Santorum and the Sword of the State

Albert Mohler,  President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written a very positive blog post about Rick Santorum, which you may read here.

He concludes,

Finally, Rick Santorum attracts protests on college campuses because people believe him when he speaks. William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal pointed out recently that, even as Rick Santorum opposes same-sex marriage, so did Barack Obama when he ran for the White House in 2008 (and, at least in terms of official statements, even now). But Santorum gets jeered and Obama gets a pass. Why? McGurn understands: “There’s no mystery why. Mr. Santorum is attacked because everyone understands that he means what he says.”

This is an excellent point. Rick Santorum is a Roman Catholic that probably believes what he is saying. This seems to be refreshing to many Conservative Evangelical voters. In fact, there are many things that he says I could whole-heartedly agree with. It is true that homosexuality is a violation of natural law. It is true that the sexual revolution was not a good thing. It is true that Mainline Protestantism is dead. Of course this is nothing new. These cultural and theological battles are as old as the hills.

But I find this paragraph interesting.

When moral conservatives reveal their reasoning, the elites hear the launch of a new Inquisition. It is simply incomprehensible to them that sane, rational, educated people might still believe in the Father of Lies. When Catholic Rick Santorum speaks theologically at Catholic Ave Maria University, the secular elites go into toxic shock. The same would be true of an Evangelical politician who would speak theologically of such issues at a truly evangelical college. Speak on love and you will not be in much trouble, but admit that you believe in the Devil and the press corps will go into apoplexy.

It is true that elites hear all kinds of nonsense when conservatives speak simply because they live in a modern world (modern world = no moral absolutes). So to hear someone say something is morally wrong would be threatening. But I would like to suggest another course than the one conservatives have been on for a looooong time.

Rick Santorum has no love for conservative libertarians.

“I would say the conservative movement believes that this country is a moral enterprise, we have God-given rights, and with God-given rights come God-given responsibilities, and we have a set of values, and if everyone does whatever they want to do, then we have George Soros, we don’t have America.”

Now I believe Rick Santorum really believes the "government has a role". But this is the problem with the culture war. Well meaning people have been sucked into attempting to save our country through governmental means. It would be one thing if Santorum were just wishing to limit government away from Modern Leftist ideas, but that simply isn't the case. Santorum will escalate the culture war with his policies.

We know in church history the fastest way to spread error is through a centralized ecclesiology. This has been true in American politics with the centralizing of the Federal government.

Let's use homosexuality as an example since that seems to be a big discussion at the moment. Ron Paul is right. If we take government out of the equation and de-centralize government in this entire debate over marriage then how could the homosexual movement force upon citizens their entire enterprise?

The simple means of accomplishing this is through the return of private property rights. By removing government coercion of cultural issues one way or the other, citizens could restrain one another through local means such as churches and other organizations. Business owners would not have civil rights legislation and bureaucrats coming down on them with the barrel of a gun.

Now this could go both ways. Homosexuals could prevail throughout a culture, but the reverse is true. Remember, fads come and go. The homosexual movement would eventually fall under its own weight and not have the ability to have a government perpetuate a culture war for them or against them.

When Rick Santorum says the Devil is attacking America, he is opening the door for the government to fight the devil with authority that it does not have. Only the church of Jesus Christ has the right to take that offensive and to do so not through military might, but through prayer. So although the government does have a role, its role is to restrain evil, not actively go after it. If you doubt this is Santorum's purpose, as Mohler seems to do, then just remember that Santorum has no problem with the government killing 16-year-olds at a dinner table simply because the President says they are worthy of death.

This kind of power belongs in the hands of God alone. Of course Santorum seems to not have a problem with taking that role.

Iraqi War Veteran Questions John Bolton

What Is Money?

Wouldn't the world be better if we just got rid of money?

Look in your wallet at your money! What is it? It is a representation of your labor! A means for you to store your hard work in your pocket.

