Loyal To LibertyBeta

Last Friday (May 8) I and others concerned with Notre Dame's scandalous invitation and extension of an honorary degree to Barack Obama were engaged in peaceful, prayerful witness to truth on the Notre Dame Campus. We walked onto the campus praying the rosary and pushing strollers that illustrated the Church's teaching with respect to the objective evil of abortion. At the behest of Father John Jenkins, the President of the University, we were detained by the UND police and turned over to the civil authorities. At the time of our arrest we were not defying civil law, but obeying the laws of God and the directives of the Church and its leadership. We sought to counteract the scandalous impression given by University authorities that it is compatible with Christian faith and Catholic teaching to honor and hold up as an example of good conduct someone who has made himself the focus of abortion evil in the world today.

Yesterday I sent a letter to David Tyson, the Provincial Superior of the Indiana Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross urgently requesting a hearing at which I and the others injured by Father Jenkins' abuse of his authority can present our grievances and seek relief. Unlike Father Jenkins, we are acting with respect for Christ's instruction that people of faith should work out their differences within the communion of the faithful before calling upon civil authorities who may or may not act with respect for the laws of God and the teachings of the Church. This is why I sought to meet with Father Jenkins before I joined in the spiritual rescue efforts occasioned by the University's scandalous behavior. He did not respond to my request. In this he displayed the same obdurate indifference to spiritual considerations that has exemplified his conduct throughout this scandalous affair. He has encouraged a bunker mentality within the University of Notre Dame community, by treating other members of the Body of Christ, even those in communion with the Holy See, as if we are "outsiders".

This mentality contradicts the "emphasis on Community in Catholicism" cited in the University's mission statement but utterly ignored in the actions ordered by Father Jenkins and his colleagues. Archbishop Burke of the Vatican and the American bishops who have asked that the invitation and honorary degree be withdrawn; the hundreds of thousands who have signed the petition with the same plea; the millions of Catholics and prolife Christians they represent: though part of the Church communion, the body of Christ or the community of the faithful, all are apparently to be treated as criminals if they dare to set foot on the Notre Dame campus to question the University administration's will and judgment.

Where is the humility that should characterize Christian leadership? Where is the love toward other believers that should give glory to God? Instead of ordering arrests and persecution, a true Catholic and Christian heart should seek to converse in order to instruct (if there is misunderstanding) or to learn. Instead Father Jenkins has reacted with a harshness that bespeaks fearful guilt, using force to dispose of opposition. If, despite the opinion of the Vatican, the bishops and so many of the laity, he and his colleagues are right to honor evil, why are they afraid to deal openly and respectfully with both the Church authorities and fellow believers who disagree?

They react with forceful abuses of their authority because they cannot properly defend their action in terms of the laws of God and the teachings of the Catholic Church. They therefore substitute force for persuasion. In this too they honor evil, by imitating its methods.

[FYI: This past weekend Fox news reported the arrest of Randall Terry as he protested against Notre Dame's invitation and honorary degree for Barack Obama. (See Notre Dame: Promoting the Glamour of Evil, and An Open Letter to Father Jenkins.) According to the report "Terry was taken to the St. Joseph County Jail on criminal trespass charges." He has since been released after posting a bond. In light of this occurrence, I feel bound in conscience to make the following statement, commitment and call to all who labor in defense of the God given and unalienable right to life.]

With the arrest of pro-life servant Randall Terry, Father Jenkins and the University administration at Notre Dame take their adulation of evil to a new level of spiritual atrocity.

In a little less than two weeks they will welcome to the university campus a man who represents the most abominable and extreme commitment ever known in US politics to destroying the God given right to life of innocent human offspring. With their actions and the "honor" they confer upon Obama, they will actively promote the lie that it is possible to dishonor God blatantly and unashamedly, yet be somehow "honorable" in the eyes of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ said

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:31-40)

These words must ring in the ears of faithful Christians as they consider the grim reality of abortion. Every time abortionists rip a child limb from limb within the womb; every time they crush an infant's fragile head; every time they have scorched the life from its body with a death dealing chemical solution; every time they scrape its nascent cells of life from the walls of a womb- Jesus is savagely beaten again; his skull pressed down with thorns; his limbs pulled recklessly in their sockets; his hands and feet pierced through with nails; his breaths infused with fiery pain; his life finally extinguished; every time.

And every time there stands vociferous in the taunting crowd, the ambitious man of blood, Barack Obama. He is crying aloud, "Let Him be crucified." He is justifying the torture, forcing bystanders to aid in the atrocity, assuring that the nails are paid for and the henchmen of evil well fed and rewarded for their role in the daily crucifixion. Even the garments of the innocent children (their little organs or their stem cells), like the vesture of Christ, he prepares for division among those who perpetrate the slaughter.

All his life Randall Terry, seeing this passion play of evil repeated over and over again in our day, has born witness bravely and shamelessly against it. On the day of crucifixion, Christ endures the punishment reserved for infamous rebels and criminals. Fearing that they too would be treated as criminals, Peter and most of the other disciples run and hide. So too do many of us today. Though we profess to believe that abortion breaks God's fundamental law, we will not stand boldly with Jesus as he endures humiliating injustice. We fear for ourselves and shrink from association with the bloody and terrible images of torture and death. But through the years Randall Terry, and those who share his lion's heart for justice, have stood with the Mother of our Lord at the foot of the Cross. They have been sprinkled with the blood and water that gushed from his wounded side. They have received from the pierced and bleeding hand of the Lord the Blessed Gift by which he made his Mother Our Lady (Notre Dame), the mother of all the faithful ones who endure with Him to the end, receiving His crown of pain, which is also the crown of life.

Instead of cringing inwardly at Randall Terry's bold willingness to be arrested for bearing witness to God's truth, those who understand the gift of Christ's words and example must be moved to imitate his boldness. Tragically, ironically, a supposedly Catholic university and its administration have stepped forward to be the Bull Connors of this era's most clear and pressing battle for God given human rights. They have declared it an offense peacefully to demonstrate the evil of abortion. They have declared it an offense, prayerfully to bear witness to truth on a campus supposedly guided by and subordinate to that truth. Though it is an offense to them, it is a duty to Truth, and to Christ and to God. Wherever there are faithful hearts drawn to do this duty, they must feel now the vocation to join Randall Terry in defiance of this intimidation. I will join him. I ask others who all these years have prayed and labored for the unborn to join us. I know you are there. I have broken bread with you at dinners for crisis pregnancy centers and right to life groups. I have marched with you to proclaim the sanctity of innocent life, and decry the laws that sanction its destruction. I have been uplifted by your faith, your perseverance, your love of God and His son. The forces of evil mean to lay final claim to a place supposed to be within the precincts of our God and Lord. Come what may, we must come forth now to occupy and hold it against them.

I will go to South Bend. I will step foot on the Notre Dame campus to lift up the standard that protects the life of the innocent children of this and every generation. I will do it all day and every day until, if it be God's will, shame and the love of Christ overcome the university administration's vain craving for iniquitous "honor". I will do it though it means I shall be housed every day in the prison house of lies and injustice that Obama, Jenkins and their minions now mean to construct for those who will never be still and silent in the face of their mockery of God and justice, their celebration of evil.

If this be trespass, then forgive us our trespasses and join us in trespassing until the South Bend jail is filled to overflowing with witnesses to truth; filled beyond capacity; filled until we break the most onerous shackles of all- the ones that bind the heart and mind to evil and our nation to the path of its moral and spiritual destruction.

Like Washington's army at Valley Forge, the political forces seeking to reestablish the constitutional republic in America today suffer greatly from the lack of material resources. This is partly the consequence of the current economic squeeze being used to pressure the nation into relinquishing its liberty. But another contributing factor touches on one of the sorest points of the current situation- the fact that many well intentioned people around the country continue to give their "widow's mite" to organizations that have routinely sacrificed the moral and political causes they profess to serve.

During the 2009 election cycle these supposed champions of moral conservatism ( i.e., pro-life and supportive of the God ordained natural family, upholding the Godly principles of the American Declaration of Independence, beginning with the respect for the existence and authority of the Creator God) and Constitutional liberty (upholding the sovereignty of the American people, border security, limited government, based on representation, federalism and the separation of powers, and the private enterprise economy) betrayed the good faith of their supporters by backing for President candidates they knew to be false to these causes. Many of them have also taken positions on key issues like the judicial promotion of homosexual marriage that abandon Constitutional liberty and allow duplicitous public officials to connive at the destruction of the marriage based family using the specious argument that their actions are constrained by the force of law. (In this fashion, for example, Mitt Romney pretended to support the God ordained family while single handedly forcing the issuance of illegal marriage licenses to homosexual couples in Massachusetts. He pretended to act under compulsion from the Massachusetts high court, even though in its opinion on the matter the Court itself acknowledged that no lawful action could be taken until and unless a new law was passed by the state legislature. Thus Romney's action struck a critically damaging blow against the institution of marriage, and openly promoted the false understanding of judicial power that effectively destroys the separation of powers. Yet organizations like the Family Research Council continue to feature him as a legitimate moral and Constitutional conservative.)

After employing underhand tactics to prevent people from hearing a consistent and comprehensive conservative message during the Republican primary season, these organizations and individuals actively promoted moral relativism during the general election, relying on a lesser of evils approach to herd well intentioned conservative voters toward a candidate (John McCain) they knew to have broken faith on all the key conservative issues. Not surprisingly, their chosen champion then backed the G. W. Bush administration's bailout proposals, known then and now to be the lead leg of the leap into socialism the Obama faction now seeks rapidly to consolidate.

From my first hand experience at Tea Party events, as well as the many reports from other events around the country, I know that many good hearted Americans feel the same deep loyalty to liberty and its moral basis that I do. They are seeking a rallying point round which to unify like-minded citizens in a consistent, effective effort to pull our nation back from the abyss of unconstrained government dictatorship. There are individuals and organizations that have not bent the knee to Baal; that never surrendered to expedient moral relativism; that never sold out, for ambition or material support, their allegiance to the cause of morally principled liberty. Yet I know from firsthand experience that many of the individuals and organizations that have steadfastly supported consistent, comprehensive conservative views are languishing now on the brink of collapse.

The forces that seek to establish socialist dictatorship are shamelessly raiding the public coffers, and through intimidating displays (like the firing of the GM CEO) they are adding corporate wealth to their political reserves. Meanwhile, the economic squeeze used as the excuse for their power grab saddles the defenders of liberty and private enterprise with a shrinking base of material support. When resources are scarce, it is all the more important that people allocate them with care. Yet all too many are still willing to give what little they have to those who have and are still betraying the causes they profess to serve. Sadly, though they give until it hurts, their sacrifice will do nothing to advance their hopes.

Every day I offer my prayers to God for the good men and women I see working without fanfare or reward in the true cause of liberty. Every now and again, when the material pressures reach the point of deep crisis, one or another of them alludes somehow to that reality, but it is rare. Like heroes silently enduring torture at the hands of their enemies, they grimly soldier on. Meanwhile there rings in their ears the taunt like that which Christ heard from His tormentors: "He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver him: Let Him deliver him, seeing he delighted in Him." (Psalm 22:8, cp Matthew 27:43) It's the fate, I guess of those who will not sell out that their roofs sometimes fall in. And so, proving their faithfulness, the trustworthy languish. Meanwhile people who sigh for standard bearers they can trust continue to devote their increasingly scarce reserves to those they should know by now that they cannot. And they shake their heads, wondering why so few stand firm. Go figure.

"Who provides for the raven his food, When his young ones cry unto God, And wander about for lack of food." (Job 38:41)

[This is a further installment of the series Real Change. For the previous post in the series visit Real Change-Replacing the Federal Reserve. To read the whole series from the beginning click on "Real Change" under Topics in the sidebar.]

Though for the time being we still maintain the institutional semblance of constitutional self-government, the United States no longer has a political process consistent with its survival. This isn't a matter of structural features (two-party vs. multiparty, proportional vs. winner-take-all representation, regional vs. group representation and so forth.) Rather it has to do with what we understand to be the purpose of politics; the nature of citizenship in light of that purpose; and the means and methods most likely to produce actions consonant with good citizenship.

