Jonah Goldberg Puts It Well

It's been a while since I've heard this political division described so well and succinctly. Enjoy:

What we have here is a fundamental conflict of visions, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell. One side believes that people are born into their station in life and it is the government's job to make their miserable lives a little better. Indeed, it is the natural order of things for the government to provide jobs, health care, homes to the people. If you object to this concept of government, it must be because you want to "punish" the downtrodden and discriminated. You must be animated by racism, sexism, greed, "fascism!"

The other side says that our rights come from God, not from government. That while the government has an obligation to promote the general welfare, it doesn't have a holy writ to design the nation as it sees fit. The Constitution is not a coupon insert in your local paper, brimming with all sorts of giveaways and two-for-one deals. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights delineate what the government cannot do, not what it can. What was so fantastic and revolutionary about that is that for the first time in history, a nation was founded on the proposition that the government should mind its own business. Believing that doesn't make you a fascist, it makes you a patriot.

But the leaders of one America don't see it that way, and probably never will. Which is why, whatever happens in Congress in the coming days and weeks, it will be "two Americas" for a very long time.

I Lack Passion?

Someone told me the other day that I wasn't passionate about anything.

I don't know about that. I'm sure it seems like it to some. But I think it's more a question of having pretty much come to my conclusions and settled on what I need to do.

I am pretty well convinced that at best, the United States is sliding toward European-style welfare statism and quite possibly balkanization. I really don't anticipate the situation turning around anytime soon. The only thing that could turn it around is another Great Awakening, I think.

One of the things I think I need to do is to do my best to situate myself and my descendants so that we'll be better able to ride out the next--What? Fifty years? A hundred? Who knows? Could be more than that.

We--Mrs. MOTW and I, that is--have pretty much all the material things we really need and can use. Not that there aren't little odds and ends, but truthfully, all we need is to pay off the house and improve and maintain our property so that hopefully, our children can sell the house and split the proceeds when we croak. We've got to maintain, if at all possible, our health and mentality so that we are as little a burden as possible in our old age. And we've got to finish educating and preparing the kids, not merely to make a living, but to help prepare their descendants.

The other thing I think I need to do is to do my best to pass on what I can, what I know, of the Gospel, of the thinking that lies at the roots of any government that genuinely respects and protects man's rights, and the things that have proven practically useful to me or are likely to prove useful to my descendants and others of like mind. That's part of the purpose of this blog. It's true that I also use this blog to vent, but nevertheless, knowing that nothing ever really dies on the internet, I'm in hopes that some people, somewhere, sometime, will find some of these scribblings useful.

There'll be other things I try to pass on, stuff that will not appear in this blog. Sorry. I can't share everything in this forum. But I will share the introduction to a multi-generational project very soon.

Those things are long-term. All the short-term goals pretty much relate to the long-term goals in one way or another.

I suppose this mindset might seem passionless to some. It's not, not really. It's just that I'm more oriented, now, to situating self and family for the long haul. It's a mindset that calls more for steadily glowing coals of thought than for white-hot thinking.

Ideas don't, I think, ever really die. One day, the ideas behind the American Revolution, behind the Constitution, will likely experience a genuine reflowering. And when that day arrives, whether it is, by God's grace, near at hand, or a long time from now, the MOTW family will be ready.

Fourth Quote from Liberty and Tyranny

Man is more than a physical creature. As Edmund Burke argued, each individual is created as a unique, spiritual being with a soul and a conscience and is bound to a transcendent moral order established by Divine Providence and uncovered through observation and experience over the ages. "There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity--the law of nature and of nations." This is Natural Law that penetrates man's being and which the Founding Fathers adopted as the principle around which civilized American society would be organized.

The Declaration of Independence appeals to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." It provides further, "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."

[snip]

Some resist the idea of Natural Law's relationship to Divine Providence, for they fear it leads to intolerance or even theocracy. They have that backwards. If man is "endowed by [the] Creator with certain unalienable rights," he is endowed with these rights no matter his religion or whether he has allegiance to any religion. It is Natural Law, divined by God and discoverable by reason, that prescribes the inalienability of the most fundamental and eternal human rights--rights that are not conferred on man by man, and, therefore, cannot legitimately be denied to man by man. It is the Divine nature of natural Law that makes permanent man's right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

You'll note a certain similarity between what Mr. Levin says here and what I've said about a bajillion times. Order the book here.

