poligion

where religion and politics meet

Everybody has a worldview. A worldview is what you believe about life: what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what are the rules, are there any rules, what is the meaning of life, what is important, what is not.

If a worldview includes a god/God, it is called a religion. If a bunch of people have the same religion, they give it a name.

Nations have worldviews too, a prevailing way of looking at life that directs government policies and laws and that contributes significantly to the culture. Politics is the outworking of that worldview in public life.

We are being told today that the United States is and has always been a secular nation, which is practical atheism.

But our country could not have been founded as a secular nation, because a secular country could not guarantee freedom of religion. Secular values would be higher than religious ones, and they would supersede them when there was a conflict. Secularism sees religion only as your personal preferences, like your taste in food, music, or movies. It does not see religion, any religion, as being true.

But even more basic, our country was founded on the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings. But what God, and how did the Founders know that He had? Islam, for example, does not believe in unalienable rights. It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights, and it was the Bible that informed the Founders of that. The courts would call that a religious opinion; the Founders would call that a fact.

Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’ have the United States of America.

A secular nation cannot give or even recognize unalienable rights, because there is no higher power in a secular nation than the government.

Unalienable rights are the basis for the American concept of freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty require a high moral code that restrains bad behavior among its people; otherwise the government will need to make countless laws and spend increasingly larger amounts of money on law enforcement.

God, prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments were always important parts of our public life, including our public schools, until 1963, when the court called supreme ruled them unconstitutional, almost 200 years after our nation’s founding.

As a secular nation, the government now becomes responsible to take care of its people. It no longer talks about unalienable rights, because then they would have to talk about God, so it creates its own rights. Government-given rights are things that the government is required to provide for its people, which creates an enormous expense which is why our federal government is now $22 trillion in debt.

Our country also did not envision a multitude of different religions co-existing in one place, because the people, and the government, would then be divided on the basic questions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our Constitution, which we fought a war to be able to enact, states, among other things, that our government exists for us to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It could not do this unless it had a clear vision of what it considers to be true, a vision shared with the vast majority of the people in this country.

I want to engage the government, the culture, and the people who live here to see life again from a Christian perspective and to show how secularism is both inadequate and just plain wrong.

Because religion deals with things like God, much of its contents is not subject to the scientific method, though the reasons why one chooses to believe in God or a particular religion certainly demand serious investigation, critical thinking, and a hunger for what is true.

Science and education used to be valuable tools in the search for truth, but science has chosen to answer the foundational questions of life without accepting the possibility of any supernatural causes, and education generally no longer considers the search to be necessary, possible, or worthwhile.

poligion: 1) the proper synthesis of religion and politics 2) the realization, belief, or position that politics and religion cannot be separated or compartmentalized, that a person’s religion invariably affects one’s political decisions and that political decisions invariably stem from one’s worldview, which is what a religion is.

If you are new to this site, I would encourage you to browse through the older articles. They deal with a lot of the more basic issues. Many of the newer articles are shorter responses to particular problems.

Visit my other websites theimportanceofhealing blogspot.com where I talk about healing and my book of the same name and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com where I am posting all my other Bible studies. Follow this link to my videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-RztuRKdCEQzgbhp52dCw

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Larry Craig

Saturday, August 31, 2019

The Illinois State Constitution

The Illinois State Constitution contains the following lines:

1) Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

2) A tax on or measured by income shall be at a non-graduated rate.

My question is: why is one considered a promise that cannot be altered and the other not? State pensions are bankrupting the state, Chicago, and who knows how many other communities, but politicians refuse to address this, because they call it a promise.

Does a promise mean that nobody can say, “Hey, we made a mistake”? Or, circumstances have changed. We are now broke. We cannot afford this. I’m sorry.

But the same wording is used to say that an income tax shall be at a non-graduated rate.

Isn’t that a promise too?

But the state wants to change one but not the other. I’m sorry, but that is wrong.

The Constitution also says that:

3) The State has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education.

Two thirds of public education funding is done at the local level through property taxes. The state is clearly acting in defiance to the state Constitution. Who holds the state accountable for this? The state could easily raise the income tax to pay for schools and reduce property taxes all across the state. That would have no problem passing, because it would reduce housing costs substantially.

4) Appropriations for a fiscal year shall not exceed funds estimated by the General Assembly to be available during that year.

Our state routinely spends far more than it takes in in revenue. Nobody is surprised by this. They pass the budgets knowing full well that they will have to borrow money to pay for everything.

Does nobody pay attention to the State Constitution?

5) The State militia consists of all able-bodied persons residing in the State except those exempted by law.

Our country fought its first war against its own government. Many of the Founders were concerned that this new national government might at some point try to limit or infringe on the people’s unalienable rights. In the Federalist Papers which were written to encourage the passage of the new Constitution, they talk about states being able to resist the power of this national government through their militias.

A semi-automatic gun is modern engineering applied to guns, like an automatic transmission on a car. Gun violence is a lot more than a gun problem, which is beyond the scope of this letter. To prohibit semi-automatic guns is essentially rejecting the whole concept of a militia.

My last question is: who can and will confront the state and hold it accountable for not following the Constitution it is based on?

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

curbing gun violence

The Sun-Times (Americans want new laws to curb gun violence, August 21) is dismayed that Congress hasn’t passed more laws to curb gun violence.

