Series: Moral Renewal, the economic key «

3 Cheers for Obama’s defeat-no cheer from the RINO victory

January 20, 2010 · 20 comments

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Moral Renewal, the economic key

I can’t help but look at Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts in the context of the larger strategy clearly being implemented by the RINO (Republican-In-Name-Only) clique that currently controls the GOP. Sean Hannity is the clique’s bellwether media tool. It was no coincidence that he featured Mitt Romney on his program last night to revel in the Scott Brown victory. Scott Brown in Massachusetts is the advance guard for Mitt Romney in the White House (or vice-versa). He becomes the poster child for the RINO clique’s archetypal GOP candidate who:

Has no differences in principle with the socialist minded Democrats;
Embraces the substance of Obama’s socialist agenda, but “opposes” Obama by criticizing his implementation of socialism, especially when it comes to fiscal matters;
Agrees in principle with the Democrats on the fundamental issues of justice and morality but employs the deceptive rhetoric of personal opinion to evade the questions of public law and policy they involve. Such issues include child-murder and other abrogations of the unalienable right to life, as well as the rejection of the God endowed rights of the natural family.

As long as the RINO clique can gull the conservative base of the GOP into identifying with and celebrating the success of such candidates, principled conservatives will never (or very rarely) win elections; conservative policies will never be implemented; and the tragic decline of America’s liberty will continue to its inevitably ruinous conclusion.

The RINO clique pushes the view that only candidates who focus on bread and butter pocketbook issues stand any chance of winning. Money and jobs are all that matters. But money is only a means. It represents the power to procure material effects, including of course the work (jobs) of other people. By insisting that political differences be reduced to disagreements about money and jobs, the RINOs tacitly embrace the notion that human political communities can be formed and maintained on a strictly materialistic basis. But this implies that the individuals who make up the community can also be dealt on a strictly materialistic basis. It further implies that for political purposes, human beings are no better than chattel. Therefore human communities are simply pools of human resources, to be built up or drawn down as administration requires. Like the use of gravel in landscaping, the arrangement and use of these resources involves no moral considerations, and therefore gives rise to no moral conflicts.

Both the RINOs and the socialist Democrats subscribe to these views. They operate from a common perspective; one that makes politics, legislation and policy-making no more than different aspects of social engineering. By redefining every political contest to focus on money and jobs they encourage people to redefine themselves and their aspirations in terms that conform to their role in the administration of things. Pesky ideas of intrinsic worth and dignity are pushed into the background with a view to eliminating them altogether. Of course, this also eliminates the real basis for self-respect, replacing it with a false sense of self-esteem built upon the possession and enjoyment of things. Instead of identifying themselves with the moral substance of actions for which they can take responsibility, people are content to identify themselves with external things, which are at best empty, perishable symbols of their pride. Made hollow by their preoccupation with these things, their consciousness of the interior source of their dignity grows ever weaker, until it is entirely dependent upon the presence or absence of those external things.

At this stage, people become the ideal subjects of the corporate, socialist administrative state that is the ultimate goal of the RINOs and the socialist Democrats. They become dependency minded, unable to imagine life or action outside the government centered and fabricated framework the social engineers have constructed for their habitation. For them, freedom has no meaning apart from the sense of security they feel when all the government services they depend on seem to be in place. Of course, they can never really experience this “freedom”, as their sense of dependency is continually teased and manipulated to keep them in subjection to the masters of their state. Like drug dealers, the social engineers administer relief only in order to encourage dependency.

For many Americans the prospect of life under the completed dominance of this socialist, administrative state is repugnant. As they understand the Obama faction’s open dedication to achieving it, they are rising to oppose such a fate. Sadly for them, the RINO political theatre is showing the same movie, with a less obviously offensive trailer and soundtrack. The RINOs accept the approach that redefines politics to exclude the moral issues that arise from the self-evident truth: human beings are not things. They are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights arising from their responsibility for right and the actions they are obliged to take to fulfill that responsibility. Money and jobs are not the salient issues. The salient issues involve justice, responsibility, and respect for individual rights. The proof of this priority lies in the hard fact we are even now inescapably confronting: we shall find no solution to the economic crisis America faces unless we are willing to address the foundational moral crisis from which it springs. Come back for more on this point in my next posting.

