After this “short” expose the bottom line is that the top half of the pyramid [to follow] has more in common with Leftist ideals of a larger government, and should be in a pyramid that includes ANTIFA and the beliefs of Michael Loadenthal.
DAN BONGINO: LEFTY ADMITS THE THINGS THEY DO ARE ILLEGAL
Thanks to the MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER, a media watchdog group, the public is now learning the Biden-led Department of Homeland Security has passed out $40 million in grant funds to left-leaning recipients through a program called Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program, or TVTP. Those funds, which ranged from a $85,000 to $1.1 million, were spread among 80 grants to recipients such as an extremism prevention program at the University of Dayton and a homosexual rights group named Out Boulder County.
Free Speech America, a division of Media Research, learnenewsbd about the flow of grant money and its recipients thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request. That public records request forced DHS to hand over some – but not all – public documents related to the federal agency’s ongoing effort to condemn its right-wing enemies, such as think tank The Heritage Foundation and cable news outlet Fox News.
With some of that public request information in hand, MRC and Free Speech America were able to track down the TVTP grant recipients and request the results they produced from their taxpayer-funded grants.
Michael Morris, who leads Free Speech America, tells AFN the most alarming revelation so far was a “Pyramid of Far-Right Radicalization” that categorizes right-wing threats in four tiers. It includes little-known Neo-Nazi groups with well-known groups such as the NRA and media outlets such a Fox News.
“When [Joe] Biden goes out and says that they’re administration is looking to go after white supremacists,” Morris tells AFN, “they’re not talking about actual white supremacists. They’re talking about you.”
Like a food pyramid with whole grains at the bottom and sugar at the top, the top of the pyramid lists anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi groups as the most dangerous enemy of the American public. In the chart, they fill up the No. 4 and No. 3 slots. Meanwhile, Fox News, The Heritage Foundation, Christian Broadcasting Network, the National Rifle Association, and the Republican Party are listed at the bottom.
Just above them, in the No. 2 slot, are PragerUniversity, Breitbart News, pro-police group Blue Lives Matter, Turning Point USA, and Infowars.
[….]
According to Morris, a genocide expert at the conference compared President Donald Trump to Pol Pot, the Cambodian leader who oversaw the massacre of millions. A second speaker, with Human Rights Watch, suggested Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, wants to start a second Holocaust by creating a state militia.
In its story, Fox News was not done with Loadenthal. It points out how he spoke at a second seminar on “White Nationalism” in which he praised “antifascists” and Antifa for fighting the Far Right. Like a war veteran describing battle, Loadenthal recalled fondly how he had fought “white supremacists” in his “younger years” before that movement evolved into what is now known as Antifa.
“Antifascists” is where “Antifa” gets it name, and its violent members are self-described Communists, Marxists, and anarchists.
“A lot of things we’re doing are illegal,” the researcher said. “A lot of it involves breaking the law.”
Yes, they are breaking laws, but the chart breaks common sense as well. I will explain what I mean a bit [those that follow me know when I say “a bit,” sometimes that means “a lot”], but people have a very broken view of the issue and where the cards fall, so-to-speak.
So, let’s delve into this issue with some partial past posts of mine discussing the main issue I see between levels 1 and 2 and those of 3 and four. (So I am cutting the pyramid in half essentially.) Here is the main idea via an old post that originally appeared in August 2007 on my old blog, but that eventually got imported and updated to my .com:
…. Let us look at what we are told is suppose to be the political landscape if it were to be put into a line graph.
Really this is misleading. For one, it doesn’t allow for anarchy, which is a form of governance (or lack thereof). Also, it places democracy in the center… as if this is what one should strive for, a sort of balance. (The most popular — college level graph — is wrong and misleading as well):
However, the founding fathers wanted nothing to do with a democracy no matter how many times a New York Times editorialist or you’re teacher says we are in one:
James Madison (fourth President, co-author of the Federalist Papers and the father of the Constitution) Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general; been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
John Adams (American political philosopher, first vice President and second President) Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration): “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”
Fisher Ames (American political thinker and leader of the federalists [he entered Harvard at twelve and graduated by sixteen], author of the House language for the First Amendment): “A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will provide an eruption and carry desolation in their way…. The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.”
Governor Morris (signer and penman of the Constitution): “We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism. Democracy! Savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt.”
John Quincy Adams (sixth President, son of John Adams [see above]): “The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.”
Noah Webster (American educator and journalist as well as publishing the first dictionary): “In democracy there are commonly tumults and disorders.. therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence): “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
Zephaniah Swift (author of Americas first legal text): “It may generally be remarked that the more a government [or state] resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”
The Founders obviously knew what a democracy was, which is why in Article IV, Section Four of the Constitution, it says:
The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.
The following graph includes all political models and better shows where the political beliefs lie e.g., left or right is the following (take note, this graph is from a book I do not support nor recommend… but these visual insights are very useful):
In actuality, during WWII, fascism grew out of socialism, showing how close the ties were. I would argue that the New Left that comprises much of the Democratic Party today is fascistic, or, at least, of a closer stripe than any conservative could ever hope to be. I will end with a model comparing the two forms of governance that the two core values (conservatism/classical liberalism versus a socialist democracy) will produce. Before you view the below though, keep in mind that a few years back the ASA (American Socialist Association) on their own web site said that according to the voting record of United States Congressmen and Women, that 58 of them were social democrats. These are the same that put Hitler and Mussolini in power.
Which Do You Prefer?? Liberal Democrats want more government control, Conservative Republicans want less. In a discussion, I exemplified that minimally “fascism” is growth of government in this way:
[….]
To expand a bit on the Rummel book mentioned above… he shows that both the citizenry and free countries are dealt heavy hands and dedath in greater numbers as the government grows larger. Conservatives want to decrease governments size. Progressives want to increase the size of government.
Which is why I shake my head when I hear about people talking about the libertarian Koch Brothers influencing politics. They are for same-sex marriage as well as wanting to make government smaller, in other words, MORE CONSTUTUTIONAL. When people like billionaire coal magnate Tom Steyer gives millions of dollars to Democrats to increase the size of government, he is praised as a hero. The same goes for George Soros.
The bottom line is that leftist billionaires/millionaires who support more control by government over the affairs of men [like Tom Steyer, George Soros, Bill Gates, etc] are participating in the exponential growth in the chance of it’s citizenry to be killed in order to implement all these new legislative laws and powers that go along with the growth of government. By growth of government the ease to nationalize things becomes easier. Like Obama’s Harvard professor pointed out, above.
Here is a more Constitutional look (clip) at government:
So we see that there is a misunderstanding at the core that doesn’t account for the top half of the pyramid wanting a socialist form of government like Mussolini or Hitler set out to accomplish, versus, the “right” in America that wants a small government and voting brought back to the electorate through what the Constitution clearly enumerates in statehood.
So let us go through the bottom half a b it.
FIRSTLY, I cross out the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY (JBS)and INFO WARS for a few reasons. I was heavily influenced by JBS through an old bookstore in North Hollywood back in the day. Lots of conspiracy books and VHS documentaries, yada-yada. While many authors and writers for JBS made great points and had insights into communism and the Left… there was a stream of conspiratorial views that I eventually rejected, and thus stopped following the society as a whole. I discuss this a bit in a chapter from my book:
In fact, even though these “conspiracy writers” may drop the ball on some historical facts and their connections, insights — like I said — are still admirable. For instance, some of the graphs I have already used above come from such a book: None Dare Call It Conspiracy, By GARY ALLEN. I wouldn’t recommend the book to a young mind just starting out in parsing good political theory from bad… but I would recommend it to someone who can rightly parse good history from bad…. as there is worthwhile thoughts to glean from such a book. Especially with the World Economic Forum topic and the George Soros‘ of the world.
And my site makes it plain I am no fan of Alex Jones and all he touches. Many on the right glom on to him as some sort of truth teller, when he is anything but. For instance, just one linked story from my site:
And I will admit I feel bad for conservatism proper that so many “of my people” follow such a clown. I also wish to not defend the tactics or actions taken by Patriot Prayer of Proud Boys… also in the bottom half of the pyramid. But I do not cross them out as may of their goals are maligned/distorted by the media and the left.