Without money there is no means to calculate profit and loss. A business's profit or loss is how you control society. It's how you decide who will succeed and who will fail. You (all of us) possess that power! With our money we can remove any business we hate and keep the ones we love. The ones who serve us the best get our money, and the ones who fail to serve us disappear.

Money is the means by which the people's choice is exact. It has no politics, just constant fulfilled choice. Money is the ultimate democracy. It is our means of voting every single day.

Money is our means of exchange. Each exchange making both parties more wealthy.

Money is a means to set prices. To have the whole of society decide on everything's worth.

Without money there is no society.

Want a world with no money? Then you want to grow your own food, make your own clothes, build your own shelter.

Even the communist (which is not supposed to have money) could not survive its short 80 years without it.

I hold my money with pride! It represents my intelligence, my hard work, my talent. The money I make represents the value I bring to others. How well I serve society.

The more medicine I make, burgers I flip, cars I sell, houses I build, items I ring on the register , people I heal, tires I change, clothes I fold, toilets I fix, floors I clean, planes I fly,......the more money I make!

The more I serve others the more money I get.

Except where the state is involved, all people who make money, are serving mankind!

The richer someone is, the more he has served his fellow man.

It doesn't matter if he did it for that reason or not. In a free market, one must serve to get money.

The richer someone gets, the richer he makes others. If his incentive was to get rich, who cares? If the only means to do that is to make me richer, why would I want to stop that?

Why do we want to steal from the rich? The very people making us all more wealthy by serving us.

This wonderful phenomenon, and all liberals can think to do is steal from them! Remove their incentive to make us all more wealthy!

Before you speak out against capitalism you better understand what it is! You better understand economics and that capitalism is the reason you live in absolute wealth over societies without it.

Learn it! At Mises.org

by Jim Fisher

Propaganda Pictures About Women

I must state at the beginning of this post that I am writing as a Christian, who actually believes the Bible to be God's Word while also standing well inside the Libertarian political camp.

I don't want to merely defend the Republicans in this post. Lord knows how the police state is growing just as much under them as it is under the Democrats, but a friend of mine posted on his Facebook page typical stereo-type stuff with shallow arguments. But what I find interesting is how people think and the assumptions they make without ever feeling they have to prove them. In fact, one commenter states that Religious wackos are waging war against the Democrats. Yet the material shows that non-religious people hold on to their Traditions just as religiously as any so-called Religious/Conservative Right-winger.

Here are the claims through pictures.

Now here are the arguments or shallow propaganda for the Left.

Notice the equivocation. Based upon the recent news stories I assume the context is that government owes women as a fundamental right, free access to birth control. Apparently, to say government shouldn't pay for or supply women birth control is to say we "are not going to let women use birth control." It is very subtle but very effective for the closed minded state worshipers.

Now I am not a Newt fan by any means. In fact, I think I'd rather have Obama...okay, that's not true. But I say that to express my total disdain for Newt. But I think Newt's point ought to be obvious. Even black men within the black community have expressed the same thing. But to put a picture of the golfing/party throwing/Nobel Peace Prize winning while waging war overseas President as the chief counter-argument is not convincing to those who would disagree with you.

Notice again the assumption. The Prolife movement has successfully argued and demonstrated over and over that there is not "the possibility of one" child in the womb. It is a child in the womb. This is so obvious that Prochoice philosophers have had to go to the greatest lengths and contortions to come up with ways of getting out of this. This is probably why my Prolife scholar friend can't find anyone to debate the subject anymore. The only side that is waging war is the one doing the murdering of babies and defying God's created order of the family. And they do this while claiming Jesus is on their side to boot.

Now I also realize that there is a picture about rape. That is another debate in itself and only about 3% of babies killed would come under that rubric. Therefore this is another straw-man argument.

Now this one is perhaps my favorite. It is true that Jesus may have been considered a Liberal in the classical sense. But Jesus was no more a Liberal in the Modern sense that He would be a Conservative. Let me offer an example.

