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.

 

 

 

Why Western Civilization Is On The Verge Of Self-Destuction. In A Nutshell.

I came across the following article on Yahoo:

Prince Speaks for Kardashian-Weary Nation: ‘Get Off the Stage!’
Posted Tue Feb 8, 2011 8:18am PST by Caryn Ganz

Last night at Madison Square Garden, Prince did what so many of us want to do, but simply cannot do: make Kim Kardashian go away. At the end of each of the singer’s Welcome 2 America concerts in New York, he’s invited VIPs onstage to dance — and in Cyndi Lauper’s case, belt a few notes. Yesterday one of his stellar backup singers took Kim by the hand and led her onstage, saying, “Look who I got.” Prince busted a move; Kim stood and laughed. So he dismissed her with a neck-snapping, “Get off the stage!” as the crowd roared. “Welcome 2 America,” he added, scanning the audience for another girl who “can get busy.”

Stars who have successfully boogied with Prince at MSG include Sherri Sheppard, Naomi Campbell, Alicia Keys, Whoopi Goldberg, Jamie Foxx, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and Spike Lee. Yes, Sherri Sheppard, the same woman who horrified Prince on national TV by proclaiming on “The View,” “I have wanted to make love to you for my whole life.” He’s even serenaded Leighton Meester with “I Love You But I Don’t Trust You Anymore.”

Kim’s defense, mounted on Twitter (of course): “I was so nervous I froze when Prince touched me!” She added that the Purple One gave her another chance, and she did, indeed, get funky. “This time I redeemed myself! We all danced while Prince played the piano! Wow! What a night!”

In truth, she should feel honored — because of Prince’s staunch anti-Internet stance, no fresh footage of him has managed to hit the web in years. In 2007, the singer even got into a fight with his fans when he pulled down images of everything from Prince-inspired tattoos to photos of his album covers — and when his devotees got angry, he wrote a diss track called “PFUnk” that includes the line, “I love all y’all, don’t you ever mess with me no more.” Thanks to the Kardashian smackdown, we got another glimpse of our favorite funkateer in action!

Well, there’s nothing about this article that is remotely important or meaningful.

What IS a testament to the rapidly approaching extinction of the late great USA and the Western Civilization it epitomizes is at the bottom:

The word “vacuous” comes to mind.  Can you not understand why radical Islam is exploding, given such a completely airheaded altnernative?

And yet this story came out just today, and 2,841 people believed it was so significant that they felt the need to comment about it.  And, good Lord, I came back three minutes later just to recheck, and the number had risen to 2,918 comments.

Now, I don’t waste my time with this kind of mind-sucking drivel.  But I can’t remember reading an important article about anything even remotely important that fired up this level of hype and attention.

It’s like the Animal Farm society is already here, living and breathing, in our midst.  And its zeitgeist has taken over our feeble little atrophied minds.  And every day, there is less and less and less about this civilization that is worth fighting for.  It has become a hollow facade, with everything that truly made it great carved out by political correctness, the postmodernist purge of truth and meaning and the progressive social-engineering doctrine of mutliculturalism.

The spine that made everything great in our democracy possible has been ripped out of our civilization.  The document that made our Constitution possible said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Now nothing remains to provide a foundation for anything.

Except, of course, whether Kim Kardashian should have been kicked off the stage or not.

We are in a great sucking vortex of moral idiocy – trapped in a depraved culture that has tragically become like a giant reciprocating engine that just drives us downward and ever downward dumber and dumber with every stroke of its constantly pumping cylinders.

The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible sums it up marvelously in its second verse: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity.”

The beast is coming, the Antichrist warned about by that same Bible for some 2,600 years.  Everything is amazingly in place, including the technology for the mysterious “mark of the beast.”  Our rotted world system will soon collapse.  And when it implodes, it will do so with stunning speed in a matter of days.  Chaos will follow.  Economic collapse, wars and fighting, disease and death, just as Revelation 6 describes.  And this political beast, this Antichrist, this big government visionary will emerge onto the scene claiming to have all the answers.  Everything he does will appear to have the magic touch.  And the whole world will literally worship him in place of God.

We have already had a taste of this frenzied idolatry in the person of Barack Hussein Obama.  But what is coming will dwarf the empty “hope and change” of Obama.