I also have some recent notes on this idea that the Left maligns everyone who is violent as “white supremists.” Here is my personal thoughts on the matter:
This has been bugging me for quite some time, and I wish to opine. Some here may know my biography a bit… but to catch you up a tad: Thirty-plus-years ago I was incarcerated a few times, mainly for 3-felonies. During my two longest stints in various L.A. County jail system (from Biscailuz, to H.O.J.J., to Super Max and Mira Loma – etc.). My first couple weeks in were a steep learning curve, as are most young persons. But in all my time in the system – about a year and a half – I never met a “white supremacist person of color.” Having met many actual Aryan Brotherhood members, Nazi Low Riders, white pride guys, and other white purists (like an Odinite I met), and the like. Not one was Mexican, Black, Indian (from India), yada-yada.
I also met many racist cult members other than the ones already mentioned who were likewise part of prison gangs, like: Black Guerilla Family (BGF), Barrio Azteca, Mexican Mafia (La Eme), and the like. While there is some cooperation between Whites and Hispanics at times in jail… I slept in what was called the “wood pile.”
I loved [even then] to talk politics and categorize things. The reason, for instance, I was removed from Biscailuz detention center was in my dorm I was asking all the Hispanic, Blacks, and White’s their set or gang affiliation or one’s they knew of. I had a very long list on two double sided legal paper notepad. Well… One guy said I was doing this because I was an undercover “po-po.” THAT caused a BIG problem, and I was removed before I was beaten to a pulp.
In my very long list – ironically confiscated by the Sheriff’s removing me – and although I am sure the Sheriff gang unit were/are aware of them all, maybe I got a sub-set they were not. So, the accusation was a self-fulfilling prophecy by the guy who initially accused me. Lol.
All that to say, studying quite a few religiously racist cults years later and racist origins/history…. I have never, ever met a non-white white supremacist.
Ever.
The cults I have spent some time investigating are [to name a few]:
Christian Identity [defunct for the most part];
the KKK [5,000 members];
British Israelism;
the Nation of Islam [NOI];
Black Hebrew Israelites;
and the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths
My studies have included getting original source materials from the founders of these movements, and watching copious amounts of members descriptions of their beliefs.
And in all that, the only time I hear about “white supremacist people of color” is from the “new-new” Democrats and the Left.
I have met and studied a lot about anti-Semitism in my time in jail and my studies. Anti-Semites come in all colors, creeds, and historical movements…
But never a black or brown white supremacist.
~ RPT
So the origin of the Proud Boys (PB) is a bit more innocent than they are painted to be. That doesn’t mean that people in any of these groups do not have people in them (like any group) that abuse the stated goals of these groups. And the “boys” [in America at least], are small government advocates. As are John Birchers as well.
Which brings me to the upper half of the chart. Three and four.
I note on my site, after years of studying racist movements, that all these groups (black or white) almost always vote democrat. Here, for instance is another excerpt from a post of mine detailing this:
First, in the broad sense this has to be true… that is… somewhere in this nation I am sure a racist supports Donald J. Trump. Even if we assume the Klan all voted in unison, he would have gotten 8,000 votes at most! Nationwide.
HOWEVER, as you will see, even the above hypothetical is more complicated than most assume it to be. Let’s just clear the air first on this past charge of Trump not disavowing David Duke (a “famous” racist and past KKK leader) during the run-up-to the nomination: Trump clearly disavowed David Duke’s endorsement. As we will see, the truth about David Duke is more complicated than we often hear. Okay, moving on.
After Trump won the election the media and Hollywood types as well as comedians and Democrat Senators and Representatives all started saying there was a backlash of old-racist-white-men that came out in force and voted for Trump. This just isn’t the case. You can see from just a few of the bullet points from my “Blacks, Hispanics and Gays are Sexist, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Racist” post that this attack on American voters is just a maligning of each and everyone of those peoples character:
…Thirteen percent of Muslims voted for Trump, triple the amount that voted Romney, are they are Islamophobic, bigoted, xenophobic, and racist?
Eight percent of blacks voted for Trump, seven percent more than Romney — not to mention the black men and women who didn’t vote for the president at all in a higher percentage. These same men and women previously voted twice for Obama. These persons of color… if I understand my detractors correctly, are racist bigots?
A higher percentage (almost 30%) of Hispanics voted for Trump, more in fact than voted for Romney. These Hispanic and Latino men and women, like the others, are xenophobic, bigoted, and racist?
One hundred-and-ninety-four counties that voted for Obama once switched to GOP in the 2016 election. And, two-hundred-and-nine counties that voted for Obama twice switched to GOP. Many of these people are union members as well as life-long Democrats. Am I now being told that these Democrats who voted for Obama are: racist. sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted?
So you can see from the above and the graphic below that the people who really pushed Trump into the “win” section of the electoral count were minorities and voters who previously voted for Obama either once or both times prior to voting for Trump.
Two of the above four racist cults are both telling their followers to vote for Trump… the KKK and the Nation of Islam. Christian Identity as a cohesive movement is all but dead… and the 5% when they do vote always vote Democrat. IN FACT they all primarily vote Democrat.
A quick history point that is important for the next paragraph:
After the triumph of the civil rights movement and the introduction of a series of civil rights laws, the Klan broke up into various subgroups. Previously these KKK members were Democrats and they continued being so after.
“…virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” — Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
“…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” — Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.
People do not realize why these groups, especially the KKK, vote Democrat. For instance, out of the four leaders in the “white-power” movement (the KKK subculture) with the most followers, three told their peeps to vote Democrat (Actually, then it was them telling their followers to vote for Obama in 2008).
Here you see some higher ups in this white racist movement telling their people (3-of-the-4) to vote Democrat for the election in 2008:
➤ Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance; Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980… ➤ Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America; Career Highlights: Sued in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center for inciting the brutal beating of a Latino teenager; building the IKA into one of the nation’s largest Klan groups by allowing non-Christians to join. ➤ Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, “The Aryan Barbarian.” ➤ Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party; Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: “If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.”
Yes, most racist groups — INCLUDING THE KKK — voted for a black nominee.
The next question should be, Why?
Reason One One reason is that these racist white groups are typically socialists. And socialism is a political system that wants the government to run health-care, business, increase central power, etc. Here is a most basic graph of this concept (see to the right – click the graph to go to my combined post on the matter).
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” — Hitler
John Toland, Adolph Hitler: The Definitive Biography (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1976), 223-225.
Reason Two Another reason a lot of racist whites vote Democrat is they are very poor and use heavily the social services they support ideologically. This was even evident when less than the typical 80% that vote straight Democrat still voted straight Democrat in their respective states but did not vote for Obama.
The other Black Nationalist cults vote heavier [percentage wise] Democratic.
This year is different. You have both Louis Farrakhan telling his followers to vote for Trump, and you have more people in the disjointed KKK telling their people to vote for him. Why this change? I think it is because he has many similar views on issues with Bernie Sanders, as an example,
Forty-four percent of Sanders supporters surveyed said they would rather back the presumptive GOP nominee in November, with only 23 percent saying they’d support Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. And 31 percent said would support neither candidate in the likely general election match-up. (THE HILL)
Keep in mind those are voters in the state that put Sander’s into the Senate!
Here is the kicker though regarding the Nation of Islam (NOI). This cult, unlike the KKK, is VERY structured under a single leader. So what Farrakhan says is followed “religiously” by his adherents. Whereas, in the KKK, these leaders are not looked to in the same way Farrakhan is, as some sort of “messianic” figure. So you might have slightly more vote for Trump in the Klan on the recommendation of their leaders. This is different in the structure of the Nation of Islam, the percentages would be almost unanimous in their “lock-step.”
Many will continue to vote straight Democrat the rest of the ticket, in all groups mentioned.
“Racists Vote Republican,” or, “Republican’s Are Old Racist White Men” may be a convenient (actually evil) political narrative to scare a few voters away from the GOP, surely. But the maligning of every Republican nominee since Nixon just is not factually true.
DON’T accept the comparison. Take their arguments and return them packaged in a nice little bow.
Editor’s Aside:
Democrats want to fundamentally change America. I don’t love my wife if I want to fundamentally change her. Black Life Matters protesters teach their children to burn American flags or march down the street CHANTING “What do we want?!” “Dead Cops!” “When do we want them?!” “NOW!” They argue America was founded on nothing but slavery and greed. Hillary Clinton backed this group even going as far as far as saying (at the NAACP) that “systemic racism” needs to be eliminated. Months later calling Americans all racists: “I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think unfortunately too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other and therefore I think we need all of us to be asked the hard questions ‘why am I feeling this way?’”
Democrats think I am an imperialist white supremacist Christian cisgender capitalist heteropatriarchal male. Apparently however, these many demographic changes across the board [noted above] seem to agree that Trump’s slogan was acceptable, “Make America Great Again.”