As things stand today, the only purpose of politics is to get elected. In order to get elected, you must get more votes than your opponents. The most efficient way to achieve this result is to find out what people want to see and hear, then fabricate and project an image that corresponds to their desire. The electoral process has become an information exchange between self-centered hedonists and self-promoting liars: people willing to expose their selfish desires choose from a menu of fictional satisfactions offered by candidates pursuing their own selfish ambitions. On Election Day the electorate selects the candidate whose fabricated image most effectively seduced their self-serving judgment.

Prior to Election Day the focus of the political process is on the candidates. The term politics is therefore used to refer mainly to the activities undertaken by and on behalf of those competing for political office. Besides the candidates themselves, the people involved in politics, are the pollsters and analysts of opinion who figure out what the people want to see and hear; the media consultants whose work is to produce and project an image of the candidate that corresponds to their preferences; and the money people who gather from every possible source the funds needed to pay and equip the rest. But there are obviously two other groups of people who actively participate in the process: those who control access to the media, and those who control access to the money. They have become the only electorate that really matters, the praetorian guard, as it were, whose choice ultimately determines which candidates shall be lifted up for the adulation or opprobrium of the selfish rabble. I say they are the only electorate because the people who determine the choices actually determine the choice. This paradigm of politics therefore effectively abandons the idea of government of by and for the people. Instead we have government over the people, manipulated by the media, who are owned by money powers that therefore control both the process and its results.

For our present purposes two things are especially noteworthy in this political paradigm. The first is the essentially passive, and ultimately superfluous, role of the people as a whole; the second is the concentration of political activity in the hands of a relatively small group of elite participants who in effect become the only real citizens. This paradigm represents the end of the democratic era in human affairs, and a return to the oligarchic rule (using those words to refer to government by the few, but with the usual implication of power in the hands of the wealthy) characteristic of societies before the institution of the American republic. As long as this oligarchic paradigm predominates, the American experiment is suspended. Once the paradigm has been consolidated, it will be over and done.

If this analysis of our present political process is accurate it means that as far as truly representative government is concerned American politics has become an imaginary exercise. Candidates for office have essentially been degraded into mere images. The final choice made by the people is also imaginary, since they select from alternatives predetermined by an exclusively elite process in which they play no active role. The aim of the imaginary process is to determine which representatives of the elite powers project an image more likely to mollify people, and make them less resistant to the will of those who in fact now exercise sovereign control. Though imaginary in its outward form and content, the process therefore aims at a very real advantage. It is less expensive (both in material and emotional terms) to control a people induced to vent its frustrations and ambitions in what amounts to a virtual reality. Such virtual politics adds the finishing touch to the welter of preoccupations and distractions offered by technological toys and sexual hedonism (keeping in mind, of course, that much of that is also virtually enacted, through internet pornography, and such vicarious satisfactions as following the antics of "stars" in the entertainment and information media.)

At the moment, this imaginary political process appears to serve the goal of establishing a system of global governance that will ultimately eliminate the need for the charade of representative institutions (or at least make it entirely optional.) From the oligarchic point of view, the advantage of such a global system lies in the concentration of sufficient power in the hands of a global elite to deter, co-opt or suppress opposition. This requires that a background network of globally minded elites becomes, in effect, the last remaining superpower, with no lesser power capable of standing alone against it. The American union has the wherewithal to be a lasting superpower, but on a national basis incompatible with the globalist principle of the New World Order. Therefore, the continued existence of the United States is an obstacle which must be removed by reducing the power and destroying the unity of the nation.

Whatever his rhetoric, the policies being pursued by Barack Obama are intended to achieve this deflation of the relative power and cohesion of the United States.

His critics have been quick to see the destructive implications of his agenda, especially in the economic realm. But few if any have seen, or at any rate been willing to articulate, the purposeful intention behind it. The two party system effectually dampens any inclination toward such candor, since it represents an imaginary (or virtual) opposition of elements with no more real difference between them than two heads on the same body, or two eyes in the same head. However different they look, they move together and in the same direction. Though Democrats pretend to care deeply about the welfare of the people, Democrat policies increase the power of controlling elites with little net benefit for the people at large. Though Republicans pretend to care deeply about the liberty and opportunity available to individuals, their policies tend to increase the freedom of controlling elites, with little net benefit for individual liberty on the whole. The telltale sign of the agenda common to both parties is their actual indifference or hostility to the effects of programs and policies on the characteristics that are the essential bases of the people's ability to think and act for themselves: self-discipline, self-sufficiency and self-government.

Self-discipline clearly depends on the formation and encouragement of certain moral characteristics. Self-sufficiency requires economic approaches that preserve and enhance opportunities for individual income and wealth creation. Self-government demands political processes that depend on, and respond to individual initiative in the development and mobilization of representative political networks. Clearly these three components of self-government are interdependent. Unless they control material resources that exceed the bare necessities of life, individuals are unlikely to show much political enterprise. Without a sense of their own worth, and the significance of their own abilities and actions, people are unlikely to see or take advantage of economic opportunity. Even when they do, without a sense of responsibility for the management of their impulses and passions, they are unlikely to focus on and sustain effective action long enough to produce results. Finally, without the self-confidence and courage that arises from the sense of personal responsibility, individuals become the passive subjects of the actions and intentions of others, incapable of the initiatives required 0f true citizens.

In their different ways, both the Democrat and Republican parties advance policies that promote mentalities and ways of life that directly attack or persistently erode one or another of these components of republican citizenship. The Democrats consistently champion undisciplined sexual lust. The Republicans routinely cater to the lust for money and material goods. Both alike agree to serve as masks for the unbridled lust for power. In the more general sense of the term, therefore, lust is the whole purpose of the political system they comprise. It represents the implementation of an Hobbesian vision of human nature as an endless effort to satisfy unquenchable desire, a tyranny of domineering passions, in which the appearance of choice simply registers the prevalent passion of the moment. But Thomas Hobbes reasoned logically to the conclusion that absolute despotism is the political system that corresponds to this vision. He would not be at all surprised to see that both major Parties to the politics of lust tacitly agree on a path that leads humanity under the yoke of global tyranny.

The American republic was not founded upon a simply Hobbesian concept of human nature. The American founders acted on an understanding (profoundly influenced by Christian and Biblical precepts) that saw natural right, rather than passion, as the ruler or measuring rod of choice. This different conception of nature leads to a different conception of choice. Rather than arising from the welter of competing passions, it reflects the possibility of deliberation, the process whereby one consciously chooses which passions shall be constrained, and to what degree. But such deliberation assumes a standpoint not subject to passionate forces, an eye in the storm of passion, free in some sense from its prevailing winds because it represents the point of origin from which passion itself derives substance, force and meaning. In the understanding articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, this is the standpoint of the Creator. The concept of right arising from the authority of the Creator assumes that this original position represents more than the sheer force of real existence. It represents an intention, an inwardly formed purpose that foresees, and at every moment constitutes, the destination of existing things. The assertion of right represents the presence of this intention in action, along with just the force needed to carry it out. From this juxtaposition of intention and forcefulness arises a concept of justice that supplies the reason for constraining and ordering the passions, a reason that looks beyond the prevalent disposition of passion itself.

It may accurately be said that the people most responsible for the American founding were obsessed with justice. They saw it as the overriding purpose of political life, to which the freeways of passion would ultimately be forced to submit. But if, by deliberation, people recognize and submit to its requirements, their freedom of choice becomes the basis for government, rather than forced submission. The extent and degree of their self-determination with respect to the requirements of justice establishes the extent of individual freedom in their society. In this respect, the more good individuals are willing to do of their own volition, the less the force of government will be called upon to do for them. Conversely, the less justice they reflect in their individual choices, the more the force of government will be called upon to dictate and impose upon their actions. Freedom depends on individual responsibility.

The politics of lust (using the term in its general sense, as we have in this essay) represents the complete abandonment of this responsibility. Because we have accepted it, our freedom is being overthrown. If we wish to save and restore our freedom, we must become, like America's founders, partisans of justice; people willing to answer in word and deed for the right use of freedom in our own lives and the life of our nation. But we cannot restore the concern for right if we abandon the standpoint from which the concept of right arises: the standpoint of the Creator and of respect for the authority implied by His intention for our lives. This is the true fault line along which shall be determined the fate of American liberty. On one side move the forces that reject the premise of the Creator's will. On the other those firmly committed to its defense. And in between, so many who shift to and fro between the false promises of unbridled passion and the common sense of justice that inclines them toward the path of responsibility and true liberty. Though the partisans of justice cannot pander to the falsehoods, we can do our best to make clear the solid happiness that can only be achieved through liberty. This is the practical challenge that our derelict elites have brushed aside, but which those who are loyal to liberty must be ready to address. To see their work in progress, visit AIPnews.com. Then look for my further description of the real change they are working for in the next installment of this series, Real Change- Restoring the Politics of Justice.

An article on the games of the ninth Olympiad in the Encyclopedia of the modern Olympic Games takes note of the following: "The American team was also watched closely for their etiquette as they marched passed the reviewing stand. Led by AOC head MacArthur, the Yankee squad continued the American custom of refusing to bow to or salute any foreign monarch…"

Since he is no Olympian, when Barack Obama met with the King of Saudi Arabia recently he proffered what might be interpreted as a deep and unmistakeable bow. Whatever the eventual excuse given for this apparent obeisance, I doubt it will accompany the photo as it is reproduced in publications throughout the Islamic world.

Some people ascribe this alleged faux pas to Obama's ignorance of the proper protocol between Heads of State. Yet when he met with the Queen of England, he shook hands and nodded slightly, a correct and inoffensive greeting under the circumstances. (See the Youtube videos now playing under the heading "Did you Catch that?" to the left.) It appears that the State Department's Acting Chief of Protocol may have briefed him after all.

The difference suggests not ignorance, but an intentional application of Obama's special knowledge.

Thanks to his years of Muslim schooling as a child in Indonesia (from 1967-1971 he lived there with his mother and Indonesian step father, who was like his Kenyan sire, of the Islamic faith), Obama is certainly aware of and sensitive to the special religious status and legitimacy claimed by the Saudi Monarch "as guardian of Mecca and Medina, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and of the Islamic faith." While we citizens of the American republic mull over the possible insult to the sovereignty and republican mores of the people Obama is supposed to represent, his gesture of religious fealty sends an unmistakable message to Muslim millions around the world. Could it be the proverbial wink that a con artist uses to communicate his real identity to those who are in on the sting?

Just another episode that, taken by itself, may mean nothing. But in the context of all we know, and ominously don't know, about the background and policies of the present occupant of the White House, it is as Arsenio Hall used to say, one of those "things that make you go hmmmmmmmmm."

Worth considering? Then don't forget to DIGG IT!!!!

An Open Letter to Father Jenkins

President of the University of Notre Dame

I pray God that you, and the Trustees and Faculty of the University of Notre Dame will reconsider your decision to extend an Honorary Degree to Barack Obama, and that you will withdraw your invitation to him to speak at the University's Commencement exercises in May. As leaders in the American Catholic community do you not hold to the Church's teaching with regard to the inviolable sanctity of human life, and against the heinous practice of abortion?

The issue at stake in the fight against abortion is starkly simple: Are all human beings created equal, or not? It is the same issue that was at stake in the fight against slavery and racial discrimination.

As an American who subscribes to the self-evident truths our country was founded upon, I answer the question in favor of equality. As a descendant of enslaved Black Americans, I believe that any other answer would invalidate the struggle for justice to which so many Americans of all races gave their lives.

Given that the principle at stake is the same as that which demanded opposition to slavery, I have always had a simple test when dealing with any question involving abortion. I ask myself what I would do or say if slavery was the issue in question. I recommend this test for your consideration. Ask yourself whether you would invite as a Commencement speaker an individual who abused the authority of office to provide Federal funding for the purchase of slaves. Would you consider it honorable for the University to confer an honorary degree on an individual who issued executive orders allowing US funds to be used to support slave markets? Would you let the University be used to give stature to a politician who supported the position that ownership of slaves is a matter of individual choice?