CURB gun violence?

Houston, we have a problem! And nobody’s getting it.

We used to go to Sears and buy guns like we were buying a new screwdriver. We used to have gun clubs in high schools.

It’s not the easy accessibility to guns that is the problem. It’s the people that are the problem

We have lost our collective moral foundation. We used to believe in and teach our kids: Thou shalt not kill, Love your neighbor as yourself, Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. But that was deemed religious and unsuitable in public conversation.

The best we can teach our kids today is tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity.

I’m sorry, but that won’t work. It doesn’t work. It won’t stop the violence.

When we were a religious nation, we could live with a couple hundred million guns, and we felt safe. Now we don’t feel safe anywhere anymore.

The Statue of Liberty and Trump

There is a lot of talk today about the Statue of Liberty and its inscription about tired, poor, and huddled masses and recent talk and policy changes from the Trump administration.

A little context is needed here.

Our country has changed a bit since that statue was erected but not in the way you’re thinking.

Our country was built on freedom, the freedom of the people here to pursue their dreams. Our government existed to protect those freedoms. And people came to live here for the same reason.

In the 1800s, when the Statue of Liberty was erected with its famous poem about the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, there was no TANF, SNAP, CHIP, EITC, or HA. There was, however, a myriad of voluntary usually church-supported charitable organizations to help people in need.

But the role of our government has changed. Instead of existing to protect our freedoms, it now exists to take care of people. This comes at an enormous expense to the public, and it certainly attracts far more people to our country than who would have come here otherwise. And, frankly, we no longer know or care who is coming here to live free or who is coming here to be taken care of.

Our country is over $22 trillion in debt, and that’s just at the federal level. This is not a situation that can end well.

The President thinks we don’t have enough money to take care of everybody who wants to come here and who also needs to be taken care of. We are adding 2 -3 million new immigrants a year, legal, refugees, or otherwise.

gun laws and gun violence

The Sun-Times is demanding more laws to curb gun violence.

Isn’t there already a law against that?

Oh, you mean laws against guns.

We have laws against the possession of all kinds of drugs. How is that working out?

You’re looking for band-aid solutions and not trying to solve the real problem.

If there’s an epidemic of headaches, you don’t subsidize Tylenol tablets and require everybody to take two in the morning. Something is going on that you need to find out what it is.

If the problem is hate, you can’t fix that with new laws. If the problem is just too darn many guns floating around, you need to find out why that is. This didn’t just happen a few years ago because of some legal loophole.

Guns have always been an essential part of the American identity. We have always had a lot of guns.

Why?

Because we fought a war against our own government to protect our liberty, and they figured we might have to do it again.

If we’re turning against our own people now, then we need to take a good long hard look at what has happened to our society. A few feel-good gun law changes won’t fix the problem.

Monday, August 19, 2019

Why we have the Second Amendment

Read the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers.

Our country had just fought a war against its own government. The Founders thought we might need to do that again.

Governments exist to protect the unalienable rights that God gave to the people. When they don’t, the people have the right to change the government.

The Founders figured that any state would be able to amass far more troops than any national army would have. The people were already “armed”, unlike the people in Europe who were unarmed and ruled by kings and tyrants.

But what about all the gun violence today?

The Founders knew that our rights come from God, and that people had a corresponding responsibility to God. Our nation has rejected God, and secularism knows no corresponding responsibility toward God. Secularism cannot restrain hatred and evil. That requires the fear of God.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

The Immigration Myth

Anyone who talks about immigration is required to begin by saying something like: Both my wife’s and my grandparents were immigrants, and my wife’s grandfather had the proverbial $5 in his pocket when he came here. He went on to start a business and built several apartment buildings.

There are almost 7.5 billion people in the world who do not live in the United States. That means that there are over 7 billion possible immigrants to the United States.

According to modern immigration thinking, every single one of them would make a positive contribution to our country, simply by virtue of not living here already.

Our modern immigration system is like a job fair where there are no job interviews or resumes. Everybody who can make it here is accepted. We have no requirements; we make no demands.

The words on the Statue of Liberty are often quoted when discussing immigration:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Do you know what’s missing here? It doesn’t say what happens to them when they get here. It doesn’t say that we will take care of you. You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You have the freedom to pursue your dreams, and our government will not stand in your way.

The United States has always been a compassionate country, but it’s the people who are compassionate. Government cannot be compassionate, because it is not spending its own money. It is spending other people’s money.

The fact is that the rule about immigrants being self-sufficient has been around at least 100 years. Our government has just been loosening the definition of self-sufficiency over the years. We are essentially paying people to come here. Would they still come here if we weren’t so generous with our government benefits?

Monday, August 12, 2019

speeding up baseball games

I have seen a lot of articles lately about speeding up baseball games, the most recent was a letter to the Tribune (Limit foul balls to cut time, August 10).

The only rule change I think that that has merit is a clock for batters and pitchers. It shouldn’t rush them, but there are some players who definitely take way too long.

But nobody seems to be asking how much time is being set aside for commercials. Baseball keeps statistics on everything. Surely, they know.

Commercials are killing baseball as much as anything. Some will argue that you need more commercials to pay these exorbitant salaries. Well, exorbitant is right. If commercials were limited, maybe it could curb salaries a bit. And maybe that might even curb ticket prices a little. And then maybe more average people could go to baseball games again.