The Second American Revolution

If the Founders of our country were alive today, there already would have been a Second American Revolution.  And if the people alive today were alive back then, there never would have been a first one.

The Declaration of Independence was written to explain why the colonies wanted to be independent of England and why they thought it was worth fighting a war to do just that.

Read this excerpt from that document.  But read it slowly.  I’ll wait.

“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. — 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.”

Our country is based on certain concepts: all people are created equal, and their creator, God, gave them unalienable rights.  Equality means, or at least what they meant by it, is that nobody has a right to be a king, or a ruler.  There is no royal family or royal line.  We would have representatives to represent the people, a Senate to represent the states, an executive to carry out the laws, and courts to mete out justice.

God gave people unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, rights that the government cannot take away, change, or interfere with. 

We establish government for the purpose of securing and protecting those rights.  And if it doesn’t, we are told to change it or get rid of it and make another one.

Our government no longer believes in unalienable rights.  It only knows of rights that the government gives, based on what the people want or what they offer to the people in exchange for their votes to stay in their elected positions.

So why doesn’t the government believe any more in unalienable rights?

It goes back to the court called supreme.  That court said that the government cannot aid religion or favor any particular one of them, something that it had been doing for almost 200 years after our nation’s founding and the almost 200 years that the colonies existed before that.

Unalienable rights come from God.  And not just any god.  Islam doesn’t know of unalienable rights, nor any other religion.  When the Founders spoke of God or our creator, they were talking of the God of the Bible.   That’s why the Bible was a basic part of public education for almost 200 years before, again, the court called supreme found that unconstitutional. 

But how can it be unconstitutional if the very idea of unalienable rights comes from the God of the Bible?  Our very country is based on what our courts call a religious belief.  The Founders called it a fact. 

If our courts cannot favor any religion, then all religions must be considered equal.  That only makes sense if religious beliefs are only opinions with no basis in fact.  They are considered unproveable, so they have no validity outside of their own system.  Religions are then nothing more than people’s opinions or preferences, like their taste in music, books, movies, or food.  You can tell people why you like a certain book or movie, but you can’t tell them they are wrong if they don’t agree with you.

That’s one way you can look at religion, but then there is no such thing as unalienable rights.  You don’t have them, and our country was built on a lie.  You can call a religion simply a belief system with no basis in fact, but to the people who believe in their religion, it is a fact.  It is true.  A religion is a description of all of reality.   And this is why all religions cannot be true.  None of them may be true, but all of them cannot. 

But if none of them is true, then God is unknowable, and talk of God is pointless.  God would have to reveal Himself to humankind for us to know what He is like.  If He hasn’t done it, then we don’t know what He is like.  If He has done it, then only one religion can be true, because they are all fundamentally different in their core.  Not perfect, because we are still dealing with human beings here.  But its teachings in the broad scope would be true.  As you try to answer more and more questions, people end up trying to be certain where the texts are not clear.  But the main teachings are clear.

Some will argue that our rights are natural rights figured out by John Locke and some other philosophers whose works the Founders borrowed from.  But unalienable rights come from a Higher Power, one that the people of the land need to agree on.  You don’t get unalienable rights just because you say you have them. 

Our nation and the United Nations are trying to pass the idea or force the idea of human rights on other nations.  If enough people of a nation insist on a right, and the government doesn’t forcibly forbid it, people get rights.  They are not unalienable, but once they have them, it’s hard to take them away apart from a forceable change in government, like a coup or revolution.

So, our country is based on a particular belief of a particular God of a particular religion.  Without God, you don’t have unalienable rights.  Without the God of the Bible, you don’t have unalienable rights.  Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights. 

I should note here that Judaism and Christianity are inextricably linked.  Christianity would consider itself Judaism 2.0.  There is one basic teaching of the New Testament that Judaism doesn’t accept.  But all the relevant teachings pertaining to unalienable rights and the necessary moral code that goes with them are found there.  Our heritage as a nation is often spoken of as our Judeo-Christian heritage.  But the Bibles used in our public schools always included the New Testament.

For generations now, our government has been insisting that we are a secular nation, where religion is best kept to yourself, and we don’t need or can use it in government. 

So we stopped teaching it to our children.  Then we flooded our country with people from all over the world who have in most cases no idea of unalienable rights, the God of the Bible, the Bible, or Christianity, which is the outworking of the teachings of the Bible.  Which is why for most of our history, we got most of our immigrants from Europe.  They were familiar with Christianity and the Bible.

So over generations, our nation has been shifting from unalienable rights to government-given rights, and the differences are huge.  For one, they usually require enormous amounts of money.  Since this shift has started, our government has almost always spent far more money than it receives in taxes.  The government then just borrows the money, pays interest on it that makes everything it spends money on more expensive, and it prints money to devalue the money we already have to pay the debt back with cheaper dollars. 

Our country is now pretty much at the tipping point.  The number of voters who have no concept of unalienable rights seems to outnumber those who do, but our country is based on uniting states, not just one large mass of people. 

But if those who believe in unalienable rights don’t fight for them, then our country is lost.  We will still be the United States in name, but it won’t be the country our Founders fought a war in order to create.  It would be the same as if we had been overrun by a foreign country and they imposed a new government on us.

But it happened slowly, over generations.  So the changes were accepted as inevitable, small, not serious, necessary, progress, but it set in motion forces that only move in one direction. 