From The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible

Emphasis, where present, is mine and in bold:

The most secular, rationalistic, and self-consciously non-Christian of all the Founders of the United States--the aristocratic Virginian and slave-owner Thomas Jefferson--ended up writing the most biblically charged words ever enshrined in a political document:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," he wrote, "that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

Once again, we moderns are so brainwashed and asleep, we fail to appreciate the radical, unprecedented quality of those seventy-nine words--still often denied by totalitarians, judges, and college professors the world over.

As described in the Declaration of Independence, human rights are not privileges dispensed or withdrawn at the discretion of the State. Rather, they are gifts from God which no prince or potentate, no State or sovereign, may take away.

That is the key insight behind the American revolution, not democracy or majority rule--and it is derived not from secular philosophy, but from biblical religion.

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records," said Alexander Hamilton. "They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

This is a sentiment as old as Genesis: God declared that he made the human being (adam) in his image (tselem) and after his likeness (damut) and gave to him authority to rule over all the earth.

This is also what St. Paul was referring to, writing to the Romans, when he said that knowledge of God can be seen through creation and his law, the knowledge of good and evil, is written on the human heart:

"For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them," Paul said. "Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks" (Rom 1:19-20).

Thus, the concept of "self-evident" truths did not originate with the French enlightenment or Rene Descartes but actually dates back at least to the Apostle Paul, writing in 60 AD.

Paul adds that, even though the Gentiles did not have the benefit of the Torah (instruction), certain basic standards of morality can be known even without special divine revelation.

"For when the Gentiles who do not have the (Roah) law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts" (Rom 2:14).

Modern secularists believe that the idea of a self-evident human equality that pervades the U.S. Declaration of Independence came primarily from the agnostic intellectuals of the French Enlightenment; and that the theistic sentiments expressed by Jefferson and other Founders were mere rhetoric, designed to curry favor with Christian colonists.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

While some of the Founders (like Jefferson or Ben Franklin) were not orthodox Christians by any stretch of the imagination, neither were they atheists.

They were steeped, from childhood, in the stories and values and ideas of the Bible; and most believed that, as John Adams put it, "the Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy, that ever was conceived upon earth. It is the most republican book in the world."

Men like Washington and John Adams, Ben Franklin and James Madison, were warriors and farmers, writers and statesmen, not parsons.

But a raw religious faith was important to them. George Washington, for example, upon taking command of the Continental Army, ordered that each day begin with a formal prayer in every unit.

"The General commands all officers, and soldiers, to pay strict obedience to the Orders of the Continental Congress, and by their unfeigned , and pious observance of their religious duties, incline the Lord, and Giver of Victory, to prosper our arms," the Order went.

As philosopher Michael Novak argues in his remarkable 2002 book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, the revolutionary political philosophy that gave birth to government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" was based on two primary sources:

1) A simple but deeply rooted biblical religiousity that saw human rights as self-evident and "unalienable" gifts of a benevolent and almighty Creator.

2) A "plain reason" that grew out of rugged, practical experience in self-government.

Revolution based solely on "plain reason," without the moral restraint of religious experience and the fear of God in rulers and legislators, gave birth to the nihilistic atheism, cold calculation, and ultimately bloody massacres of the French Revolution.

The American Founding was different.

It was, as the Great Seal of the United States found on every dollar bill puts it, to be a novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. It was a bold, unprecedented attempt to work out a system of self-government and political freedom that recognized the "unalienable rights" endowed by the Creator and bestowed upon "all" men--not just upon a favored class.

Without the fear of God that religion bestowed upon arrogant and powerful men, the Founders knew, tyranny was never far away.

"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 the gift of God?" Thomas Jefferson asked.

George Washington agreed.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensible supports," Washington said in his Farewell Address. "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."

The widespread, stubborn, not always orthodox or churchgoing but sincere religious faith of ordinary Americans--that Europeans and media elites find so childish and unsophisticated--has been a hallmark of the American republic since the very beginning.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who penned Democracy in America in 1830, "for the Americans, the ideas of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of one without the other."

I have often been amused by people who, reading Jefferson's words in the Declaration--let's look at them again, shall we?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...

are at no inconsiderable pains to explain them away. They so obviously and naturally refer to God that those who opine that the United States is without a Christian foundation must somehow explain them away or ignore them. So far, the "explanation" that I have found most amusing is the simple assertion that he must not have really meant it.

