A child is suspended from school for pointing a chicken finger at another student and saying “Pow, pow, pow!” Other children are suspended from elementary school for pointing their fingers at one another and saying, “Bang!” An eagle scout leaves his scouting pack in his car. A broken hatchet used in his scouting activities was found in his car, which he parked at the school parking lot, and the Scout gets suspended for carrying a weapon to school. A 60-year-old man who smoked cigarettes since a teenager, ignoring the health warnings on every pack, successfully sues the tobacco companies for millions because he had cancer caused by the cigarettes. An airplane company is successfully sued when a thirty-year-old aircraft of their manufacture, crashed because of pilot error. We toy with paying reparations for slavery to anyone who had a slave as an ancestor. A woman spills hot coffee on herself and successfully sues the restaurant from which she purchased the coffee for spilling it on herself. My ladder has inane warnings about not climbing too high. My new windows came with stickers telling me it was dangerous to leave them open at night (duhh!). A high school student tapes a chemistry lecture and is criminally charged under wire-tapping statutes. A six year old is suspended from school for possessing drug paraphernalia because he brought his father’s pager to school for show and tell. A five year old boy is expelled from kindergarten for kissing a little girl on the playground, because it was sexual harassment. A young school boy was suspended from school for drawing a picture of his father, who was in the military. The picture showed the father in his military garb, thus the school deemed the boy to have “violent tendencies” and punished him.
Amidst a war, a real war, which has combatants that hate us, and have indeed declared war on us, the major news outlets are obsessing on how bad the United States of America is. They focus on a few mistakes and a few criminal acts perpetrated by a tiny minority of American GIs, indicting the Commander-In-Chief, as well as the entire country for those few acts. Yet, they give the horrific acts perpetrated by an entire culture on their own people and others, like Nick Berg, et al, a pass. They simply do not comment on those acts nor do they report on them. In doing so, the major news outlets are giving credibility to our enemies while indicting the entire complement of American military personnel as war criminals and sadistic thugs. Why do some Americans hate America so? It is because they have the desire to completely revamp our system. They wish to gut a system that was so carefully prepared by the fathers of our country. In doing these things, they are absolutely hampering the war effort of their own country. If they do succeed in destroying our system in favor of another more socialist one, they will be the first who are in jeopardy of loosing their freedom. Our system, which our military is fighting for, is the only system that will allow the news media absolute freedom to do as they please. A more socialist system will quickly strip journalists of their right to a free press, substituting a controlled press instead.
That is the story on the surface, but not the whole story. The complete picture is that the major news outlets are heavily populated with left-leaning members of the political establishment. For example, inside the beltway media types favor the election of a left leaning candidate (usually a Democrat) by a wide margin. What is really happening is that the press, because of its own political agenda, is reporting in a way that will undermine the presidency of a moderate or conservative president. When a liberal president in the White House, he or she can do no wrong according to the press. The reality is that those journalists with that agenda wish to have a moderate or conservative president lose his or her reelection so that their very own socialist candidate will become president. Accordingly, they will allow our system to be undermined so that their candidate will win the next election.
The State of Louisiana has recently passed a bill that allows policemen to enter into houses without a warrant. Of course, the law does put some limits of situations that will allow such entry. Nevertheless, the probability of abuse is very real because policemen are human. But that is not the actual problem. The actual problem is the circumventing, once again, of the Constitution. Allowing warrantless searches of private property is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. Our country fought a war over such intrusion and many men died to give us protection from such searches.
Time after time, the U.S. Supreme court has weakened the bill of rights. The right to bear arms, for example, has been weakened because we are now only allowed to bear certain types of arms. If an American wishes to own a fully automatic M-16, he cannot without a permit from the government. Before you say that no one needs a fully automatic M-16, the Second Amendment, as the Rutherford Institute has stated, is not about needs, it is about rights. Anyway, that is your opinion. If the weapon were used to protect our freedoms from a domestic threat or an invasion, that fully automatic M-16 would be essential. The reason for the Second Amendment was just that, to allow citizens to protect their own freedoms. It was most definitely not about hunting.