I hope and assume that the answer to all of these questions is no. Since you have chosen to answer otherwise where abortion rather than slavery is at issue, you must see a moral difference between enslaving grown people and killing nascent ones. Or else you see a moral difference between the nascent child in the abortuary and the slave on the auction block. As a Black, Catholic, prolife American, I challenge you to explain the difference to me and to everyone like me. Perhaps you make a distinction because the child is more helpless, more imperatively incapable of voluntary wrongdoing, more explicitly acknowledged by Christ to be the subject of His special regard? (Matthew 18:6, Luke 17:2) Or perhaps it's because some refuse to recognize the nascent child's humanity?

Whenever someone raises the latter objection I remember a speech Frederick Douglass made in which he felt compelled to make arguments for the humanity of black Americans because, he said, "A respectable public journal, published in Richmond Virginia., bases its whole defence [sic] of the slave system upon a denial of the Negro's manhood." You see, people once raised a question about that, which supposedly Catholic Christians (including some no doubt from my home state of Maryland) probably used at that time to justify their commerce with slaveholders; their willingness to hold in honor those who practiced or defended slavery; or even their own willingness to hold slaves themselves.

When I read of slavery in my youth I could not understand why so many tolerated such evil for so long. I asked God to help me never in my life to be such as they were. Once I fully understood the nature of the abortion issue, I was moved to stand against abortion and the slaughter of innocent life as I would have wanted all people of conscience and goodwill to stand against slavery and the rape of my forbears' liberty. When people suggest that Barack Obama shares some heritage with me, I know better. For the truest test of that heritage is not the color of someone's skin, but the determination of their heart, never to stand silently by while God's fundamental law of justice is denied to persons whose only crime is the unjustly despised appearance of their humanity.

I know that the Catholic Church today is guilty of no such dereliction. The Holy Father, the clergy, and millions of the laity have joined together in prayer, and work and sacrifice to bear witness against the wrong of abortion, to bear witness against a false idea of choice that betrays God-given liberty. Your University bears the name of the Blessed Mother of Christ, who honored God's will for human life though it could have meant her own dishonor in the minds of her contemporaries. Even if, as you say, Obama's visit does worldly honor to you and your colleagues, what is more consistent with her example: to seek honor at the expense of God's truth, or to forego it if need be, in obedience to His loving will.

I realize that such a decision is not so much for thought as for prayer. So I ask that you give prayerful consideration to the plea that is on my heart, and on the hearts of millions like me. This may well be a teaching moment for Obama and other politicians like him. But sometimes one deed speaks more certainly of truth than many words could do. Thus spoke the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Are we not called to act as He did? Perhaps the best Commencement speech of all would be the testimony of silence, in which, perhaps for the first time, someone who needs to hear it will hear the voice of Rachel, weeping. (Matthew 2:18)

With Pleasing Hope for Life,

Alan Keyes

"Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin? (From the Roman Catholic Rite of Baptism)

Apparently the Catholic folks at Notre Dame University have no more respect for the Baptismal vows they renew every Easter than their invited Commencement Speaker this year has for the Presidential Oath of Office. At this moment in time, Barack Obama is the living incarnation of the glamour of evil. His smiley tones and non-threatening manner mask a studied commitment to the promotion of the most deadly form of evil in the world today- the cult of abortion centered on the ritual of child sacrifice. Obama has moved with impetuous determination to prove his claim to the mantle of High Priest of the Worldwide Abortion cult. With Executive orders he has shifted the resources of the U.S. government behind the global implementation of abortion. He has declared open season on embryonic human life. He has appointed enthusiastic political and judicial acolytes of this cult of death to high positions in the Executive and Judicial branches.

Even before these actions there was no rational basis for pretending to doubt his absolute commitment to the evil of abortion for its own sake. There can be no other explanation for his opposition, while an Illinois state Senator, to the bipartisan effort in the legislature to end the heinous practice of infanticide against innocent babies- delivered in the course of an abortion attempt; wrapped in soiled linens; and left on a cart to languish without medical care or any human comfort until they died. His only real explanation for refusing to support an end to this abominable practice was the cold-blooded logic that any interference with the mother's intention to kill the child would damage so-called abortion rights.

The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is objective evil of the most deadly spiritual kind. Obama embraces this evil for its own sake, without even the specious calculus of cost and benefit to cloak the true nature of his devotion. Except the Notre Dame University community consciously wishes to promote similar devotion in its students, there can be no valid explanation for their willingness to extend a platform to such a man. They cannot plead respect for his supposed High Office, unless they mean to suggest that it is consistent with Catholic teaching or the Lord's example to put such worldly reverence above the reverence for God, and the sacred laws commanding respect for innocent human life. Human honor cannot redeem that which God abhors. It cannot clear away the stain and curse that mars it. Vox Populi, Vox Dei is no maxim for the Body of Christ.

Nor can apologists at Notre Dame point to any positions he takes, or worldly programs he promises that can offset the sacrifice of spiritual integrity his unapologetic support for the cult of child sacrifice entails. It may be that he has gained the whole world's momentary adulation and tinsel honor. But as Christ spoke true, his soul is forfeit in the bargain, and the gain is as nothing compared to the cost.

Neither can they plead respect for the historic breakthrough his election supposedly represents. How can one who withdraws the protection of God's ordained equality of rights from innocent, helpless children claim to represent the triumph of justice over the very evils, born of greed and passion, unleashed by disregard for that equality? The vicious heart of selfish passion that perverted the souls of slave masters or self-worshiping lynch mobs, is the same heart offered in service to the Father of lies and evil in the abortion cult.

In the literal sense therefore, Barack Obama is the incarnation of what the Catholic Church identifies as the epitome of evil in the world today. What Notre Dame has done puts the stamp of Catholicity upon him, as if there is no absolute contradiction between what he advocates and represents and what can honorably be presented from platforms that benefit from the auspices of the Church. A Commencement speech represents a word spoken at the beginning of a new stage of life. In the literal sense it represents a principle for thought and action. Are we seriously to believe that some morally truthful argument can be made that justifies presenting Barack Obama in a Catholic context, as one who speaks for decent moral principle? It is sophomoric to suggest that any good thing he promises, promotes or even implements can compensate for his declared war upon the very principle of goodness, which is nowhere more clearly at stake than in the law of love that shrouds, protects and sanctifies our reverence for innocent human life. What Catholic theology makes good the rationalization that good works somehow supply the deficiency of a spirit and will that in the innocent person of the child, defile and abuse the very image of God Himself?

Given the evil he represents, Notre Dame's invitation to Obama is a slavish capitulation to the glamour of evil. Across America there are people of many different hues and denominations who devote themselves to the protection of innocent life, respect for the God-ordained family, and promotion of social justice in ways that conform with the principle of subsidiarity that respects human responsibility before God for the exercise of freedom His will for us makes possible. The world does not elevate them to platforms of power. Indeed it threatens them with punishment; ridicules and reviles their single-hearted devotion to Christ's example; relegates them to what it believes are the dingy fringes of respectability and esteem. Yet where is Christ to be found more than in those willing to bear with him the cross of human anguish on the long climb toward Calvary and the sacrifice that redeems mankind from the burden of sin? Rather than give an honorable platform to an evil man the world admires, a Catholic institution would do better to offer students a voice that speaks from the depths of this redemptive anguish, with a heart that sees past the glamour and power of evil, to the truth that will someday repel and triumph over it.

In an era when the Catholic Church in America still reels from the damaging effect of leaders who seem to connive at what gives scandal to the faithful, this scandalous gesture of admiration and respect toward the man who best represents the temporary triumph of evil over America's public life is a renewed scandal. As the first reeked of worldly fear and selfish licentiousness, this reeks of death and the prideful embrace of the doctrine that rejects the sovereignty of God in order to make man the master of life and death, right and wrong, hope and salvation. Catholics who abhor such scandal need to speak out. With one voice we should say to Notre Dame what Joshua said to the people of Israel: "If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve…" (Josue 24:15)

As a Catholic I earnestly pray to God, and ask of our Church leaders, that they make clear that this invitation cannot stand. If it stands, the scandalous lesson of subservience to human pride and power will lengthen the shadow of spiritual corruption that still haunts the Church. But if it is rebuked and withdrawn, every Catholic and Christian heart submissive to the sovereignty of God, as they bear witness to the affirmation of its truth, will be emboldened to speak and act with courage, even in the teeth of the whole world's scornful power.

This may also be an opportunity to begin the work that may someday turn Obama's heart from evil. Rather than confirm him in his present heedless service to objective evil, confront Him with the truth that there are Christian hearts that honor God above any man or human office. The seed planted by that confrontation will remind him of the true spirit of liberty. And it might someday grow up to impel him to repent of evil, who knows? With God, all things are possible.

UPDATE (March 22): Anyone wishing to help communicate opposition to Notre Dame's action can sign the petition at this site sponsored by the Cardinal Newman society. All who appreciate the sponsorship of evil signified by Notre Dame's invitation are welcome to sign, of course.

Worth considering? Then don't forget to DIGG IT!!!!

"…for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. I will very gladly spend and be spent for you…" (2 Corinthians 12:14)

"For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing… (Matthew 13:15)

By now most Americans not willfully assuming the three monkeys pose acknowledge that the present mad frenzy of bailouts, pork binging and budgetary abandon are driving the nation into the depths of a Mariana trench of indebtedness. Despite the self-serving prognostications of the politicians and purported economic geniuses driving us into this madness, it looks increasingly like the desperate thrashings of a drowning victim compulsively sucking deep into his lungs the water that will seal his fate. Once water fills the lungs the only question is, how long the body can sustain itself without air? For our body politic that means wondering whether the bankruptcy of the nation will hit us now, or not until the overhang of debt breaks off to crush another generation. The dead weight of debt destroys us either way, but our heedless willingness to live on the hope that our children will be the ones destroyed by it reveals the essential nature of our depravity. We have exchanged the parents' natural sense of duty toward their children for an unnatural willingness to make of them an offering to the fierce gods of our ambitious pastimes.

Many people who profess to be Christian are actually supporting and applauding this mentality of child sacrifice. I guess that, with the easygoing smorgasbord mentality too often characteristic of some self-described believers in our time, they choose not to have ears when they get to Scriptural passages like the words of Paul quoted above. Apparently God's lesson to Abraham, most emphatically confirmed in the life and fate of Jesus Christ, has no power to instruct them. It does not warn them against their sacrifice of new Isaacs on the altar of what they claim is dedication to good things like charity, compassion and justice. "We serve the god of love, in this sacrifice," they seem to say "therefore it is righteousness." But if their god demands this of them, what they worship is not truly the God who revealed Himself through the book they profess to believe in. For He made it clear that no offering can save us but only the one that He wills, and has provided, begotten from eternity in the love that informs all of Creation.

Quietly, and perhaps sometimes without being conscious of it, such believers sympathize with those who chide folks like myself for unequivocally rejecting the political idol they have set up as their totem of change and progress. We are unreasoning fanatics who insist upon a false perfection, unwilling to balance good and evil in the scales of rational calculation. They do not remember the wisdom of Solomon, who understood that the willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children gives the lie to our professions of kindness. True human kindness acts with loving respect for their wholesome existence. Like Paul and Jesus Christ true parents would rather lay down their own lives than offer up their children's, even to serve their sense of righteousness.

Tragically for these idol worshiping believers, the chief distinguishing feature of their new age totem openly flaunts this abandonment of wholesome respect for life. He advocates and consistently promotes the cultish ritual of abortion, appointing to power those who have assiduously promoted and proclaimed its central mystery, the redemptive efficacy of child sacrifice. Women are blessed by it with relief from the punishment of carrying their offspring. Health is blessed by it, with the specious advances promised by embryo destroying stem cell research. The world is blessed by it, through U.S. funding of programs that promote abortion for population control and social engineering.