Oh. Perhaps he didn't "mean it" when it came to the rest of the Declaration, too.

But leaving idiotic explanations for Jefferson's words aside, there you have it, right there in the Declaration of Independence: precisely what I have been saying ad nauseam for months: the purpose of government is to secure man's God-given rights. That's what it's for.

Government's job is not to make you comfortable. It is not to make you financially secure. It is not to take care of your health. It is not to "spread the wealth around." Its job is to protect your God-given rights. This is not something I am making up. It's right there in one of our two most crucial founding documents.

Why so insistently hammer on "God-given rights?" Very simple: without God, you have no rights! Look yet again:

...men...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...

Strike out "Creator" and what do you have?

...men...are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...

You have squat, that's what you have. Without the Creator, without God, where do those rights come from? Other men? Who gave them the authority? Who do they think they are? Do "rights" even exist under those circumstances? I think not. If other men--society, that is--determines what rights you do and do not have, ultimately, you don't have any rights. What society determines is law. If society can grant rights--"rights" to health care, for example--it can take those "rights" away.

A "right" that can be taken away--not simply ignored, mind you, but taken away--by a dictator's decree or a public vote is no right at all. It is simply a temporary privilege, misnamed so as to mislead the rubes. And a view of government that doesn't recognize the concept of God-given rights and that government's job is to protect them is a view of government that ultimately puts them at risk.

A Moratorium on Immigration?

Pat Buchanan saith:

If jobs are available in the United States, Americans should go to the front of the line to get them, ahead of illegal aliens. And as there are six Americans out of work for every job opening, it is time to call a moratorium on immigration. Why are we bringing into the United States over a million legal immigrants a year to compete for jobs against 15 million to 25 million Americans who can't find work or full-time jobs to take care of their families?

Who is America for -- if not for Americans first?

Earlier in the column, Mr. Buchanan notes how, post-immigration-raids, jobs that illegal aliens were doing because Americans allegedly won't do them have, in fact, been filled quite handily by Americans.

I'm not going to talk extensively about illegal immigration today, save to say that I wish to high heaven our government would do what is indisputably part of its job and control our borders. I hardly ever meet anyone who favors unchecked illegal immigration. The only people who seem to support it are those on the left who see illegal immigrants as a huge source of Democratic voters (they're right; immigrants typically vote Democrat for two generations, last time I read anything about it) and those in big business (often putatively on the right) who realize that the presence of huge numbers of illegals results in a net drag on wages, thereby fattening their own bottom lines. The thinking on both sides is short-sighted, to say the least, and completely ignores what, as far as I can tell, are the views of of most Americans on the subject, and results in a situation wherein most of the country hates illegal immigration, yet seems unable to organize itself sufficiently to put a stop to it.

But Mr. Buchanan goes further than just calling for controlling the borders, to a call for an outright moratorium on immigration. And personally, I think he is right. A government's first responsibility is to its own country, to its existing citizens. The criterion for allowing, or not allowing, immigration should not be whether people just want to come, but whether or not their arrival will benefit the country. This has nothing to do with charity or the lack thereof to the oppressed or the economically desperate. It is merely the logical consequence of the idea that a government's first responsibility is to the people of its own country.

You should not get the idea that I dislike immigrants or oppose immigration per se, although I'm sure some will, since, as Pat Buchanan is regularly and falsely tarred as a xenophobe, agreeing with him on the subject will certainly get me tarred in similar fashion. The reality is that I rather like foreigners who come here. I take an almost childish delight in them. I find it flattering that they prefer to come to my country rather than stay in the land of their ancestors. There are few things I find more moving than when, in effect, a foreigner says, like Ruth:

Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

I never had a problem hiring legal immigrants when I was in the restaurant business. If they were the most qualified applicants I could get for the price I was allowed to pay, I would hire them. My life would certainly be the poorer were it not for certain immigrants, especially considering my fascination with martial arts. America certainly has benefited enormously from the contributions of immigrants--but even to recognize that is also to recognize that that is why we have allowed immigration at some times and discouraged it at other times: because America benefits--or does not benefit.

