The unique, and now endangered, Spirit of '76

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) In my youth, a mischievous friend asked if other countries have 4th of July. I can’t remember how I answered the trick question. Perhaps I was fooled. Of course other countries have a 4th of July, they just don’t celebrate it. Only in America is the 4th of July Independence Day.

Quite a few countries have a national day of celebration. Mexico has Cinco De Mayo. The French have Bastille Day, Canadians have Canada Day. The English have Guy Fawkes Day, to name a few. On these days, citizens enjoy food, parades, flags, fireworks and revelry in the name of their country. What makes Independence Day any different?

Independence Day isn’t just about independence from Great Britain. Other countrys’ patriotic days celebrate independence from a colonial power. Independence Day isn’t just about celebrating American culture – apple pie, rock’n’roll, baseball, and all that. Flag-waving, parades, festivities, and traditional foods are common expressions of national pride everywhere. What makes Independence Day special?

On this day, Americans celebrate the unique proposition on which our nation was founded. This proposition, articulated in the Declaration of Independence 231 years ago, states 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. — 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, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In simple terms, our nation was founded on the revolutionary principle that everyone has an equal right to life and liberty given by God not the government. The purpose of government is to protect these rights. When a government fails to protect its citizens’ rights, the people have a right to change or abolish it and institute a new government founded on just principles.

That is exactly what our forefathers did. They severed ties with the old order and established a new government based on the protection of natural rights and self-government. For their efforts, we enjoy a level of freedom and prosperity unprecedented in history.

Americans enjoy freedom in every aspect of their lives. Americans have access to an uncensored press and can openly criticize their government. They can practice their religion without going to prison or being beaten while the government stands idly by. Americans can pack up and move to another part of the country without permission from the government bureaucracy. They can open a business without having to bribe officials. Americans can choose their own doctor and don’t have to wait in line for months to get surgery.

Americans can choose their careers and set their financial priorities with little restriction. They can even choose not to participate in the culture. "Freegans," profiled recently in the Rocky Mountain News, are Americans who choose to eat out of dumpsters to protest American materialism. Try eating out of the dumpster in the developing world. America is so prosperous that people can choose to eat out of dumpsters without getting dysentery.

The sheer span of choices open to Americans defies imagination. In the words of Dinesh D’Souza, “In most of the world, even today, your identity and your fate are largely handed to you. In America, by contrast, you get to write the script of your own life.” When the government protects our God-given rights to life, liberty, and property, the result is that individuals enjoy a “self-directed life,” to use D’Souza’s phrase.

Unfortunately, freedom is easily taken for granted and when no longer valued, easily given away. Consider the freedoms eroded in the past year of legislative activity here in Colorado. Teachers, parents, and elected school board members are forbidden from instituting abstinence programs in schools. Restaurant owners cannot choose to allow smoking. Increased property taxes mean politicians will have more choices on spending your money while you have fewer. This is just the short list.

Consider what’s on the horizon. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are talking about censoring the press. Politicians on the left want to socialize medicine, a prescription for medical rationing, long lines, and a loss of personal choice. They also want to foist heavy taxes and regulations on businesses thereby limiting the choices of consumers, business owners, and workers.

And there's more: Radical environmentalists want to restrict public use of public land and private use of private lands. Teachers' unions want to roll back laws providing parents and students choice in education.

Basic liberties are at stake. The government, rather than protector of life, liberty, and property, is slowing becoming that which takes away the rights of some while conferring privileges upon others.

When that happens, the 4th of July becomes just another day to eat hotdogs, drink beer, and be entertained. Heaven forbid.

Nightmare continued: Disunited States of America

By David Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net)

Editor's Note: Petteys is on a dystopian prophetic tear. Here is the sequel to his recent progressive nightmare post.

The golden age for ancient Israel was the united kingdom under King David and his son Solomon. It lasted less than a 100 years. It fractured when Solomon’s son tried to impose an unreasonable agenda on the Northern Kingdoms. In analogy, has not the American golden age been the last 100 years of a united and prosperous United States? But are not the pieces in place for its dissolution over the next couple of generations?

The progressives have taught our children that the United States has been built on racism, genocide and oppression, and maybe the world would be better off without it. The progressives have spent the last generation balkanizing the nation: rich against poor, men against women, ethnic strife, victimology, and entitlement.

Secularism along with a “higher loyalty" to all humanity and mother earth, undermining and ridiculing Americanism and patriotism, has become the established quasi-religion. And if the secular vision for the future is only to enjoy life as comfortably as possible, who is willing to die for anything?