And does anyone seriously believe that this present generation of vacuous amoral fools won’t worship him just as the Book of Revelation says?

What the Bible prophesies is no longer a collection of fanciful fable; it has become the most reasonable description of where are world is truly headed.

ObamaCare Will Bring Abortion Mindset To Treatment Of Elderly

D. James Kennedy prophetically said years back, “Watch out, Grandpa!  Because the generation that survived abortion will one day come after you!”

And coming they are.  And coming after Grandma, too, of course.

One of the morally depraved assumptions of abortion is that the baby has a duty to die for the convenience of his or her mother.

And guess what, Grandma and Grandpa?  It’s getting to be YOUR turn to quit burdening us with your useless lives.  It’s getting to be time that you shoved off and “died with dignity.”

May 11, 2010 12:00 A.M.
A ‘Duty to Die’?
Thomas Sowell

There was a time when some desperately poor societies had to abandon the elderly to their fate, but is that where we are today?

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die” rather than become a burden to others.

This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

Make no mistake about it, letting old people die is a lot cheaper than spending the kind of money required to keep them alive and well. If a government-run medical system is going to save any serious amount of money, it is almost certain to do so by sacrificing the elderly.

There was a time — fortunately, now long past — when some desperately poor societies had to abandon old people to their fate, because there was just not enough margin for everyone to survive. Sometimes the elderly themselves would simply go off from their families and communities to face their fate alone.

But is that where we are today?

Talk about “a duty to die” made me think back to my early childhood in the South, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One day, I was told that an older lady — a relative of ours — was going to come and stay with us for a while, and I was told how to be polite and considerate towards her.

She was called “Aunt Nance Ann,” but I don’t know what her official name was or what her actual biological relationship to us was. Aunt Nance Ann had no home of her own. But she moved around from relative to relative, not spending enough time in any one home to be a real burden.

At that time, we didn’t have things like electricity or central heating or hot running water. But we had a roof over our heads and food on the table — and Aunt Nance Ann was welcome to both.

Poor as we were, I never heard anybody say, or even intimate, that Aunt Nance Ann had “a duty to die.”

I only began to hear that kind of talk decades later, from highly educated people in an affluent age, when even most families living below the official poverty level owned a car or truck and had air conditioning.

It is today, in an age when homes have flat-paneled TVs and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites — rather than the masses — have begun talking about “a duty to die.”

Back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann, nobody in our family had ever gone to college. Indeed, none had gone beyond elementary school. Apparently, you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about “a duty to die.”

Many years later, while going through a divorce, I told a friend that I was considering contesting child custody. She immediately urged me not to do it. Why? Because raising a child would interfere with my career.

But my son didn’t have a career. He was just a child who needed someone who understood him. I ended up with custody of my son and, although he was not a demanding child, raising him could not help impeding my career a little. But do you just abandon a child when it is inconvenient to raise him?

The lady who gave me this advice had a degree from Harvard Law School. She had more years of education than my whole family had, back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann.

Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which “a duty to die” is just one.

These efforts at changing values used to be called “values clarification,” though the name has had to be changed repeatedly over the years, as more and more parents caught on to what was going on and objected. The values that supposedly needed “clarification” had been clear enough to last for generations, and nobody asked the schools and colleges for this “clarification.”

Nor are we better people because of it.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Don’t think Sowell knows what he’s talking about?

How about lifelong Democrat talking head and economist Robert Reich?

“Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I’m so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that’s true and what I’m going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you,  particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more.

“Thank you.  And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

That’s right, young folk.  You get to pay more to have the privilege of one day being euthanized like an unwanted dog at the county animal shelter.  I know I’D certainly happily pay more for a privilege like that.  Pay more for my health care?  And then get to die a slow, painful death of medical neglect because I’ve been considered to be a useless burden like all those millions of babies Democrats have murdered?  Where can I sign?

Oh, I’m ALREADY signed up for it?  Coool.  I just can’t wait until that cancer starts eating holes in my body, and my government health plan offers me suicide in lieu of any actual care.  Or maybe I’ll get REALLY lucky and simply be left to die in my own filth.

Robert “Third” Reich isn’t the only one pointing out this actually quite obvious central tenet of the Democrats’ health plan.  Obama has appointed at least two other “experts” to advise him on medical issues.  Here’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, whom Obama appointed as OMB health policy adviser in addition to being picked to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.”  Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care.  Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources under a government plan:

When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s and 60s, you start receiving less and less priority.

