My Veterans Day Wish

Over the years, countless people have thanked me for my service to the country.  When this happens, I always think, “I pray I can count on yours.”

Abraham Lincoln presciently said that no “transatlantic giant” would ever cross the oceans and defeat us, but rather, “if [danger] ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

This death by suicide is happening right in front of our eyes and the military cannot stop it – intervention must come by the voice of the people.  This is the service I pray I can count on from the patriotic citizens of this country that I love.

Our liberties are steadily decreasing with the ever expanding role of government. The wise warning of Ronald Reagan on communist expansion across the globe is equally applicable to the governmental expansion occurring amongst us:

"We're at war [ideologically] with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars [i.e. socialism under any other name], and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers."

"If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.   This is the issue… Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

My wish this Veterans Day wish is that all citizens who love liberty, revere the constitution and appreciate the blood sacrificed freely by those past and present to preserve it from foreign powers, will rise to the occasion and cease not to raise their voices in its defense by all means available until the socialist tide is turned and our constitutional liberties are restored to their original standing.

Servitude to the State

Our founders enumerated powers in our Constitution to ensure that the scope of government remained limited, thereby preventing government from re-enslaving the people.  For decades the government has used the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution to justify expansion and increasing involvement in or control over the lives of citizens.  This has resulted in a corresponding degradation of liberty and servitude to the state.  To illustrate this, let’s examine the government’s role in meeting the needs of the poor and frame the discussion with Aesop’s fable, “The Ant and the Grasshopper”.

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content.  An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. 

"Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"

"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."

"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present."  But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.  When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.  Then the Grasshopper knew:

It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

This well-known fable highlights the importance of industry and self-reliance, while also highlighting the folly of indolence and procrastination.  In another version of this fable the ant refuses the starving grasshopper’s petition for food and upbraids him for his wasted summer and unpreparedness.  This variation leads some to ignore the original moral of the fable and instead condemn selfishness and lack of compassion on the part of those like the ant.   Granting that the grasshopper was lazy and the ant lacked charity, let’s consider which side our government comes down on.

There are two types of poor, the deserving and undeserving.  Deserving poor are those who are poor through no fault of their own, while the undeserving poor are able bodied with adequate opportunity but choose not to work for their basic necessities.  The grasshopper in Aesop’s fable is clearly intended to highlight the undeserving poor.  Our government’s welfare policies make no attempt to distinguish between the two and therefore incentivize the indolence of the grasshopper.  Worse, government unjustly makes the industrious ant the slave of the grasshopper.

If our government were cast in Aesop’s fable, upon identifying the plight of the undeserving grasshopper, instead of using the force of government to compel him to work and earn his own bread they would use the force of government to take the fruits of the ant’s labor and redistribute it to the grasshopper through welfare instruments.  Instead of forcing self-reliance the government chooses to force “charity” and fosters dependence.  Since there is no incentive for the grasshopper to become self-reliant his annual plight will persist and the government will continue to force the ant to support the grasshopper with his labor.  It is a twisted mind that can claim justice in this scenario.

 

The individual himself should be the first line against poverty, yet the government’s policies do not seek to foster self-reliance.  The next line of defense should be the family, yet the government’s policies do not seek to strengthen and support this vital institution in society.  Quite the contrary, the government has for some time supported and aided those in society bent to destroy the family and has sought itself to replace the family.  Welfare distribution actually discourages poor pregnant females from getting married.  The next line of defense should be religious based institutions and organizations specifically established to relieve poverty. 

   

One author wrote that the “private charities of the nineteenth century had been more successful and humane than the twentieth-century welfare state – private charities had stressed what he called affiliation, trying to help the poor by restoring broken family ties, whereas contemporary social policy emphasized personal autonomy.  Private charities had tried to bond with those they cared for when they were truly on their own, whereas the welfare state was bureaucratic and impersonal.  Private charities tried to discern who really needed help and who merely sought to live in indolence; the welfare state made no such distinction” (Regnery,2008).

The government is impersonal and will never be able to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor.  Instead of assuming the role and responsibilities of charity, they should establish policies that foster self-reliance and strengthen those institutions of society best able to do so and to administer to the deserving poor.   As long as government stays in the welfare business, they will continue to unjustly make the hard working members of society the slaves of the undeserving poor.

