All Lives Matter. But POLICE Lives Matter: In Fact Police Lives Matter Most Of All.

 

Last night I attended a “Glow Walk” to honor our police and take a damn stand against a depraved media liberal culture that routinely undermines and even demonizes them.

I put it this way to the chief who shook my hand and thanked me for coming: I pointed to the American flag over our heads – which was at half mast over the police station due to the assassination-murder of two police officers in an adjacent city – and I said, “I came because of THAT.”  Because every time I drive by and see that flag at half mast it makes me sick, it makes me seethe with rage, because I know what it represents.  We have to choose sides right now in this nation; and I’m choosing my side.  I’m choosing to side with law and order and justice and decency over murderous ideological vermin and the cultural elites who are supporting those vermin.

For the record, I have had several opportunities to spend time with my chief of police.  He is a truly wonderful man.  I have met his wife, and they are a loving, caring, dedicated couple.  He is a professional: if he were serving another city, he would serve that city to his utmost.  As it is, he is serving MY city.  And while I don’t get to see him work in the office as the chief, he never seems to miss an opportunity to be an ambassador for his department.  He is always affable, always listening, always caring.  And our crime rate has dropped dramatically in the time he has served.  We are lucky to have this man as our chief.  Period.

EVERY human life matters.

But ONLY people who are pro-life have any right whatsoever to say that.  Because ultimately either EVERY human life matters, or NO human life ultimately matters.  Because when you start parsing out human life, and arguing that this life matters, this one doesn’t: this human life is sacred because mommy wants her; but with this human life we can stick a tube in her head and suck her brains out and then crush her skull with forceps and pull her mutilated body out of what God intended to be the safest place for her on earth.  When we can do something like that, then NO LIFE MATTERS.  Because we ALL start from that same exact place in the womb.  And according to science – according to the branch of science which is specifically charged with classifying organisms into their proper categories – we never become more “human” than we are from the very moment of conception.

A zygote, in her mother’s womb, is:

I created that image just a few moments ago, under what I believe was divine inspiration.  Because the science on the left and the image of the baby in the womb on the right scream the identical same message: that baby in the womb is HUMAN.  A child in the womb is HUMAN by virtue of her parents; she is a BEING by virtue of the fact that she is a living thing: SHE IS A HUMAN BEING.

We are all equal as humans because we all have the same human nature which we had at the very first moment of conception.  And either human life matters because it’s human life or it doesn’t.  And if it doesn’t, then whoever is in power gets to start playing games with what ought to be sacred and sacrosanct.

Either that unborn baby’s life matters, regardless of her level of “intelligence” or “ability” or “accomplishment” or spatial location, or else there is nothing logically or morally preventing us from going the way of the Nazis, or the Stalinists, or the Maoists, or the Khmers rouges, or the North Koreans, etc. and just start killing by the millions, by the tens of millions, every single human being who fails to measure up to our a priori determination of what a valuable “human” is.

Senior citizens’ lives don’t matter: they are no longer producing, they are soaking up benefits that others could be putting to more productive use and to pay out those benefits undermines more viable “humans.”  Or black lives don’t matter: too many of these individuals are on welfare, producing nothing, only costing society, and now to make matters even worse they are creating societal unrest.  And so on.  Look at that damn cripple over there in that wheelchair.  What a waste of flesh!  Look at that dwarf!  It’s like a human head on a monkey body!  And therefore, “The members of these groups whose lives don’t matter should be euthanized in the most efficient and inexpensive process possible, so that more fit, more productive “humans” may live and flourish.  Which is the very heart of evil.

According to the so-called “science” of Darwinism, that is actually a FAR more scientifically valid argument than murdering healthy babies who have their entire lives before them and have unimaginable potential.  After all, who can demonstrate that we didn’t abort our next evolutionary link that would have made us better – and now our entire SPECIES will perish because we didn’t evolve when we needed to.  And all because we kept aborting our next step to evolutionary greatness…

It is an incredibly arbitrary, and murderous act to kill human beings merely because they have not yet reached the stage that they most certainly WOULD have reached had they merely not been killed yet.  Why don’t we kill five-year olds?  What good are THEY?  What do THEY produce?  I mean, hell, let’s wipe out the teenagers; they are FAR more trouble than they are worth according to most objective standards!!!