Then there’s Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

There’s a great deal more about Obama’s own advisers’ plans here.

Which very much jives with what Obama himself told a woman concerning her mother:

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

We can sum it up quite nicely with the words of Obama’s former senior economic adviser: “So we’re going to let you die.”

Die with dignity.  Or die without it.  It doesn’t matter.  What matters in the brave new world of ObamaCare is that liberals have finally succeeded in turning health care into a socialist boondoggle.  And it will one day be your duty to die in order to sustain that boondoggle.

The REAL Cause of the Housing Finance Meltdown

What’s the biggest problem today in our financial market?  What caused this disaster?  Was it mismanagement?  Was it lack of regulations?  Was it the “other” political party?

Let me just state it for the record: the problem was greed, pure and simple.

We can see a level of shocking greed in our elite business and investment circles merely by looking at the disparity between worker salary and CEO compensation.  In the “better days” of the 1960s, the average CEO earned around 40 times what the average worker earned.  Today the average CEO makes over 500 times what the average worker earns.  And the gap is widening, year by year.

Why has this happened?  The pro-business side argue that this more than twelve-fold increase of CEO pay relative to the average worker can be attributed to proportionately similar increases in market capitalization of large US companies over the years.  The pro-labor side argues that the decline of unionization has been the primary cause of skyrocketing executive pay.  But again, you can’t just play with numbers and justify this massive disparity in compensation; nor can you claim that unionization would be our savior (particularly in a global economy, where increased unionization of labor would merely result in the increased “outsourcing” of jobs).

And the problem has persisted – and continued to dramatically increase – through periods of dominance of both political parties.

Let me say it again: the problem is rampant, cancerous greed.

And this greed does not merely exist at the top of the corporate and financial food chains.  It is in the masses of Americans who wanted more than their means could provide for, who took out loans they could never hope to repay.

And why has greed become such an enormous problem in American life?

Because our ruling elites have actively discouraged religion for decades, and we are eating the bitter fruit of cultural relativism and practical atheism.

What happens when we discourage belief in a Creator God – who created man in His own image, and holds us morally accountable as His image bearers, and begin to inculcate Darwinism in its place?  We get social Darwinism.  And in social Darwinism, the strong eat the weak, and the rich most assuredly devour the poor.  And why shouldn’t they?  Are they not merely living by the obvious standards of the law of the jungle?  Why not be predatory carnivores?  Isn’t that what we ultimately are?

In the early 1960s, during the Warren era of the Supreme Court, we began to see the Establishment Clause interpreted in a more and more secular humanist and blatantly anti-religious manner.  In the case of the Ten Commandments, it was decided that, “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments.”  And we couldn’t have any of that, could we?

What happens when you divorce religion and morality from society and from public life?  The thought of our founding fathers, the thought of the men who framed and wrote our laws, and the thought of the men who contemplated what made our culture great, continues to teach us if we will but listen:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…”
– George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts in the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have been advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”
– George Washington“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”
– John Adams, Letter to Zabdiel Adams, Philadelphia, June 21, 1776

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion…  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– John Adams, Address to the Officers of the Massachusetts Militia, 1798

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to John Trumbull, October 16, 1778

“The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor…and this alone, that renders us invincible.”
– Patrick Henry, Letter to Archibald Blair, January 8, 1789

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?” -Thomas Jefferson in “Notes on Virginia”

“Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”
– Thomas Jefferson”Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”  – Samuel Adams, 1790

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever by encouraged.
– Northwest Ordinance, Article III, July 13, 1787

“…[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom.  As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Messrs. The Abbes Chalut and Arnaud, April 17, 1787

“The only foundation for…a republic is to be laid in Religion.”
– Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress

“The only foundation for…a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
– Benjamin Rush, “Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical,” 1798

“In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste
so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government. That is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible.”
– Benjamin Rush, 1798

…I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel…
– Benjamin Franklin

We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages…I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business…”
– Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787

“…how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly appealing to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible to danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered… And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?…
– Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention

“Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine…Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.” Foundations Reappear
– James Wilson, “Of the General Principles of Law and Obligation,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Signed U.S. Constitution

“Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”
– Charles Carroll Letter to James McHenry, November 4, 1800.  Signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress

“To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you
destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall. When the public mind becomes vitiated
and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper.”
– Daniel Webster, 4th of July, 1800, Oration at Hanover, N.H.

