... without a miracle
We need a miracle. America’s founders wrote often that it was by God’s grace and providence that our country survived the war for our independence. Indeed, our very founding documents, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution for the United States of America, credit the divine Creator of all things for the blessings of the unprecedented liberties we have in this country. For all of the bravery and the lives paid to secure our freedoms, it was still God that did the heavy lifting. No other country in the history of the world has experienced such blessing and freedom so fast and as great as the United States of America. He granted us a miracle.
Our Declaration of Independence appealed not to our own might or some legal authority produced by men, money, or contract. It skipped all the earthly trappings and went straight to God for the authority to divorce us from the king of England and the rule of any other. So too our Constitution founded the authority of the people to govern themselves on the rights given to us by God.
For well over 200 years we have enjoyed God’s blessing of self governance and the unalienable rights first listed in our Declaration of Independence. By God’s grace, we have had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure those most basic of rights our Constitution’s limits on government’s power and the enumerated Bill of Rights has stood as guarantor of our freedoms and very way of life.
It has taken a couple of centuries, but government’s predictable lust for power, our complacency, preoccupation with meaningless entertainment, and rejection of God’s natural order have eroded our freedoms and endangered our rights to such an extent that our government now actively denies us the very rights it is supposed to protect. Our government has taken it upon itself to pass unconstitutional laws and run up our debt to inconceivable heights over our expressed objections and in complete defiance of large persistent protests. Our government no longer listens to us or even its own laws. Our republic has failed.
It isn’t about what party is in charge. For over a year leading up to the 2010 elections, people who had simply had enough took to the streets to announce for all who would hear that government’s abuse of power had gone too far and must be reined in. The size and persistence of the growing crowds was undeniable. The hand-made posters were simple and direct. Voices were loud and warnings were clear. The people were about to rise up and change their government and no politician who defied constitutional limits, regardless of party affiliation, was safe.
November 2nd 2010 was a huge night of victory for many and disappointing shock for others. Congress hasn’t seen that many seats change from one side of the isle to the other in a generation. The voter’s revolt of 2010 even rejected party favored candidates from the so-called conservative party on the right. So the hope of the American system of self government continues right? We the people can still right the wrongs that have been done and restore our beloved republic… right?
Were it so simple. Washington’s District of Criminals has become such a political cesspool of corruption that even seemingly good people who go there become infected with its evil disease. We have dug ourselves into a hole that is much deeper than one off-year election, even an historic one, is going to fix. It isn’t just that our national debt is measured in trillions… per year now. It isn’t that we just started a new war against a third country (at the same time the other two are still going on mind you) without any goals or local allies to support. No, these are things that we could fix. Our real problem is that we have abandoned the founding moral and social principles on which our nation was founded. Worse yet, we have abandoned the miracle God granted us, the principles of self government.
We have become so ensnared with the lie that all we need is the right candidate to vote for and a solid new government program. We believe that if we could only get candidate X elected or gain a majority of Y party in government that finally we could get things running right around this place again. It’s a wonder we haven’t yet replaced the motto on our money to “In Man We Trust”.
How does our current representative republic and the freedoms that our Constitution and Bill of Rights are supposed to protect stack up with the governments and freedoms of generations past? Consider the following:
In 2005 the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in Kelo vs. City of New London, CT that any city or municipality could take your property for no other reason than money. Not money you owe mind you. Money they want to make off of what was your property. Not for roads or schools or general infrastructure, but just because they want more money… your money. The doctrine of eminent domain use to be limited to specific and important needs and included fair payment for what was to be taken. The city of New London simply condemned the property, evicted the former owner, and paid a reduced condemned price and the court said that was A-OK. Does that sound like something our founding fathers would countenance? Not after 1776.
In 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the 1st amendment’s protection of freedom of speech by only a 5-4 decision in striking down the McCain-Fiengold Campaign Finance Reform bill. Don’t let the name fool you. That bill abridged free speech by outlawing any private advertising within 60 days of an election and the Supreme Court’s decision was only 1 vote, one person, short of throwing out the most well known, most popular, and most frequently quoted of all the rights listed in the constitution.
In 2008 and 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the 2nd amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms by only a 5-4 decisions in striking down bans on gun ownership by home owners in Washington DC and Chicago. Again, the margin to uphold a key and original constitutional right was only 1 person; one presidentially appointed person. We should seriously be praying for the health and well being of those 5 that still believe the constitution matters!
Today the TSA can and will virtually strip search you as a requirement for simple travel from one place to another. If you object, you get the hands on treatment. Can you imagine Benjamin Franklin allowing a government official to physically search his crotch without probable cause and a warrant? Well, he actually had something to say about that. “Those that would trade a little freedom and liberty for a little safety and security deserve neither freedom nor liberty.” Sounds like a “no” to me.