Like I say, I love immigrants, always have. I don't care whether they're the almost blue-black of folks from Senegal, or the deep Mestizo brown of people from the south of Mexico, or the olive of folks from the Middle East, the lily white of people from Northern Europe, or the various brown shades of people from all over Asia. I have never asked but two things of them: first, that they come here in accordance with our laws, and second, that they come here with the aim of becoming Americans. That last is not to say that I am asking them to discard their cultural heritage altogether, just that they embrace the fundamentally American idea that government exists to protect man's legitimate, God-given rights, and learn how to function in and respect our dominant culture. Every Sunday night, I teach an ESL--English as a Second Language--class to a bunch of Mexican immigrants in an effort to help them do that very thing. I have enormous respect for the effort those people are making.

But none of that means that immigration should be allowed from every country at any time. There are times when it is wise to call a halt to it for a while, and it seems to me that this is one such time.

Excellent Article on Man's Rights

A right is the sovereignty to act without the permission of others. The concept of a right carries with it an implicit, unstated footnote: you may exercise your rights as long as you do not violate the same rights of another—within this context, rights are an absolute.

A right is universal—meaning: it applies to all men, not just to a few. There is no such thing as a "right" for one man, or a group of men, that is not possessed by all. This means there are no special "rights" unique to women or men, blacks or white, the elderly or the young, homosexuals or heterosexuals, the rich or the poor, doctors or patients or any other group.

A right must be exercised through your own initiative and action. It is not a claim on others. A right is not actualized and implemented by the actions of others. This means you do not have the right to the time in another person’s life. You do not have a right to other people’s money. You do not have the right to another person’s property. If you wish to acquire some money from another person, you must earn it—then you have a right to it. If you wish to gain some benefit from the time of another person’s life, you must gain it through the voluntary cooperation of that individual—not through coercion. If you wish to possess some item of property of another individual, you must buy it on terms acceptable to the owner—not gain it through theft.

[snip]

Statists have corrupted the actual meaning of a right and have converted it, in the minds of most, into its opposite: into a claim on the life of another. With the growth of statism, over the past few decades, we have seen an explosion of these "rights"—which, in fact, have gradually eroded your actual right to your life, money and property.

Statists declare you have a "right" to housing, to a job, to health care, to an education, to a minimum wage, to preferential treatment if you are a minority and so on.

[snip]

Under statism, "rights" are a means of enslavement: it places a mortgage on your life—and statists are the mortgage holders, on the receiving end of unearned payments forcibly extracted from your life and your earnings. You do not have a right to your life, others do. Others do not have a right to their lives, either, but you have a "right" to theirs.

There's more, of course, and I recommend you read it. I would add only (at this point--I've only read it once) that rights, starting with your right to life, are, as the Declaration of Independence says, a gift of God. You have them because God says you do. Where there are any limitations, they are likewise to be found in the decrees of God, that is, that is why governments can legitimately collect taxes for legitimate--that is, God-ordained--functions. God instituted government, and authorizes taxation to support it.

But taxation for any governmental purpose beyond those legitimate functions, the principle one of which is to act as God's minister for justice, that is, to protect man's rights? I'm very tempted to call that theft.

Perspective

This was sent to me by a relative.

Truer words have seldom been spoken. I can't tell you the number of times I've talked to people whose premises, if followed to their logical conclusions, amount to this very thing.

I Recommend This Post...

If you're interested in how Christianity relates to government, you will probably find this post interesting. Go ahead and read it.

And hey, why not?--when you get back, read this one and this one, too. If you haven't already read 'em, anyway.

Edmund Burke Quote # 4

From "Speech Before the House of Commons in Support of Mr. Rose Fuller's Motion that the Commons Move to a Committee of the Whole in Order to Discuss the Threepence Tax on Tea":

Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America than to see you go out of the plain highroad of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests, merely for the sake of insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of threepence. But no commodity will bear threepence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No; but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.

Some taxes are more than just a means of raising revenue for legitimate governmental tasks. Some taxes are also means of insulting people, or of punishing certain people, or of communicating to them that they have no rights the government is obligated to respect. Eventually, people get tired of being disrespected, insulted, and unjustly punished, and they begin to seek means of avoiding such taxes. The amount of the tax might be almost immaterial. It is the reason why it is demanded that is the primary issue.

Attributed to Alexander Hamilton

I have not bothered to verify the source of this quote. Whether or not Hamilton actually said this, though, the sentiments are exquisite:

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.