EVERY human life matters to anyone who truly believes the Bible, because the Bible declares in Genesis 1:26-27 that:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

The Bible is crystal clear regarding the unborn and their precious humanity:

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous–how well I know it.  You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.  You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.  How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!  I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me! — Psalm 139:13-18

When it comes to humanity, any morally sane being would err on the side of humanity; which is to say that no one would EVER harm something that even MIGHT be an innocent human life unless they were either truly insane or genuinely evil.  So if you are a mother, and you have several children, and you hear your oldest daughter say, “Mommy, can I kill this?” from behind you while you are cutting up vegetables, YOU LOOK TO SEE WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT.  Because she might be talking about her little sister.  And in the same way, anybody who says, “Well, who is to say WHEN “human life” begins, so let’s leave it up to anybody who wants to make their own choice one way or another,” is no morally different than the Islamic State caliphate allowing its adherents to decide whether Yazidis are “human” or not: and you go ahead and kill ’em as you want to if you don’t think they meet the standard.

It’s particularly easy for Bible-believing Christians – who were demonized by liberal media culture well before that culture began undermining and demonizing our police officers – to realize that Jesus loves EVERYONE regardless of their race or anything else that has nothing whatsoever to do with our fundamental humanity as His image-bearers:

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red, brown, yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children
Of the world.

Jesus died for all the children
All the children of the world
Red, brown, yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus died for all the children
Of the world.

Jesus rose for all the children
All the children of the world
Red, brown, yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus rose for all the children
Of the world.

ALL LIVES MATTER.

I still recoil in SHOCK at the fact that the Democrat Party actually forced a candidate running for president – and the following statement destroyed that candidate’s chances of winning the nomination of the Democrat Party – to apologize because he made the “mistake” of saying that “ALL LIVES MATTER” to a group of liberals who demanded that only BLACK lives matter.  Those liberals can play all the damn pseudo-intellectual word-games they want; they can equivocate all they want; but the same Democrat Party that booed the statement that “all lives matter” is the same party that has systematically exterminated ten times more innocent human life than the Nazis did during the Holocaust.

EVERY human life is of what morally intelligent philosophers describe as “incommensurate value.”  There is no price, no amount of gold or gems or any other form of value, that can compensate for the life of a human being.

For the record, the death penalty itself – which is BIBLICAL – is itself a testimony of that above fact: if you murder another human being, there is literally NOTHING you can do or give that will compensate for the sheer magnitude of your moral crime.  YOU took a life – you STOLE a life – and YOUR life shall be taken in return.  The scales of justice will be BALANCED.  And that act of JUSTICE in recognition of the value and the magnitude of innocent human life will become an object lesson to us all.

All lives matter.  Even the lives of those who have been murdered, who have been expunged, who have been aborted.

But police lives matter MORE.

Why do I say that?

It is not that police lives are more valuable because police are somehow better “humans.”  That is not true.  Police officers are as “human” as the rest of us.  They too were zygotes, were embryos, were fetuses, were infants, were toddlers, were teenagers, and capable of making all the mistakes and errors that are prone to frail, imperfect, fallen humanity.

Police officers sweat.  Police officers feel fear.  Police officers have families and they want desperately to see their children grow up and grow old with their loved ones.

Police officers are human.  Nothing less.  Nothing more.

But a police officer wearing the badge, wearing the uniform, bearing the weapon that he or she is uniquely entitled to bear because that officer has been given the trust of a society to serve and to protect that society, becomes something even more special, even more sacred, to the flourishing of that society.

If I am murdered, it is a heinous crime.  Nothing on earth can purchase my life back, or properly compensate for the fact that I am now dead because someone made the decision to murder me.  And the person who murdered me ought to be hunted down by the police, placed on trial for his or her life by a court of law according to our laws, and imprisoned and ultimately executed after the proper appeals process determines that no grievous mistakes were made in the trial that would make that execution an act of injustice.

That is true of every single American: red, brown, yellow, black and white; male or female; young or old; disabled or abled; rich or poor.  Because all are precious in God’s sight.

But if a police officer is murdered in the line of duty, the statement I made above about the dignity and value of all human life is true, but there is something even beyond that: that officer’s murder represents an attack on our very system of justice itself, upon the society that has created that system of justice and ordains it, and literally an attack upon human civilization.