One reason many of these hate groups (black and white) are voting for Trump is for border control. A) There is an animosity towards illegal aliens for racist reasons, and B) reasons related to economics as well. A great example would be this video “CHICAGO’S INNER-CITY POOR BLACK COMMUNITY ABANDONING OBAMA’S LIBERAL AGENDA“
To continue this point, one woman said this:
A resident of the Austin community, Jean Ray, says after 40 years of Democratic party control over the black community, the policies “are hurting,” and if there were Republicans willing to do the right job in her community, she would vote for them. (More at BREITBART)
So a good reason that black racist groups would have voted Trump includes practical economic concerns, i.e., jobs. Which is why we saw a 7% jump in blacks voting for the Republican candidate… but most likely even they voted Democrat the rest of the ticket.
Reason Three They HATE (H-A-T-E) Israel, and this is a reason they tend to support Democrats. For instance, on his YouTube, David Duke endorsed Charles Barron for Congress (video on the left). Another endorsement for Hillary was from a KKK leader here in California (right video).
So attributing racism to the GOP is silly, because as a whole, the almost 8,000 KKK members nation wide vote Democrat. AS DO ALL THE OTHER RACIST CULTS IN AMERICA (*booming megaphone affect in a cave*). NOT TO MENTION where all the hub-bub is when all these hate groups vote for Democrats in years past?
In other words, WHY is it only “newsworthy” when they vote for Republicans and not for Democrats?
I smell something fishy here.
I can continue, but this post is already long enough. On the racial issues, I suggest my page entitled: U.S. RACIAL HISTORY. This page deals with the supposed party switch by racist Democrats to Republicans, slavery, American Indian narratives, some VERY PROUD BLACK HISTORY in our country… and the like.
Recap Again, let’s recap for clarity some of my reasons white racist/nationalists cults vote Democrat:
They are typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance).
This is why a majority STILL supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. She is a socialist at heart, wants a big welfare state, and does not like Israel as much as Trump, who has kids practicing the Jewish religion. Thee ONLY issue a racist could want to vote for Trump on is his immigration policies… hardly a racist position. It has only now become an issue of bigotry and racism because the Left has moved the goal post in the use of language. Racists no longer means “genetically superior,” rather, it mean you disagree with a Democrat and/or hurt their feelings. Otherwise, these people would be RACISTS!
So the bottom line is that the top half of the pyramid has more in common with Leftist ideals of a larger government, and should be in a pyramid that includes ANTIFA and the beliefs of Michael Loadenthal.
So, as far as I can tell there are complete idiots at the FBI that follow the bad thinking of places like the Southern Poverty Law Center that further polluting the ideas that are soo easily refuted.
Here are just a couple examples of how the Left distorts reality:
THE SPLC! An example of this infectious disease
The Southern Poverty Law Center bills itself as a watchdog of hate groups. But is this just a cover for its true aims? Journalist and author Karl Zinsmeister explains.
It is SHOCKING that the FBI works with this political cult!
MORE SPLC RADICALISM
GAY PATRIOT [now defunct, sadly] notes the radical attacks from Leftist organizations:
The Southern Poverty Law Center was, perhaps, once a civil rights organization. Then extremists spent its core assets – in this case, SPLC’s good word and reputation – until they were gone. SPLC now routinely mislabels conservative and/or Christian groups as so-called “hate groups”, emptying the term of meaning and making the SPLC a bad joke.
Most famously, SPLC mislabelled the Family Research Council a “hate group” for its stance against gay marriage, and in 2013 that prompted an attempted mass-murder by a gay activist, Floyd Lee Corkins II.
SPLC is still going. Most recently, they mislabelled the D. James Kennedy Ministries:
[…..]
The DJKM plan to fight back with a defamation suit. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I expect it to fail; “that’s our opinion” is a workable defense in many instances, and many in the law profession have a blind spot for the SPLC.
The WASHINGTON EXAMINER goes after the partisan hate-group with this excellent article:
Newsrooms were on fire this week with terrible news: The number of hate groups in the United States has soared to record highs under President Trump.
There are most certainly hate groups in the U.S., and even one is one too many, but I’d encourage everyone to approach the numbers reported this week with calm and caution. There’s nothing partisan operatives would love more than for you to panic and to believe them when they suggest that the problem can be solved by expelling “the other team” from power. That the figures cited by newsrooms come via the decidedly unreliable and hyper-partisan Southern Poverty Law Center also doesn’t help anything.
The New York Times reported, “Over 1,000 Hate Groups Are Now Active in United States, Civil Rights Group Says.”
“Hate groups ‘surge’ across the country since Charlottesville riot, report says,” reads the headline from the Miami Herald.
“Trump ‘Fear-Mongering’ Fuels Rise of U.S. Hate Groups to Record: Watchdog,” U.S. News and World Report said in a headline that sort of gives the game away.
First, let’s keep things in perspective. Remember, for example, that the rise in the number of hate crimes is attributable in some way to the fact that there are more reporting agencies ( hundreds, in fact!) than ever before. It’s easy to say, “Oh, it’s all because of President Trump,” pointing to incidents like his disastrous Charlottesville statement. But the problem of bigotry is far older and deeper than the current administration. That the Trump White House isn’t helping anything is one complaint, but don’t fall for the suggestion that it’s the main driver.
In 2015, for example, the group put Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on its “extremist watch list,” citing the one-time presidential candidate’s “anti-LGBT views.” Later, in 2016, the SPLC labeled women’s rights activist, female genital mutilation victim, atheist, and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslim extremist” because she opposes Islamic extremism. The British activist and extremist-turned-counterextremist Maajid Nawaz was placed in the same category. The SPLC lumps pro-family and pro-Israel organizations in with actual neo-Nazis.
As for the report the SPLC just released this week, IT CONCEDES THERE IS AN UPTICK IN THE NUMBER OF BLACK NATIONALIST GROUPS SINCE 2017, BUT IT DOWNPLAYS THIS FACT BY CLAIMING THOSE GROUPS “HAVE LITTLE OR NO IMPACT ON MAINSTREAM POLITICS AND NO DEFENDERS IN HIGH OFFICE.” I must’ve just imagined noted-anti-Semite and frequent Democratic guest Louis Farrakhan.
[….]
Hate groups are real. Hate crimes are real. The SPLC is not. It exploits hate groups to raise money and further political interests unrelated to the problem of hate. Don’t fall for the SPLC’s lies.
(Originally posted in April of 2015. New media added)
…the Founders hated democracy and left behind a REPUBLIC OF HIERARCHY, not a Democracy of Equality
Take note of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution reads:
“The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government…”
I tell my kids that we do not have a democracy, but a Democratic REPUBLIC; and I am basing these on the Constitution and the authors (and signers) understanding of it (commonly referred to as “original intent”). Our Founders had an opportunity to establish a democracy in America but chose not to. In fact, they made very clear that we were not – and never to become – a democracy:
James Madison (fourth President, co-author of the Federalist Papers and the “father” of the Constitution) – “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general; been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
John Adams(American political philosopher, first vice President and second President) – “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration) – “A simple democracy… is one of the greatest of evils.”
Fisher Ames (American political thinker and leader of the federalists [he entered Harvard at twelve and graduated by sixteen], author of the House language for the First Amendment) – “A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will provide an eruption and carry desolation in their way.´ / “The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.”
Governor Morris(signer and penman of the Constitution) – “We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate… as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism…. Democracy! Savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt.”
John Quincy Adams (sixth President, son of John Adams [see above]) – “The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.”
Noah Webster (American educator and journalist as well as publishing the first dictionary) – “In democracy… there are commonly tumults and disorders….. therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence) – “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
Zephaniah Swift(author of America’s first legal text) – “It may generally be remarked that the more a government [or state] resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”
Critics have long derided the Electoral College as a fusty relic of a bygone era, an unnecessary institution that one day might undermine democracy by electing a minority president. That day has arrived, assuming Gov. Bush wins the Florida recount as seems likely.
The fact that Bush is poised to become president without a plurality of the vote contravenes neither the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution. The wording of our basic law is clear: The winner in the Electoral College takes office as president. But what of the spirit of our institutions? Are we not a democracy that honors the will of the people? The very question indicates a misunderstanding of our Constitution.