In the fourth point, it says he hung out with criminals, whores and other unsundry characters. True enough. However, Jesus always explained to them they must repent of their sin. He didn't go to the so-called righteous because the righteous don't think they need to repent. Hence Jesus' teaching to them, "It is the sick that need a doctor, not the well." [my paraphrase]

In other words, Jesus would just as much be kicked out of a Liberal church as a Conservative one for being too judgmental.

The other one that reads anachronistically into Jesus' words is that Jesus "advocated giving away your personal belongings, and paying your taxes." Now what is funny is that Modern Liberals don't give away their personal belongings. Studies have shown that Conservatives and Republicans in general are far more likely to donate money to charity than Liberals and Democrats. But the anachronistic part is that Jesus never advocated the State to have the power to steal your money to give to another person in the form of welfare. Instead Jesus loved "cheerful givers" who give from the heart in order to fulfill the Law of God.

In fact, when it comes to Social Justice, Jesus was ignoring the role of government altogether. Everything he did was outside of government while submitting to their earthly authority when necessary.

One last picture.

There is much that could be said here but as one who is on the Libertarian side I say woo hoo! Set me free baby!

In conclusion, the idea that women need to be free from the role God has given to women is to accept the false premises of the Left, but ironically, those false premises are the same as those that the Left considers Conservatives who wish to make women second class citizens.

Women are not second class citizens simply because the Creator has made them differently from men and to have a different role from men. As a Christian, I see God's purpose for women as something to be cherished, not denigrated as the Left does. But also as a Christian and one in the Libertarian camp, I see another way to challenge the role women play.  Allow me to offer an example.

What if instead of being a "mere house-wife" [as if that is a bad thing, which it is not] a women is a helpmate to her husband in other non-conventional ways. An illustration may help here. What if a woman were to be a helpmate to her husband, who is a doctor, by becoming a nurse. My wife's cousin, who is a doctor, was greatly assisted by his nurse wife in the birth of my second child. Perhaps she should be encouraged to press on in her education and become a doctor herself and being an even greater assistant to her husband! What a team that would be.

In other words, we all make assumptions that could be wrong or inconsistent with what we say. We all need to be challenged in that area. It is the Left, however, that needs to stop accepting the false premise that women are second class citizens simply because there is a created order that God has given to women.

Elizabeth Wurtzel: NPR & Intellectual Property

Yesterday, on the way home from my daughter's swim meet, I heard Elizabeth Wurtzel being interviewed on NPR about her new book, Creatocracy. I am not certain if the brief interview was really about promoting her book. It was a typical 5-minute interview where almost nothing about the book was discussed. Mostly her background was noted in the interview.

However, the interviewer did ask her about her book very briefly. Basically, from what I gathered, the book is about Intellectual Property Rights [IP] or at least deals with that concept in the book. When asked about where IP comes from, she offered two reasons. The first was how the Framers of our Constitution had enshrined Intellectual Property Rights. Now I haven't the foggiest idea where they did that, and she didn't offer a single argument. So I suppose you'll have to go buy the book.

Her second and final argument as to why IP is to be accepted was because, "It works." That's right. It works. Of course when those on the other side say it works, it is because it fits their definition of what works. Now what was the framework and definition of what works? I guess you'll have to read her book. How Utilitarian of her because selling books works too.

Now to the interviewer's credit, he raised the question about music artists, who put their music on the internet for free. Her response was simple. That's just crazy and silly. Now you may wonder why that's an argument. Perhaps she knew she had almost no time in her interview so "why bother" offering intellectual thought. But this was NPR. You know. The radio program that claims that we need it to stimulate our intellect. Yet this woman was almost as flighty and goofy as Farah Faucet was on David Letterman.

The truth is, there is no such thing as Intellectual Property. It is made up out of thin air in order to create a monopoly of sorts. The history of Intellectual Property demonstrates this all too well as can be learned in this lecture by Jeffrey Tucker here. Intellectual Property creates a disadvantage and an unfair playing field. It is usually argued that it is not fair for those who copy the original because the inventor loses money in research while everyone else benefits from the invention. However, that is not how inventions come about in the first place.