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Moral renewal, key to ending U.S. debt slavery- I

January 23, 2010 · 15 comments

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Moral Renewal, the economic key

My last posting ended with the contention that we shall find no solution to the economic crisis America faces unless we are willing to address the foundational moral crisis from which it springs. This has been the analytical basis for my involvement in national politics since I first stepped into the arena. In January 1996, I gave a brief (8 minute) speech at a GOP dinner in New Hampshire that was later featured on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show, in which I simply declared “We don’t have money problems. We have moral problems.” Events since that time have conclusively demonstrated the truth of that statement, culminating in the 2008 financial crisis brought on by a train wreck of unbridled greed, heedless political ambition and individual irresponsibility.

Sadly, that debacle was simply an episodic manifestation of the deeply structural economic vulnerability created by the dissolution of America’s moral fiber. I was led to ponder this recently as I read Jerome Corsi’s WND article Forecast: Debt to dwarf GDP:

A blue-ribbon panel that includes three former heads of the Congressional Budget Office is telling President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress that the federal deficit must be cut now or the national debt within about two generations will be 600 percent of the gross domestic product.

“The debt level of the United States is unsustainable, something has to give,” said Rudolph Penner, former head of the CBO and co-chairman of a report issued last week by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration.

“The panel suggested four different solutions, varying the mix of entitlement program spending and tax increases in the policy alternatives.” All the alternatives involved some mix of national restraint in the form of lower spending, higher taxes, or reneging on promised Social Security and Medicare benefits for the elderly. It’s ominous that “all four budget alternatives were constructed with a view to keeping the U.S. debt on what the panel considered a sustainable ratio of 60 percent U.S. debt to GDP.” Apparently the panel gave no consideration to any alternative that would place the debt slavery of the American people on a path toward extinction.

As John Steele Gordon note in his article A Short history of the National Debt, “It was not ever thus.”

Before the Great Depression, balancing the budget and paring down the debt were considered second only to the defense of the country as an obligation of the federal government. … In 1865 the vast debt run up in the Civil War amounted to about 30% of GDP; by 1916 it was less than a tenth of that.

There even was a time when the U.S. made it a deliberate policy to pay off the national debt entirely – and succeeded in doing so.

Though in 1790 Alexander Hamilton called the national debt a national blessing, he understood that the blessing was both the incentive and reward for fiscal responsibility. The Founding generation treated the goal of extinguishing the post-Revolutionary war government debt as an essential part consolidating and defending America’s independence. They institutionalized the government’s commitment to this goal with the establishment of a sinking fund intended to make sure that in the use of any surplus government revenues, priority would routinely be given to paying down the national debt. Thus despite the cost of
fully funding almost all U.S. governmental debt obligations (including state debt) as the new Federal government was launched, and borrowing to finance the Louisiana purchase, the ratio of debt to GDP under U.S. Presidents who were leaders during the Founding period fell to below 10% from a high of 35% in 1792.

The purpose of setting a strategic goal is to discipline the planning process. The implementation of plans, however, depends on the effective discipline of the people who must carry them out. Thanks to the delusions of socialist (Keynesian) economics, after WWII the U.S. government abandoned the strategic goal of debt reduction. Thanks to a politics based on those same delusions, the American people were encouraged by self-serving political leaders to abandon all semblance of personal discipline as well. This culminated in a “we can have it all” approach to government finance that gradually corrupted the whole financial system.

For the last two generations the American people has behaved like the spendthrift heir of fiscally responsible parents, indulging in a debt financed spending spree. We have squandered the moral capital of international trust and confidence accumulated by the generations before us. This has partly been the result of materialistic self-indulgence. But ironically, it has also partly resulted from the moral impulses of compassion. The problem is that there is a lie at the heart of the supposed good intentions. The lie is revealed in the preference for government as the instrument of compassion. It allows people to bask in the warm glow of doing good while avoiding any real personal involvement or commitment.

For example, the natural plan for social security rests on the simple premise that, as parent are obliged to take care of their children, so children are obliged to take care of their parents. On the one hand, this plan requires parents who work and sacrifice for their children, and children who respect the example and authority of their parents. On the other hand, it requires children who accept the work and sacrifice involved in caring for their aging parents; and parents willing enough to forego the pride that would otherwise prevent them from accepting some degree of dependence upon their children.

Simply by reestablishing this natural and age-old system for mutual self-reliance, we would slow the demand for government entitlement, increase the stock of human and material help available to every individual in need, and alleviate the fearful sense of vulnerability that leaves so many prey to the notion that their personal security depends on the government’s authority and largesse. The symbol of the successful acceptance of the sharing and mutual obligations, constraints and sacrifices the natural family system involves is the coming together of the generations under one roof, grandparents and parents, children and grandchildren making room and mutual provision for one another as the givers and receivers of example and care.