James Madison’s famous Federalist No. 10 makes clear that the Founders fashioned a republic, not a pure democracy. To be sure, they knew that the consent of the governed was the ultimate basis of government, but the Founders denied that such consent could be reduced to simple majority or plurality rule. In fact, nothing could be more alien to the spirit of American constitutionalism than equating democracy will the direct, unrefined will of the people.
Recall the ways our constitution puts limits on any unchecked power, including the arbitrary will of the people. Power at the national level is divided among the three branches, each reflecting a different constituency. Power is divided yet again between the national government and the states. Madison noted that these two-fold divisions — the separation of powers and federalism — provided a “double security” for the rights of the people.
What about the democratic principle of one person, one vote? Isn’t that principle essential to our form of government? The Founders’ handiwork says otherwise. Neither the Senate, nor the Supreme Court, nor the president is elected on the basis of one person, one vote. That’s why a state like Montana, with 883,000 residents, gets the same number of Senators as California, with 33 million people. Consistency would require that if we abolish the Electoral College, we rid ourselves of the Senate as well. Are we ready to do that?
The filtering of the popular will through the Electoral College is an affirmation, rather than a betrayal, of the American republic. Doing away with the Electoral College would breach our fidelity to the spirit of the Constitution, a document expressly written to thwart the excesses of majoritarianism. Nonetheless, such fidelity will strike some as blind adherence to the past. For those skeptics, I would point out two other advantages the Electoral College offers.
First, we must keep in mind the likely effects of direct popular election of the president. We would probably see elections dominated by the most populous regions of the country or by several large metropolitan areas. In the 2000 election, for example, Vice President Gore could have put together a plurality or majority in the Northeast, parts of the Midwest, and California.
The victims in such elections would be those regions too sparsely populated to merit the attention of presidential candidates. Pure democrats would hardly regret that diminished status, but I wonder if a large and diverse nation should write off whole parts of its territory. We should keep in mind the regional conflicts that have plagued large and diverse nations like India, China, and Russia. The Electoral College is a good antidote to the poison of regionalism because it forces presidential candidates to seek support throughout the nation. By making sure no state will be left behind, it provides a measure of coherence to our nation.
Second, the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system — a system worth preserving. Historically, federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power, but even in our own time we have found that devolving power to the states leads to important policy innovations (welfare reform).
If the Founders had wished to create a pure democracy, they would have done so. Those who now wish to do away with the Electoral College are welcome to amend the Constitution, but if they succeed, they will be taking America further away from its roots as a constitutional republic.
How did the terms “Elector” and “Electoral College” come into usage?
The term “electoral college” does not appear in the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment refer to “electors,” but not to the “electoral college.” In the Federalist Papers (No. 68), Alexander Hamilton refers to the process of selecting the Executive, and refers to “the people of each State (who) shall choose a number of persons as electors,” but he does not use the term “electoral college.”
The founders appropriated the concept of electors from the Holy Roman Empire (962 – 1806). An elector was one of a number of princes of the various German states within the Holy Roman Empire who had a right to participate in the election of the German king (who generally was crowned as emperor). The term “college” (from the Latin collegium), refers to a body of persons that act as a unit, as in the college of cardinals who advise the Pope and vote in papal elections. In the early 1800’s, the term “electoral college” came into general usage as the unofficial designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President. It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in 3 U.S.C. section 4, in the section heading and in the text as “college of electors.”…
Most of us learned the key ideas of the Declaration of Independence in school: that “all men are created equal,” “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” that government’s job is “to secure these rights.” This was a radical departure from the way things had always been. Where did these revolutionary ideas come from? Ben Shapiro explains in this illuminating video.
INTRO
When I read the title of this FEDERALIST article, it made me think back to an introduction letter to a co-worker who had left to go to San Francisco State University. The title is, “Seattle Anarchists Holding Capitol Hostage Demand Complete Return To State Of Nature.” You see, years ago I worked as the Special Order Clerk at Borders Books and Music. If there were harder to find books, I was the man to track them down for the customer. (This was around 1999 to 2001’ish.)
I had a co-worker that leaned Left and we set up a correspondence to exchange ideas about the roots or differences of Left and Right philosophies in the political parties. When I mentioned, for instance Rousseau being in a sense the philosophical founder for Western Leftism, he disagreed, but agreed that this should be our first subject. And Rousseau thought man should return to a state of nature, which is why thee FEDERALIST article rang a bell with me. At any rate, my co-worker…
…went away to school.
I mailed him the intro topic.
Never heard a peep.
I always wondered what happen to that [then] kid. Was the letter too long? Was he already partying and not caring a wit about the topic? Was his mailing address changed? Did he die? Whatever the case was, this was the first and only interaction I had with him when he left for college. So I figured I would put the paper here as an ode to the headline above and to save publicly some of my mediocre writing.
Here is a PDFof the below [letter] — Enjoy. BTW, this section allows you to JUMP to a section or appendix of your choice. Just hit the back arrow on your browser to return.
Rousseau’s Philosophy Of “Nothing” In Retrospect To Locke’s Philosophy Of “Ordered Statesmanship.”
SECTION ONE — deals with Rousseau and his social contract.
SECTION TWO— touches on the topic of Locke’s work, second treatise of civil government and more.
CONCLUSION— I will reference the self refuting nature of Rousseau’s philosophy… when put into a logical framework, it is un-workable!
APPENDIX A — discusses what was meant by the “general will” in Rousseau’s work and what Locke was referring to when mentioning “natural law.”
APPENDIX B — is a “investigation” into who Rousseau was, the inner man.
APPENDIX C — uses two examples of social compacts years before Lockean principles were formed.
APPENDIX D — is the journey of a French statesman hired by his government to find the key to the American Revolution.
“I have received your new book against the human race, and I thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit more than sixty years ago, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it.” — Voltaire on Rousseau’s Social Contract
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.” — Mussolini
“The most horrid and cruel blow that can be offered to civil society is through atheism,” — Edmund Burke, British Statesman
According to Locke, people are better off in the properly constituted state than they are or were in the “state of nature.” Quite a different point of view was expressed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1721-1778). In the state of nature, in which there was neither state nor civilization, people were essentially innocent, good, happy, and healthy, maintained Rousseau in his Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Men (1754). Further, in the state of nature, he said, people enjoyed perfect freedom. But with the advent of private property, this all changed. “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society,” which brought with it the destruction of natural liberty and which, “for the advantage of a few ambitious individuals, subjected all mankind to perpetual labor, slavery and wretchedness.”
To put this in some sort of perspective, Rousseau wrote this indictment of civilization in 1754. This was fully sixty-seven years after Newton had published his Principia. It was two years after Benjamin Franklin, with key and kite, had proved that lightning is electricity. Thirty years earlier, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit had devised his thermometer. Bach had been dead four years, and it had been twenty-three years since he had completed the Brandenburg Concertos, a masterpiece of mathematical reasoning expressed in music. This, in short, was the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment, the age of light, the Age of Reason. Civilization was stuffed with benefits. Philosophers were (as always) critical, but this critical? Civilization a step in retrograde?
But Rousseau later came to think that, in proper society, people would surrender their individual liberty for a different and more important collective liberty. Through a social compact a people may agree, in effect, to unite into a collective whole, called “the state” or “the sovereign,” and through the state sovereign enact laws reflective of the general will. An important point to be aware of here is that, for Rousseau, the state or sovereign is an entity in its own right, a “moral person” (as Rousseau says), a nonbiological organism that has its own life and its own will. Rousseau’s concept of the general will – that is, the will of a politically united people, the will of the state – is his most important contribution to political philosophy (see appendix A for a further discussion on the general will).
Plato viewed the state as a person or organic entity as well, a sort of organism. Alternatively, think of a football team, which can easily be regarded as something “over and beyond” the individual players that make it up, or a corporation, which the law regards as a person.
The general will, according to Rousseau, defines what is to common good, and thus determines what is right and wrong and should not be done. And the state or sovereign (i.e., the people as a collective agent) expresses this general will by passing laws. Further, the general will, the will of the people taken collectively, represents the truewill of each person. Thus, insofar as the individuals actions coincide with the common will, he is acting as he really wants to act – and to act as you really want to act is to be free, said Rousseau. “Compelling (*by force?) a person to accept the general will by obeying the laws of the state is forcing him to be free,” Rousseau wrote in a famous passage. So we may lose individual or “natural” liberty when we unite to form a collective whole, but we gain this new type of “civil” liberty, “the freedom to obey a law which we prescribe for ourselves.” Thus, Rousseau wrote, “it is to law alone that men owe justice and [civil] liberty.”