If we could resurrect our offspring, as God did, perhaps we might excuse with power our rejection of His redemptive offering. But for all its Dr. Frankenstein pretensions, our technological prowess can destroy, distort and exploit human life, but its creation remains beyond our capacity. We deny, but cannot solve, its mystery. However if, as Christians profess to believe, God's Word reveals truth, there is no mystery about the evil involved in the destruction of innocent life. Are the Christian idol-worshipers like the Israelites, falling down before a golden calf in the very presence of God's Word? Perhaps they are, even down to the treasure they borrow to enamel it, secured by the aborted hopes not just of one child, or even a multitude, but of our whole posterity. "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." (Matthew, 13:9)

 
When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. (Proverbs 23:1-3)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; (U.S. Constitution, Amendment I)

  
 

When G. W. Bush established the Office of Faith based initiatives, I was among those who made myself unpopular by telling anyone who asked that I thought they should steer clear of such government largess. Now, as if to confirm the truth of that warning, the present occupant of the White House is moving quickly to transform what was supposed to be a helpful support for socially beneficial religious initiatives into a means of enforcing a godless approach to public life, albeit clothed in the pietistic language of church-state separation. Obama ordered the establishment of a White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to replace Bush's bureau. According to an online AP story (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/obama-attends-prayer-brea_n_164190.html)

Obama said the office would work with nonprofit organizations "both secular and faith-based" and would help them determine how to make a bigger impact in their cities, learn their obligations under the law and cut through government red tape. … To lead the office, Obama appointed Joshua DuBois, a 26-year-old Pentecostal minister who headed religious outreach for Obama's Senate office and his presidential campaign. He also named 25 religious and secular leaders to a new advisory board.

The big picture is that President Obama believes faith-based and smaller secular neighborhood organizations can play a role in American renewal. They can work with the federal government to address big problems," DuBois said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're also going to make sure we have a keener eye toward the separation of church and state."

The story goes on to make clear that the Obama people intend to develop a stricter policy on issues like the hiring requirements to be imposed on institutions getting funds from the government

"There is a pretty clear lack of legal clarity and data in this area. This mechanism allows us to explore those areas on a case-by-case basis and find out exactly where things are," DuBois said.
Lupu [Ira Lupu, a professor at George Washington University School of Law] said Bush-era faith-based regulations were ambiguous and sought to limit faith-based groups as little as possible. Obama's order, on the other hand, emphasizes oversight of how taxpayers dollars are spent, making sure they don't go to religious purposes, he said. "He's signaling, 'We are going to take more seriously than the Bush people did the constitutional concerns about what it is the government may or may not directly support with government money,'" he said.

It takes but a little imagination to catch the sub-text of these words. So-called faith-based initiatives will be welcome so long as their basis in faith is checked at the door. This closes the door on conscientiously Christian action, since its goal must be to share the Gospel, and so bring people to Christ. Jesus said "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."(Matthew 5:16) Scoured of all outward signs of the connection to God and Jesus Christ, the glory of works of mercy is more likely to go to government, and of course to politicians running for re-election.

But isn't it just as well to help people with their material needs, regardless of who gets the glory? Maybe, if such help represents real benefit. But the word benefit refers to the good we do for others. According to Christ, "No one is good but God alone."(Mark 10:18). Consequently, we cannot do good except in connection with God's intention. The Apostle Peter described the Lord as "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) And Jesus said "He that believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."(Mark 16:16); and he warned "you will be hated by all for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved."(Mark 13:13) Does not a Christian therefore believe that no action truly benefits others unless it is connected with God's will for their salvation; and with the repentance and transformation in Christ that is the way to that salvation; and with the unwavering witness to the power of His Holy Name that is the test and seal of our rebirth in Him? If working with Obama's plan requires the surrender of these characteristics, what Christian purpose is left in so-called Christian activism?

I sometimes think that one of the purposes of evil in this world is to encourage people to do "good" on one condition: that they leave God out of it. This turns our natural disposition to conform to God's law of love into a subtle but deadly weapon against our own salvation. What ought to be sublime expressions of God's presence in and through our lives, become instead empty assertions of our own will and intentions, offerings made rather in the spirit of Cain than in the true spirit of love for our Creator. In this light, the purported constitutional requirement of church-state separation appears to be a lie intended to put the power of the U.S. government behind this wicked deformation of our good nature.

The self-worshiping American power elite that Obama represents has promoted a false understanding of the proper relationship between piety and politics based on the shibboleth of separation. In an environment marred by acceptance of this false understanding, truly faith based institutions expose themselves to great spiritual and material damage if they make any part of their sustenance dependent on a government stipend.

Here follows an email exchange occasioned by my article Obama's Vain Beginning (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=86830). I thought it might be of interest.

January 24, 2009

Dear Dr. Keyes,

just read your commentary, Obama's vain beginning. No wonder you can't get elected to ANYTHING. Please do keep speaking on behalf of right wing and Republican causes.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

PS: How are you doing with your latest birth certificate court case? With your sore record of failure, I'm not surprised you want a piece of this highly unlikely action. Oh, I know, suddenly defense of the Constitution is the morally correct position to take. . . (I don't recall any outrage from you during the 8 years that Mr. Bush trampled upon the Constitution)

January 24, 2009

Dear XXXXX,

My thanks for your carefully thought out and reasoned response to my article. It has much in common with the speeches of the man you admire and obviously seek to imitate. By the way, long before I ever heard of Obama I was speaking out against the dangers of a cavalier attitude toward the Constitution. (see, for instance the WND article "The dangers of Physical Safety", June 17 2002 http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=14266, and on the same theme the article entitled Taking Advantage, December 1, 2001 http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=11860) Your information is clearly on a par with your careful consideration of the arguments I made in Obama's Vain Beginning. It may come as a shock, but some of us care more for truth than for party or political success.

Alan Keyes

January 25, 2009

Yes Dr. Keyes, the truth is so important to you. Is that why you are willing to accept as true anything Christianity or Catholicism proclaim as "the truth" without offering one single shred of evidence? This is why people cannot take you seriously. As rightfully reasoned and logical as you are on many issues, your insistence that your religious views are true, providing neither empirical evidence nor sound logical footing leaves you sounding, well, kinda crazy. But, as I've requested in my earlier e-mail, please do continue to speak out for right wing, Republican AND evangelical causes. Thanking you in advance, XXXXXX

January 25, 2009

Dear Mr. XXXXX,

Do you mean to say that the mere fact that I am a Christian and a Catholic allows you to conclude that I believe things that are untrue? Is truth confined to what can be empirically proven? What is the empirical basis for the assertion of human equality? What is the empirical evidence for the notion that it is unjust to enslave others, or to kill them in order to take their property? Science cannot, on its own terms, establish the truth of any moral precepts, yet without them decent human life cannot be sustained. Is it crazy to believe there is a difference beyond right and wrong, though science cannot empirically establish what it is? What is unreasonable is the notion that we must limit the claim of truth to what science can establish, when science cannot establish the basis even for the simple assertion that every human life has intrinsic worth, a fact that few if any human beings deny when their own life is threatened with extinction.

Moreover, from a scientific point of view, nothing we say about the past can be established with scientific certainty. Did Julius Caesar actually exist? All we have as proof is human testimony, and what this testimony says is the residue of his existence (coins, statues, etc.) But similar testimony, and similar residue would prove the existence of the goddess Venus. In the strict sense, science deals only with data gathered under rigorously controlled conditions, and recorded with scrupulous integrity. But until very recently (in historical terms) people had very little conception of such data, much less the instruments needed to record and report it with integrity. Is it unreasonable and crazy, therefore, to form convictions based on historical evidence?

Even in what some people regard as the scientific realm, conclusions owe more to imaginative speculation than to scientifically established facts. Did dinosaurs walk the earth? What we have as proof is a residue that imagination works upon in order to reconstruct the form, shape and likely composition of creatures no one has actually observed. Is the belief in dinosaurs crazy, or is it a reasonable conviction? But if the existence of dinosaurs can be accepted as somehow rational despite the imaginative reasoning involved in asserting that fossils are evidence of their existence, then it is reasonable to look at the world around us and reach conclusions based on the fact that we can reasonably assume that objects as we observe them now are related to objects in the past by a structure that relates cause and effect, form and substance in some way that corresponds to the rules that govern our perception and understanding. We can assume, for instance , that the size, shape and material strength of a bone indicate and limit its probable function in the body of a creature we know only from its fossilized remains.

If such rational inference is reasonable in the context of fossils, of archaeological and geological evidence, what then of the evidence we see all around us in structures more complex than any humanly fashioned constructions. The archaeologist unearths what appear to be artificial constructions. Based on the assumption that they were produced by beings with a level of intelligence that corresponds to their complexity, and the harmony of form and function he observes in them, he posits the existence of an ancient civilization, inhabited by intelligent beings with a certain level of knowledge.

If what the archaeologist does is not crazy, but falls somewhere in the realm of acceptable scientific activity, why is it crazy to observe a world filled with objects of unfathomed complexity, where form and function are in harmony to a degree that each advance of our strictly scientific knowledge consistently confirms, and reach the conclusion that a being exists whose intelligence corresponds to the nature of the world we thus experience? If this is crazy, then the whole endeavor of science itself is also crazy, with nothing more to justify its truth than the perishable little benefits we may momentarily derive from the gadgets that are the side effects of its discoveries.

In the end it is unscientific to believe that science explains everything, or even the most important things.

By the way, I haven't been a Republican for some time, ever since the Party's leadership proved beyond doubt that they have no respect for the principles they claim to uphold. I belong now to America's Independent Party. You can check it out at www.AIPnews.com.

Alan Keyes

A Call for Moral Independents in the 2008 Election

Preface

I remember reading somewhere that societies in decline reach a point where they are so corrupt that attempted remedies only reveal and further aggravate the causes of their demise. Sometimes I'm tempted to believe that the American Republic has passed well beyond this point; that our liberty is gone, and cannot be recovered. The essay that follows is evidence that I have not yet succumbed to this temptation.

I have no doubt, however, that we are in the midst of the feverish crisis that marks either the recovery of the Republic, or its dissolution. The great principles of right and justice that gave rise to our constitutional system of democratic self-government are everywhere discarded or under assault. Indeed, things are so far advanced that the issues most involved with the destruction of these principles (such as so-called "marriage" for homosexuals) are being debated and decided with no reference at all to their implications for the moral premises of liberty.

We live in revolutionary times, by which I mean times when a form of government will either be restored or overthrown—not just in the sense that one group replaces another in power, but in the profound sense that substitutes one premise of government for another. In our case, the premises of aristocratic despotism (the rule of superior ability, force, and fear) are replacing those of democratic liberty (moral equality, self-discipline, consent). Unfortunately, the battle between these forces is being waged in an intellectual climate deeply prejudiced against the understanding needed even to comprehend the nature of the battle, much less wage it effectively. This is what makes the prospects for liberty so obscure.

I see one sign of this prejudice in what has sadly become the commonplace reaction to a political tract such as the one you are about to read. "It's too long (for an article). It's not long enough (for a book). It's too academic (for the masses). It's not scholarly enough (for the academics). People won't have the patience to read it, or the intelligence to understand it. You must make it shorter; make it more accessible, more readable, etc., etc., etc. Can you give me a sound bite? What about a 60-second spot?" It seems that just about the only element of the democratic ethos that unquestionably dominates consciousness these days is a pervasive insistence on lowering the standard of public discourse so that the "common people" can understand.

I see at least two problems with this reaction. It insults and underestimates the common sense of the people. It neglects the possibility that the length and substance of a discussion must respect the nature of the subject being discussed, not just the assumed tastes and capacities of the subjects following the discussion. When the premises of government are at stake, political discourse must involve deliberation about the way in which those premises relate to the issues and circumstances of the time. This requires reasoning. Reasoning involves examining and articulating the premises, then following their implications until we see how they are connected with the issues and circumstances we face. The result is neither a purely academic treatment of principle nor a handbook and call to action. Instead, it relates decision to principle in order to establish a consistent basis for action. This is not the work of an administrator, or even a merely practical politician. It is however the challenge of statesmanship in those times when moral upheaval shakes a regime to its foundations.