Police work has always been dangerous.  Officers pursuing fleeing suspects or attempting to apprehend dangerous criminals could very well use deadly force against the police.  But today we are seeing something radically different: we are witnessing ideologues assassinating police officers from complete ambush.

It’s literally like Vietnam where soldiers could never know who the enemy was or for that matter modern Iraq and Afghanistan where terrorists plant Improvised Explosive Devices to kill or maim without warning.

Police must therefore treat everyone like a potential assassin – which guarantees more shootings as terrified police with hair triggers try to stay alive knowing a target is on their back and they can be murdered for no reason other than they are police officers at any moment.  Which guarantees more shootings as frightened police see guns where otherwise they would have exercised more restraint.  Which then gives the ideologues more “justification” to kill more police.  Which the ideologues knowingly intend to create a vicious cycle.  And everyone who kills a police officer in the name of “Black Lives Matter” is in actuality guaranteeing that more black lives will be killed by terrified police.  And they actually WANT that!

Furthermore, the police – being “human” – will withdraw from communities that do not support them.  They will stay in their cars in the inner cities and innocent black people who could have been saved will die because the police are too frightened of being either killed or prosecuted for doing their jobs.  That too is part of the vicious cycle.

And this vicious cycle can only stop when society treats police with the respect they deserve and need to do their vital jobs.

As I said before, our police officers are human.  They are in a very nearly impossible job, trying to serve justice in situations that are so depraved, so confused, that it becomes impossible for any other being but God Himself to be able to know what to do.  Then you add in the next human factor of fear: that officer is in a situation in which his or her very life is at stake if he or she hesitates to pull that trigger at the right moment when the subject is about to take that officers’ life.  Did that officer shoot before he or she should have fired?  People come in after the fact who are themselves completely SAFE at that point and make that determination.  Which is why YES, it is REASONABLE to give that officer of the law the benefit of the doubt in complex situations.

The Bible, the Word of God, is crystal clear in this:

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.  For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.  Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake.  — Romans 13:1-5

The police bear the sword of government for our own protection, for our own good.

That comes from the pen of St. Paul, who was beheaded by the unjust system of justice of the very government whom he was upholding.  Because under divine inspiration, St. Paul understood that, even in a wicked regime like ancient Rome, or modern-day North Korea or Iran, the police largely exist to ensure a stable, peaceful society.  God ordained them for that role.

For better or worse, this is the government we have, and if we are to change that government, or that system of justice, we are to do it PEACEABLY and through legitimate means.

And so yes, we all agree that there are times when an officer acts unjustly, when an officer acts in a depraved manner.  There are also times when JUDGES act in such unjust, depraved manner.  And there are times when the system that appoints those judges acts in an unjust, depraved manner.

By the very standards I have set above, when an officer, or a judge, or a politician, commits a violent act under the color of sacred authority, that officer should face even GREATER penalty.

But it is NOT up to ANY individual in ANY society to make that determination for himself or herself, that an officer of the law, that an officer charged with justice and peace for a society, should be killed.  Because that is the path toward anarchy and nihilism and the end of civilization.

All lives matter.  But no life matters more than the life of a police officer who is wearing the uniform and the badge and the weapon serving and protecting his or her community to the best of his or her ability.

And that is why I support and honor my police officers.

And anyone who claims otherwise is an agent bent upon the destruction of our society and everything it stands for.

As a military veteran, I urge veterans to see our police officers and introduce themselves and say, “Thank you for your service.”  Because police work is literally taking place in a war-zone, a modern-day battlefield, today in America.

 

 

 

Marriage Defined As The Union Between One Man And One Woman Doesn’t Take ANYBODY’S ‘Rights’ Away – (Except Maybe God’s)

That’s what we’re told every day.  If I believe “marriage” is the union between one man and one woman, I’m some kind of fascist who is out to take people’s rights away.

The problem is, that’s a whole lotta bullcrap.

For one thing, marriage has been defined EXACTLY as I define it by pretty much every single civilization that has ever existed.  There is NO civilization that has EVER allowed homosexual marriage for its people in HISTORY.  So why am I a fascist for holding to a tradition that has accompanied the human race for its entire history rather than the people who are trying to impose a “fundamental transformation” on the entirety of human history up to this point being the fascists?