The question arises, of course, just how do we know what the general will is? Rousseau’s answer: If we, the citizens, are enlightened and are not allowed to influence one another, then a majority determines what the general will is: “The general will is found by counting votes. When, therefore, the opinion which is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so.”
Rousseau, however, distinguishes between the “will of all” and “the general will.” On the former of the two, Rousseau wrote, “is indeed but a sum of private wills: but remove from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other, and then the general will remains as the sum of the differences.”
According to Rousseau, it makes no sense to think of either delegating or dividing the general will. Therefore, he calculated, in the state, there cannot validly be a division of powers (in contrast to what Locke thought), and, though we may commission some person or persons to administer or enforce the law, these individuals act only as our deputies, not as our representatives. Rousseau maintained that the citizens of the state have the right at any time to terminate the social contract (explained more in the conclusion). He also held that they have the right at any time to depose the officials of the state. The implication of the right of the citizenry to terminate the social contract at any time and of their to remove officials of the state at any time is that the citizenry have a right of revolution and a right to resume anarchy at any time. Thus Rousseau is thought to have provided a philosophical justification for anarchy and revolution.
Did Rousseau also unwittingly establish a philosophical basis for totalitarianism? Some think that is the case because he said that “the articles of the social contract [reduce] to this single point: the total alienation of each associate, and all his rights, to the whole community.” If the community is regarded not just as the sum total of its members but as an entity somehow over and above the individuals in it, an entity with its own life and will that can itself do no wrong and must always be obeyed, then Rousseau’s words do have an ominous ring and invoke concepts that are incorporated wholesale in the philosophy of fascism. – (Hitler’s claim that the Fuhrer instinctively knows the desires of the Volk and is therefore due absolute obedience is an appeal to the general will.)
Also ominous is what Rousseau wrote near the end of The Social Contract (1792): “If any one, after he has publicly subscribed to these dogmas [which dispose a person to love his duties and be a good citizen], shall conduct himself as if he did not believe them, he is to be punished by death.” (*ahh, …by force!)
[Editor’s Note: before heading into section two, years after this I read a book by the son of famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, William J. Murray. In his book, Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World with Central Planning (KINDLE), he discusses the origins of Communism in Plato and the Spartan’s. That was an interesting addition to this thinking. But here I am speaking to a more modern Leftism found in the West]
SECTION TWO
“I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion [Christianity] – for who can know the human heart? – but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable for the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class or to a party, but it belongs to the whole rank of society.” America, Tocqueville added, is “the place where the Christian religion has kept the greatest power over men’s souls; And nothing better demonstrates how useful and natural it is to man, Since the country where it now has the widest sway is both the most Enlightened and the freest.” — Alex de Tocqueville, French Statesman.
“[A] true patriot must be a religious man… [H]e who neglects his duty to his Maker, may well be expected to be deficient and insincere in his duty towards the public.” — Abigail Adams agreeing with John Witherspoon
“…we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness 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.” — John Adams, first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797–1801) President of the United States.
In this section on the musings of John Locke, I must confess that I have to break the mold in which I was told I must write this paper. Some of the reasons being that a proper understanding of the “law of nature” or “natural law” is foundational to Locke’s writings and political philosophy. So I turn our attention first towards the French Revolution and it’s Constitution, whose announced aim was to duplicate the American Revolution, which had been such an obvious success. In fact, Thomas Jefferson traveled to Paris in order to assist Lafayette and his associates to draft their own Declaration of Rights.
“Everyone here is trying their hands at forming a declaration of rights,” Jefferson wrote in a letter to Madison, and included in his correspondence several drafts. “As you will see,” Jefferson observed, “it contains the essential principles of ours accommodated as much as could be to the actual state of things here.” Article Four of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted in August of 1789, for example, states that “liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another.” France’s Declaration abolished slavery, titles of nobility, and the remnants of feudalism and serfdom. In many respects, the French Declaration appeared superior to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. But whereas the American Revolution ended in the establishment of a constitutional democracy, a government under law, the French Revolution ended in tyranny and government by the guillotine, followed by the rise of Napoleon.
~ The obvious question is what went wrong in France? ~
The French Declaration did not acknowledge that the source of man’s rights is man’s “Creator,” as Jefferson had affirmed in America’s Declaration of Independence. The French Declaration did not even mention that rights are inherent, inalienable, or derived from any transcendent authority. This is why in China today the communist government persecutes the followers of the Christian faith. Not because communism is atheistic in it’s philosophy, but because Christians believe that earthly kings are answerable to the “King of the Earth.” A transcendent right giver, so to speak. Rights, for the Frenchman, were granted by an enlightened government. George Washington inadvertently commented on such an enlightened government: “[L]et us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be concede to the influence of refined education on minds… reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
Locke’s two Treatise of Civil Government contained 102 Biblical citations. Locke even began his argument with the proposition that God intended man to own private property, and referred the reader to Genesis: “God gave the world to Adam and his posterity in common,” He then went on cite Paul’s first letter Timothy: “God… richly supplies us all things….” But, Locke added hastily, this was by no means a prescription for socialism, as man also possesses property in the form of his own exertions. Thus, any individual who takes what God has provided equally to all and tailors it to his purposes becomes sole owner of that property. A farmer, for example, who builds a fence and cultivates the land for the production of food, becomes the legitimate owner of the land.
According to Locke’s view: “God, when He gave the World in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labor… God in His reason commanded him to subdue the earth, subdue it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labor. He that in obedience to this command of God subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, and could not without injury take it from him.” Moreover, “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not covet” are commandments (unchanging moral law that is Locke’s [God’s] general will) of God designed to protect private property, which includes labor and the fruits thereof.
Another vast difference between Rousseaulean doctrine and that of Locke’s is Original Sin. From his reading of Genesis, Locke noted that man at one time existed outside the bounds of civil government, was in a “state of nature” and completely free. But once sin entered into the world through Adam’s indiscretion, the safety of men and their property became tenuous. Man’s fallen state required that he give up some of his freedom and prudently subject himself to civil government, without which his ability to enjoy the fruits of his labor and defend his rights “is very uncertain and constantly exposed to invasion of others.”
Locke adds, “For all men being kings such as he, every man his equal and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state [of nature] is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quite this condition, which however free, is full of fears and continual dangers.”
Frail and defenseless individuals, in Locke’s view, were forced by the brutish circumstances (i.e., original sin = man inherently evil; no original sin = man inherently good) of existence (which man creates) to band together for their own mutual protection to form civil societies, entrusting to some sovereign agent the power to wield the sword against bandits and foreign invaders. But Locke, wanting to confine the duties of government to a narrow compass, was quick to add that the power of government is by no means absolute; the people had entered into a mutual and binding trust with each other and had established a regime with precisely defined obligations. If this trust or “compact” – precisely defined obligations – is at any time broken, the people have the right to withdraw their allegiance… even to rebel and depose their ruler, an astonishing notion to those who believe the monarch’s authority flowed from divine right.
To the question: Who shall judge the king? Locke replied,
“The people shall be the judge,” though in the end, said Locke, “God in Heaven is Judge. He alone, ‘tis true, is Judge of the right. But every man is judge for himself… whether he should appeal to the Supreme Judge, as Jephthah did” and wage war (Judges 11:27-33). “I will not dispute now whether princes are exempt from the laws of their country,” wrote Locke, “but this I am sure, they owe subjection to the laws of God,” and added: “No body, no power, can exempt them from the obligations of that Eternal Law [caps in the original]… Whatever some flatterers say to princes of the world, who all together, with their people joined to them, are, in comparison to the Great God, but a drop of a bucket, or a dust on the balance, inconsiderable, nothing” (Isaiah 40:15).
Locke’s argument for disobeying a king was actually a conservative one. While Royalists believed rejection of the monarch’s authority was the same as disobeying God. Locke thought little harm would come from acknowledging the people’s prerogative to exercise their ultimate right to reject the civil authority, because “people are not so easily got out of old forms as some are apt to suggest.” “Great mistakes,” said Locke, “will be born by people without mutiny or murmur” (see conclusion). Only “a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way,” that is towards subverting the people’s God-given liberties, could make people “rouse themselves.”