In expanding outside of the enumerated powers of the Constitution, our government has slowly marched towards tyranny and despotism.  Our welfare system is but one example.  Always under the guise of authority, justice and the general welfare of society, politicians have fostered a mindset and culture of dependency on government.  The have passed laws that steadily eroded personal liberty and put government in control.  They are increasingly bold in despoiling the fruits of our labors to support the growing aims of the state.  Sadly, too many of our citizens cannot see this destruction in operation.

Sarah Palin on Freedom's Fall

This is why I like Sarah Palin - she's the only national figure correctly identifying that the cause of our problems, whether mass shootings, a falling economy, foreign entanglements, disappearing freedoms, etc. is our collective fall away from morality (article link).

Sarah Palin observes that the characteristic response of our government is to ask, “What can we do to limit the freedom of the people” when instead they should ask, “What can we do to nurture and support a people capable of living in freedom?”

She quotes John Adams who said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” I will add that one will have a hard time finding a founding father who did not also echo the sentiment that collective national virtue is the only foundation upon which peace, safety and prosperity in our nation can endure under the constitution they established, or who did not predict all of the consequences we are seeing as a result of discarding that sure foundation.

 I’ve been listening closely for a long time to the voices on our national stage posit on the root causes of our several national challenges and advocate various cures, but Sarah Palin is the first I’ve heard identify a growing culture of immorality as the source of our nations woes and turning to God as the remedy. God, religion, right, wrong, good, evil, morality, immorality are all subjects and words branded “offensive” by the the standards of political correctness and are thus banned from the public lexicon, suppressing the real national dialog that needs to take place. Bravo to Sarah Palin for having the courage to speak truth in defiance of political correctness.

As long as the good men and women who have a national platform succumb to fear of violating the sacrosanct commandments of the politically correct and avoid the topic of good and evil, seeking instead to find a secular, intellectual answers that will suffice while not bringing down wrath from those who feign offense at the hint of God, our nation will never get on the road to recovery. As the prophet Jeremiah unsuccessfully tried to teach the Jews just before their utter destruction by Babylon, “...Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” (Jeremiah 17:5)

 Many of our churches are teaching this, but the damnable suppressive consequence of our leaders’ acquiescence to political correctness hinders the truth from making its way to the public square. Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was one in 2009 who taught church members the same truth Sarah Palin courageously raises on the national stage (link):

“[They teach] that truth is relative and that everyone decides for himself or herself what is right. Concepts such as sin and wrong have been condemned as value judgments…

“As a consequence, self-discipline has eroded and societies are left to try to maintain order and civility by compulsion. The lack of internal control by individuals breeds external control by governments…

“Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become…

“In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues.”

Our god-fearing pilgrim ancestors believed this as did our patriotic founding fathers and the faith of their generations propelled the United States of America to the pinnacle of greatness of recorded history. Our country is sliding down the slopes from that pinnacle because our generations have ignored or not been taught one of the foremost truths taught in scripture, that “If they obey and serve [God], they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures. But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they shall die without knowledge.”  (Job 36:11-12)

Our nation was founded upon principles of righteousness and our turn away from God is bringing about His judgments and will continue to do so until we return to Him, something that won’t happen as long as political correctness controls the national discourse.

We need more Sarah Palin’s in public life and in private life to stir the nation up in remembrance of God and urge everyone to reject wrong and embrace right.

Say "NO" to Government Run Health Care

"I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future." (Remarks by President Obama to a Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009)

Key points from Rep. Ryan (WI) on the current health care bill before the House of Representatives:

Our current entitlements are already suffocating state budgets and adding trillions in obligations we have no means to pay for.

The bill does not control costs; the bill does not control deficits.

The bill is full of gimmicks, smoke, and mirrors making it look cheaper than it is.

The true 10 year cost of the bill is $2.3 trillion.

The full 10 year cost of this bill has a $460 billion deficit; $1.4 trillion the next 10 years.

THE BILL PUTS GOVERNMENT IN CONTROL OF HEALTH CARE!

America's Drift Towards Socialism

“America was built on the principle of faith in God, self reliance, the profit motive, individual action and voluntary charity. It was built by those who believed that the surest helping hand at was at the end of their own sleeves. These forefathers of ours shared one thing in common, an unshakeable faith in God and a faith in themselves. There are indications that America is moving away from the philosophy that made her the most prosperous nation in the world.” – Ezra Taft Benson