How have we become a people for whom the prospect of actually living in such a household subtly offends our sense of personal freedom, aspiration and pride? I’ll further explore the ramifications of that question in my next posting.

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Moral renewal, key to ending U.S. debt slavery- II

January 27, 2010 · 6 comments

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Moral Renewal, the economic key

The options for dealing with the national debt presented in the Report mentioned my last post quietly highlighted a hard reality. There is no way to prevent the debt level of the United States from crushing the nation’s economic prospects without addressing the public financial burden associated with Social Security and Medicare benefits for the elderly. Such programs are part of our society’s efforts to address the age old challenge of all human societies- how to care for children, the infirm and the elderly. However, since the original Report to the President of the Committee on Economic Security transmitted to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, U.S. efforts have been based on the assumption that, “in this man-made world of ours”, the God ordained natural family is inadequate to deal with the challenge.

This inadequacy purportedly relates to the fact that in the “man-made world” the family’s material sustenance depends on the income individuals derive from participation in an artificial economy, characterized by large scale industrial and other human enterprises. This income dependency has largely replaced reliance on what they can produce by activities such as agriculture that involve direct interaction with elements of the natural world. According to this reasoning, even with the best intentions and cohesiveness, the family unit cannot secure sufficient income to be proof against the vicissitudes of life in the “made-made world.” Government therefore has to replace the family as the locus of provision against misfortune.

That original report claimed that the “task of reconstruction” the nation faced as a result of the misfortune we call the ‘Great Depression’ “does not require the creation of new and strange values.” In the American context this was, at the very least, a disingenuous declaration. The United States of America was not founded on the notion of a “man-made world” but that of a world made by the Creator God who endowed all men with certain unalienable rights. The aim of government is to secure these individual rights, not the individual’s material welfare. To be sure, the idea of right includes the individual’s responsibility to care for God’s gift of life, including all that is necessary to sustain the body, which is its material form. But the idea of human welfare was not confined to meeting its material requirements. It involved, above all, the individual’s responsibility to do right, i.e., to carry out the actions required to fulfill the natural law, which encompasses all the determinations of the Creator’s will that make human existence possible.

The natural family, as defined by the predisposition toward procreation (to be fruitful and multiply) is the primordial focus of this individual responsibility. Though its activities involve actions indispensable for the material security of its members, the bonds of family are not simply ties of material selfish interest. They involve the active acknowledgment of obligations that subordinate material self-interest to the good of other members of the family and the family as such. Given the sacrifice involved in fulfilling these obligations (up to and including giving one’s life for their sake) material calculation cannot ultimately be the motive for doing so. Rather it flows from the conformation of the individual’s will to the overall will of the Creator as it relates to the life of each family member, but also to human life as such. This conformation of the individual’s will to the benevolent will of the Creator, (as well as the feelings or emotions associated with it), is the true essence of family life, which we call love.

As expressed in the life of the natural family love is not simply an emotional connection between individuals, though it cannot exist apart from the determination of the individual will. Nor does it simply involve the reflexive subordination of the individual’s will and existence to that of the family as a whole, for that would invalidate the individuality of each person’s loving commitment to the family. As the individual accepts and respects what is required for the existence of the family as such (and that of each of its members,) so the family respects what is required for the existence of each individual as such, including its uniqueness. Though somewhat paradoxical, this mutual respect is the essence of true family unity. This unity is a covenant of love constituted and sustained by the will of the Creator. It emerges as all members of the family come together to accept and carry out the Creator’s benevolent provisions for the possibility and sustenance of human life.

Love thus informed by respect for the will of the Creator substantiates the culture of voluntary self-sacrifice that contributes to reliable fulfillment of the mutual obligations family life entails. What people do for the sake of love they do of their own free will, even while preserving the natural bondage that defines and characterizes the family as a whole. This unique fusion of bondage and freedom, of individual choice and natural obligation, is the essence of the distinctly human community. Like the distinctive atomic structure that marks the molecules of a material substance, it marks the family as the indispensable building block of all the more extensive communities that, because they respect the prerequisites of humanity, are properly understood to be human communities.