Locke was merely applying Protestant religious principles to the world of politics (see appendix C). If the individual has the authority to interpret Scripture for himself, without a human agent acting as intermediary, isn’t it also up to the individual to determine his own relationship to the government and indeed to the rest of society? Under extreme circumstances, thought Locke, the conscience of the individual, informed by scripture, and right reason, can supersede the government and even the collective judgment of the group because society is a voluntary union, from which anyone can exit if he so chooses. Unlike Rousseau who said, “Further, the general will, the will of the people taken collectively, represents the true will of each person. Thus, insofar as the individuals actions coincide with the common will, he is acting as he really wants to act – and to act as you really want to act is to be free.” Neither are you free to exit at any time according to Rousseaulean philosophy: “If any one, after he has publicly subscribed to these dogmas [which dispose a person to love his duties and be a good citizen], shall conduct himself as if he did not believe them, he is to be punished by death.”
CONCLUSION
Society As the “Whole”
(Excerpted from the book, Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly In Mid-Air)
If Society, the will of all or the will of the majority [society says], is the final measure of morality, then all its judgements are moral by definition. Such a concept is an oxymoron – a contradiction in terms. An attorney once called a radio talk show with a challenge. “When are you going to accept the fact that abortion is the law of the land?” she asked. “You may not like it, but it’s the law.” Her point was simple. The Supreme Court has spoken, so there is nothing left to discuss. Since there is no higher law, there are no further grounds for rebuttal. This lawyer’s tacit acceptance of conventionalism suffers because it confuses what is right with what is legal.
When reflecting on any law, it seems sensible to ask, “it’s legal, but is it moral? It’s law , but is the law good; is it just?” There appears to be a difference between what a person has the liberty to do under the law and what a person should do. Conventionalism renders this distinction meaningless. There is no “majority of one” to take the higher moral ground. As Pojman puts it, “Truth is with the crowd and error with the individual” (much like Rousseau). This is tyranny of the majority.
When any human court is the highest authority, then morality is reduced to mere power – either power of the government or power of the majority. If the courts and laws define what is moral, then neither laws nor governments can ever be immoral, even in principle.
Another absurd consequence follows from the society says line of thought. This view makes it impossible to reform the morals of a society. There are actually two problems here; the first is called the reformer’s dilemma. Moral reformers typically judge society from the inside. They challenge their culture’s standard of behavior and then campaign for change. But when morality is defined by the present society’s standard, then challenging the standard would be an act of immorality. Social reformers would be made moral outcasts precisely because they oppose the status quo.
Corrie ten Boom and other “righteous gentiles” risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. William Wilberforce sought the abolition of slavery in the late eighteenth century in the United Kingdom. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for civil rights in the United States in the 50’s and 60’s. in Germany during World War II, Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer challenged Christians to oppose Hitler.
We count these people as moral heroes precisely because they had the courage to fight for freedom. According to Society Says thought, however, they are the worst kind of moral criminals because they challenged the moral consensus of their own society. This view faces another difficulty with moral improvement of society. If society’s laws and cultural values are the ultimate standards of behavior, then the notion of moral improvement on a legal or cultural level is nonsense. A social code can never be improved; it can only be changed.
Think of what it means to improve something. Improvement means an increase in excellence by raising to a better quality or condition. How do we know if we have increased the quality of something? Only by noting that some change has brought it closer to an external standard of improvement. A bowler improves when she raises her average closer to 300, the perfect game. A baseball pitcher increases his skill by decreasing the number of batters he allows on base. If he strikes out every batter, he’s attained perfection. In either case, an outside standard is used as the measure of improvement.
To improve a society’s moral code means that the society changes its laws and values to more closely approximate an external moral ideal. If no such standard exists, if cultural values are the highest possible law, then there is no way for those standards to be better than what they are at any given moment. They can only be different. A society can abolish apartheid in favor of equality. It can adopt policies of habeas corpus protecting citizens against unjustified imprisonment; it can guarantee freedom of speech and the press. But according to this view, no one could ever claim that these are moral improvements but only that society changed its tastes. There is no moral ideal to emulate. Moral change is possible, but not moral improvement. Improvement means getting better, and there’s nothing better – in this view – than any society’s current assessment of morality. And moral reformers actually turn out to be unethical.
APPENDIX A
“By offering evolution in place of God as a cause of history, Darwin removed the theological basis of the moral code of Christendom. And the moral code that has no fear of God is very shaky. That’s the condition we are in.” — Will Durant, the preeminent historian and author of The Story of Civilization
Speaking of his native born Russia, “But if I were asked today to formulate as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’“ — Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“I have been alternately called an aristocrat and a democrat. I am… neither. I am a Christocrat…. I believe all power… will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. He alone who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.” — Founding Father Benjamin Rush
A Critique of the “General Will”
Rousseau’s concept of the general will is essentially the same as such familiar concepts as the “sentiment of a nation” and the “aspirations of a people.” The idea is that a group of people may collectively or as a group desire or wish or want something, and that this collective desire, though it may coincide with the desires of the individuals in the group, is a metaphysically distinct entity.
Two questions about the general will, and all similar notion of a collective sentiment, are controversial to this day. First, what is it? Let’s suppose, for example, that every member of a group of people believes that the federal deficit should be reduced. We may say, then, that the federal deficit should be reduced. But can saying this possibly mean otherwise than simply that every individual in the group believes that it should be reduced? In this instance, that is, the general will seems no different from the wills of all individuals.
Let’s suppose now that 60 percent of the group believes that the deficit should be reduced. If we now say that the general will is that the federal deficit should be reduced, can we mean anything other than that 60 percent believes that way? In this instance, then, the general will seems no different from the individual wills of the 60 percent.
Suppose, finally, that 50 percent believes in raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit and 50 percent believes in cutting taxes to reduce the federal deficit. If we ignore the differences about how the deficit should be reduced (these, Rousseau might say, are “pluses and minuses that cancel each other”) and say that the general will is that the deficit should be reduced, do we mean anything other than what we did in the first instance, namely, that everyone believes that it should be reduced?
Thus, if the general will is supposedly something other than the will of all or the will of the majority – which clearly is Rousseau’s view because he envisions circumstances in which the majority will and the will of all may actually run counter to the general will – the question is: What is it?
And the second question is: Even granting that a group may have a general will that is distinct from the will of the majority, how is one to determine the specific propositions it endorses? Polls and elections disclose the will of all and the will of the majority; what discloses the general will? Through the will of all the general will could feasibly be changed since “the freedom to obey a law which we prescribe for ourselves.” Thus, Rousseau wrote, “it is to law alone that men owe justice and [civil] liberty.” Man is the end to a means, this general will then is subjected to his will as opposed to His Will!
This is why an unconstitutional democracy will never work. Founding Father Fisher Ames said, “A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption, and carry desolation in their way,” (legally, I might add). Founding Father Benjamin Rush was equally pointed when he noted, “A simple democracy is the devil’s own government.” Founding Father and President John Adams stated that, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There has never been a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
So strongly did the Founders oppose democracy that when they created the Constitution, they included a provision to keep America from becoming a democracy. Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution requires that “each State maintain a republican form of government” – a republican form as opposed to a democratic one. One of our most thoroughly educated Founding Fathers was Noah Webster, who illuminated us as to what a “republican form of government was,” keeping in mind that Webster was the author of Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution:
“[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.”
The Judeo-Christian moral standard will never change because the basis for it is Divine in nature. This is the general will that a properly constituted government can refer to in order to stay within the lane lines of freedom and liberty. This is something that Rousseau’s general will cannot, and will never be able to, accomplish!
APPENDIX B
“As a man thinkith in his heart, so he is” — Proverbs 23:7
“If the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow…. These considerations should lead to an attentive solicitude… to be religiously careful in our choice of all public officers… and judge of the tree by its fruit.” — Founding Father Elias Boudinot
As the quotes above give a clue as to what this appendix is, I would want to first say that a man can change, but Rousseau never showed that change that can so inspire men to renounce their past beliefs, like Abraham Maslow. So lets delve into the mind of Rousseau with a conglomeration of quotes by him from various sources. This is done in order that we may see who the real Rousseau is.
Rousseau actually enjoyed the lavish lifestyle and considerable success even in his lifetime. To the unprejudiced modern eye he does not seem to have had much to grumble about. Yet Rousseau was one of the greatest grumblers in the history of literature. He insisted that his life had been one of misery and persecution. He reiterates the complaint so often and in such harrowing terms, that one feels obligated to believe him. On one point he was adamant: he suffered from chronic ill health. He was “an unfortunate wretch worn out by illness… struggling every day of my life between pain and death.” He had “not been able to sleep for thirty years.”