The entire history of the United States of America from the days when it was a colony to this day records that my views represent America and the views of homosexuals do not represent America.  Why is it that those who are trying to force a new definition that is entirely antithetical to the history of this nation not qualify as fascists?

That’s the overarching argument, of course.

It applies right down to the individual.  By defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman I am not taking anyone’s “rights” away.  Because every single adult American can marry any adult American of the opposite sex who will have him or her.  Nobody’s rights have been deprived.  We all have the SAME rights as everybody else.  And if homosexuals have morally disqualified themselves from wanting to exercise that right is hardly my fault.

If I have the right to marry anybody I choose, then why can’t I marry Aishwarya Rai?  Why can’t I can’t marry the woman of my choice?!?!  And I’m holding out for her.  I’m saving myself for you, Aishwarya!  I’ll never marry anyone else if I can’t have YOU until society gives me my rights!!!

Ah, the gay marriage proponent says, but she doesn’t choose you!  Well, that sucks.  I’ve still been deprived of my right to marry the partner of my choice whether she agrees with that choice or not, the way the left frequently presents their argument, but let’s say that that is the criterion.  So what happens if I want to marry two women?  What happens if I want to marry a ten year-old boy?  And in both cases these marriage partners agree that they would like to marry me too?  In the latter case there is at least a tradition called “pederasty” that has FAR more historical support than gay marriage ever has.  How are you going to rule gay marriage in and rule pederasty out?   There is no question that we are radically redefining society by imposing gay marriage; at least you could point to SOMETHING that once existed with pederasty; it’s been a common if disgusting practice, as opposed to homosexual marriage which is ONLY a disgusting practice.  If  ten year-olds can choose to have an abortion, as the left insists they should be allowed to do, surely they should be able to choose other sexual behaviors such as marriage.  Who are YOU to impose your “outdated morality” and “intolerance” on that ten year-old boy?  And those two women – or for that matter those 22 women – are willing adults.  If you’re going to accuse me of being “arbitrary” for defining marriage as every civilization has basically defined it and very definitely as Western Civilization and the Bible which undermines that Western Civilization has clearly defined it, how is it not “arbitrary” to categorically state that marriage can only be between two people???

If a woman wants to walk out of her home leading her husband – that is literally a well-hung young STALLION – who the hell are YOU to say that’s wrong?  Why do you think you should have the right to impose your narrow-minded intolerant bigotry on that poor woman who only wants to be left alone and live her life with her husband the horse? 

The problem is that marriage is either a particular thing, an ordinance under God that every society has recognized, or it is basically whatever the hell you want it to be at any point in the increasing depravitization of our culture until it becomes too toxic to continue to exist and dies out.

There is something that Francis A. Schaeffer described that he labelled “moral velocitization.”  It referred to something we are seeing coming at us faster and faster and faster with every passing year. 

There was a time not very long ago when NO American president would have celebrated homosexual marriage.  If FDR had campaigned on the platform, “I’m going to give you a country in which one man may openly sodomize another man and anybody who doesn’t like it gets denounced!” he would have had his ass thrown out of office.  And if you go from George Washington to Bill Clinton, you find that Bill Clinton signed into law something called “the Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) that defined marriage PRECISELY the way I define it. 

It’s not until you get to the forty-forth president, with the previous forty-three all unanimously disagreeing with him, that you get to an endorsement of homosexual marriage.  And even THAT president lied and decieved his way into office by categorically stating that:

“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.”

If the forty-forth president had said anything different, his skinny little fascist ass would never have sat in the Oval Office.

THAT’S moral velocitization.  We go from a moral view that nobody in their right mind believed could have characterized this nation to one that is held by the most dishonest president in our nation’s history – and which by “virtue” of a bait-and-switch has gradually acclimated America to a toxic view that our founders would have decried as genuinely evil.

Let me talk about abortion for a moment; I’ll be back to homosexual marriage.

Since 1973, the Democrat Party and every single person who has voted Democrat have murdered 54,559,615 MILLION innocent human beings and counting since Roe v. Wade (that as of January 23, 2012).  We’re talking about a level of homicide that is NINE TIMES WORSE than Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust.

I’ve told more than a few Democrats who call themselves “Christian” that no, you aint: because the Virgin Mary came to you and said, “I’m only thirteen and I’m pregnant.  I have no husband and I don’t know what to do.”  And you fed her the Democrat Party line and she had an abortion.  And so your baby Jesus is dead and He didn’t die for your sins because you killed Him before He had the chance.