As for the intelligence of our people, why should we assume that our people can read the Bible or follow the abstruse intricacies of a team's strategy for the NFL draft, yet they can't grasp the rather less challenging discussion of political right and liberty? Why should we assume that the American people, though smart enough to build and maintain the buildings, the machines, and the enterprises needed to sustain the most successful material results in human history, have become too stupid to sustain the historically unique hope of liberty their self-government represents?

The essay that follows is about 10,000 words long. The essay that famously helped to rouse and focus the passion for liberty before the American Revolution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, was more than twice its length. The essay that follows includes some reasoning about the natural basis for rights, property and government. In Common Sense Paine similarly reasoned about the claims of divine-right monarchs and aristocrats, and the better claims of governments based upon consent and representation. Now, the literacy rate in the colonies at the time Paine wrote was probably somewhere between seventy and eighty percent (ninety percent or better in the northern region, lower, sixty-five to seventy percent, in the middle and southern colonies). Today we claim a basic literacy rate of ninety-nine percent or more throughout a nation much larger in size. It's likely, therefore, that the proportion of the population capable of understanding the reasoning in either essay is at least as large today as it was at the time of the Revolution, and probably much greater. If length is any measure of the challenge involved in reading it, an essay as long as the present one requires of readers today only half the capacity of those who decided the fate of America's liberty in the first place. Someone might object that our people have the capacity but they no longer have the patience. But such patience, like physical strength, develops with use. So first we weaken their tolerance for thought by feeding people a steady diet of slogans and punch lines, and then we use their supposed weakness as the excuse for never varying the diet that's killing their strength.

Whether intentional or not, this approach appears to be consistent with a strategy meant to deprive people of the opportunity to hear and ponder, in the context of active political life, the kind of reasoning that is essential to the maintenance of our free institutions. Ideas were and are the essential basis for maintaining the will to liberty. But more and more our people are being misled by an understanding of politics that focuses exclusively on material facts and outcomes, to the exclusion of reasoned arguments, arguments that relate current issues to the permanent ideas and principles on which our claim to self-government is based.

We pretend that the sixty-second sound bite mentality is imperative in the age of television-based mass communication. The medium is the message. In the computer age, however, shouldn't we consider the possibility that the medium has been programmed to require this truncation of thought, not the other way around? The best way to assure that reason is excluded from political discourse is to insist on a form of political communication based on sound bite conclusions and emotional punch lines, with no space for the kind of reasoning that refers to the premises of thought and aims to prove that the conclusions one reaches arise from and respect those premises. Such exclusion means that, on matters of principle, rational thought can no longer be the basis for choice. Instead, choice results from impulses connected with purely emotional responses. The most compelling speech will be the one that best employs the emotional goad to push people in one direction or another. (From hence comes the purported eloquence of demagogues such as Barack Obama.) Political outcomes are then determined by manipulation rather than deliberation. People don't make choices. They are herded toward predetermined results. Obviously in this situation, they no longer govern themselves. They are governed by whomever engineers this manipulation.

Can we achieve the restoration of self-government using the manipulative approach that contributes to its destruction? I don't think so. If we reject government based on the forceful manipulation of passion, we must reject the forms of communication that make our people fit subjects of it. We must rediscover and insist upon the form of political discourse that taps the motivating power of passion through the natural intermediation of reason and principle. This may require that the body politic use sinews somewhat weakened by idleness, but we will never win back the form and substance of our liberty if we do not exercise the faculties that make it possible.

With this apology, therefore, to potential readers put off by the length of this pamphlet, or the style of extended reasoning that it contains, I hope for the patient attention of any willing to accept it. I pray that it will provide some help and encouragement to those like me who will not give up our allegiance to the American Republic, nor our faith in the self-evident truths that make, and may yet keep us, free.

Dobson's Choice

Not long ago Dr. James Dobson declared that he could not in good conscience cast his vote for Senator John McCain. He did so in light of the Senator's positions on key issues of moral concern, including his support for embryonic stem cell research and his unwillingness to defend the natural family as the basis for the institution of marriage. Now, according to an AP article, Dr. Dobson may be changing his mind. "Conservative Christian leader James Dobson has softened his stance against Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, saying he could reverse his position and endorse the Arizona senator despite serious misgivings. 'I never thought I would hear myself saying this,' Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday. '... While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might. …There's nothing dishonorable in a person rethinking his or her positions, especially in a constantly changing political context.'" Citing Barack Obama's extremist positions on these key moral issues, Dr. Dobson says he is now inclined to believe that "he must consider McCain's record against abortion rights and support for smaller government, and added McCain 'seems to understand the Muslim threat.' He also indicated McCain's choice of a running mate will be a factor." (Associated Press, July 21, 2008) The AP articles goes on to report: "Of his new position, Dobson said in the statement to the AP, 'If that is a flip-flop, then so be it.'"

No one can or should deny another the right to change his or her mind in light of new information or a better understanding of the facts. Dr. Dobson may be correct when he cites a "constantly changing political context." However, he presented his opposition to McCain as a matter of conscience, not political calculation. As Dr. Dobson wrote in an essay defending his position of conscience, "Polls don't measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one's principles. In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades. Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear." ("The Values Test", The New York Times, October 4, 2007) From this perspective, the question is not whether the political facts have changed, but whether there has been a change in
the moral truth that should govern conscientious choice. In this respect the moral facts about both Obama and McCain were clear when Dr. Dobson first declared his position of conscience. Nothing has changed.

Since 2002, when Jill Stanek and others exposed Obama's acceptance of infanticide against babies who survive a failed abortion, Dr. Dobson and other leaders of the moral constituency have known about and presumably understood the depth of Obama's commitment to the evil practice of abortion. Throughout the Democrat presidential primary campaigns, they could hardly have missed of his consistent embrace of so-called "gay rights", and his advocacy of appeasement, withdrawal and accommodation with evil in the fight against terrorism so vital to our national security. Similarly, in the course of the Republican primary campaign, the facts about John McCain's retreat from his early commitment to the pro-life position were repeatedly brought to light in ways that included information from one of his Senate colleagues, former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, making clear that behind the scenes he time and again opposed bringing pro-life issues to the Senate floor. McCain's unprincipled approach to the marriage issue was also widely known, including support for so-called civil unions and his opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment.

The Demands of Conscience

When dealing with matters of conscience, knowledge of material facts is not the only consideration for good judgment. Moral conscience demands that facts be viewed, ordered and prioritized in light of the principles that distinguish right from wrong and good actions from bad. Where conscience is concerned, information is a term that cannot be understood without reference to those principles, and the substantive process of deliberation through which a conscientious person translates them into decision and action. When a conscientious individual changes his mind about a matter of conscience, our respect for their integrity demands an explanation that justifies the change in terms of this moral due process.

This is especially true when dealing with the issues of deep moral consequence that confront this generation of Americans. Though it's often ignored these days, good conscience is an essential component of happiness. The people who agitate for "abortion rights" and "gay rights" do so at least in part because the stigma of illegality and immorality casts a shadow of discontent over the lives of people who have abortions or engage in homosexual acts, even when no one physically interferes with or punishes their actions. Human beings are not sticks or stones, but self-conscious, emotional beings. Their happiness has a component of consciousness that makes it difficult to be content in the presence of a standard that condemns what they do. Try as they might, this "bad conscience" (their inner, even if secret, knowledge of a standard that condemns their actions) may sour their disposition, their sense of their own worth, even their enjoyment of life itself. Some people may be unwilling to take this seriously when it comes to sexual acts, but many understand it completely when they or someone they know has to deal with an unintended pregnancy. Few are so brazen as to believe that the decision to have an abortion is a happy one, few so callous that they remain unmoved by the thought of a woman, especially a young girl, wrestling with the prospect that she must choose between ruining her plans for life and taking the life she did not plan.

Since bad conscience can cause so much unhappiness, people who uphold and fight for moral conscience must do so with great care. It is morally wrong simply to disregard the happiness of others. Those who do so disregard the standard of love that is in fact the highest principle of moral life ("faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love"). But if good conscience is vital to happiness, love requires that we painstakingly respect the requirements of good conscience. People may feel happier for a while when they close their eyes to those requirements, but it is like the habit of taking a powerful drug – a momentary good feeling that masks the gradual destruction of the capacity to experience good in any way at all. When a drug addict, such as an alcoholic, renounces the habit, the experience of withdrawal can be enormously hard and painful, but it is necessary if his capacity for happiness is to be preserved or restored. Though someone who refuses him a fix or a drink may be resented for the pain perpetuated by their refusal, yet and still this refusal proves their love.

Similarly, a painstaking refusal to ignore the requirements of good conscience can be the way in which the discipline of love manifests itself in the thought and actions of those who seek to uphold its standards. Since they seem to ignore the pain and discomfort suffered by people whose actions violate the standards they uphold, they will of course be accused of lacking love and compassion. They will be subject to the suspicion that they derive some satisfaction of pride or self-righteousness from the suffering others must endure on account of their "intolerance." In the end the only sure refutation of this suspicion is that they themselves are willing to suffer as much and more for the sake of the standard they espouse. Though this was not ultimately the reason Christ willingly suffered and died upon the cross, yet down through the ages His willingness to do so has informed and instructed those who seek, however imperfectly, to live out their acceptance of the discipline of love His life exemplifies.

One would hope that people who want to uphold standards of moral conscience would show painstaking respect for this discipline in all that they do. Of course, since we are dealing with human beings, it may be that the best we can hope for is that they remember and acknowledge the standards, even though human imperfection sometimes gets the better of them. It is the effort they make toward this acknowledgement that can help others to receive their moral advocacy with patience rather than suspicion. Sometimes this effort involves admitting and seeking forgiveness for wrong actions or mistakes. Sometimes it may simply involve making sure that decisions are not made without carefully weighing their merits in light of the standards we espouse. In either case, it means never treating the possibility of wrong as a casual matter, a consideration secondary to some other concern. The first foundation of good conscience may be the priority we give to its requirements.

The Christian Standard

This is especially true of Christian conscience. Was it not of Christ that the prophet spoke when he said, "He knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good"? (Isaiah 7:15) Time and again in His ministry Christ stressed the importance of putting moral considerations ahead of everything else. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," He said, "and these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33) "What shall it profit a man," He said, "if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36) And again, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28) And finally, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Jesus was clear and unequivocal about the right priority, and the importance of respecting it. God comes first. Moral considerations take precedence. Evil is never an alternative, though the body be pained or destroyed when we reject it. Never once, anywhere in the Scripture, does Christ suggest that His followers may choose the lesser of evils. He does command that even in the face of physical violence and death, they seek to do good: "Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you." (Luke 6:27); "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." (Matthew 5:44) From His words the apostle rightly instructed, "See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men." (1 Thessalonians 5:15) If Christ's life, death and resurrection prove anything, they prove that God has absolutely provided a choice for good in every situation. Christ enjoins His followers to make that choice no matter what. Though it lead to ridicule, physical torture and even painful death, they are called to walk with God in the certainty of resurrection and eternal life.

This was of course the Spirit in which the apostles and martyrs of the Church lived and sometimes gave their lives as witnesses to the truth of Christ's continuing presence on earth. In America today are His followers called to witness any less emphatically? Are they not called, like Christians in every age and circumstance, to walk in the Spirit that makes it possible? Are they not called to make manifest, in whatever way they can, that Christ lives in and through them, and that He is their choice no matter what the cost?

Dr. Dobson declared that "in good conscience" he could not vote for John McCain. Respect for his integrity requires us to assume that a man of his professed faith and commitment to Christ spoke with sincere respect for the Christian standard of conscience. Comparing what Christ requires with what John McCain represents, he reached the accurate conclusion that McCain fails to measure up. But now, it seems, he is preoccupied by Barack Obama. Comparing McCain with Obama, he now entertains the possibility of voting for McCain. In this comparison, what has become of the standard, which is Jesus Christ? From Dr. Dobson's words, both Obama and McCain depart from that standard, though McCain not as much as Obama. What does this mean? Is the difference a matter of degree, or a matter of principle? Given Christ's instruction, the difference in principle must be decisive, for God is the first principle, and our relation to the will of God the first priority. Does Dr. Dobson mean to say that support for Obama's candidacy departs from good conscience in principle, whereas support for McCain's does not? If so, a change of heart may be justified. If not, it is sadly mistaken.