Frankly, we don’t have much time before the country we fought a war to create will be no more.  If you don’t know how it was supposed to be, you won’t see any difference.  But the forces aren’t done moving. 

Government rights seek to do more and more things for more and more people.  And the money isn’t there.  We are already $22 trillion in debt with no end in sight.  Very soon we will be spending a trillion dollars a year just on interest for that debt.  That’s money that is just wasted and that is a drag on the economy as it takes money out of the private sector and people’s pockets. 

Those of us who know the truth have to decide if it’s worth fighting for, because it won’t change without a fight.  And nobody is even talking about it right now.

We are told not to talk about religion and politics.  I think that was made up by the people who want to change our country, because that’s what we always talked about, because that’s what’s most important in life.  Religion has to do with our relationship with God and people.  Politics is about almost everything else.

We need to start talking about this with our friends, family, co-workers, and then the newspapers and all of our elected officials.  There is nothing more important for our country right now, and you can’t just wait for somebody else to do it for you.

Improving Chicago's mayoral election

The City of Chicago did away with the party system for electing of its mayor, and we have a host of candidates as a result.  Most elections in our country use a two-party system, where any additional candidates generally end up splitting the votes of one party and essentially giving the election to the other party.

In addition, Chicago will have a runoff if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.  Most elections in our country don’t require a candidate having 50% of the vote to win.  When a third candidate runs in the same election, the winner can have as little as 34% of the vote.  That is wrong.

So Chicago has solved two of the major election problems in our country.

I would like to make a suggestion to make it even better. 

If nobody gets more than 50% of the total votes in the election, Chicago will have a runoff between the two leading candidates.  The problem is that more people will have preferred someone else than either of the two leading candidates; They may not want either one. 

What Chicago needs to make a good system even better is to use a weighted ballot.  I’m going to guess that Preckwinkle and Daley will be the leading candidates after the election, if neither gets more than 50%.  They will get the votes, because they have party power.  And I will bet there will be a lot of people who would rather have anybody but them. 

Weighted ballots ensure that the candidate that most people support will win.  Sure, if you limit the choices to two, somebody will win, but if there were more choices, somebody else might, and that possibility says we should pursue that option.

The Most Important Issue of our Time, and Nobody is Talking about It - original, revised version

This essay appeared in The Patriot Post today, but they made several slight but significant changes.  This is the version that I submitted.  This essay also was published previously, but this version contains some important improvements.

Our country has never been more divided or in more turmoil than it is today.  I lived through the Civil Rights and Viet Nam eras, but those were more focused protests, while today we are divided on just about everything.

I wanted to figure out why.  I wanted to know how we got here

I read an article in the paper about what it means to be an American.  After reading the answer given and thinking about the overall divisions in the country, I knew something was missing from the discussion. 

Then I saw it, an issue so fundamental to everything that is going on, and nobody was even talking about it.  And what’s more, this is the issue that will determine the future of our nation in every way that matters.

The single most important issue facing our country today has to do with what it is that defines America.  The common definitions of what it means to be an American today are missing the point, because frankly they aren’t going back to the original sources.

The best description of what America is is found in the Declaration of Independence:

“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. — 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.”

God gave human beings unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, rights that the government cannot restrict, modify, or take away, rights that are not dependent on polls, consensus, votes, or Supreme Court rulings.

But wait a second.

What God gave people unalienable rights, and how did the Founders know that He did? 

Every nation in the world at that time had their god(s) and their religion(s), but no other nation had unalienable rights.

It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights to people, and the Bible and Christianity were seen as the vehicles God used to reveal Himself and His purposes to humankind.

God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  The courts would call that a religious opinion.  The Founders called it a fact.

If you don’t have the Bible and Christianity, then you don’t have unalienable rights.  And if you don’t have unalienable rights, then you don’t have America, at least the one for which our Founders fought a war in order to be able to create it.

If you separate the Bible and Christianity from the foundation of our country, or if you deny the existence of God, or if you lump all the religions together as being equal with no religion being more important or more true than another, if our government cannot favor one religion over another, then you don’t have unalienable rights. 

Government cannot give unalienable rights.  Unalienable rights require a Higher Power, an authority higher than the government that the nation as a whole accepts.  If there is no higher power, or if that Higher Power is not the God of the Bible, then you don’t have unalienable rights.  You only have what rights the government will give you, and those are two very different things.

Unalienable rights have to do with things that you are free to do without the government’s permission, interference, or restrictions.  This is what our Founders meant by liberty, or freedom. 

Government rights generally require the government to compel other people to do things for the sake of the people who have now been given these rights.  Usually this will require enormous amounts of money.  This is the primary reason that our country is now $21 trillion in debt.  So many people have a right to so many things, there isn’t enough money to pay for all of them.

Liberty, freedom, and unalienable rights require a very high personal moral code that everybody recognizes and lives by, otherwise it will lead to anarchy. 

For almost 200 years, the moral code of our country was the Ten Commandments, Love your neighbor as yourself, and Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, all from the Bible.  But that was ruled unconstitutional, because they were considered to be religious sentiments. 

They were replaced by tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.  And so now unalienable rights like free speech and religious expression are frequently in conflict with higher secular values, and secular values don’t promote the societal cohesiveness and personal self- restraint needed to let the right of bearing arms continue without enormous government control, including apparently confiscation.