In this sense the natural family is literally the building block of human society. If, as the original Social Security report implies, the “man-made world” strains the family beyond its capacities, then by threatening the family the “man-made world” poses a threat to the humanness of society (i.e., that which is distinctively human about it.) In response to that threat, the “welfare state” (socialist) approach started during the New Deal substitutes the coercion based activity of the man-made institutions of government for the love based actions of the God endowed natural family. That is to say, it simply surrenders to the threat. The surrender is couched in terms of material necessity. But since the necessity is “man-made” it is contingent upon the human choices responsible for what has been made. Those choices therefore give rise to the threat to the family and the consequent dehumanization of society.

In response to a man-made problem the socialists propose reliance on man-made institutions that cast aside the distinctively human basis of the community. The destruction of the family is therefore not an accident of material circumstances, but a purposeful sacrifice of human being as it comes from the hand of God (human nature) to make way for a world of human making. In the “man-made world” humanity is no longer recognized as such because man has superseded himself, asserting God-like responsibility for the nature of all things, including, of course, his own.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that man is the matter and maker of the state. Though for rhetorical purposes the socialists present the exaltation of the state as a function of compassion, it appears more accurately to be a function of self-idolizing pride. It allows man to believe that he is indebted for what he is to no one but himself. But a debt owed to ourselves is no debt at all. It represents no external constraint upon the will, and involves no acknowledgment of the limits or boundaries of our potential. For the sake of what we will ourselves to be we may therefore expend ourselves without limit, becoming on our own account all that we wish to be, no matter what the cost.

In keeping with this arrogant assumption of limitless potential, socialism dissolves the loving bondage of family life in order to unleash a tidal wave of self-worshipping pride that culminates in hateful bondage and self-destruction. The assumption of human self-sufficiency replaces the acknowledgement of our dependency on God’s love for us. Mechanisms of coercion and fear replace the willingness to be the agents of that love toward one another. The self-sacrifice that is naturally the free gift of love becomes instead the coercive imposition of sacrifice, by one human being upon another (abortion, starvation of helpless innocents like Terry Schiavo, etc.); and one generation upon another (abortion, death panels for the elderly, the imposition of livelihood destroying debt upon future generations, etc.)

This prospect of fear and coercion, though desperately tragic, is not without hope because it is of our own making. What we are doing to ourselves, we can yet and still undo. We can turn away from (repent of?) the ideologies, policies and actions responsible for it and let our God-endowed nature once again take its course. In the next and last article of this series, I will offer some thoughts about what this might involve.

More From Alan Keyes is Loyal to Liberty

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Moral renewal-turning the key

January 28, 2010 · 13 comments

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Moral Renewal, the economic key

If, in addressing the challenge of economic and social security the politicians simply meant to “second the motion” of God’s intention for the family, things might have worked out differently. (The same could be said of using public money to support education.) I think, however, that the socialist mentality has at its heart a spirit of rebellion against God, not cooperation with His will. So the purpose is to substitute government action for the activity of the God ordained institution of the natural family, and ultimately to exalt human will and control above and in place of adherence to God’s will.

The key evidence of this intention is the promotion of so-called “gay-marriage.” Once that idea is accepted, the natural (i.e., Creator ordained) basis for the family is necessarily discarded. The duties and attendant rights arising from the bonds of family are left with no legitimacy except what they derive from human legislation. The state may then claim the power to define the duties and rights connected with the family without regard for any natural (that is, Creator ordained) limits upon that power. This allows the state to claim the primary role in the upbringing and education of children. It makes parents at best agents of state power. But once the upbringing and education of children are taken over by the state, the possibility of government of, by and for the people cannot be sustained. Those who control the government simply brainwash new generations to be servile subjects of state power.

Respect for the God-ordained family as an expression of the natural law instituted by God makes it imperative to preserve respect for each individual’s responsibility to God, which the state cannot lawfully supersede. This imperative runs counter to any claim by the state justly to usurp from parents primary authority for the upbringing and education of children. It obliges the state to respect the unalienable right arising from each parent’s responsibility before God. Therefore in order to consolidate state power, the doctrine of unalienable rights arising from the natural law must be cast aside.

Not all of the politicians (in both the Democrat and Republican parties) who promote socialist schemes do so with this intention, aware of the full implications of what they do. At present, however, I believe leaders in both the Democrat and Republican parties serve people and forces (e.g., George Soros) that are fully aware of, and committed to, the goal of discarding the natural law ideas articulated in the American Declaration of Independence; completely overturning the constitutional republic; and emancipating the institutions of human power (chiefly represented by government) from all not merely expedient moral constraint.