McCain Abandons Principle on the Issue of Abortion

Of all the issues confronting our country today, the assertion of so-called "abortion rights" most clearly epitomizes the nation's departure from moral principle. Senator McCain has taken the position that once Roe v. Wade is overturned, the issue of abortion can properly be left to the state governments for decision. But the moral premise of our republican form of government, the premise that makes the consent of the people necessary for just government, is the Declaration principle that all human beings are endowed by God with unalienable rights, including first of all the right to life. If the states can pass laws that depart from this premise, it means they are not required to preserve the foundations of republican form of government. But "if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalms 11:3) McCain's position not only discards the Declaration's first principle of justice, it also violates Article IV, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, which requires the Federal government to guarantee a republican form of government in all of the states. Thus, as a matter of Constitutional principle, John McCain departs from good conscience. (Since, on taking office, the President swears as a matter of conscience to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution, a candidate's approach to matters of conscience cannot be taken lightly.)

Despite this evidence of his disregard for principle, Dr. Dobson cites Senator McCain's pro-life voting recording as evidence that he is somehow preferable to Senator Obama. Now, someone who intentionally kills an innocent child violates moral principle in every case, but not everyone who opposes the killing does so as a matter of conscience. Their opposition may be a matter of sentiment or calculation rather than principle. Some people who advocate "abortion rights" were revolted by descriptions of partial-birth abortion, but their opposition to this repugnant method of abortion did not alter their departure from moral principle. Indeed, some people support the ban on partial birth abortion because they think the publicity given to such an overtly gruesome way of killing erodes support for "abortion rights". Far from respecting the principle of God's will for life, they act as they do in order to preserve the evil that violates it. Similarly, when people like Jill Stanek described the murder of children born alive after a failed abortion, many "abortion rights" advocates (including for example, Hillary Clinton) supported a measure to end the killings, but in this case also their vote did not alter their substantive rejection of moral principle.

McCain Abandons Principle on the Issue of Destroying Human Embryos for Research

By contrast, the issue of destroying human embryos to harvest their stem cells for research barely registers as a matter of sentimental revulsion. In many respects it poses the issue of respect for the unalienable right to life as a matter of pure moral principle, with little to inspire advocates for embryonic life except their respect for the self-evident truth that the right to life is a matter of God's will, not human choice or calculated benefit. The issue therefore offers a good means to distinguish between people who are pro-life as a matter of principle and those who are not. John McCain is willing to permit this life-destroying research method. Like the overt supporters of so-called "abortion rights" he votes pro-life when he believes the situation calls for it. But when the costs (or in the case of embryo destroying research, the speculative benefits) are high enough, he abandons the position of conscience. His decision is based on calculation, rather than principle. Some people justify this, since they doubt the humanity of the embryo. They believe that, given this uncertainty, the benefit of the doubt should go to those whose lives might be improved by the results that may be achieved using the harvested stem cells. But as President Reagan rightly concluded, "Simple morality dictates that unless and until someone can prove the unborn human is not alive, we must give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it is. And thus, it should be entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (Remarks at the Alfred M. Landon Lecture Series on Public Issues, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, September 9, 1982) When there is doubt, the benefit of the doubt goes to preserving the life in question rather than taking it. In our society we take this truth so seriously that even the life of someone who may have committed heinous murder must be preserved until guilt is proved "beyond a reasonable doubt." Reagan understood this. Clearly, John McCain is no Ronald Reagan.

McCain is Blind to Principle on the Issue of Marriage

Natural Right and the Family

The destruction of nascent human life is an issue of moral principle too often decided by emotion. The push to legitimize so-called marriages for homosexual couples is also an emotional issue, but unlike abortion it is almost never argued in terms of principle. Yet in the context of the American creed, it involves the most fundamental principle of all. The Declaration's assertion that governments exist to secure unalienable rights derives its authority by reference to the Creator, and respect for what the Declaration calls "the laws of nature and of Nature's God." The whole doctrine that justice requires a republican form of government, based on the consent of the people, depends on this understanding of the universe as a law governed whole whose structure and activity give rise to relationships that human beings are morally obliged to respect. The most fundamental of these relationships is human equality, as a moral fact without regard to any material differences between one human being and another. In political terms, especially, the principle of God-ordained human equality vitiates the notion that material superiority of any kind entitles one human being to command or rule over another. It implies to the contrary that every human being, whatever his or her material condition, represents a limit or check upon the prerogatives of superior human power which every other human being, however powerful, is morally obliged to recognize and respect. In this sense the doctrine of equality implies that in the moral realm ("the kingdom of God") the weak have claims that command respect from the strong.

This idea runs contrary to the experience of human life in almost every respect. Wherever we chance to look in human history we see societies governed by the prerogatives of power. By and large, human experience supports what the character Thrasymachus asserts in Plato's Republic: "justice is the good of the stronger." But there is one instance of human society where the weak command and rule the strong, where people with more developed abilities and attributes respond with alacrity even to the inarticulate cries of others helpless to intimidate them in any way, and where they do so with a sense of obligation so complete that duty takes on the aspect of devotion and subservience [is there a word missing here?] every semblance of pride and contentment. And far from being unusual, this society has existed everywhere on earth, amongst people of every language, custom and creed, always preserving in its rudiments the combination of powerlessness and command that universally undermines the notion that rulership is the exclusive prerogative of power. Such is the natural sway that children have over the parents whose union they represent.

Because human beings are born in a state of the utmost helplessness, the survival of the species itself depends on the possibility that those who are stronger and more capable than an infant will feel and respond to the obligation to care for its needs. The tie that binds the caring parent to its child is both the proof and the paradigm of the relation of natural justice that arises from the obligation of one human being toward another. That all are created equal is clear in the equally helpless condition in which all enter the world. That by nature government is based on consent is proved by the simple fact that people acting upon nothing more authoritative than the promptings of their own hearts offer to helpless babes servitude more prompt, more assiduous, and sacrificial than could be commanded by the most absolute monarch of the world.

The family thus exemplifies the natural first principle of just government. The key to understanding its significance is that in the first instance authority arises from the control that nature ironically associates with the weak and undeveloped condition of the child, not from the parents' superior physical development and strength. By reflecting on the juxtaposition of weakness and commanding authority, we begin to see the relationship between the natural obligation imposed by the family relationship and the meaning of consent. The parents' willingness to follow the promptings of natural obligation gives the child's weakness its power over their strength. In the presence of this natural sense of obligation, the good of the weak takes precedence over the strong.

But since human will is not just a matter of instinct, the human response to natural obligation does not operate with the consistency characteristic of less self-conscious animals. Once consciously understood, the natural inclination may be resisted and ultimately undone. This can mean greater freedom for the individual, but it also weakens the natural subjection of superior strength to the moral requirements of nature. Freed from the natural sense of obligation, the manifestations of human power may take the path of least resistance, the path that leads to the subjection of those whose weakness marks them for domination.

Family and Government by Consent

Seen in light of these reflections, the fact that the Declaration prefaces its assertion of human equality with a reference to "the laws of nature and of Nature's God" is not a rhetorical flourish, but the acknowledgment of a necessary connection. The concept of government based upon consent is inseparable from the natural sense that obliges strength to respect the claims of weakness. Free of the trammels of this natural sensibility, self-conscious power acknowledges no limits except those imposed by superior power. Emboldened by the idea of an authoritative natural standard, however, the weak may find strength in the unity that results from their common understanding that the Creator has taken care to connect the fate of the whole species with respect for the natural inclination that constitutes the first human society – the relationship between the child and its parents – and that because of this relationship the greatest possible human weakness commands respect and even obedience from the strong.

The Declaration's assertion of equality and unalienable rights relies on the authority of nature (as it reflects and implements the Creator's will). On the one hand, the natural family embodies the evidence of this natural equality (all humans begin as helpless infants). On the other, it provides the paradigm of consent that obliges the strong to respect the needs of the weak so that humanity can survive despite its vulnerable beginnings. This paradigm, in turn, exemplifies the first instance of human belonging or property. The parents affirm that they belong to the child by actions that accept their responsibility for its well-being. As they acknowledge what they owe to the child, they affirm the mutual bond that constitutes their proper tie one to one another, a bond grounded in the will and authority of nature (represented by the child's imperious needs) and formed by their will in response to that authority. Ironically, in this first assertion of proprietary right, ownership is not a function of ability or labor, but of helpless dependency secured by the workings of the what Shakespeare called the "compunctious visitings of nature" upon the human heart. The right involved is the right action of the parents in response to the natural impulse of their hearts – in other words, their natural inclination. This way of understanding the principle of property (i.e., its first origins in human society) is not altogether different from the views of political philosophers such as John Locke, who saw the connection between property rights and labor. The culmination of childbirth is not called labor for nothing, and the parents' act of procreation is also performed by the sweat of their brows. In this way property is revealed as the response to natural inclination through which individuals accept their responsibility to preserve the appearance of the natural whole in one form (the child) to which they are bound by prior consent of their will when it appeared in another form (the work of procreation).

Because the contemporary debate over the institution of marriage takes place in the context of the push forcibly to legitimize homosexual behavior, the more fundamental issue of natural right that is at stake is never explicitly addressed. Is the paradigm of natural right represented by the procreational family still the basis for the American understanding of just government? Does nature have any authority in establishing the obligations human beings have toward one another, or is society the incidental result of the interplay of human choice and relative power? The advocates of homosexual marriage offer a concept of family that is based on human choice, without reference to any natural obligation. But once the element of natural obligation has been discarded, what limits the power of choice when confronted with the demands of those who have no power?

In the paradigm of the natural family, the connection between right and obligation is clear, and it establishes the connection between responsibility and authority. In the first instance, the child exerts natural authority over the parents because of their response to a natural inclination. By this response they consent to take action for the sake of the child, to take responsibility for its helpless condition. In doing so they acknowledge that they are the authors of its being in that condition, its parents, and so assume the authority that comes with this acknowledged responsibility. By this understanding, parental authority entirely derives from the interaction of nature and the consent of the individual, without reference to any society or institution beyond the family itself.

But where no natural tie exists, what is the basis for parental authority? Does the mere fact that one individual is willing to care for another establish the authority to do so? What if many individuals have the same inclination? Does authority go to the one with the strongest desire, or to the one with the greater strength to enforce that desire? Without reference to the right established by nature, such opposing claims cannot be resolved except by accident, conflict or the intervention and mediation of some agent who represents a power greater than the parties involved. But the notion that accident establishes right leads to chaos; that conflict establishes right leads to perpetual war; that greater power establishes right, leads to perpetual tyranny.

Disregarding the Natural Basis of Family Leads to Tyrannical Government

Because our present debate over marriage takes place in the context of an already established institution of government, we tend to discount the first two possibilities. But the third raises the specter of a fundamental change in the form of government we have enjoyed. If family is simply a matter of choice, conflicting choices imply the surrender to government of more and more power to decide what constitutes a family and what establishes and limits parental authority. Yet the power to define family means the power to distribute the benefits, burdens and obligations of family life without regard for the desires and inclinations of some or all of the individuals involved. Where the natural family derived its existence from the consent of its participants, the family produced by arbitrary choices depends for its existence on the fiat of government decision, as it supports or invalidates those choices. Individuals can have no prior claim of right when the concept of right is established exclusively by positive law and regulation.