The incredible turmoil and division that our country is experiencing is coming from people trying to impose a vision of our country on a country that was built on a different vision.

We no longer teach these founding principles to our children, because they are considered religious.  And we certainly aren’t teaching them to the millions of people who have been and still are moving to our country.  In a generation of two, the vast majority of the people in our country will have no idea about unalienable rights, and we will have lost our country as surely as if we had been taken over by a foreign power. 

Our country is now near the tipping point where the majority of the people voting will have no concept of unalienable rights and the moral code required to live with them.  Jefferson said that if our government does not secure our unalienable rights, we have the obligation to alter or abolish it and institute new government that will most likely effect our safety and happiness. 

Those of us who believe in the founding principles of our country need to stand up and demand our country back.  If the original Founders were alive today, there already would have been a second American Revolution.

why we need a wall - a letter sent to the paper

A reader (December 20) and apparently the Tribune who printed his letter still believe that putting a wall on our southern border is wrongheaded.

I wrote my senators why we need this wall:

1)         We have possibly the number one drug exporting country in the world right next door, and we are their biggest target   Don’t even think about complaining about an opiod crisis in our country, if you will do nothing to stop the flood of drugs coming into our country through Mexico.

2)         It is obvious to anyone who thinks about it that dangerous criminals would consider leaving their home countries to evade capture and prosecution.  Every person entering our country should have a background check.  We want it for people who buy guns.  We should have it for people entering our country.  We can’t do that if people enter our country without meeting with border agents.

3)         Our country is seeing an upsurge in the occurrence of diseases we had almost forgotten about, plus some new ones.  How can we allow thousands of people a year to enter our country without having a medical examination for transmittable diseases? 

The cost for a wall is chump change in Washington these days.  I think any senator, representative, or elected official who doesn’t see the need for a wall isn’t putting the wellbeing of the people of the United States in high regard.

Time to Rethink Separation of Church and State - a letter sent to the paper

A Tribune reader (December 18) hopes that the DuPage County Board stops its practice of opening its sessions with prayer.  He says that this practice violates the separation of church and state.

What we have forgotten as a nation is that our country was founded on the concept that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  The courts may call that a religious belief.  The Founders called that a fact.  If it is not a true statement, if God did not give unalienable rights to people, then we don’t have unalienable rights, and our country was based on a lie.

If God indeed gave unalienable rights to human beings, how can we teach this to our children and the next generation of voters and elected officials without talking about God?

 

The fact of the matter is: separation of church and state is not in the Constitution, and the prohibition of an establishment of religion by Congress (First Amendment) had to do with Congress establishing a state Church like they had and still have in England.  Removing God from our public life and government was never the intent, since Congress itself has always opened with prayer.

But then you have to ask: what God were they talking about, and how did they know that God gave unalienable rights to human beings?  It was the God of the Bible, and the Bible was the source of that information. 

Separate God and the Bible from our nation, and we will no longer have unalienable rights, and we will no longer have the nation that our Founders fought a war in order to be able to establish.

Peace Talks in Afghanistan

I think it is wrong and shameful to have peace talks with the Taliban.  Do we really want the Taliban, and the entire world, to think, or know, that the United States cannot defeat them?  The greatest military force in the history of the world, and we couldn’t defeat the Taliban?

This is the same mistake we made in Viet Nam.  We wanted someone else to win the war, and we would only be their helper.  

I thought there were 20-some terror groups now in Afghanistan.  Are they a threat to us or not?  If the Taliban and these other terror groups are a threat to us, then take the damn lead and destroy them.  If the Taliban is not a threat to us, then you should destroy them anyway.  To leave under any other circumstances is just telling the world that the United States doesn’t have the will to fight anymore. 

Trump tax returns: the bigger isse

I see that the Democrats are talking again about Trump’s tax returns.

I’m not so worried about his returns than I am about something else.  The IRS will make sure that Trump pays everything he owes.

The Democrats want Trump’s returns from when he was a private citizen.

I want the returns of people who are in public office.  I want to know how the Clintons in 18 years, where Hillary spent 15 years as a Senator and Secretary of State and Bill was a public speaker, could amass a fortune of a quarter of a billion dollars. 

Public ‘servants’ won’t become billionaires in our country.  But they can and do become very rich.  I want every elected official to issue a financial statement and tax return every year.  All public employees pay should be readily available to an online search. 

For too long, the public sector has been too generous to itself at the expense of the rest of us, and elected officials just handle too much money not to think that they won’t get more of that than they should, especially when they deal daily with people who want some of that money.

border security - a response to my senator

Thank you for writing me in response to my concerns about border security.

I need to respond to what you wrote.  This issue is too important to keep leaving it unresolved. 

In 1986, Democrats promised President Reagan that they would approve a wall in exchange for amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.  Fifty years later, illegal immigration has only worsened with no end in sight.

There is talk in conservative circles that Democrats really don’t want to solve it, because they know that first generation immigrants overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and Democrats don’t try very hard to prevent or stop illegal immigrants from voting.  But that’s another issue.

The second paragraph of your letter spoke of “a series of dangerous and misguided executive orders” including one about “the immediate planning and construction of a wall along the entirety of the U.S. southern border with Mexico.” 

Nothing is said about what the other dangerous and misguided executive orders are.  As for taxpayer dollars, Democrats have not shown any real concern about spending taxpayer dollars before.  They just prefer to spend it on programs where the money is given to people more directly.  As for Mexico paying for it, the first priority is getting the wall built.  There are many ways to recoup the money from Mexico, like charging a fee for all the money that is sent back to Mexico every year.