The Supreme Court has weakened the First Amendment as well. With the Everson decision of 1947, the words, “Separation of Church and State” have entered our system of jurisprudence. Because of this decision, the law mandates that strictly religious activities be banned totally from publicly owned places, activities, events, etc. The First Amendment states that the government (Congress, according to the Supreme Court, refers to the whole government) cannot make any law respecting as establishment of religion. So the amendment states that the Government must not establish any religion. It also says, in the second clause, that the government (again, Congress means the whole government according to Supreme court rulings) may not prohibit the free exercise of one’s religion. To me, free exercise signifies that I may exercise my religion at any time and any place (reasonably, and responsibly, of course). But the court has ruled and upheld rulings by lower courts, which prohibit the free exercise of my religion because doing so establishes a religion, thus violating the establishment clause. So the establishment clause trumps the free exercise clause in every instance. Current law does not uphold the constitution’s mandate of freedom of religion. If the same standards that apply to the religion clause of the First Amendment were applied to the free press clause of that amendment, there would be such a loud outcry, that those standards would quickly be abandoned.
Such standards would have a chilling effect on freedom of the press, just as they already have chilled our freedom of religion. The other clauses, pertaining to freedom of assembly and freedom to seek redress from our government have also been chilled by court rulings. For an example of such chilling, observe what happened to Operation Rescue. I am opposed to abortion but do not support Operation Rescue because I believe there is a better way to stop abortion than in-your-face activism. However, they should still have the freedom to operate under the first Amendment. It is amazing, but laws blocking the freedom of speech, assembly, and redress have been passed that were specifically aimed at Operation Rescue. Additionally, anti-racketeering legislation has been misused against Operation Rescue. That particular organization may not exercise its free speech rights in certain places. The Courts have enacted what amounts to free speech zones for Operation Rescue. They may not exercise their rights except in these zones. If they are near an abortion mill, they may not assemble, demonstrate, or even speak to those entering the mill under penalty of imprisonment. The Supreme Court upheld this.
Local Governments are now legally stealing private property on a regular basis. Yes, the law allows governments to exercise eminent domain proceedings when a property is needed for the public good. When they do so, however, they are to compensate the property owner adequately and fairly. Eminent domain is for public benefit and public, not private, use. But many governments have taken eminent domain to a much higher level. Many local governments have taken land from property owners and sold or leased it to (and in some cases have granted it outright to) private developers on the promise of the developer that the area will deliver more tax revenue that it did before development. In many cases the developers went to the property owners to purchase the property and the owners did not wish to sell for the amount the developer offered, which is usually below market values. Consequently, the developers went to the local government and, with the promise of increased tax revenue, asked the government to condemn the property, take it and sell it or give it to the developer. In some cases the property has simply been taken without compensation. In other cases, the compensation given has been well below market value. These governments have abused the property rights of citizens in what amounts to theft. In several cases, when taken to court, the courts have fallen on the side of the land grabbers. The Supreme Court has agreed to review an eminent domain case between New London, Connecticut, and some property owners in the city. For now though, on any pretext, it is OK for local governments to steal the property of their citizens. Again, we fought a war over such government arrogance and many men gave their lives for our freedoms. Taking private property from one owner and giving it to another private owner is a horrible abuse of the policy of eminent domain and should be stopped. (Addendum: In 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the city’s right to legally seize property and they did seize it.)
My point in these rants mentioned here is that the United States of America has lost all semblance of common sense. It seems like common sense solution to our problems are not acceptable. A common sense solution to the violence in America is not to undermine the Second Amendment, but to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators as soon as possible, and to carry out the implementation of their sentence quickly and firmly, especially the death penalty. The argument is that the death penalty is not a deterrent. I must agree that its deterrent effect is diminished, but the reason is that it takes ten to twenty years to execute the death penalty. A more swift execution of sentence would boost its deterrent effect.