The difficulty posed by conflicting family claims is so great that the Bible uses such a conflict to illustrate the epitome of wise judgment in human affairs. In the Biblical story two women lay claim to the same child. With no basis for decision but their conflicting claims, King Solomon commands that the child be cut in two and physically divided between them. When one of them is moved to surrender her claim in order to preserve the child's life, Solomon takes this as proof that the child belongs to her. He relies on the "compunctious visitings of nature" to reveal and enforce the standard of right. But this account forces us to consider the consequence of substituting human choice for the discipline of natural obligation when deciding what it means to belong to a family. In the Biblical example, the child's existence is threatened by a human decision that takes no account of its nature, i.e., of the natural standard that distinguishes a living child from, say, a loaf of bread. The child is treated as a commodity that may be valued or discarded as a matter of convenience. In our day, this is no merely theoretical possibility. As a matter of convenience we sanction the killing of babes in the womb. As a matter of convenience, we sanction the destruction of embryos for research. As a matter of convenience we are moving to implement an understanding of marriage that deprives children of the natural belongings (their family relations) that are the primordial paradigm of all property rights.

Despite pervasive protestations that the welfare of the child is of paramount concern, the primary consequence of the current effort to define family in terms of choice is to eliminate any regard for the authority the child, by its very nature, exerts over its parents. People blithely promote homosexual marriage, or civic unions, including the artificial conception of children to be reared by homosexual couples, with no mention made of the fact that such children are deprived in principle of at least one of their rightful parents. By nature the child has the right to a kind of natural dominion over its progenitors, including the opportunity at least to try out the appeal that its helpless condition makes to their natural sensibility. Moreover, a child systematically deprived of any knowledge of at least one of its biological parents cannot fulfill the filial obligations that arise from the natural connection, or avoid the oedipal risks connected with such ignorance. These things may or may not be important to the "purblind worldlings" whose noisy clamoring these days drowns out the nagging whispers of natural reason, but we must raise the question on its behalf: Why it is right to deprive children of their natural belongings so that the very people thus willing to sacrifice their rights can indulge their sexual preferences, or their vain desire to congratulate themselves for their self-righteous tolerance of so-called diversity?

Homosexual Marriage and the Principle of Natural Human Equality

In this respect, just as abortion suppresses the child's right to life, homosexual marriage suppresses the child's natural belongings, the first rights of property in the primordial sense of the term. But once we abandon respect for the authority of nature as it establishes the rights of the child, we have in principle abandoned that respect when it comes to any human beings whose situation makes them as helpless or vulnerable as children with regard to their superiors in power. Thus the issue of homosexual marriage actually poses the question of our allegiance to the principle of natural human equality, the principle from which we derive the form of government meant to secure our liberty.

The people who promote homosexual marriage often claim as well to work for equal economic justice for the poor (that is, those weaker than others because they command fewer material resources). As we have seen, however, the suppression of respect for the natural family actually deprives the weak of nature's support for their equal claim to property rights. And as we noted above, individuals can have no prior claim of right when the concept of right is established exclusively by positive law and regulation. Without the appeal to natural justice, possession becomes the whole law of property. Them that has, gets. Those with greater physical strength or prowess; greater intelligence or cunning; greater courage or temerity may assert that the results produced by their superiority establish a legitimate claim to hold and rule whatever (and whomever) their might has conquered. Though in our day the elites to whom this rule awards sovereignty pretend, and seek to demonstrate, that the decisions of power freed from the constraints of natural principle will do justice to the poor, I suspect that their concern with the weak will not outlast the twilight of the democratic institutions founded upon respect for "the laws of nature and of Nature's God." At the moment, the people are still emboldened by the belief that the absolute strength of the Creator God supports their claim to rights and dignity. Once the ideologies of dehumanizing science (e.g., the dogma of evolution) and unfettered human will have extinguished this belief from their consciousness, the democratic age will end. A new dark age of autocratic aristocracy will begin, a new night of the human soul, with no light but from the flickering fires of passion that reveal new possibilities of human debauchery. There is more than a hint of this in the dark visions of the future produced by the entertainment media, whose works reflect the vain imaginings of contemporary elites. The "Star Trek" future of hopeful exploration has been shouldered aside by the "Blade Runner" vision of banal violence as humanity, stifled by delusions of godlike creativity, battles monsters of its own creation. It's just entertainment, of course. Or so they say. But as it reflects the burgeoning popular culture of video games and massive, multiplayer worlds on the internet, can we safely ignore its implications for the soul and consciousness of the upcoming generations whose time it preoccupies? By means of such pastimes, the soul is inured to the prospect of a universe without natural justice, in which the only concept of right is the one established by the human will to power and vindicated when the debris settles around those who are the last ones standing.

In light of such grim possibilities, can the issues involved in the assault on the natural family be treated as matters of political convenience or emotional whim, as John McCain and others like him do? McCain's statements on the issue of homosexual marriage, civic unions and the need to protect traditional marriage by Constitutional means show no regard for the profound destruction of moral principle that will result from overthrowing the claims of the natural family. Like Barack Obama, he takes positions exclusively calculated to win votes from the constituencies he needs for political victory, no matter if they risk the soul and moral foundations of the republic. At the very least he wants to harvest votes from people deeply concerned about the besieged moral foundations of our liberty even though he obviously lacks the understanding needed to defend them. He cannot see, or perhaps even conceive of, the connections between our moral ideas and practices and the survival of our institutions of self-government. Such a leader might be barely adequate in the "weak, piping time of peace." But when, on every front insidious war is being waged against the moral pillars of our freedom, his inadequacy is not just lamentable, it will be deadly.

Surrendering to Relativism

It's clear that as a matter of good, and most especially of Christian conscience, Dr. Dobson was right to reject McCain's candidacy. On the fateful moral issues of our time McCain is the archetype of political expediency. Christ emphatically rejected such expediency for principled moral decisions. ("What shall it profit a man…") Relative benefits cannot justify actions that violate the absolute standard of God's will.

Dr. Dobson and leaders like him have many times declaimed against and rejected the moral relativism and "situational ethics" that masquerade as moral reasoning these days. If they now express support for McCain they not only promote a candidate who represents this corruption of moral conscience, by their actions they represent it themselves. The sequence of events in Dr. Dobson's case makes this clear. He said he could not vote for McCain as a matter of principle, but may do so now because McCain is the better choice when compared to Barack Obama. Since Dobson and others denounce Obama as evil, this makes evil the standard of comparison. The true standard disappears. This is an example of moral relativism, pure and simple; a bad example offered to their fellow citizens in the context of the weightiest public responsibility most Americans ever face, their vote for President of the United States. Christians of old chose suffering and death precisely in order to make it clear that they stood with Christ when it mattered most. By their surrender to relativism in Presidential politics, these leaders stand Christian witness on its head. Their message is clear: When the world is at stake, vote as if Christ isn't part of it.

McCain's Stand on National Security is Dangerously Self-Contradictory

Nations have more often been undone by unskilled or treacherous defenders than by irresistible conquerors. The flaw in the "lesser of evils" arguments being used to promote John McCain, and others like him is that even a lesser evil may be evil enough to kill. Such leaders are like the wound that took the life of Romeo's friend Mercutio: "not so deep as a well, or so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve." To a city under siege, the noisy army that lies in wait upon the surrounding plains may seem the greater evil, but the postern gate quietly left open by treachery or ignorant neglect more often proves to be its real undoing. In this respect Senator McCain represents danger in the very area of national security that Dr. Dobson cites as a possible reason for preferring him over Obama. On the one hand he takes a firm line against policies of withdrawal, appeasement and accommodation in the war against terrorism. On the other, he has been in the vanguard of those who promote policies that neglect the security of our national borders and encourage the tide of illegal immigration that will inexorably subvert the sovereignty of the American people. He seems ready enough to defend the ramparts, and even come to grips with our enemies, but then he wants to swing the back gates wide open, and keep defenders away from the areas where enemy sappers can be heard busily working to tunnel beneath the walls.

The Lesser Evil More Deadly?

From the perspective of principled republicanism, the choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between a vile smelling poison that kills quickly and a tasteless one served up in a savory stew. The first seems more dangerous until we realize that the second is more likely to be consumed. Republicans leader like Senator McCain also remind me of a briefing I once attended at the World Health Organization when I was Ronald Reagan's Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council. The briefing included a description (suitable for the non-scientist, of course) of the insidious workings of the AIDS virus. Apparently, HIV cells destroy the cells programmed to defend the body against infection then masquerade to take their place. When dangerous organisms attack HIV-affected organs, no signal goes out to stimulate the production of antibodies to counteract them because the HIV cells, which do nothing in the body's defense, nonetheless appear to be on guard. The body is therefore left defenseless, to be ravaged by opportunistic infections.

I cannot vouch for the scientific accuracy of this description when it comes to AIDS, but my own experience confirms its accuracy as a description of the condition of the body politic in America today. During the Republican primary season, none of the candidates touted by the media or promoted by the corporate money powers offered a substantive, consistent and proven republican alternative. The two who most prominently professed to speak for the moral constituency (Romney and Huckabee) were different versions of the same masquerade. Romney wore the false robes of a pro-life convert to mask his true record as a supporter of so-called abortion rights and homosexual marriage in Massachusetts. Huckabee touted his true record of support for moral conservative positions as governor of Arkansas to distract from his true record of big-government socialism in every other respect. Then Fred Thompson stepped forward using a false claim of conservatism to mask the true absence of any substance at all. All the while, every effort was made to make sure that a capable, consistent, substantive conservative voice would never be heard. Since I raised that voice I can speak first hand to the sleazy contrivances used to keep my name off of ballots, my voice out of debates, and even to keep votes cast for me from being recorded. From beginning to end the Republican primary process was a manipulated sham aimed at making sure the conservative base of the party found no true rallying point round which to gather its undoubted strength.

These candidates produced the result the AIDS analogy would lead one to expect. In terms of the conservative constituency of the Republican Party, Senator McCain is an opportunistic infection that threatens to ravage and destroy its defenseless body. Tragically for America, in the larger context of our national political life he still plays the role of the AIDS virus, masquerading as a republican while opening the way for Barack Obama, the opportunistic infection that will ravage the defenseless body of our republic. If we accept the McCain/Obama choice we resign the republic to its demise. I guess the "lesser of evils" crowd will take comfort in the notion that though infected with HIV, the patient actually died of pneumonia. Unfortunately, this is false comfort, since the choice they make increases the virulence of the opportunistic infection. In today's political terms, their surrender to moral relativism makes Barack Obama's election to the Presidency more and more inevitable.

Who Helps Obama?

This is ironic given the fact that Senator McCain's backers rely so heavily on the wearisome fallacy that anyone who fails to support him helps Obama to victory. But a little common sense reflection reveals this as sophistry. Obama's strength comes mainly from a combination of hype from the leftist media and entertainment industry, monolithic support from blacks, and a quiet play on America's almost pathetic hankering after an outcome that can be portrayed (however inaccurately) as proof that the bad old days of racism are firmly behind us. Apart from the hype, Obama is actually a left-wing extremist whose socialist views are out of line with those of many Americans, and whose abandonment of American moral principle would assure the organized opposition of many others. Even his claim to represent some historic breakthrough for black Americans is demonstrably false. But given the degree to which John McCain shares Obama's big government predilections and his consistent abandonment of moral principle, he is in no position to rally opposition to Obama on these most salient points of his vulnerability. Others can hardly be blamed for not supporting him when he offers them nothing to support. If people are obliged to support one person who doesn't represent them in order to stop another who also doesn't represent them, they end up with a government that doesn't represent them. The American Founders rightly identified representation as the defining feature of our republic (see for example James Madison in Federalist Number 10, "a republic by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place…"). Now, thanks to the "choice of evils" crowd, we are being skillfully maneuvered into a voting mentality that effectively destroys it.

Thanks to his cotton candy rhetoric, and a lot of help from fellow travelers in the so-called information media, Barack Obama has thus far advanced through a haze of prefabricated enthusiasm calculated to take the edge off his extremist views. This serves to distract from the combination of deceitful vapidity and downright evil that that mainly constitutes his otherwise scanty political record. Every now and then a little bubble of truth bursts the façade of this Potemkin image. People get a quick whiff of the unsavory truth, but just as quickly the cotton candy spinmeisters explain it away, leaving behind the pretense that the matter has been laid to rest. Did he justify infanticide? Of course not: no one would do that. Only his mean spirited critics would suggest it. His voting record and statements prove the critics right, however, so the media ignores them. Did he spend years imbibing the swill of a preacher of racial hate and violence vainly sporting the name of Jesus Christ? A little denunciation clears him of the deed, a well-crafted scene of public repudiation and seeming rupture, and all is well. Has he consistently advocated policies of disengagement, accommodation and withdrawal in the face of terrorism? A little jaunt to the front lines, a nodding, obsequious tour of Europe and voila, a leader ready for the sternest tests of America's endurance.