As for the wall itself, you say the GAO found that DHS cannot demonstrate the effectiveness of a wall.  Do you read the news?  Several European countries have built walls to keep out the wave of migrants flooding Europe.  They are working.  Israel build a wall to keep our terrorists.  That has been effective.  How can you prove or disprove the effectiveness of something that doesn’t exist?  If it can be demonstrated that people cannot climb over it, that should be enough.

Illegal immigration has been a problem for 60 years, and Congress does nothing.  I wrote to you about my concerns of drugs, diseases, and criminals.  You don’t want a wall, then what do you want?  “border security through deployment of advanced technology”  OK, where is it? 

And why does every bill have to be comprehensive?  Why does Congress feel they have to deal with everything in one bill?  That’s one reason nothing gets done.  Too many issues.  Plus, when bills are too large, people (lawmakers and public) can’t read them, you get things that would never pass on their own. you don’t know what you have until the bill is passed (and then there’s always buyer’s remorse), and you can’t even have a good debate on anything, because there is just too much to debate.

You need to start with border security, for the simple reason that our border is being flooded with people trying to get in, and they know that if they do, there is a good chance they will get to stay and that they will get government assistance (which is probably more than they can get in their home country when working).

I already outlined in my letter why we have to seal the border: drugs, crime, and disease.  Those reasons alone are enough to build a wall.  If you say we don’t need one, then where is the bill for the alternative? 

You’re think $20B is too much money.  When the President wanted to increase defense spending by $70B, the Democrats demanded to have the same amount of money to spend on domestic programs.  They didn’t have anything specific in mind when they said that; they just wanted the money.  Twenty billion dollars is chump-change in Washington. 

The truth is that Democrats don’t care about protecting our country from drugs, crime, and disease.  They would rather have more immigrants in our country regardless of the cost, so they can get their votes. 

You happen to be a Democrat, but I don’t want to lump you together with what they have been doing to our country for the last 50 years.

 

I made the case for border security in my last letter.  I really would like to see you do something to protect us from the drugs, crime, and disease that uncontrolled immigration unnecessarily brings into our country.

Thank you.

Larry Craig

 

when rights conflict - a letter sent to the Supreme Court

The Court has ruled in the past that women have a right to kill their babies, if they do it before they are born.  However, I don’t believe the government has a right to compel its citizens to pay for that right.  If money is speech, then using my money to pay for abortions is compelling me to say something I not only don’t believe but abhor.  People have a right to the pursuit of happiness, but that does not require other people to pay for it.

How can a nation have free speech as the first item in its Bill of Rights and then compel half the country to say something they don’t want to say? 

Thank you.

border security a letter sent to my senators and Congressman

I hope you are doing well.  

There is an important issue that I think Congress is failing to deal with, and that is border security.  Congress promised President Reagan a border wall in 1986, and still nothing has been done.

I am asking that you will support a border wall whenever you have the opportunity in Congress to do so.

1)         We know that Mexico, if not run by drug cartels, is certainly known to have enough of them to warrant calling their presence a problem in that country.  And who is their primary source of revenue?  What nation are they most interested in selling their drugs to?  That would be us. 

Me, I would easily support using our military going into Mexico and eliminating their business. 

But the least we can and should do is to have an impenetrable barrier between our two countries to make the exporting of drugs to our country as difficult as possible.  Anything less than this I think is criminally irresponsible. 

We know the threat; we see the cost (not the wall, but the cost in human lives, crime, and medical care that the drug business has worked in our country).  Well, then, we need to do something.  And we are doing nothing.  That’s shameful.

2)         Any person entering our country should be checked for criminal activity.  If you were a wanted criminal facing serious charges, wouldn’t leaving the country be one of your main options?  Particularly when it is so easy and so easy to blend into that other country. 

We need a wall to funnel all new potential residents to a few places where they can be screened and checked for a criminal background.

Again, I think anything less than this is criminally irresponsible.

3)         And any person coming into our country, particularly from countries known for poverty, should be screened medically for transmittable diseases.  We are seeing many diseases that we had almost forgotten about now making a comeback in our country. 

We can’t screen new immigrants unless we are able, again, to funnel all newcomers to locations that are set up to do that. 

For the reasons I just gave, I believe that not having a impenetrable barrier (wall) between the United States and Mexico is criminally irresponsible, particularly since Congress saw the need for this 50 years ago and has done nothing about it since.  Our government exists to take care of the American people.  Frankly, it’s not doing something that is so basic that I find it astonishing that it can ignore it the way it does.

I hope you will take action on this.

 

Thank you

Larry Craig

the most important issue of our time,and nobody is talking about it

Our country has never been more divided or in more turmoil than it is today.  I lived through the Civil Rights and Viet Nam eras, but those were more focused protests, while today we are divided on just about everything.

I wanted to figure out why.  I wanted to know how we got here

I read an article in the paper about what it means to be an American.  After reading the answer given and thinking about the overall divisions in the country, I knew something was missing from the discussion. 

Then I saw it, an issue so fundamental to everything that is going on, and nobody was even talking about it.  And what’s more, this is the issue that will determine the future of our nation in every way that matters.