Suppose the current drive for amnesty and open borders succeeds. It’s not hard to envision a California legislature, dominated by Hispanics, declaring themselves an autonomous region with a special relationship to Mexico. And if they passed laws to do the following:

** To fly only the Mexican flag

** Public schools to teach only in Spanish

** Only Mexican history to be taught

** To prohibit Federal withholding by California companies, and instead mandate its diversion to the state

** Seizure of all Federal Facilities by the California militia (basically a California Hispanic Army)

... does anyone think a Hillary Clinton, who had spent the first four years of her administration dismantling the American military, would send the 82nd Airborne to seize Sacramento?

More than likely she’d “negotiate”. And as the negotiations dragged on for years, the California secession would become a fait accompli. It would result in an arrested tax flow to Washington, but not welfare checks from Washington.

With this precedent, there would be nothing to keep little islands of Islamic Republics forming in Michigan and Minnesota, an independent Mormon region in Utah, and so on. In another generation or two, the United States would be no more: only a balkanized and warring North American continent. The weath, power and prosperity of a United States only a distant memory of old people whose broken hearts remember it well.

It would also render a squabbling North America incapable of dealing with any external threat, such as a modern 30 million man, nuclear-equipped Chinese Army.

The Progressives had better start learning Chinese, unless the Chinese decide to exterminate and repopulate the entire continent, which they could easily do.

Progressive nightmare could follow amnesty

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) The bottom line on immigration is that the Progressives wish to import 35 million poor people to vote Democratic. This would give the Progressives absolute control of the country. And as happens in most situations like this, once the Progressives gain power by the ballot, they will change the rules to make their grasp on power permanent. Hitler did this with his “Enabling Act” and so did Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. All it would take is a Progressive-packed Supreme Court that would reinterpret the First Amendment to make criticism of government officials felonious prohibited “hate speech”. Then, opposition parties, talk show hosts, newspapers and TV stations, and websites that didn’t hold the Progressive view could be suppressed.

This also gives the Progressives a 35-million-member constituency with no history of democracy. They would think nothing of an America ran by a Hugo Chavez in a pants suit! Rather than the immigrants building a better life in America, they would basically be bringing with them their one-party system with its tendency to corruption, extortion and violence. Police departments become gangs run by sheriff strongmen who prey on the populace. Nothing gets done in local government without the payoff under the table as is the Latin American norm. Small businesses would be destroyed by excessive taxation, police protection rackets and gang extortion. And as is in Latin America, the only good job would be in government.

The next step is the destruction of the middle class to make the income distribution pyramid conform more closely to Marxist theory. Exorbitant property taxes (how does $40,000 a year on a $400,000 house sound?), raised to build public housing for this new immigrant clientele, will soon lead to most homes escheating to the local housing authority. Any home with more than one level would have each floor cut into a separate apartment with a different family living in each. Neighborhoods like Highlands Ranch would have their population quadrupled with gangs vying for control of various sections. But with no one responsible for maintenance, the community becomes a shabby third world slum. Extremely expensive neighborhoods would be preserved for housing government officials (of course).

And if depriving the middle class of their homes weren’t enough, their retirement funds would be next. A rich source of wealth redistribution for this immigrant clientele will be taxes on IRA’s and 401k’s. At an annual tax rate of 15 to 20% on the capital base, it wouldn’t be long until everyone’s funds were gone. The middle class automobile would follow:

In the Progressive view, cars are bad, but public transport good. Thus, taxing automobile ownership (say to the tune of $25,000 a year as they do in Singapore) to fund public transport would soon mean only the extremely wealthy or government officials (of course) would have cars. The contraction of the economy with the business and job losses would be staggering.

But how would the deficit in Social Security, the handicapped and the mentally retarded be handled in a Progressive America? By invoking quality of life and a concept of “longevity fairness”! Living too long would be deemed “unfair”. Being a burden on society would be unacceptable. Thus, a panel of government officials and doctors would judge if your age and/or “quality of life” is at a point where it was time to revoke your social security benefits and check you in to a government hospice for a lethal injection.

This would complete the Progressive vision for American society: “justice”, where everyone’s equally poor, equally dependent on the government, and waiting for the bus -- or for Dr. Kevorkian.