If media fabricated perception is reality, Obama can be considered fit for the Presidency of the United States. We should remember though that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centered looked like pillars of stability the day before they crumpled like rice paper. Some aspects of our situation in the world defy all our grand delusions. It was not the terrorists' wonderful science or their overwhelming military might that brought the Towers down, but the sharp edge of their fanatical spirit, forged in the moral battle waged since the fall from Grace on the plain that stretches out between the poles of good and evil. That plain rises in the inner universe where love conceives, where hate is born, where from motives mingling the one and the other the human heart forms purposes that cannot be discouraged by material weakness or turned aside by the prospect of death and wounds. Vapid rhetoric and fabricated glamour will not sustain the moral will of the American people through the struggle grounded upon that battlefield. They will need the clarity of true moral principle that lets people see what they live and would die for, if need be.

The self-evident truths set forth in the American Declaration of Independence have been the key to such clarity of purpose through all the challenging times when the survival of the republic hung in the balance. They informed the deliberations of the Framers of the Constitution. They inspired those like Daniel Webster who forged the nation's love of the Constitution as the guarantor of Liberty and Union. They guided and tempered the sternly compassionate statecraft of Abraham Lincoln in the terrible Civil War he fought on the moral ground that they made possible and necessary. And when the twentieth century time and again produced coalitions of tyranny to reassert in modern dress the ancient evils of government by fear and conquest and fanatical deception, they lifted the sights of ordinary folks beyond the empty promises of totalitarian utopias, and gave them the common sense to confront the claims of raw power with souls made strong by their simple allegiance to the simple truth that confirms the dignity of the powerless, though it be denied by every human power on earth except their own.

Obama's Greatest Vulnerability

But his record proves that Barack Obama – like most left-wing politicos, but unlike most American voters – simply rejects these Declaration principles. That's why his sacrifice of these principles with regard to the paramount moral issues of our day should galvanize many Americans against him and also why his neo-Marxist policy preferences will be repellent to many others. Despite much sloganeering about unity and change, he offers people no real basis for unity and no change except for the worse. This is especially true of the monolithic congregation of black voters gathered under the banner of his candidacy. As they were invoked in the nineteenth century battle against slavery and the twentieth century's great struggle for Civil Rights, the Declaration's principles of God-given human equality and unalienable rights became an integral part of the heritage and identity of black Americans. They resonated deeply with that combination of spiritual resourcefulness and an unfailing thirst for justice that ultimately steeled the hearts of those who risked death in the Underground Railroad, or injury and death in the long marches and night watches against racial segregation, prejudice, and injustice. When Barack Obama declared that there is no principle that protects the life of helpless, innocent babes born despite every effort to abort them, he spoke from a spiritual wilderness alien to the experience of innocent, disenfranchised black men and women who, like those children, survived every attempt to abort their lives, their dignity, their livelihood and even their sense of spiritual worth in order to become a people whose quiet righteousness sustained them against the dogs and the fire hoses, against the police assaults and the night riding KKK assassins, until it finally moved the conscience of the nation to see and to do what was right.

During the height of the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King often evoked the Declaration's famous insistence on human equality and unalienable rights. In that context he repeatedly made it clear that black Americans, and those who joined them in non-violent battle for justice, did not fight for blacks alone, but for all Americans and indeed all people everywhere whose common humanity makes them the subject of the Declaration's promise of justice for all. As people stood together in their determination to bear faithful witness to the truth of this promise, they represented a unity that goes beyond rhetoric and beyond the passionate enthusiasm of the moment. It becomes the sure foundation of a community of principle and decent hope, a "res publica" (public thing, common possession of the people) for which people of good conscience will sacrifice in life and even in the face of death so that it stays alive for the generations to come. This is the true ground of unity for the sake of which brave soldiers endure the hellish risks and pains of war; true statesmen sacrifice the baubles of popularity and easy political success; true patriots love America most when as a nation we stand not for ourselves alone but for all those everywhere who stand with us in the name of just humanity. What was Common Sense when Thomas Paine wrote of it is still common sense today: "The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind."

But how can we claim to stand for justice for all people everywhere when we deny justice to the helpless, innocent offspring God has entrusted to our care? How can any leader claim to represent our unity when he adamantly supports that denial, even though it means tolerating infanticide and denying the very truths that make us free? In the twentieth century, as we fought against the totalitarian tyrannies of Eurasia, there were American leaders like this, who would decry the Nazi or Communist violations of justice and human dignity while they adamantly defended racial segregation and discrimination against blacks here at home. The tragic irony is that the man, Barack Obama, whose victory some people dare to suggest will be a fitting culmination of the historic struggle against those evils, actually represents the same hypocritical betrayal of justice as those anti-communist defenders of racist inequity. Like all the advocates of so called "abortion rights", however, his stand does not affect the rightful claims of one group only, but of any innocent human beings threatened with extinction by those who have physical power over them.

I realize that some people say they support Barack Obama because they believe in social justice and policies that promote equity for the poor, the weak, and the disenfranchised. It is deeply and tragically ironic to see them promoting for the Presidency a man who has discarded and disregarded the self-evident truths that oblige conscience to respect the claim of moral equality that justifies this belief. If we care only about ourselves and what happens in our own time, it may be enough to have leaders who choose to do what is right while destroying our allegiance to the principles that make it so. But if we mean to fulfill our Constitution's ultimate goal, and secure the blessing of liberty not only for ourselves but our posterity, then we cannot sacrifice the integrity of our nation's commitment to lasting principle in order to get contemporary results for ourselves. Here again Christian conscience decries the bad bargain that may win a vote today while losing the moral heart of our liberty.

No Choice but Evil?

John McCain and Barack Obama are both of them versions of this bad result. I earnestly pray that the reflections offered here will lead those who want to act in good conscience to think again about their willingness to support either one of them. Of course, those who seriously uphold the standard of Christ cannot be content with merely refraining from bad action. They will accept the ultimate challenge of Christian morality, which as we have said involves doing good even though it means enduring pain, suffering and even death. The "choice of evils" brigade will be quick to point out that, as things stand in the present election cycle, this is impractical, impossible and doomed to failure. Even if they are right, Christians ought to act on the wisdom of God, though it appears foolish from a merely human vantage point.

However, I suspect that more often than not the wisdom of God offers the only path to real success even in human terms. Christ did say that if people faithfully seek God's kingdom (i.e., act on the premise of His sovereignty) "all other things will be added unto you." The actions of ambitious politicians indicate the decisive power of the moral constituency. In the present election cycle, for instance, though Barack Obama's views on the great issues of moral principle clearly and consistently contradict Christian conscience, nothing has been more striking than his assiduous efforts to court Christian voters. (In one such speech he often took my name in vain. He even suggested that since he already had a pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he didn't need me to tell him what Christianity is all about. I invite fair-minded people to compare my speeches and writings with those of Reverend Wright and judge for themselves who takes more seriously the standard Christ embodies for us.) Doubtless Obama realizes that he must take precautions to guard against the possibility that black Christians will see the contradiction and act on it. His sensitivity on this score has its parallel on the Republican side. To cynical Republican politicos, the conscientious Christian voter is the white elephant at the auction, priceless and therefore hard to move. But they know that unless it's properly motivated, the Republican elephant can forget about victory at the polls. That's why, despite all the initial media hype about his great chances of getting the Republican nomination, Rudy Giuliani (well known for his pro-abortion views) never stood a chance of doing so. It's also why such pains are being taken to focus on John McCain's putatively pro-life record, rather than his proven abandonment of moral principle.

Even in a two-way race for the Presidency, a morally principled candidate who got Christian voters to vote according to their Christian priorities, would probably win the election. Even more clearly, however, in a true three-way race, the Christian plurality could be decisive. Under the Electoral College system, the winning candidate in each State is the one who comes "first past the post," i.e., who wins the largest plurality of the vote. In most States that winner takes all of the State's electoral votes. The percentage required for the winning plurality depends entirely on how many candidates win a significant proportion of the votes cast. In a three-way race this means that 35 to 40 percent of the vote should be sufficient for victory. Even less if minor vote getters garner more than 10% amongst them. This is how Lincoln won the Presidency in 1860 with only 39% of the popular vote. Under such circumstances, the question isn't whether there's a moral majority. Only a moral plurality is required, and that could be less than two fifths of the votes cast. This fact explains the elaborate system now in place to prevent Christian churches from uniting under the banner of true Christian conscience. It does not explain why the leaders of the Christian moral constituency let themselves be fooled and intimidated by arguments based on a third party candidate's inability to win a simple majority of the vote when no such majority is needed for victory.

Despite the fact that Mike Huckabee's overall support for "big government" policies damaged his appeal to many conservative Christian voters, he still managed to garner more than 30% among Republican primary voters in many states. He achieved this result despite the fact that most of the moral constituency (indeed most Republican voters in general) stayed away from the polls. In this year's general election the fact that neither so called "major" party offers a good choice for Christian conscience greatly increases the likelihood that a candidate of proven principle could rally a winning plurality. Of course in the absence of such a candidate, many voters of conscience will again stay away from the polls. Without their turnout, McCain will undoubtedly lose, but it doesn't stop there. The candidates these conscientious voters would support for other offices will also suffer. Since most such candidates wear a Republican label, it will be a bad day for the Republican Party.

Why is it so hard for leaders of the moral constituency in American politics to see the strength of their own position? First because they act out of fear, and second because their disregard for the absolute standard of God's will makes them "halt…between two opinions" (1 Kings 18:21), leaving them "double minded" (James 1:8, 4:8) and therefore susceptible to manipulation and division. Their fear blinds them to the power of the faithful. This is the last thing one would expect from people who say they look to Christ as their guide. As we have seen, Christ's standard requires that we fear no one but God, and no outcome but what divides us from His will. The heralds of Christ's coming sounded the note that is the key to the power of Christian conscience when they said, "Be not afraid." In harmony with them, the apostle Paul reminded Timothy that "God gave us a spirit not of fear; but of power and love and self-control." (2 Timothy 1:7) Yet instead of the fearless advocacy of Christ's standard, these leaders make themselves tools of the politics of fear, retreating into the sorry logic that supports one evil because they are afraid of another, instead of rejecting both with the courage that comes from their faith in God and Jesus Christ.

The hesitancy and double-mindedness of the moral leaders opens them to the blandishments of politicians and donors who help them to secure resources and a place at the table of power in exchange for the use or abuse of their influence with morally concerned voters. Having built a little success with this kind of help, the ambition for more leads them to become increasingly reliant upon it, until the day comes when the fear of what they might lose by forthright advocacy replaces the prospect of gain. In either case, the focus on material success leads to a calculating mentality that by degrees changes from a calculation of goods to a calculus of evil. This is the change they now seek to establish as the standard for the moral constituency in our political life.

I earnestly pray that the people who make up the moral constituency in our politics will show the faithful courage their leaders do not. To do so, they must declare their independence from a two party system that offers no choice but for evil. They should "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness," actively looking for the candidate who most effectively stands for His will. When they find such a candidate on the ballot, they should vote for him or her. When they know of such a candidate, though not on the ballot, they should write in the name. If in some states they are not allowed to do so, they shouldn't wait until Election Day to make a good old American fuss about this infringement of their voting rights. They should not settle for less than what they know is right for their country. Why? Because they love their country, and because they love the Creator God who made them free. And most of all because the Good Neighbor who suffered and died on the Cross to save them from death and sin is not willing that our nation should be lost to a "choice of evils" because those who profess to follow Him will not show in their love of country the same sacrificial love that He showed on Golgotha, and still shows for all of us.