In 2008 as Wall Street shrieked and bankers pulled what little hair they had left off their thin comb-overs, our government snapped in line behind… them… instead of the people of the United States. With every public poll running nearly 80% opposed they passed the single largest bill in American History to authorize a $700,000,000,000 (that’s in Billions) blank check to give to one man (Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) to distribute as he saw fit without any congressional oversight or accountability. Four months later in2009 they did it again with over around $800,000,000,000 (more Billions) with TARP II and gave the money again to one person (Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) in complete defiance of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Weeks later our government passed an even bigger and completely separate budget that was again the largest in US history over the expressed objection of the people. In 2010 congress passed another record setting bill (2000+ pages at an incalculable cost really) to “provide” health care even though the bill as written was fundamentally unconstitutional, opposed by more than 2/3rds of the population, and promptly followed by lawsuits from no less than 26 state attorneys general. In spite of passing the single largest unpopular power grab in American history, the 2010 congress recessed in the fall without approving or even considering a fiscal budget as required by the constitution. Then, after the biggest election loss for a party in power in a generation (a loss of nearly 70 seats) that same congress with literally days left to “serve” in the jobs they got fired from introduced a 1,094 page $1,200,000,000,000 (that starts with a “T”) omnibus budget that was not only the largest in history, they wanted to vote on it immediately without giving anyone the opportunity to read it. Does that sound like a Representative Republic whose government answers to and is of by and for the people? No. That sounds like an oligarchy. The only thing keeping it from being an outright dictatorship is that it is being perpetrated by a handful of people instead of just one.
The newly elected replacements are already wavering and compromising over what to do with our spending addiction just like their predecessors. Last month, our countries deficit was larger than the entire year of 2007. This year our deficit is projected to run 1,600,000,000,000 (Trillion) and the best that the new congress that we elected to reverse spending can come up with is a “cut” of 4% (roughly 38 billion) of the projected deficit. That leaves 96%... 1,562,000,000,000 (Trillion) of the additional deficit spending untouched!
Why? What good is an election if nothing changes! How did we get this bad off? What happened that we have allowed our government to go so far out of control that we can’t stop them even with a once in a generation landslide election to replace them?
Our constitution was written by people who provided for themselves and praised God for the blessings. Today our government has taken the place of God and forces its will on us in a way the founding fathers never intended. God asks for offerings and commends charity, but no pastor is going to send the deacons to your front door to collect it or to your employer to have it taken from your paychecks against your will to be spent on things you are opposed to. What of the non-believer? They too are being forced into a practice of charity they may oppose as well.
America has lost its founding principles and the respect for and dependence on Almighty God. We have traded a solid foundation for temporary (and false) fixes that result in one self-inflicted crisis after another. We have traded the truth for a lie. If that last line sounds a bit biblical then pat yourself on the back for remembering at least a small part of the book of Romans. Go back to re-read that passage and you’ll find that God gave them over to their own desires and they promptly destroyed themselves with immorality, overspending, and endless conquest. Sound familiar? Well, buckle up because we’re next.
Political correctness, good intentions without any thought to consequences, an abandonment of founding principles, selfishness, and flat out willful ignorance have all conspired to reduce us to despotism and subservience to a corrupt government and a financial debt the likes of which the world has never seen. The founding fathers would rather die than be virtually strip searched by the TSA, or robbed blind by a private Federal Reserve Bank that is neither under any federal control nor has any real money in reserve.
We have become a nation of willfully blind, self centered, agenda driven sheep who wouldn’t know the truth of something if it slapped us in the face. We have given our government so much power and not held our press to any standard of accountability for so long to the point where we allow both to dictate what we do and how we even think.
Whenever the truth is spoken, politicians, political activist, and media pundits retort with diversions, insults, and out-right lies. No sooner has someone managed to blurt out a little truth on camera, than the media cranks up the volume and frequency of lies to counter it. Our burning ears long to hear what we want and our 24 hour a day “news” industry is ready and waiting to entertain us with it regardless of the facts. Having heard the popularized “news” from the ever present media, lemmings and sheep boldly arm themselves with the latest pack of lies to parrot and challenge anyone who would dare to bring back the sullied and forgotten truths of yesterday.
Sadly, even family and friends who have been horribly misled refuse to listen to proper warnings. Many people simply refuse to even discuss things and get glassy-eyed like some hypnotic programming just kicked in telling them that they really should be talking about the latest contestant on American Idol. Try it sometime. Tell a pop culture friend or family member that the projected national debt this year is $1.6 Trillion or that the TSA is violating people’s 4th amendment rights every day. Watch the fog roll in over their eyes. If you are really daring, try just suggesting that homosexuality is wrong or that the Koran is not a “holy” book or that we didn’t evolve from apes. Heck, at that point you might as well go for broke and tell your progressive, “open minded” friend that abortion is murder. If they don’t walk away, it’s likely they will be showering you with insults and denouncing you as a fundamentalist right wing hate monger.
There are such things as right and wrong. We knew that instinctively once. We use to teach our children the difference. We have not only forgotten it now, we refute the very idea. We use to value independence and guard ourselves with great pride against any form of dependence on others. To our shame, we now demand that government provide for our every need. Our depravity calls not on God, but on government to save us from ourselves. We have lost so much integrity and fallen from such a great height of independence and liberty that we have made government our savior. The corrupt government we cling to for protection and sustenance polices not only out actions, but our very thoughts to the point that simply acknowledging the truth of what is right and wrong is demonized and labeled as a hate crime.
Social programs, however well meaning, cost money; more money than we have. Immoral alleged “rights” given by men to specially protected groups, not only trounce all over traditional Judeo-Christian morality, but telling a business or property owner who they must hire or what they must or can’t do on their own property denies them their God-given rights of liberty and their pursuit of happiness. Finally, our disastrous international policies have led to the loss of our wealth in massive trade imbalances and endless and ever growing wars. No new politician, law, or constitutional amendment is going to change the fact that our society as a whole has rejected its founding principles. We have lost the most basic skills of critical thinking and morality. We don’t have the tools to fix this anymore. We need a miracle. We need God.
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