The single most important issue facing our country has to do with what it is that defines America.  I have read a number of different definitions of what it means to be an American, but frankly they are missing the point, because they are not going back to the sources.

The best description of what America is is found in the Declaration of Independence:

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. — 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.

God gave human beings unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, rights that the government cannot restrict, modify, or take away.

But wait a second.

What God gave people unalienable rights, and how did the Founders know that? 

Every nation in the world at that time had their god(s) and their religion(s), but no other nation had unalienable rights.

It was the God of the Bible, and the Bible and Christianity were seen as the vehicles used by God to reveal Himself and His purposes to humankind.

God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  The courts would call that a religious opinion.  The Founders called it a fact.

If you don’t have Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights. 

If you separate Christianity from the foundation of our country, or if you deny the existence of God, or if you lump all the religions together as being equal with no religion being more important or more true than another, if our government cannot favor one religion over another, then you don’t have unalienable rights.  Unalienable rights require a Higher Power, an authority higher than our government that our nation as a whole accepts.  If there is no higher power, or if that Higher Power is not the God of the Bible, then you don’t have unalienable rights.  You only have what rights the government will give you, and those are two very different things.

Unalienable rights have to do with things that you are free to do without the government’s permission, interference, or restrictions.  This is what our Founders meant by liberty, or freedom. 

Government rights are rights that require the government to compel other people to do things for the sake of the people who have now been given certain rights.  Usually this will require enormous amounts of money. or it will require a curtailing of certain unalienable rights if they are seen to conflict with what the government wants to give other people.  For example: freedom of speech ends if your speech is considered offensive to someone else.  In other words, your freedom of speech is determined by someone else, so you better be careful what you say, lest you offend somebody and are held liable for your speech.

Our Founders also recognized that liberty requires high moral standards.  If people do not want to do what is right as a general rule, freedom will lead to anarchy and eventually back to despotism.

For 200 years, the moral code of our country was the Ten Commandments, Love your neighbor as yourself, and Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, all from the Bible.  But that was ruled unconstitutional, because it was considered to be religious sentiments.

Now they have been replaced with secular values: tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.  The only responsibility here for individuals is tolerance, which can mean nothing more than ignoring your neighbor.  The rest require the government to closely monitor society and people’s behavior to ensure that everyone complies with these new highest values.

The First Amendment cannot guarantee freedom of religion unless religion is consistent with the highest values of the land, otherwise conflicts will inevitably rise, and secular values will take precedence, because secular values are now higher than religious ones.  And that is what is happening today.

This proves that our nation was never intended to be a secular nation.  It also shows again that Christianity is at the root of our country, because religions all have very different value systems.  At that time, Hindus routinely burned widows alive on their dead husband’s funeral pyre, and Muslims then and now believe(d) in subjugating or killing those who will not subject themselves to Islam.  Our country fought its first war against Muslim countries in Africa.  Their leaders showed our leaders from the Koran that it is the duty of Muslims to enslave or kill the infidels.

And, of course, the entire idea of establishment of religion in the First Amendment has been entirely misunderstood, because people have not read enough in the early documents. 

The Founders did not want a national Church as they had and still do in Europe.  That the First Amendment had nothing to do with our government recognizing God and Christianity is evidenced by the fact that most if not all of the original states had a State Church written into their earliest Constitutions.  They soon came to see that they were simply duplicating on a smaller scale the very thing many of them had fled from in Europe, so this omitted in later versions of those Constitutions.

To say that we cannot talk about God in our public schools is wrong, because how are we going to be able to teach our children about unalienable rights if we don’t talk about God?

The entire founding of our country is not being taught in our schools, at least the parts that are most important in establishing the true nature of our country, because it has to do with God.  And we certainly aren’t teaching it to the millions of people who have been moving to our country over the years.  Well, that would be culturally insensitive. 

When our children and the millions of immigrants start voting, getting elected to public office, and making our laws, they will not do it with the knowledge of what made the United States unique among the nations.

So over the course of a few generations, our country will change as surely as if there had been a war and we were taken over by a foreign power.  We will have lost everything that made us what we are.  But because it is happening slowly, over generations, nobody is alarmed.  All the changes that are happening in our country are seen as inevitable, good, a sign of progress, or as just another political debate as there have always been. 

Our country is at the tipping point.  This can be seen by how close most elections are. 

More and more people will question why the religion question is that important.  Below are five inevitable changes that have followed on the heels of our secularization as a nation.

1..        Our country has no uniqueness, so we can and should follow the lead of other nations with regard to health care, gun laws, welfare, speech codes, globalization.  To think differently is considered to be arrogance and willful blindness.

2.         As a secular country, government now assumes the role that God used to play in people’s lives.  Government now is the provider, protector, and benefactor of the people.  This comes at an enormous expense to our country:

a)         This is why government spending will never be cut.

b)         This is why our federal debt has ballooned so much so quickly and will not come down.  People have a right to so many things that cost so much money.

c))        This is why socialism, or a version of it, is almost inevitable.  People have a right to be taken care of.

3.         What were unalienable rights now have become government-given rights.

a)         Freedom of speech has to be limited to protect people from hate and offense.

b)         Secular values are higher than religious ones, so religions freedom must be limited where religious values differ from secular ones.

c)         The right to life assumes the right to defend that life.  But the State believes it has the right and duty to restrict, regulate, and closely monitor that activity under the guise of public safety.