Because this escape from moral constraint is the desired result, there is no incentive for the government to live within it’s means. Money isn’t put aside to meet needs or address crises. Needs and crises are simply convenient excuses for claiming control of more and more money. Those seeking unlimited power covet unlimited control of all available resources. Anyone who accepts the supposedly “pragmatic”, money centered framework of the current discussion of government policy plays into their hands. The irresponsible policies that threaten the American way of life do not arise from bad fiscal practices. The bad practices arise from an ideological agenda intended to destroy the American way of life.

Clearly the first step in thwarting this agenda is to recognize the mainly ideological character of the threat. Then we must:

Refresh and restore our understanding of the ideas and principles that provide the moral and practical basis for constitutional (justly limited) government, including especially the natural law basis for the doctrine of unalienable rights and its dependence on acknowledging the existence and authority of the Creator, God;
Think through and apply the consequences of this understanding of America’s ideas and principles as the basis for our approach to all the policy issues we face, beginning with the treacherous failure of the existing political system and the elites that control it, as well as the issues of national and economic security arising from that failure;
Give priority to addressing the aspects of this failure that most directly assault the moral and practical foundations of constitutional government, especially:
- Imposition of a false doctrine of “separation of church and state” intended to impose government control of all religious belief and activity rather than to protect them from government interference and domination;
- Abrogation of the doctrine of unalienable rights through abuses of executive, legislative and judicial power in order to promote abortion, gay marriage, and wholesale infringement of the right to keep and bear arms;
- Material starvation of the right peaceably to assemble and seek redress of grievances being perpetrated under the guise of so-called “campaign finance reform” laws, and other legislation aimed at stifling the political activities of the people;
- Erosion and confiscation of the independent material resources of the people through the imposition of a tax system that requires the surrender of fundamental constitutional rights and fiscal policies that virtually enslave this and future generations of Americans with debts to foreign powers and international banking institutions;
- Dilution of the sovereignty of the American people through lax surveillance of the borders of the United States, lax enforcement of immigration laws, and careless extensions of the privileges of legal residence and citizenship to illegal aliens, thereby promoting a demographic invasion of the United States intended to subvert the sovereignty of the American people.
Support proposals to address the crisis of national and economic security that aim to
- Reestablish the just limits upon government power imposed by the U.S. constitution, including the exclusion of the judiciary from any share in the legislative power of government;
- Abolish the Federal income tax, and repeal the 16th amendment thus restoring to the people control of the first claim to and use of their property and resources, including especially such income as they derive from their labor or other economically valuable capacities.
- Fund the Federal government using tariffs, duties and excise taxes as provided for in the Constitution prior to the imposition of the Federal income tax;
- Restore the Federal character of the Constitutional republic by restricting the activities of the U.S. government to the use of those powers explicitly delegated to it by the Constitution, leaving all others, not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, to the States and the people as the 10th Amendment requires.
- Reestablish the Constitutional provision for enforcement of the 10th amendment by repealing the 17th Amendment, and thus returning the election of U.S. Senators to the control of the people as constituents of their State governments, through which they exercise the residual powers of sovereignty reserved to them by the 10th amendment.
- Base efforts to address the social and economic challenges facing the American people on approaches that fully respect the prerogatives and responsibilities of the natural family; preserve the private sector as the primary and preferred engine of economic activity; and protect the material independence and national security of the American people by reducing the national debt and pursuing trade and other international policies that preserve the industrial capacity of the United States on a competitive basis.
- Maintain the moral and material capacity of the United States to pursue the most effective strategy for national defense, including the capacity to comprehend, influence and where necessary appropriately respond to, threatening international events and situations;
- Reject the false national security policy that seeks to compensate for ineffective or incompetent national security measures by targeting the unalienable rights and constitutional liberties of Americans.
Note that this strategic outline includes both a clear understanding of our situation, and a summary of specific priorities and related policy goals. We need to find and back people who are willing and able to represent both, first as candidates for office, and then as our representatives in government. Because the threat does not come exclusively from this or that particular element of the assault on our way of life people who are good on one or even several issues, but who do not subscribe to or cannot articulate the understanding and priorities that inform our overall purpose, won’t get the job done. Such people could be useful members of the forces needed to renew our liberty, but they will not succeed without general leadership that effectively unifies them in articulate pursuit of the overall strategic plan.

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