A common sense solution to the spread of STDs (the politically correct term for VD) is to identify those infected and make it known that they are infected. That way they may receive treatment and others will be less likely to get the disease. But we will not have such a solution because of the “privacy” rights of the infected people. What is more important, privacy, or prevention of an epidemic? To me it is obvious. The epidemic is a higher priority. But that common sense solution is unlikely.
While on the subject, an even more down to earth approach is to tell people the truth about STDs. That truth is that some of them are preventable only by abstinence from promiscuous activities. Nevertheless, may we teach abstinence? But, nooo, that is religious. Huh? Why is telling the truth necessarily religious? Common sense tells us that nothing is wrong with teaching abstinence. However, common sense is a precious commodity today.
We seem to have so many intractable problems. Gangs, delinquency, illegitimacy, dead beat fathers, world hatred against the U.S., terrorism, debt, family breakdown, deficits, hunger, homelessness, out of control government, the police state, poor court decisions, escalating medical costs, loss of freedoms, hatred, social decay, loss of values, etc. The list could continue indefinitely. We have problems with seemingly no solution. Our civilization seems to be self-destructing before our very eyes. We try to fix things and the fixes cause even more problems. They harder we work to try to improve things, the worse they become. Hopelessness seems to be the only thing the future holds. Can our problems ever be solved? Or do our children have little to look forward to? Even the questions are intractable, seemingly with no answer available. What is going on in our country? Why is this happening and what can we do to reverse things? There is an answer, you know, to all of these stubborn questions. It is not a difficult answer. However, we wish to ignore it. Furthermore, it is the correct answer.
The answer is that we must turn back to God. We have decided that we are too wise and sophisticated to need a god. We have relegated Him to fables of the weak and unlearned. We have attempted to remove Him from reality and have tried to define him as a figment of our collective primal imagination. Such thinking leads to the imagined reality that man created God instead of God created man.
It is time to readmit the existence of God. At one time, most Americans admitted to His existence. Let me categorically state that there is a God. He is a God Who is personal and loving. He is a God that cares about us. He is a God Who is compassionate. He is a God Who is just. There is just such a God. He told us what we are to call Him in His book, the Bible. He said to refer to Him as the great “I Am”, meaning He was, He is, and He always will be. He created us, and He provided a way for us to know Him personally.
God is interested in what is happening to us. He wishes us to have blessings instead of curses. However, like a good father that loves his children and wishes only the best for them, He will allow us to be on our own and make our own mistakes. Moreover, like a good father, He wants us to realize our own mistakes and turn to Him for help. Nevertheless, He will let us falter if we do not turn to Him. He will allow us to wallow in our own mistakes. It is not God’s fault that we refuse turn to Him. It is ours. Until we admit that the mistake is ours and until we rectify our mistake and return to Him, He will allow us to suffer for our mistakes.
Americans must return to God in order for those intractable problems to become solvable. The first step is to admit that God exists. It is also important to realize that He is the God of the Bible. Once we admit the existence of God, then we may be more inclined to seek Him out. If we will seek Him, He will be found. For He says in His own words, in Jeremiah 29:13, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Fellow Americans, let us begin to search for Him with all our hearts.
There is a sermon in the Bible, written by God, that outlines what will happen to a nation that follows God. Conversely, God also outlines what will happen to a nation that turns away from Him. Interestingly, all of the things he mentions in this sermon have happened to America. When we trusted Him, the blessings He listed were the blessings America received. Since we have turned away from Him, the curses he set down in the Bible are now happening to America. See for yourself, read Deuteronomy chapter 28. Let us return to God in order to reverse those curses. See the study entitled Rejected.
Copyright © 9/30/2004, Mark Oaks. All rights reserved.