4.         Our new moral code is failing to restrict bad behaviors.  Our country has become an unsafe place.

a)         We may say that crime has not risen, risen that much, or even falling in some cases, but we are falling to acknowledge at what price.  We have made it much harder to get away with a crime at an incredible expense: the cost of technology, additional police personnel (salaries, enormous pensions).

b)         People are afraid to walk alone, at night, or in less public places.  Heck, they are afraid in our public schools.  It used to be common to leave cars and house unlocked.  We weren’t worried that someone was going to steal from or rob us.

c)         Guns must be restricted or banned for public safety reasons.  Your right to bear arms can be qualified: it is only for hunting, recreation, within your home, limited to only a few shots before reloading, and, of course, guns must always be unloaded or disassembled when not in use. 

d)         We now require security guards everywhere: schools, churches, all public places.  We have to keep hiring more and more police and install more and more cameras, all at great public expense.

e)         We have to be inspected, searched, and restricted for public safety in more and more places.

                        1)         Schools are now locked down.

                        2)         We now have to be screened to fly on an airplane, go to a ball game.  We are restricted on things we can bring in and at more places, e,g. liquids, backpacks.

5..        Our religious neutrality has allowed for the presence of a burgeoning Muslim population in our country.  To even express concern for this prompts a knee jerk reaction of horror, because we have become conditioned to think only of our common humanity.  Ideas are not relevant.  Religions are all equal.  Worldview is code for racism. 

            But:

a.         this is the only reason we now have airport security screening everywhere.

b.         While individual Muslims are just that, individuals who we are taught to judge and respect as individuals, the history of Islam and what it looks like in a Muslim majority country is plain for all to see.  We can see the future of our country in Europe today and in any of 50 Muslim majority countries.  If you like what you see, don’t worry, it’s coming to America.

c.         The fact is that Islam has a goal of making the entire world Islamic.  The basic strategy is mass migration to non-Muslim countries and then mass reproduction.  The West is not reproducing at even maintenance levels.  We are teaching our daughters that it is more important to have a career than a family.  It is only a matter of time before Muslims will have a majority in the various countries.

All of the above are natural and inevitable results of our country separating itself from our founding principles.  We need to have, I don’t want to say, a debate.  We need people to confront and challenge the current thinking.  Jefferson said that if our government doesn’t secure our unalienable rights, we should alter or abolish it and institute new government. 

We’ve got to get this information into the public consciousness and get everyone talking about it.  It is not a debate, but it will look like it for a while.  We have to demand our country back.  There is no more important issue in our country at this time.  If we lose here, we lose everything. 

America, we need to talk

America, sit down.   We need to have a talk.  I have to be brief now, but we’ll talk again soon.

America was built on the idea that people have unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, rights that the government cannot restrict, regulate, or deny.  We fought a war in order to be able to establish a government that would protect those rights.  If it failed to do so, we were told to alter or abolish it and institute new government.

Unalienable rights require a Higher Power.  Government cannot give you unalienable rights.  They come from God, and specifically the God of the Bible. Islam does not know of unalienable rights, nor Buddha, Krishna, or any other God or religious system. 

You were told that we are a secular nation, where all religions are considered equal, and the government is uninvolved in any.

That is not true.  Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights.  You only have what rights the government gives you, just like every other country in the world.  And these rights are different from unalienable rights.  Unalienable rights have to do with freedom.  Government rights are generally things to which you are entitled and that require enormous amounts of money and government oversight to see that you get them.

Unalienable rights are the cornerstone of freedom and liberty.  But freedom and liberty require a high moral code, otherwise it will lead to anarchy.  For almost 200 years, our moral code was that of the Bible: the Ten Commandments, Love your neighbor as yourself, and Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Now the moral code is tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.  The only moral responsibility for individuals is tolerance, which need mean nothing more than to ignore your neighbor.

America, this is the reason our county is in so much turmoil.  You are being pulled into two very different directions.  You have a lot of questions.  But at least we need to have this conversation.

Buying cigarettes and voting in Illinois

I keep writing on this issue. and the newspaper keep avoiding the issue.

Your editorial (November 26) wanted state legislators to override Governor Rauner’s veto on raising the age for buying cigarettes to 21 in Illinois.

I especially liked the part where you say:

Because the brain doesn’t fully mature until around 25, teens may shrug off the consequences of smoking.  What seems like a really good idea at 17 or 18 can bring intense regret at 30 or 40.

You didn’t mention the fact that these same teens can vote at 18, and overwhelming so for the political party.

We gave 18 year olds the right to vote, because we were taking them to fight a war we weren’t really trying to win.  That is long gone, and if we think they are too immature to make the right choices for themselves, then they surely are too immature to make the right choices for our country.

So if you really want to raise the age for buying cigarettes, I expect you to demand to raise the age for voting and for the same reason: “public health.”

What to do about the war in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan has gone on way too long.  It should end.

But it should end in victory, not stalemate, not defeat, not stupid peacetalks that won’t mean a thing after we leave.

We are making the same mistake we made in Viet Nam.  We want to train the home army and let them win the war.  It didn’t happen in Viet Nam, and it’s not working here.

We are there not because the Taliban is a threat to Afghanistan, but because it is a threat to our country as well.  This is where Osama bin Laden planned 9/11.  We were told that about 20 other terror groups are also headquartered there now too.

We should make it our fight and destroy them.  They should surrender before we leave, like Germany and Japan did after WW2.  Anything less and they will just come back and threaten everyone again.

