Tag Archives: politics

Jul14

What Makes a Nation Great?

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It’s not “absence”. It’s not the absence of a liberal agenda. It’s not the absence of big government. It’s not the absence of people who irritate us.

When nations have big, big changes that people want to see, they often think that if they get rid of the irritating people and/or the evildoers, all will be well. If the bad stuff is gone, the good guys naturally rise to the top, right?

Wrong.

Look at history. After the American Revolution, some other countries decided that aristocracy was their problem, too. If the aristocracy were eliminated in many countries, everything would be good!

Think about France. When the aristocracy was ousted in the French Revolution, the new government did not suddenly become perfect. Within ten years of the beginning of the French Revolution, Napoleon seized power.

When the proletariat revolted in Russia, although they ousted the aristocracy, the nation was soon ruled by a dictator, Joseph Stalin. Stalin promised that someday a true communist government would happen…but never did.

The United States, for all its flaws, has the history of being a country that made the big change, and the big change worked.

When we fought the American Revolution to set ourselves free from the rule of the British king, our forefathers actually set forth a new nation that actually worked as the representative democracy that they promised. No dictator arose.

What made the US work? What helped make it a great nation? What is different about the US?

We had several things: A Constitution and the agreement to keep it as the law of the land, shared values, natural, protected rights.

Did you catch that?

We didn’t simply get rid of something; we created a new thing and made it values-based and clear through our Constitution.

The United States had something they had formed, not simply getting rid of the aristocracy.

They had a new nation that had a concrete document (the Constitution) that everyone agreed to uphold. A true and respected Constitution gives the nation goals and a way to get there. The goals included forming a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”. The way to make that kind of government happen is outlined in the Constitution with three branches of government, checks and balances, and clearly spelled out rights of the people.

Just as important, they had values that were important enough to fight a Revolution. Values steer a country and keep it on the Constitutional path. The values that made our nation great included: the power of community, the rule of law, and equality of rights for all. (Those rights included the natural right to life, the natural right to liberty, the natural right to pursue happiness, the natural right to own property, and the natural right to general wellbeing for all.)

What do we do with this information today?

It helps to start by remembering our national values. When we remember our values, it is harder to be manipulated by those who do not have the best interests of the nation in mind. Again, some of our American values are the power of community, the rule of law, and equality of rights for all.

We have individual values, as well.

We can be manipulated and tricked by smart, greedy people if we forget our personal values.

As Christians, we are given a value system that includes: following the Great Commandments (love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself; Matthew 22: 34-40), growing in the Fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control; Galatians 5: 22-23), and more.

A lesson to learn

If we want to make our nation great, it might be good to live by our values!

Can you imagine what would happen if all of us Christians followed our guiding document (the Bible) and lived the value system given to us in that document?

If we had put as much effort into fulfilling our own value system in our own lives, instead of putting our efforts into trying to eliminate the value systems of those who don’t align with us, perhaps we would not have been tricked into the chaos of our current political problems. “Getting rid of” often leads to power grabs by unscrupulous people. Living our values can give others an inspiration to look towards and a better life to believe for.

I came from a generation of Christians who were taught that things would only “be right” when we get rid of other people’s sins.

We were taught by our Christian leaders that we had to get laws passed to make other people behave in a way that made it most comfortable (or “safe”) for us Christians. So, rather than fulfilling our scriptural values, we took on a different value: the value of legislating change.

What came of that?

Large numbers of people left the churches and became “nones and dones”. People who don’t know God were not drawn to the gospel, but rather, they were repelled by Christians. We are now seeing in the culture and politics, the chaos of power-hungry people trying to get what they can while the country is weak from ugliness and division.

What can we do?

Perhaps we could recalibrate by spending time studying the Gospels and Epistles? Perhaps we could create a personal list of the values that God wants us to live out? Perhaps it would help to make our own personal “constitution” or mission statement to help us stay calibrated with God’s values and goals?

Something to pray about…

Feb28

What Happened to the Original-Intent Conservatives?

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When I homeschooled my kids in the 1980s-2000s, homeschool curriculum publishers, politicians, and popular speakers talked a lot about the US Constitution. In those days, many (or maybe, most) homeschoolers were politically conservative and we listened to politicians and speakers who were conservative. The textbooks we used with our homeschoolers leaned conservative.