Common Sense Lost
A child is suspended from school for pointing a chicken finger at another student and saying “Pow, pow, pow!” Other children are suspended from elementary school for pointing their fingers at one another and saying, “Bang!” An eagle scout leaves his scouting pack in his car. A broken hatchet used in his scouting activities was found in his car, which he parked at the school parking lot, and the Scout gets suspended for carrying a weapon to school. A 60-year-old man who smoked cigarettes since a teenager, ignoring the health warnings on every pack, successfully sues the tobacco companies for millions because he had cancer caused by the cigarettes. An airplane company is successfully sued when a thirty-year-old aircraft of their manufacture, crashed because of pilot error. We toy with paying reparations for slavery to anyone who had a slave as an ancestor. A woman spills hot coffee on herself and successfully sues the restaurant from which she purchased the coffee for spilling it on herself. My ladder has inane warnings about not climbing too high. My new windows came with stickers telling me it was dangerous to leave them open at night (duhh!). A high school student tapes a chemistry lecture and is criminally charged under wire-tapping statutes. A six year old is suspended from school for possessing drug paraphernalia because he brought his father’s pager to school for show and tell. A five year old boy is expelled from kindergarten for kissing a little girl on the playground, because it was sexual harassment. A young school boy was suspended from school for drawing a picture of his father, who was in the military. The picture showed the father in his military garb, thus the school deemed the boy to have “violent tendencies” and punished him.
Amidst a war, a real war, which has combatants that hate us, and have indeed declared war on us, the major news outlets are obsessing on how bad the United States of America is. They focus on a few mistakes and a few criminal acts perpetrated by a tiny minority of American GIs, indicting the Commander-In-Chief, as well as the entire country for those few acts. Yet, they give the horrific acts perpetrated by an entire culture on their own people and others, like Nick Berg, et al, a pass. They simply do not comment on those acts nor do they report on them. In doing so, the major news outlets are giving credibility to our enemies while indicting the entire complement of American military personnel as war criminals and sadistic thugs. Why do some Americans hate America so? It is because they have the desire to completely revamp our system. They wish to gut a system that was so carefully prepared by the fathers of our country. In doing these things, they are absolutely hampering the war effort of their own country. If they do succeed in destroying our system in favor of another more socialist one, they will be the first who are in jeopardy of loosing their freedom. Our system, which our military is fighting for, is the only system that will allow the news media absolute freedom to do as they please. A more socialist system will quickly strip journalists of their right to a free press, substituting a controlled press instead.
That is the story on the surface, but not the whole story. The complete picture is that the major news outlets are heavily populated with left-leaning members of the political establishment. For example, inside the beltway media types favor the election of a left leaning candidate (usually a Democrat) by a wide margin. What is really happening is that the press, because of its own political agenda, is reporting in a way that will undermine the presidency of a moderate or conservative president. When a liberal president in the White House, he or she can do no wrong according to the press. The reality is that those journalists with that agenda wish to have a moderate or conservative president lose his or her reelection so that their very own socialist candidate will become president. Accordingly, they will allow our system to be undermined so that their candidate will win the next election.
The State of Louisiana has recently passed a bill that allows policemen to enter into houses without a warrant. Of course, the law does put some limits of situations that will allow such entry. Nevertheless, the probability of abuse is very real because policemen are human. But that is not the actual problem. The actual problem is the circumventing, once again, of the Constitution. Allowing warrantless searches of private property is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. Our country fought a war over such intrusion and many men died to give us protection from such searches.
Time after time, the U.S. Supreme court has weakened the bill of rights. The right to bear arms, for example, has been weakened because we are now only allowed to bear certain types of arms. If an American wishes to own a fully automatic M-16, he cannot without a permit from the government. Before you say that no one needs a fully automatic M-16, the Second Amendment, as the Rutherford Institute has stated, is not about needs, it is about rights. Anyway, that is your opinion. If the weapon were used to protect our freedoms from a domestic threat or an invasion, that fully automatic M-16 would be essential. The reason for the Second Amendment was just that, to allow citizens to protect their own freedoms. It was most definitely not about hunting.