Dog doo ruling further twists meaning of free speech

By Karen Kataline (kaykat73@aol.com) I know it’s a stinky subject but the recent acquittal of Kathleen Ensz, of a criminal charge, for filling a political mailer with dog feces and returning it to Marilyn Musgrave’s office, got me thinking. Underneath the sheer entertainment value of reporting on the extent of political “dung-slinging” lies a profoundly serious issue. Ensz was acquitted on the grounds of free speech. But what exactly does that mean nowadays? We are living in a time when words are increasingly punished and seen as "violence" -- while actions, which used to be the only thing punishable by the courts, are now defined as speech and protected accordingly.

Is it any wonder that many of us are scratching our heads and wondering when it was that words lost their simple and direct meaning? Was it when Clinton made famous the phrase, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”? Or was it when Sunday morning pundits began celebrating how cleverly a politician could use words to obfuscate what he really thinks? Regardless of when it happened, I don’t think I am alone in my concern that the basic principles on which I grew up are being turned upside down.

Would the jury have voted for acquittal if say, Ensz had chosen to burn a cross on Al Sharpton’s lawn and called it free speech? I doubt it. Without clear principles that transcend personal tastes, we are up dung’s creek.

There is a well developed movement that has coined the phrase “verbal violence”. Barak Obama used the term when asked about the horrors at Virginia Tech in April. Obama went on to say that “much of the problem is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other.” Frankly, there is a limit to which I am willing to recognize myself in another—particularly a mass murderer. The blurring of distinctions between who is a victim and who is a perpetrator is another great contributor to this upside down thinking.

Today, the perpetrators of horrific crimes are characterized as victims and the victims of those crimes are asked to master the art of “forgiveness” in order to heal. What’s going on here? Erasing the line between what we think about doing and what we actually do is to ultimately erase personal responsibility for the choices we make. When those distinctions are lost, our safety and civility are at stake. Thought is action, action is thought. Criminals are victims, and victims are criminals.

The growing confusion about the simple and clear definition of free speech itself is also contributing to the problem The First Amendment protects you from being punished by the government for what you say. It does not protect you from being criticized by those for whom you work, clients you serve, or those who choose to watch your movies.

It occurred to me that one of the reasons so many people have trouble with this definition, is because they think of the government and all other private institutions as one in the same. We must stop moving in that direction. Protecting that distinction protects us all.

The right to be offended and the right to disapprove didn’t used to have to be explained and protected. Now, apparently it does. Making clear distinctions and respecting that words have specific meanings, is one of the ways we can turn the world right side up again.

What's meant by 'rendering to Caesar'?

I’ve been struck by two thoughts lately, one thought expands on my April 1 post concerning the political leanings of Jesus, the second asks to what extent faith and politics can or cannot accompany each other. It may not be fashionable to say, but it is certainly true; you can legislate morality. In fact I'd actually contend that every law adopted from seat-belt laws to smoking bans to insurance mandates is morality codified, heck the most morally telling law we pass is the budget – “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). When I say that we can legislate morality, and then I give the examples above, I am not talking about philosophical morality but rather, I mean that we can "impose by law our moral code on others and make them behave as we expect." It is far more difficult, maybe impossible, to use the force of law to compel the conscience of someone else to believe as we do. Society creates and encourages behavior it deems moral precisely through the force of law, but we cannot – and do not expect our laws to change the heart of another person. We can stop a man from murder, but we cannot stop a man from thinking murderous thoughts.

From birth through death we are constantly searching for who we are, and our individual identity - how we see ourselves - is closely tied to who we are in community and how we live our lives in relation to others. Our relationships with each other and with the greater community around us shape who we are and how we see ourselves. How we choose to be involved in the lives around us often defines us not only in the eyes of others, for a man is known to those around him by his actions, but also defines us to ourselves, for who but God knows our hearts and minds as well as we do. In other words, how I see myself is determined by what I do.

So what about political involvement? As an individual in relationship to Christ as well as to one’s fellow man, politics would seem a natural extension of living in a community. For Christians, there is some good in being politically involved, but that is not the good, or even the key ground to fight over in this world. What is Good is to live lives that draw others to Christ - and draw ourselves ever closer at the same time. Some good comes from politics and social action, and from pursuing and advocating for policies that strengthen the moral fabric of society - the founding ethics of biblical Christianity and Judaism.

To live Christianly, to have my actions truly reflect my heart, must lead to some difference in our world, some "rendering unto Caesar.” It's important to create laws that protect the innocent and punish the guilty, it is important to vote, and to use our God-given freedom to create a country that seeks liberty and justice, a country that loves and encourages what is right and true. But more than working to affect the country, Christians must realize that it is when Christians seek to act like Christ that they most inspire their community. It is the heart that influences one to follow laws, though laws will always be necessary.

I guess my point is that people don't find that out by simply following laws.