 

But what about Afghanistan?  If the threat is only a local one, then they need to decide if they want to deal with it.  If the threat is bigger and they can’t or won’t deal with it, then the nations that the threat does affect have a right to come in and end the threat.  Afghanistan can figure out what they want to do about that. 

Now the Administration wants to sit down with the Taliban.  Wrong move.  Destroy them, or have them unconditionally surrender, like Germany and Japan.  That’s the only way you will end the problem, otherwise it will just keep on coming back.

Why I Am Not Sold on Climate Change

I know that the media and many people in the government consider climate change a big danger to all of us.

And, frankly, I’m not convinced.  And here are the reasons why:

1)         Accurate worldwide average temperatures were not even possible until the advent of satellites in probably the 1970s.  I’m not even sure when anybody even started caring.

Since the average temperature changes that is causing this deep concern is less than 2° Fahrenheit, and average temperatures before satellites are just guesswork, I think we have too little information over too short a period of time to draw serious conclusions of this magnitude.

2)         There are six known ice ages that scientists are sure about, the latest went from around 1000 A.D. to the 1500s.  That is why the Vikings didn’t do more with North America than they did.  They couldn’t if they had wanted to.

But the entire world warmed up after that, and this was way before the Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels. 

Seems the average world temperature changes considerably over centuries without any help from us, and we just don’t know how the whole thing works.

3)         I understand that if all the recommendation of the climate accord in Paris were followed, the change in temperature at the end of the century would be minimal.  And I mean MINIMAL.

4)         I understand also that the United States is actually leading the world at this time in carbon emission reduction.  But we are only one country.  And if the rest of the world are big polluters (China, for example), our efforts will do very little, even less than MINIMAL. 

I have been trying to keep track of local weather reports.  I would like to compare their 5 and 7 day forecasts and see both day by day and week by week how often they are changed or wrong if not updated.  If we can’t be sure what the weather will be like next week, I think long term projections are too conjectural.  We see high pressure systems that might linger over an area for a month like in Texas a few years ago.  They had no idea why that happened.  They see how the jet stream changes, bringing artic air down to the states or not, and they don’t know why.

I am glad to see them working so hard to keep track of things, but I can’t help but think there is something else going on that is influencing their conclusions.

The single most important issue facing our country, and nobody is talking about it

Our country has never been more divided or in more turmoil than it is today.  I lived through the Civil Rights and Viet Nam eras, but those were more focused protests, while today we are divided on just about everything.

I wanted to figure out why.  I wanted to know how we got here

I read an article in the paper about what it means to be an American.  After reading the answer given and thinking about the overall divisions in the country, I knew something was missing from the discussion. 

Then I saw it, an issue so fundamental to everything that is going on, and nobody was even talking about it.  And what’s more, this is the issue that will determine the future of our nation in every way that matters.

The single most important issue facing our country is knowing what it is that makes America.  I have read a number of different definitions of what it means to be an American, but frankly they are missing the point, because they are not going back to the sources.

The best description of what America is is found in the Declaration of Independence:

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. — 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.

God gave human beings unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, rights that the government cannot take away.

But wait a second.

What God, and how did the Founders know that God gave unalienable rights to people? 

Every nation in the world had their god(s) and their religion(s), but no other nation had unalienable rights.

It was the God of the Bible, and the Bible and Christianity were seen as the vehicles used by God to reveal Himself and His purposes to humankind.

God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  The courts would call that a religious opinion.  The Founders called it a fact.

If you separate Christianity from the foundation of our country, or if you deny the existence of God, or if you lump all the religions together as being equal with no religion being more important or more true than another, if our government cannot favor one religion over another, then you don’t have unalienable rights.  Unalienable rights require a Higher Power, an authority higher than our government that our nation as a whole accepts.  If there is no higher power, or if that Higher Power is not the God of the Bible, then you don’t have unalienable rights.  You only have what rights the government will give you, and those are two very different things.

Unalienable rights have to do with things that you are free to do without the government’s permission, interference, or restrictions.  This is what our Founders meant by liberty, or freedom. 

Government rights are rights that require the government to compel other people to do things for the sake of the people who have now been given certain rights.  Usually this will require enormous amounts of money. or it will require a curtailing of certain unalienable rights if they are seen to conflict with what the government wants to give other people.  For example: freedom of speech ends if your speech is considered offensive to someone else.  In other words, your freedom of speech is determined by someone else, so you better be careful what you say, lest you offend somebody and are held liable for your speech.

Our Founders also recognized that liberty requires high moral standards.  If people do not want to do what is right as a general rule, freedom will lead to anarchy and eventually back to despotism.

For 200 years, the moral code of our country was the Ten Commandments, Love your neighbor as yourself, and Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, all from the Bible.  But that was ruled unconstitutional, because it was considered to be religious sentiments.

Now they have been replaced with secular values: tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.  The only responsibility here for individuals is tolerance, which can mean nothing more than ignoring your neighbor.  The rest require the government to closely monitor society and people’s behavior to ensure that everyone complies with these new highest values.

The First Amendment cannot guarantee freedom of religion unless religion is consistent with the highest values of the land, otherwise conflicts will inevitably rise, and secular values will take precedence, because secular values are now higher than religious ones.  And that is what is happening today.