The Supreme Court has weakened the First Amendment as well. With the Everson decision of 1947, the words, “Separation of Church and State” have entered our system of jurisprudence. Because of this decision, the law mandates that strictly religious activities be banned totally from publicly owned places, activities, events, etc. The First Amendment states that the government (Congress, according to the Supreme Court, refers to the whole government) cannot make any law respecting as establishment of religion. So the amendment states that the Government must not establish any religion. It also says, in the second clause, that the government (again, Congress means the whole government according to Supreme court rulings) may not prohibit the free exercise of one’s religion. To me, free exercise signifies that I may exercise my religion at any time and any place (reasonably, and responsibly, of course). But the court has ruled and upheld rulings by lower courts, which prohibit the free exercise of my religion because doing so establishes a religion, thus violating the establishment clause. So the establishment clause trumps the free exercise clause in every instance. Current law does not uphold the constitution’s mandate of freedom of religion. If the same standards that apply to the religion clause of the First Amendment were applied to the free press clause of that amendment, there would be such a loud outcry, that those standards would quickly be abandoned.
Such standards would have a chilling effect on freedom of the press, just as they already have chilled our freedom of religion. The other clauses, pertaining to freedom of assembly and freedom to seek redress from our government have also been chilled by court rulings. For an example of such chilling, observe what happened to Operation Rescue. I am opposed to abortion but do not support Operation Rescue because I believe there is a better way to stop abortion than in-your-face activism. However, they should still have the freedom to operate under the first Amendment. It is amazing, but laws blocking the freedom of speech, assembly, and redress have been passed that were specifically aimed at Operation Rescue. Additionally, anti-racketeering legislation has been misused against Operation Rescue. That particular organization may not exercise its free speech rights in certain places. The Courts have enacted what amounts to free speech zones for Operation Rescue. They may not exercise their rights except in these zones. If they are near an abortion mill, they may not assemble, demonstrate, or even speak to those entering the mill under penalty of imprisonment. The Supreme Court upheld this.
Local Governments are now legally stealing private property on a regular basis. Yes, the law allows governments to exercise eminent domain proceedings when a property is needed for the public good. When they do so, however, they are to compensate the property owner adequately and fairly. Eminent domain is for public benefit and public, not private, use. But many governments have taken eminent domain to a much higher level. Many local governments have taken land from property owners and sold or leased it to (and in some cases have granted it outright to) private developers on the promise of the developer that the area will deliver more tax revenue that it did before development. In many cases the developers went to the property owners to purchase the property and the owners did not wish to sell for the amount the developer offered, which is usually below market values. Consequently, the developers went to the local government and, with the promise of increased tax revenue, asked the government to condemn the property, take it and sell it or give it to the developer. In some cases the property has simply been taken without compensation. In other cases, the compensation given has been well below market value. These governments have abused the property rights of citizens in what amounts to theft. In several cases, when taken to court, the courts have fallen on the side of the land grabbers. The Supreme Court has agreed to review an eminent domain case between New London, Connecticut, and some property owners in the city. For now though, on any pretext, it is OK for local governments to steal the property of their citizens. Again, we fought a war over such government arrogance and many men gave their lives for our freedoms. Taking private property from one owner and giving it to another private owner is a horrible abuse of the policy of eminent domain and should be stopped. (Addendum: In 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the city’s right to legally seize property and they did seize it.)
My point in these rants mentioned here is that the United States of America has lost all semblance of common sense. It seems like common sense solution to our problems are not acceptable. A common sense solution to the violence in America is not to undermine the Second Amendment, but to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators as soon as possible, and to carry out the implementation of their sentence quickly and firmly, especially the death penalty. The argument is that the death penalty is not a deterrent. I must agree that its deterrent effect is diminished, but the reason is that it takes ten to twenty years to execute the death penalty. A more swift execution of sentence would boost its deterrent effect.