“Nature,” he added, “which has shaped me for suffering, has given me a constitution proof against pain in order that, unable to exhaust my forces, it may always make itself felt with the same intensity.”
It is true that he always had trouble with his penis. In a letter to his friend Dr. Tronchin, written in 1755, he refers to “the malformation of an organ, with which I was born.” His biographer Lester Crocker, after careful diagnoses, writes: “I am convinced that Jean-Jacques was born a victim of hypospadias, a deformity of the penis in which the urethra opens somewhere on the ventral surface.” In adult life this became a stricture, necessitating painful use of a catheter, which aggravated the problem both psychologically and physically. He constantly felt the urge to urinate and this raised difficulties when he was living in high society: “I still shudder to think of myself, in a circle of women, compelled to wait until some fine talk had finished… When at last I find a well-lit staircase there are other ladies who delay me, then a courtyard full of constantly moving carriages ready to crush me, ladies’ maids who are looking at me, lackeys who line the walls and laugh at me. I do not find a single wall or wretched little corner that is suitable for my purpose. In short I can urinate only in full view of everybody and on some noble white-stockinged leg.”
The passage is self-pitying and suggests, along with much other evidence, that Rousseau’s health was not as bad as he makes out. At times, when it suites his argument, he points to his good health. His insomnia was partly fantasy, since various people testify to his snoring. David Hume, who was with him on the voyage to England, wrote, “He is one of the most robust men I have ever known. He passes ten hours in the night-time above deck in the most severe weather, where all the seamen were almost frozen to death, and he took no harm.”
Rousseau called himself the “unhappiest of mortals,” spoke of the “grim fate which dogs my footsteps,” claimed “few men have shed so many tears” and insisted: “my destiny is such that no one would dare describe it, and no one would believe it.” In fact he described it often and many did believe, that is until they learned more about his character. Even then some sympathy remained. Madame d’Epinay, a patroness whom he treated abominably, remarked, even after her eyes were opened: “I still feel moved by the simple and original way in which he recounted his misfortunes.” He was what armies call an Old Soldier, a practiced psychological con-man. One is not surprised to find that, as a young man, he wrote begging letters, one of which has survived. It was written to the Governor of Savoy and demands a pension on the grounds that he suffers from a dreadful disfiguring disease and will soon be dead.
But behind all this self-pity lay an overpowering egoism, a feeling that he was quite unlike other men, both in his sufferings and his qualities. He wrote: “What could your miseries have in common with mine? My situation is unique, unheard of since the beginning of time.…” Equally, “The person who can love me as I can love is still to be born.” “No one ever had more talent for loving.” “I was born to be the best friend that ever existed.” “I would leave this life with apprehension if I knew a better man than me.” “show me a better man than me, a heart more loving, more tender, more sensitive…” “Posterity will honor me… because it is my due.” “I rejoice in myself.” “…my consolation lies in my self-esteem.” “…if there were a single enlightened government in Europe, it would have erected statues of me.”
No wonder why Burke declared: “Vanity was the vice he possessed to a degree little short of madness.” It was part of Rousseau’s vanity that he believed himself incapable of base emotions. “I feel too superior to hate.” “I love myself too much to hate anybody.” “Never have I known the hateful passions, never did jealousy, wickedness, vengeance enter my heart… anger occasionally but I am never crafty and never bear a grudge.” In fact he frequently bore grudges and was crafty in pursuing them. Men noticed this. Rousseau was the first intellectual to proclaim himself, repeatedly, the friend of all mankind. But loving as he did humanity in general, he developed a strong propensity for quarreling with human beings in particular. One of his victims, his former friend Dr. Tronchin of Geneva, protested: “How is it possible that the friend of mankind is no longer the friend of men, or so scarcely so?”
In 1743 he was given what seemed to plush post of secretary to the French Ambassador in Venice, the Comte de Montaigu. This lasted eleven months and ended in his dismissal and flight to avoid arrest by the Venetian Senate. Montaigu stated (and his version is to be preferred to Rousseau’s own) that his secretary was doomed to poverty on account of his “vile disposition” and “unspeakable insolence,” the product of his “insanity” and “high opinion of himself.”
Rousseau was a madman impassioned only with his best interests in mind. Granted he did reapply some beliefs that had already existed, much like Locke, but the difference between the two men in lifestyle and philosophy shows, that in all, Locke was a man to be measured by his deeds and his words.
APPENDIX C
“Being a lover of freedom, when the [Nazi] revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks…” “Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.” — Albert Einstein
I wanted to quickly debunk the feeling that Locke and Rousseau were the originators of the social contract. Just a couple examples will suffice, but others throughout Christian history are available. The Mayflower Compact is a prime example of what a community with Godly principles and the welfare of all in mind can do.
“In the name of God, amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign, Lord King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, & c., having undertaken for the glory of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid.”
This agreement was executed on November 11, 1620 – predating Locke’s Second Treatise by seven decades. It proved to be an accurate precursor of the Plymouth polity, which thereafter featured annual elections for governor, deputy governor, and legislature. As with the churches of that era, the pattern was repeated often in the experience of New England. Here, for example, are the words of the Fundamental Orders of Conneticut (1639), the colony established and led by Thomas Hooker:
“…well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, [we] do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth; and… enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and pursue the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess…”
Appendix D
Alex de Tocqueville on the American Revolution
Alex de Tocqueville in the early 1800’s was commissioned to by the French government to travel throughout the United States in order to discover the secret of the astounding success of this experiment in democracy. The French were puzzled at the conditions of unparalleled freedom and social tranquility that prevailed in America. Previously, it was thought that where there was liberty, anarchy would inevitably follow because of the inability of the people to govern themselves. But in America people were free – and also well behaved. In fact, nowhere on earth was there so little social discord.
When the French jurist, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States in 1831, he became so impressed with what he saw that he went home and wrote one of the best definitive studies on the American culture and Constitutional system that had been published up to that time. His book was called Democracy in America. Concerning religion in America, de Tocqueville said: “On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things” (emphasis added).
He described the situation as follows: “Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions … I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the human heart? – but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”
In Europe, it had been popular to teach that religion and liberty were enemies of each other. De Tocqueville saw the very opposite happening in America. He wrote: “The philosophers of the 18th century explained in a very simple manner the gradual decay of religious faith. Religious zeal, said they, must necessarily fail the more generally liberty is established and knowledge diffused. Unfortunately, the facts by no means accord with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and debasement; while in America, one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world, the people fulfill with fervor all the outward duties of religion”….
The Greatest Influence [De Tocqueville] emphasized the fact that this religious undergirding of the political structure was a common denominator of moral teachings in different denominations and not the political pressure of some national church hierarchy. Said he: “The sects [different denominations] that exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God…. All the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same … There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”
It was astonishing to de Tocqueville that liberty and religion could be combined in such a balanced structure of harmony and good order. He wrote: “The revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not permit them to violate wantonly the laws that oppose their designs … Thus while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust”….
In one of de Tocqueville’s most frequently quoted passages, he stated: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Two Treatises of Government, John Locke, edited by Edited by Thomas I. Cook.
Rousseau’s Political Writings, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, edited by Alan Ritter. Translated by Julia C. Bondanella.
Intellectuals, by Paul Johnson.
The Betrayal of Liberalism: How the Disciples of Freedom & Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion & Control, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball.
Christianity & the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, by John Eidsmoe.
Intellectuals Don’t Need God & Other Modern Myths: Christian Apologetics for Today, by Alister E. McGrath.
Faith & Freedom: The Christian Roots of American Liberty, by Benjamin Hart.
Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews With An Absolutist, by Peter Kreeft.
America’s Thirty-Year War: Who Is Winning?, by Balint Vazsonyi.
Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl.
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich.
Philosophy for Dummies, by Tom Morris.
Introduction To Ethics, by Robert van Wyk.
The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View, by Richard Tarnas.
America’s God & Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, by William Federer.
The Theme Is Freedom: Religion, Politics, & the American Tradition, M. Stanton Evans.
How Now Shall We Live?, by Charles Colson.
Keys to Good Government: According to the Founding Fathers, by David Barton.
The Foundations of American Government, by David Barton.
Philosophy: The Power of Ideas, Brooke N. Moore and Kenneth Bruder.
The Oxford History of Western Philosophy, edited by Anthony Kenny.
The Concise Conservative Encyclopedia; 200 of the Most Important Ideas, Individuals, Incitements, & Institutions That Have Shaped the Movement, by Brad Miner.