“In my view, the Christian Religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed…no truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”
– Noah Webster, Reply to David McClure, Oct. 25, 1836

“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.”
– Gouverneur Morris, 1832

“…as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should,
in all points, conform to his Maker’s will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature…This law of nature…dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority…from this original.”
– William Blackstone, “Commentaries on the Law,” 1723-1780

“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.”
– William Blackstone 1723-1780, “Commentaries on the Law,” 1723-1780

“…the moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws…  All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising
or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”
– Noah Webster, “History of the United States,” 1833

“It is alleged by men of loose principles, or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political stations.  But the Scriptures teach a different doctrine. They direct that rulers should be men who rule in the fear of God, able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness…”
– Noah Webster, “Value of the Bible,” 1834, #302

“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive one without the other.”
– Alexis de Toqueville, “Democracy in America”

“The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me upon my arrival in the U.S. In France, I had seen the spirits of religion and freedom almost always marching in opposite directions, in America, I found them intimately linked together and joined and reigned over the same land…
– Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

Religion should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions. From the start, politics and religion have agreed and have not since ceased to do so.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God…
– Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation & Prayer, April 30, 1863

…We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us…and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own…
– Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, 1863

…Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, 1863

… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

Our founding fathers knew full well that religion and morality were inseparable to good governance and to the well-being of a democratic society.  If you throw out God and religion, eventually morality and ethics will likewise go down the drain.  And then you will see more and more greed, worse and worse behavior, more and more crime, which in turn will necessitate more and more regulations and laws and more and more oppressive government in order to restrain an increasingly amoral and frankly bad people.

It should come as no surprise that our society, and frankly our country, began to unravel beginning in the early 1960s, as a series of sweeping policies from unelected secular humanistic judges and liberal politicians began to dramatically alter society.

We’re paying dearly for the amorality that has been increasingly encroaching upon our society.  And we will continue to reap the whirlwind until – like Lincoln – we realize that we have forgotten God.

It’s not yet too late to remember Him.  But I fear that we are on the verge of reaching a tipping point, where the culture just begins to spiral inexorably downward, as though driven by some giant reciprocating engine whose every stroke takes us farther and farther downward into a chaos from which we can never emerge.

In Memory of Tony Snow & Tim Russert: Paradigms of Decency

I didn’t write about Tim Russert’s passing, although I thought about it.

But, as I think about the passing of Tony Snow today, I am reminded of Tim Russert’s contribution to political discourse as well.

Tony Snow was an articulate conservative, who always argued conservative values and positions effectively.  But he was much more than that: he was a genuinely real human being who valued other people.

That made him rare in the world of politics.

One of his friends, Fox News’ Griff Jenkins, said of Snow during the July 12 broadcast, “Tony Snow taught me more about optimism, more about joy, more about overcoming, than anyone I have ever known.”

He was – along with Tim Russert – a man of true religion.  Both men came to radiate a sense of profound decency and goodness of character that characterized their work and changed the people around them.

It was from their Christian religion that both Tim Russert and Tony Snow obtained their values that so shaped and molded their characters that they were never without their smiles even during difficult times.  Somehow these two men “got it,” and were able to carry “it” with them even through the bloodsport atmosphere of the world of politics.

I have frequently considered my own tendency to take politics personally, and to consider the “other side” as a threat to everything I stand for and believe in.

The passing of men like Tim Russert and Tony Snow makes me think about the rightness and validity of my approach all the more.

I still believe that many Democrats in key positions of power genuinely do represent a threat to this country, and that I must fight to stand up for what I passionately believe is right and oppose what I passionately believe is wrong.  I also believe that a greater sense of civility would have a powerful positive impact on the nature of our political discourse and upon our society in general.

There’s a tension between these two ideas.  It’s almost like walking on a tightrope.

Men like Tim Russert and Tony Snow found the balance.

Their passing makes me think and gives me hope.  If they can find such a marvelous balance, perhaps I can also.

In any event, I have no question that both men are in heaven right now, arguing politics with smiles on their faces.  Maybe one day we will be able to do the same down here on earth.