A common sense solution to the spread of STDs (the politically correct term for VD) is to identify those infected and make it known that they are infected. That way they may receive treatment and others will be less likely to get the disease. But we will not have such a solution because of the “privacy” rights of the infected people. What is more important, privacy, or prevention of an epidemic? To me it is obvious. The epidemic is a higher priority. But that common sense solution is unlikely.
While on the subject, an even more down to earth approach is to tell people the truth about STDs. That truth is that some of them are preventable only by abstinence from promiscuous activities. Nevertheless, may we teach abstinence? But, nooo, that is religious. Huh? Why is telling the truth necessarily religious? Common sense tells us that nothing is wrong with teaching abstinence. However, common sense is a precious commodity today.
We seem to have so many intractable problems. Gangs, delinquency, illegitimacy, dead beat fathers, world hatred against the U.S., terrorism, debt, family breakdown, deficits, hunger, homelessness, out of control government, the police state, poor court decisions, escalating medical costs, loss of freedoms, hatred, social decay, loss of values, etc. The list could continue indefinitely. We have problems with seemingly no solution. Our civilization seems to be self-destructing before our very eyes. We try to fix things and the fixes cause even more problems. They harder we work to try to improve things, the worse they become. Hopelessness seems to be the only thing the future holds. Can our problems ever be solved? Or do our children have little to look forward to? Even the questions are intractable, seemingly with no answer available. What is going on in our country? Why is this happening and what can we do to reverse things? There is an answer, you know, to all of these stubborn questions. It is not a difficult answer. However, we wish to ignore it. Furthermore, it is the correct answer.
The answer is that we must turn back to God. We have decided that we are too wise and sophisticated to need a god. We have relegated Him to fables of the weak and unlearned. We have attempted to remove Him from reality and have tried to define him as a figment of our collective primal imagination. Such thinking leads to the imagined reality that man created God instead of God created man.
It is time to readmit the existence of God. At one time, most Americans admitted to His existence. Let me categorically state that there is a God. He is a God Who is personal and loving. He is a God that cares about us. He is a God Who is compassionate. He is a God Who is just. There is just such a God. He told us what we are to call Him in His book, the Bible. He said to refer to Him as the great “I Am”, meaning He was, He is, and He always will be. He created us, and He provided a way for us to know Him personally.
God is interested in what is happening to us. He wishes us to have blessings instead of curses. However, like a good father that loves his children and wishes only the best for them, He will allow us to be on our own and make our own mistakes. Moreover, like a good father, He wants us to realize our own mistakes and turn to Him for help. Nevertheless, He will let us falter if we do not turn to Him. He will allow us to wallow in our own mistakes. It is not God’s fault that we refuse turn to Him. It is ours. Until we admit that the mistake is ours and until we rectify our mistake and return to Him, He will allow us to suffer for our mistakes.
Americans must return to God in order for those intractable problems to become solvable. The first step is to admit that God exists. It is also important to realize that He is the God of the Bible. Once we admit the existence of God, then we may be more inclined to seek Him out. If we will seek Him, He will be found. For He says in His own words, in Jeremiah 29:13, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Fellow Americans, let us begin to search for Him with all our hearts.
There is a sermon in the Bible, written by God, that outlines what will happen to a nation that follows God. Conversely, God also outlines what will happen to a nation that turns away from Him. Interestingly, all of the things he mentions in this sermon have happened to America. When we trusted Him, the blessings He listed were the blessings America received. Since we have turned away from Him, the curses he set down in the Bible are now happening to America. See for yourself, read Deuteronomy chapter 28. Let us return to God in order to reverse those curses. See the study entitled Rejected.
Copyright © 9/30/2004, Mark Oaks. All rights reserved.