So, when all these folks talked about interpreting and understanding the US Constitution, they talked about the conservatives’ way of thinking about interpreting it: the founding fathers’ “original intent”.

Original intent is a way of interpreting the Constitution.

Original intent says that decisions should be made by trying to discern what the founding fathers meant and wanted when creating the Constitution.

People who believed in original intent took the opposite stance from those who interpreted the Constitution as “a living document”.

Those who took the “living document” stance felt that the founding fathers could not have known what life would be like in the future, so they left some flexibility in Constitutional interpretation.

This played out in the court system; for example, Roe vs. Wade. Original intent folks said that the Constitution protects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They stated that abortion ends a life, thus is unconstitutional. Living document folks stated that the founding fathers had not included women in the original “general Welfare” doctrine of the Preamble. However, today the 19th Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote, implying that their general welfare mattered- and welfare included their right to make their own health decisions.

Original intent versus living document has been one of the foundational arguments between American ideologies for decades.

Now suddenly the story has changed. With the Dodd decision in 2022, pro-life Christians got what they wanted. With this decision, abortion laws were handed back to the states. At least 14 states have passed strict abortion regulations.

Christians got a taste of power and wanted more. Recently, I heard a popular television preacher who was celebrating Dodd exclaim, “President Trump is giving the nation back to us!” Drunk on the power they are feeling because of a president that gave them a Supreme Court that gave them Dodd, this branch of Christianity is thrilling over other changes. They want their hero president to place LBTQ folks under restrictions and get rid of DEI, among other things. They believe that the current president is the nation’s and their political savior.

So my Christian friends are willing to ignore power grabs by the president, unconstitutional power grabs. And the only way they can turn their backs on the Constitutionally-mandated separation of powers and checks and balances, is to pretend they do not remember “original intent” of these. But that appears to be okay because their hero-president has given them a new idea: we are suddenly, thanks to his leadership, in a “post-Constitutional” era.

You read that right: because the current president wants authoritarian-level power, what I am hearing these days from many of my Christian friends is that they are now, “post Constitutionalist”.

They say, “we don’t need a Constitution anymore, we need a powerful man who will give us the America WE want”. They don’t want the separation of powers with its checks and balances that are guaranteed by the Constitution. They want a powerful hero who gives my friends and these television preachers the America they want. SO, they do need to toss the Constitution.

I hope some of them will remember the way this works in history.

Give all the power to a strong man, he establishes his regime, and then all his supporters and underlings are pushed aside, imprisoned, forgotten, or worse. These dictators “use them and then abuse them”. Think: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Kim Il-Sung.

Remember with me, Christian friends, that Scripture has guidelines to help us figure how to save our country:

First, test the spirit of leaders, if they are not showing fruit of the Spirit by their words and actions, then they may be tricking you:

James 3: 9 With our tongue we give thanks to our Father in heaven. And with our tongue we speak bad words against men who are made like God. 10 Giving thanks and speaking bad words come from the same mouth. My Christian brothers, this is not right! 11 Does a well of water give good water and bad water from the same place? 12 Can a fig tree give olives or can a grape-vine give figs? A well does not give both good water and bad water. (Biblegateway.com NLV)

Then remember that there’s good news! We don’t need to have a “savior” in the form of a dictator. We, the believing people, have God’s instruction on how to save a nation. If we truly believe, it’s up to us to follow the instructions:

II Chronicles 7:14:

“If MY people who are called by my name will HUMBLE THEMSELVES and PRAY, and seek my face and TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAYS, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land.”

That’s right, we humble ourselves, we pray, we seek God’s face, we turn from our own wicked ways. Then God will hear and forgive…and heal our land!

The guardrails

In the meantime, we have the guardrails: our contract between “We the People” and our government. This contract lasts till “our posterity”, so as long as there are posterity, the Constitution is still in force. It is the supreme law of the land that any would-be dictator must submit to.

In other words, you can’t simply wish away the Constitution by inventing “post-Constitutionalism”.

I suggest we believers return to Original Intent.

What did our founding fathers intend about the Constitution? That it would last, that it would be the supreme law of the land (Article 6, section 2), and that the powers of the government are equally balanced between executive, legislative, judicial, and we the people.

We the people need to walk within that contract!