You see, the Incarnation and the Baby Jesus is the quintessential proof that life begins at conception and that the Democrat Party is the Party of Demons.  That’s why “Democrat” means “Demonic Bureaucrat.”  And one day Democrats as individual people will try to use the Nazi Nuremburg Defense and say they weren’t responsible for the consequences of their votes.  But God – with the fire of His increasing wrath billowing out from His chariot throne (Daniel 7:9-10) – will point out that with every single vote they as individuals chose more politicians who would appoint more judges who would in turn murder more babies.  And this was hardly done without their knowledge and consent.

Now, I bring that up because as godawful and as depraved as abortion is, God says that that isn’t the lowest depths that the Democrats can attain to.

As recorded in Romans 1:18-28:

God’s Wrath Against Mankind

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen.26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

The lowest point a culture can get is not abortion, as hateful and evil as abortion is; it is the moral crime of condoning and in fact honoring and celebrating homosexuality. It is in the Bible in black and white.

I can explain to you why that is.  It is because after God created man in His image He said to humanity:

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” — Genesis 1:28

And from the very outset, from the Tower of Babel on, depraved, sinful, wicked man has had an “alternative” to the plan of the God who created one man for one woman.

It is no surprise that the Democrat Party – the party of genuine evil – would slander and pervert God’s will and plan by endorsing global warming and population controls and the most egregious slap in the face to His will of all: open recognition and celebration of homosexuality.

As declared in the New York Times on July 30, 2012 under the title “Democrats Draft Gay Marriage Platform“:

Democrats appear ready to embrace same-sex marriage as part of their party platform, a policy shift that reflects an expanded acceptance of gay rights in mainstream politics.

The move would place the party in line with the beliefs of President Obama, who in May became the first sitting president to declare that gay men and lesbians should be able to marry.

Democratic Party officials had squabbled over the issue in the past. But at a platform-drafting meeting over the weekend in Minneapolis, they approved the first step to amend their platform, placing the amendment on track for adoption. In two weeks, the entire platform committee will vote at a meeting scheduled in Detroit. Then, if approved as expected, it would go before convention delegates in Charlotte, N.C., for final passage in early September.

According to Democrats who were briefed on the vote in Minneapolis, there was no objection when the issue came up. Though the language that was voted on could still be revised, party officials do not anticipate any major obstacles going forward.

To put it in Chick-Fil-A terms, God’s reality is as simple as this:

That’s what the Bible says.  What reality says is that homosexuality is horrible for both society and the homosexuals who are trapped in that vile lifestyle.  What reality says is that homosexuality is terrible for the children who are abandoned by the left because of equally vile political correctness. What we find about the “children” of gay parents is that:

Even after including controls for age, race, gender, and things like being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live, such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male and female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things.

Why on earth would anybody want that for children?

Democrats have finally reached rock freaking bottom.  They have completed the Book of Romans circle describing a nation that is ready to be judged by God.

Jesus said:

“FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. — Mark 10:7-8

And that’s why Democrats murdered Him in their moral abortion mill as a Baby while He was still in the womb.  Jesus said, “Don’t do it, Democrats!”  And Democrats said, “You just go to hell, Jesus.”

And let there be no mistake: if you vote Democrat, that is PRECISELY what you are voting for.  Because without your continued support of the Democrat Party, this platform would lead to the ruin of the Democrat Party.  But the same godless Democrats who have murdered more than 54 million human beings with your vote are going to take this final step into godless oblivion.

God created man in His image.  He holds us morally accountable to the image of Himself in us.  You can try to usurp His divine right as Creator, but what you cannot do is avoid ultimate judgment by Him.  Which is why the day  is coming when every Democrat will stand before God and be held accountable.

‘Celebrating’ DEPENDENCE Day Under Barack Obama

As we survey the despotism of the world around us, we can admire our founding fathers – and celebrate their achievement – all the more.

Think of Iraq under Saddam Hussein; or think of Iran under the Ayatollah and the mullahs.  And then look around and see all the millions, even billions of peoples, under some form of tyranny and totalitarian rule.  It was not the Iraqi people, but the people of the United States of America, who threw down Saddam Hussein and instituted a democracy in place of tyranny.  And the Iranian people may have rioted in their streets, but they failed to throw off the shackles of their tyrannous and repressive regime.  And it is very unlikely that they ever will lest some free people liberate them from their own government.