The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes & Breaks Prosperity, Family & Civility, by Angelo M. Codevilla.
Nearly every American knows the phrase “separation of church and state.” Do you know where it’s from? Here’s a hint: it’s not in the Constitution. John Eastman, professor of law at Chapman University, explains how and why this famous phrase has played such an outsized role in American life and law.
An excerpt from a larger paper (the below was originally posted Jul 26, 2015):
…The First Amendment never intended to separate Christian principles from government. Yet today we so often hear the First Amendment coupled with the phrase “separation of church and state. The First Amendment simply states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Obviously, the words “separation,” “church,” or “state” are not found in the First Amendment; furthermore, that phrase appears in no founding document! While most recognize the phrase “separation of church and state,” few know its source; but it is important to understand the origins of that phrase. What is the history of the First Amendment?
The process of drafting the First Amendment made the intent of the Founders abundantly clear; for before they approved the final wording, the First Amendment went through nearly a dozen different iterations and extensive discussions.
Those discussions – recorded in the Congressional Records from June 7 through September 25, 1789 – make clear their intent for the First Amendment. For example, the original version (followed by later versions) introduced in the Senate on September 3, 1789, stated:
“Congress shall not make any law establishing any religious denomination.”
“Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination.”
“Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination in preference to another.”
“Congress shall make no law establishing religion [denomination] or prohibiting the free exercise there of.”
By it, the Founders were saying: “We do not want in America what we had in Great Britain: we don’t want one denomination running the nation. We will not have Catholics, or Anglicans, or any other single denomination. We do want God’s principles, but we don’t want one denomination running the nation.”
Of interest is the proposal that George Mason – a member of the Constitutional Convention and “The Father of the Bill of Rights” – put forth for the First Amendment:
“All men have equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians [denomination] ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others.”
Their intent was well understood, as evidence by court rulings after the First Amendment. For example, a 1799 court declared:
“By our form of government, the Christian principles – we do want God’s principles – but we don’t want one denomination to run the nation.”
Again, note the emphasis: “We do want Christian principles – we do want God’s principles – but we don’t want one denomination to run the nation.”
[….]
On the day the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they underwent an immediate transformation. The day before, each of them had been a British citizen, living in a British colony, with thirteen crown-appointed British state governments. However, when they signed that document and separated from Greta Britain, they lost all of their State governments.
Consequently, they returned home from Philadelphia to their own States and began to create new State constitutions. Samuel Adams and John Adams helped write the Massachusetts constitution; Benjamin Rush and James Wilson helped write Pennsylvania’s constitution; George Read and Thomas McKean helped write Delaware’s constitution; the same is true in other States as well. The Supreme Court in Church of Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) pointed to these State constitutions as precedents to demonstrate the Founders’ intent.
Notice, for example, what Thomas McKean and George Read placed in the Delaware constitution:
“Every person, who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust… shall… make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: ‘I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forever more, and I acknowledge the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.’”
Take note of some other State constitutions. The Pennsylvania constitution authored by Benjamin Rush and James Wilson declared:
“And each member [of the legislature], before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz: ‘I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the rewarded of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.’”
The Massachusetts constitution, authored by Samuel Adams – the Father of the American Revolution – and John Adams, stated:
“All persons elected must make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. ‘I do declare that I believe the Christian religion and have firm persuasions of its truth.’”
North Carolina’s constitution required that:
“No person, who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the [Christian] religion, or the Divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit in the civil department, within this State.”
You had to apply God’s principles to public service, otherwise you were not allowed to be a part of the civil government. In 1892, the Supreme Court (Church of Holy Trinity v. United States) pointed out that of the forty-four States that were then in the Union, each had some type of God-centered declaration in its constitution. Not just any God, or a general God, say a “higher power,” but thee Christian God as understood in the Judeo-Christian principles and Scriptures. This same Supreme Court was driven to explain the following:
“This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons: they are organic utterances; they speak the voice of the entire people…. These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”
“…we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness 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.”
John Adams, first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797–1801) President of the United States. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6. (PDF found here)
The Left Rejects Separation of Church and State
(July 7, 2016)
GAY PATRIOTnotes that at one time the left wanted a strict separation of church and state. Now they wish to regulate it! In the NATIONAL REVIEW article GP links to, we read:
I’m old enough to remember when Christians who expressed concern that LGBT activists would attempt to regulate church services were dismissed as paranoid nutjobs. Well, welcome to our new paranoid future. My friends and colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom announced today that they were filing suit against the Iowa Civil Rights Commission to block enforcement of gender identity guidelines that purport to regulate “a church service open to the public.” News flash — virtually every church service is open to the public.
[….]
Incredibly, the document contains an FAQ specifically directed at churches. Here it is:
DOES THIS LAW APPLY TO CHURCHES?
Sometimes. Iowa law provides that these protections do not apply to religious institutions with respect to any religion-based qualifications when such qualifications are related to a bona fide religious purpose. Where qualifications are not related to a bona fide religious purpose, churches are still subject to the law’s provisions. (e.g. a child care facility operated at a church or a church service open to the public).
It’s unclear to me how a branch of the Iowa state government has determined that a “church service open to the public” does not have a “bona fide religious purpose,” but there it is. Under current guidance, churches in Iowa must become “members only” to exercise their religious liberty. It’s tough to imagine this guidance surviving even liberal judicial review, but even if struck down it shows where some on the Left want to take the law. Not even the sanctuary is safe.
I am amused to see a guy — John Van Huizum — mention his two-decades of writing articles, and then, follow this resume reference with this:
I think that when you put God on a U.S. issued coin or banknote, you obviously ignore what should be a separation of church and state, as many of our founders intended.
Please, besides writing crap for two decades backed by nothing more than opinion, tell me what the Founders thought of “separation of church and state” John. Tell me what books you have read to come to such a conclusion, please. And I imagine you would have read a few from each viewpoint to come to such a FIRM conclusion, like: “you OBVIOUSLY ignore what should be a separation of church and state, as many of our founders intended” (emphasis added). In a paper I did on this topic, I note that the same persons that wrote and ratified the 1st Amendment, did something that according to John they shouldn’t have done if how he views the topic is true. For instance, as soon as they finished with Constitutional issues (its creation and passage), they immediately went to their prospective states and wrote their state constitution. Here are some excerpts from them:
State Constitutions
On the day the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they underwent an immediate transformation. The day before, each of them had been a British citizen, living in a British colony, with thirteen crown-appointed British state governments. However, when they signed that document and separated from Great Britain, they lost all of their State governments.
Consequently, they returned home from Philadelphia to their own States and began to create new State constitutions. Samuel Adams and John Adams helped write the Massachusetts constitution; Benjamin Rush and James Wilson helped write Pennsylvania’s constitution; George Read and Thomas McKean helped write Delaware’s constitution; the same is true in other States as well. The Supreme Court in Church of Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) pointed to these State constitutions as precedents to demonstrate the Founders’ intent.
Notice, for example, what Thomas McKean and George Read placed in the Delaware constitution:
“Every person, who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust… shall… make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: ‘I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forever more, and I acknowledge the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.’”
Take note of some other State constitutions. The Pennsylvania constitution authored by Benjamin Rush and James Wilson declared:
“And each member [of the legislature], before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz: ‘I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the rewarded of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.’”
The Massachusetts constitution, authored by Samuel Adams – the Father of the American Revolution – and John Adams, stated:
“All persons elected must make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. ‘I do declare that I believe the Christian religion and have firm persuasions of its truth.’”
North Carolina’s constitution required that:
“No person, who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the[Christian] religion, or the Divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit in the civil department, within this State.”
You had to apply God’s principles to public service, otherwise you were not allowed to be a part of the civil government. In 1892, the Supreme Court (Church of Holy Trinity v. United States) pointed out that of the forty-four States that were then in the Union, each had some type of God-centered declaration in its constitution. Not just any God, or a general God, say a “higher power,” but thee Christian God as understood in the Judeo-Christian principles and Scriptures. This same Supreme Court was driven to explain the following:
“This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons: they are organic utterances; they speak the voice of the entire people…. These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”
In other words, for two decades John has been writing hearsay and not doing the hard work a knowing what the “F” he is talking about. Unfortunately, due to time, I am not able to critique other issues in this short article I found wanting. That being said, I am sure the reader gets the point from this single critique (as well as my previous) that John is your typical secular liberal. I think I agree with Milton Berle’s assessment of John (*wink*), “with him, ignorance is a religion.”