For example, Tucker demonstrates the Wright Brothers' invention of the plane to be complete propaganda. How often have we watched documentaries showing the brilliance of the Wright Brothers while everyone else was trying to fly by attaching wings to their arms and jumping off of piers. Such was not the case. There were many who were on the verge of designing the wings of the plane. When the Wright Brothers discovered the mechanism to get "lift" on their wing, they had already spent much money on lawyers in order to sue everyone else out of business.

Private Property Rights are not floating in the air or in the mind for inventions. Private property rights are things that I actually own. The reason music artists that do not have big label contracts love the internet is that they are able to circumvent Big Corporations to get noticed by people who would never hear their music otherwise.

For instance, you may go and listen to a group called Sons of Korah on Youtube or other places. Using this medium, this particular group, who may otherwise remain obscure within Australian circles, may reach listeners worldwide. Due to my forwarding their Youtube videos to a friend of mine, he decided to go to their website and purchase their music.

However, this doesn't work in the old way of doing things. Big Record Companies are now practicing what the Wright Brothers did. They got the Mob...I mean the government to hire men with guns to enter homes and steal computers with "stolen" music.

The truth is, my MP3/computer player is mine. The music on it is mine. It is my private property. This is what the Founders argued for, private property rights. If the Founders really believed that ideas and inventions could be monopolized by certain companies, then they should be charging other countries for the idea of democracy or at least paying those from whom they stole the idea.

By the way, if you really believe in IP, you better quit wearing the clothes you have on your body, the ideas for them are stolen. Maybe the government wants them too. But as we have seen, inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument and the idea of Intellectual Property is as inconsistent as they get.

Rush Gets IT...Well Sort Of

Once again Rush Limbaugh nailed it when he went after the false premise that Insurance companies are in business to make certain you have health care.

Since when...? I'm gonna ask this again: Since when does a president have the power to threaten to issue a rule gutting religious liberty and then claims the power to make compromises on that issue?  This is how, folks, we lose our liberty.  This is how we lose the Constitution.  The suggestion that Obama has the power to alter that which he doesn't have the power to do in the first place, is simply unacceptable.  The first thing he does he doesn't have the power to do.  He doesn't have, constitutionally, the power to mandate that religious organizations provide -- free of charge or otherwise -- any abortion-related service with which they disagree.  He doesn't have the authority.  Then to supposedly correct it, he then engages in more authority that he doesn't have!

"Okay, tell you what: I'll tell the churches they don't have to do it."  It's none of his business what the churches do!  He doesn't have the authority to do any of this.  The very idea that Barack Obama has the power to alter that which he doesn't have the power to do in the first place? This is two exercises of power he doesn't have.  The first exercise is telling the churches what they have to do.  The second exercise of power is then changing what he told the churches they have to do.  There's no compromise, no negotiation.  There's no phony balance here.  Obama is simply not empowered to interfere with religious liberty.  No president is!

But then he says this about the women who was forced to not be able to fly home because of the TSA:

I'm not complaining at her by any means.  I'm hoping that people dig a little deeper and figure out what is happening to everyday liberty and freedom and realize who's responsible for taking it away from you -- it's the Democrat Party and Barack Obama -- and vote against them.  I've always said this program takes place in the reason of ideas.  What we want, the way we effect -- in my mind -- meaningful, lasting, substantive change is an informed electorate voting and changing the course of history.

Up until this point Rush was batting a thousand, but then he overlooked a couple of facts. Homeland Security came about in 2003 under the Republican Conservative President, George Bush. He also seemed to overlook the fact that TSA didn't arrive in President Obama's watch, but yet again, under George Bush in November of 2001.

So in conclusion, voting for Republicans because you think they will somehow shrink government is to simply lie to yourself. There is only one candidate that will fight tyranny and his name is Ron Paul.

Quote of the Day

Saw this quote today, and it was too good not to put here. And then by accident I found another one.

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say 'what should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and p...lough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!" -Samuel Adams (Speech in the State House of PA, 01Aug1776)