This proves that our nation was never intended to be a secular nation.  It also shows again that Christianity is at the root of our country, because religions all have very different value systems.  At that time, Hindus routinely burned widows alive on their dead husband’s funeral pyre, and Muslims then and now believe(d) in subjugating or killing those who will not subject themselves to Islam.  Our country fought its first war against Muslim countries in Africa.  Their leaders showed our leaders from the Koran that it is the duty of Muslims to enslave or kill the infidels

.

And, of course, the entire idea of establishment of religion in the First Amendment has been entirely misunderstood, because people have not read enough in the early documents. 

The Founders did not want a national Church as they had and still do in Europe.  That the First Amendment had nothing to do with our government recognizing God and Christianity is evidenced by the fact that most if not all of the original states had a State Church written into their earliest Constitutions.  They soon came to see that they were simply duplicating on a smaller scale the very thing many of them had fled from in Europe, so this omitted in later versions of those Constitutions.

To say that we cannot talk about God in our public schools is wrong, because how are we going to be able to teach our children about unalienable rights if we don’t talk about God?

The entire founding of our country is not being taught in our schools, at least the parts that are most important in establishing the true nature of our country, because it has to do with God.  And we certainly aren’t teaching it to the millions of people who have been moving to our country over the years.  Well, that would be culturally insensitive. 

When our children and the millions of immigrants start voting, getting elected to public office, and making our laws, they will not do it with the knowledge of what made the United States unique among the nations.

So over the course of a few generations, our country will change as surely as if there had been a war and we were taken over by a foreign power.  We will have lost everything that made us what we are.  But because it is happening slowly, over generations, nobody is alarmed.  All the changes that are happening in our country are seen as inevitable, good, a sign of progress, or as just another political debate as there have always been. 

Our country is at the tipping point.  This can be seen by how closely the election results are. 

More and more people will question why the religion question is that important.  Below are five inevitable changes that have followed on the heels of our secularization as a nation.

1..        Our country has no uniqueness, so we can and should follow the lead of other nations with regard to health care, gun laws, welfare, speech codes, globalization.  To think differently is considered to be arrogance and willful blindness.

2.         As a secular country, government now assumes the role that God used to play in people’s lives.  Government now is the provider, protector, and benefactor of the people.  This comes at an enormous expense to our country:

a)         This is why government spending will never be cut.

b)         This is why our federal debt has ballooned so much so quickly and will not come down.  People have a right to so many things that cost so much money.

c))        This is why socialism, or a version of it, is almost inevitable.  People have a right to be taken care of.

3.         What were unalienable rights now have become government-given rights.

a)         Freedom of speech has to be limited to protect people from hate and offense.

b)         Secular values are higher than religious ones, so religions freedom must be limited where religious values differ from secular ones.

c)         The right to life assumes the right to defend that life.  But the State believes it has the right and duty to restrict, regulate, and closely monitor that activity under the guise of public safety.

4.         Our new moral code is failing to restrict bad behaviors.  Our country has become an unsafe place.

a)         We may say that crime has not risen, risen that much, or even falling in some cases, but we are falling to acknowledge at what price.  We have made it much harder to get away with a crime at an incredible expense: the cost of technology, additional police personnel (salaries, enormous pensions).

b)         People are afraid to walk alone, at night, or in less public places.  Heck, they are afraid in our public schools.  It used to be common to leave cars and house unlocked.  We weren’t worried that someone was going to steal from or rob us.

c)         Guns must be restricted or banned for public safety reasons.  Your right to bear arms can be qualified: it is only for hunting, recreation, within your home, limited to only a few shots before reloading, and, of course, guns must always be unloaded or disassembled when not in use. 

d)         We now require security guards everywhere: schools, churches, all public places.  We have to keep hiring more and more police and install more and more cameras, all at great public expense.

e)         We have to be inspected, searched, and restricted for public safety in more and more places.

            1)         Schools are now locked down.

            2)         We now have to be screened to fly on an airplane, go to a ball game.  We are restricted on things we can bring in and at more places, e,g. liquids, backpacks.

5..        Our religious neutrality has allowed for the presence of a burgeoning Muslim population in our country.  To even express concern for this prompts a knee jerk reaction of horror, because we have become conditioned to think only of our common humanity.  Ideas are not relevant.  Religions are all equal.  Worldview is code for racism. 

            But:

a.         this is the only reason we now have airport security screening everywhere.

b.         While individual Muslims are just that, individuals who we are taught to judge and respect as individuals, the history of Islam and what it looks like in a Muslim majority country is plain for all to see.  We can see the future of our country in Europe today and in any of 50 Muslim majority countries.  If you like what you see, don’t worry, it’s coming to America.

c.         The fact is that Islam has a goal of making the entire world Islamic.  The basic strategy is mass migration to non-Muslim countries and then mass reproduction.  The West is not reproducing at even maintenance levels.  We are teaching our daughters that it is more important to have a career than a family.  It is only a matter of time before Muslims will have a majority in the various countries.

All of the above are natural and inevitable results of our country separating itself from our founding principles.  We need to have, I don’t want to say, a debate.  We need people to confront and challenge the system.  Jefferson said that if our government doesn’t secure our unalienable rights, we should alter or abolish it and institute new government. 

We’ve got to get this information into the public consciousness and get everyone talking about it.  It is not a debate, but it will look like it for a while.  We have to demand our country back.

There is no more important issue in our country at this time.  If we lose here, we lose everything.