the Muslim State and prevents what he misses being true in the Enlightenment Liberal state.

Because the above paragraph is true no Biblical Christian sounds like a Muslim; accusations from Radical Two Kingdom fan-boys notwithstanding. What R2K advocates want when they fulminate against Biblical government is in point of fact Theocratic Enlightenment Liberal government where, because freedom of religion is absolutized, they can advocate for the tolerance of abortion, sodomite marriage, and any number of other social deviance. In short they desire to set up a Liberal Enlightenment Theocratic Caliph where they as the Priests for the Caliph can bring dissenters before their denominations and have them banned for speaking out against their Caliph. R2K, as the Caliph’s muscle do such a great impersonation of the Turks.

Fisking Obama Speech — Times Have Changed And So Must Americans

“Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.”

Obama Inauguration Speech — 2013

1.) Times have changed and as such we have to finally relinquish our skepticism of central authority and now embrace the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.

2.) Collective action can only be achieved through the State. So the State, accruing increasing power to itself, will make sure that individual freedoms will be preserved. Yeah, and fire can only be provide warmth as water is poured all over it.

3.) The ideas of individual freedom, initiative, and personal responsibility in today’s world is as old fashioned as fighting the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militia.

Note the irony of the appeal to give up individual freedom in order to organize collectively in the context of fighting against collectivism. We must become collectivist just like those evil collectivist that we defeated long ago.

Ask Dan Brannan — A Christian Response To a Christian Gun Control Enthusiast

Daniel,

So where do you draw the line? Should I have the right to own a shoulder mounted surface to air missile? A jet bomber? a nuclear warhead? Do you think if Thomas Jefferson could have seen the damage a fully automatic UZI could inflict on a crowded cafe that he would have still supported the 2nd amendment in its present form? Or better yet been in favor to modify it. These are the argument that are going to come up not stupidity like this flyer.

Dear Jack,

First, that entire line of reasoning assumes that certain classes of weapons are for the the government alone and that the gov’t is inherently more responsible than the freeholder, or citizen. This would, by definition, be Statism – the bedrock of tyranny – precisely the sort of delusions the founders sought to restrain at all costs. As it turns out, the history of the 20th century fully vindicated the founders’ conviction by the fact that governments have proven far more lethally erratic than the average man. Those who allocate, amass, or support inordinate concentrations of power in Government hands are the danger, not the weapons. Government and the state-worshiping mindset are simply too dangerous to allow them a monopoly on force and violence. That is the entire ethic behind the Lord of The Rings: no one can safely wield that concentration of power – least of all they who in their pride, believe otherwise. All men need checks on their power, and the government more than anyone. And that is precisely the intent behind the 2nd amendment – an authority inherent in the people to restrain or overthrow a runaway government for their own defense.

So the limiting principle for the average man’s armament is packed into the the rationale of 2nd amendment itself – while citizens’ right of self-defense may not be infringed, it is apparent that indiscriminate weapons such as nuclear bombs are safe for men neither in nor out of government. In order not to infringe upon people’s right of self-defense non-discriminant weapons like weaponized viruses and nukes are illegal to all, citizens and congressmen. There is no practical use for such items in anyone’s possession; they protect no one and merely endanger everyone.

But yes, tanks, RPGs, and uzis are rightful parts of an American’s armory precisely because they are the weapons needed to suppress state tyranny. And anyone who says otherwise is promoting an ideology far more dangerous than any uzi.

As Christians, we live by Christ law, not the whim of men.