Think of the history of human civilization, and realize just how few times peoples under such rule have thrown off the shackles of bondage for themselves.

We were one of that tiny number.  And our forefathers instituted in place of tyranny the greatest example of democratic and republican government that the world has ever known.

The rarity of America’s achievement, and the resulting greatness that has since resulted, should be celebrated with more than fireworks.  It should inspire Americans – and the world – to pursue freedom and liberty over any obstacle which gets in the way.

Many historians have argued that the British government, and the king who embodied that government, really did not seek to impose anything that tyrannous.  The king didn’t seek to impose an Orwellian-style regime; he merely wanted to modestly increase taxes to help pay for a war that had been fought for the Colonies’ behalf.

The British Empire had spent some 60 million pounds fighting the French and Indian War less than a decade previously.  And the British justifiably believed that the Colonies should share some of the burden for that massive cost.  They weren’t consciously attempting to impose tyranny; all they wanted to do was raise money.

But the patriots didn’t view it that way.  What they saw was taxation without representation.  What they saw was an imposition on their property without their consent.  They looked at taxes (such as the Stamp tax and the Tea tax), and asked themselves, “If they can impose this upon us, what else can they impose?”

And when their protests were met with thousands of British troops, the patriots believed they had their answer: the king believed he could impose power upon them at his whim.

Unlike most other peoples in human history, our founding fathers did not wait for the yoke of oppression to become so heavy that it could not be thrown off.  Rather, they were willing to fight at the very first signs of tyranny.  And in so doing, they not only won their freedom, and the freedom of their descendants; they won the freedom of millions and millions of peoples whom their descendants would subsequently fight to liberate.

Part of the problem with tyranny and totalitarian rule is that there will always be people who say, “It really isn’t that bad.  Why are you making such a nuisance of yourself by protesting?”  The analogy of the frog in water comes to mind: if a government takes away our freedoms little by little, it is very likely that won’t comprehend the deprivation until it is too late to do anything about it.

Alexis de Tocqueville – one of the great political thinkers who recognized the import and result of American freedom – also wrote about one of the most pernicious forms of tyranny in the second quarter of the 19th century:

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

C.S. Lewis wrote about a century later:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The tyranny described by Alexis de Tocqueville and C.S. Lewis is the tyranny we face in America today: the tyranny of the nanny state; the tyranny of big government; the tyranny of the welfare state.  Naysayers can always continue to say, “It’s not that big of a deal,” or “It’s not that much worse than it used to be,” or “This is what we need right now.”  And they always will be able to say such things.  And that is precisely why most peoples find themselves in forms of tyranny that they have neither the power nor the will to free themselves from.

There is no question that the massive anvil of fiscal insanity will ultimately fall on the US economy due to the near doubling of the national debt as Barack Obama adds a projected $9.3 trillion to the $11.7 trillion hole we’re already in.  Obama is borrowing 50 cents on the dollar as he explodes the federal deficit by spending four times more than Bush spent in 2008 and in the process “adding more to the debt than all presidents — from George Washington to George Bush — combined.”  And what is most terrifying of all, Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very long from now? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:

By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.

I look at the recent past, and see debts that our children’s children’s children will never be able to hope to repay; debts that will soon shackle us, and most certainly shackle our future generations.  And I realize that these debts have been accumulated in order to forge the very sort of society that de Tocqueville and Lewis warned us about.

The nanny state doesn’t celebrate the peoples’ independence; it celebrates their dependence.  As big government assumes more and more control of the economy, it creates more poverty and therefore more need for the government to come to the increasingly dependent peoples’ rescue.  It systematically and progressively creates a vicious cycle of dependency that becomes increasingly difficult for a once-free people to sever themselves from.

I think of two attempts by the Obama administration to seize government power that are most pernicious of all: health care and cap-and-trade.  Consider for a moment that if the government assumes control over our health care, it will have the potential to control everything that goes into our bodies, and even the activities of our bodies in the name of our “health.”  And as for cap-and-trade, what doesn’t require energy to produce or transport?  Under these two programs alone, nearly total control can be exercised.

What would our founding fathers – who were willing to fight over taxes on stamps or tea – have to say about these massive government power grabs?