by Chuck Baldwin

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

So said Founding Father and America’s second President John Adams. And he was absolutely right. And that is what is absolutely wrong with our country today: America is in a complete moral, societal, and cultural meltdown.

Founding Father and America’s first US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay correctly summarized the reason our new nation (and the fight for its liberty and independence) was successful. He wrote in Federalist 2:

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people–a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”

In other words, a united constitutional republic can only exist within the framework of certain rather narrow and finite conditions. Remove those conditions and the framework for liberty and limited government falls apart. And the above statements by Adams and Jay succinctly summarize the conditions necessary for freedom’s framework.

“A Moral And Religious People”

At America’s founding, the principles of Christian philosophy and ideology were universally accepted. The vast majority of the colonists were churchgoing, Protestant Christians who firmly embraced and respected the sacred principles taught in the Holy Scriptures. In fact, the reason most colonists placed such a high premium on education was so that children would be able to read and study the Bible for themselves. It is more than interesting that America’s early educators all centered their curriculum upon the Bible. Include in this august list Benjamin Harris, publisher of the New England Primer; the “Father of American Education,” Noah Webster; along with one of early America’s most successful school textbook authors, William Holmes McGuffey.

Beyond that, when we talk about colonial America’s love of worship, we are not talking about what passes for “worship” in modern America. We are not talking about these Disneyland entertainment villages known as mega-churches. We are not talking about espresso Sunday Schools or glorified social clubs. We are talking about a place where preachers were bold and powerful proclaimers of truth and where people went to learn the Word of God (and how to apply it to every walk of life–including politics), not wallow in slurpy, sugary, shallow sermonettes that do nothing to prepare men for Christian warfare.

by Howard Zinn
hat tip: The Progressive (2006)

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours — huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction — what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate
hat tip: Online Journal
May 19, 2010, 00:26

If I were a religious man, I would take the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the spilling of millions of gallons of oil and gas, their engulfing of the Gulf of Mexico waters and destruction of fish and wildlife in untold numbers . . . I would take this all, mind you, BP, as a sign from the deity.

And if the deity could speak like Mel Brook’s 2,000 Year Old Man, I would imagine it would say, “You, mankind, you have been cajoling me for more oil and gas for hundreds of years. The more I give you the more you want. Enough is never enough. So here’s enough, a volcano of oil and gas, a mountain of it, a pox on your house. Choke on it. Now, leave me alone. And if you’re smart, stop it, and don’t fight amongst yourselves like a pack of hungry monkeys. Such schmucks I made in my image, I can’t believe it.” Nor can I, voice, and I’m not even a believer, in a deity or the devil. But jeez, this looks like both of them in a cosmic World Series.

And why am I making a joke of the worst natural disaster in history? Why am I looking for a laugh from what one writer called “an extinction event?” The reason: if I don’t laugh, I’m going to cry, for a long time. And that would frighten everyone around me, my wife, my kids, my friends, even my new grandson, who loves my funny faces. And how would I explain it to him, 17 months into this world, newly adopted from Russia, already having escaped an orphanage into the arms of a totally loving family, oh beloved gift of life.

by Chuck Baldwin

As we approach Father’s Day this Sunday, I think it is necessary to once again draw attention to what has become one of America’s greatest problems: the dearth of masculine leadership in the home.

As everyone universally acknowledges, there are more children being raised by single mothers today than at any time in our nation’s history. Obviously, divorce is far and away the biggest contributor to this unfortunate phenomenon. But another factor is that many women are choosing to have children out of wedlock. And, of course, a small percentage of single mothers became this way due to the premature deaths of their husbands. But it is safe to say that the vast majority of fatherless families are the result of choice, not circumstance.

The ramifications of raising children without a father are taking a toll, not only on children, but also on society itself. According to published reports, 63% of teen suicides come from fatherless homes, 90% of all runaways and homeless children come from fatherless homes, 80% of rapists come from fatherless homes, 85% of children with behavioral problems come from fatherless homes, 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes, 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes, and 85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes. See the following sources for these (and related) stats:

http://www.fathermag.com/news/1780-stats.shtml

http://fathersforlife.org/divorce/chldrndiv.htm

by Chuck Baldwin

My son, Tim Baldwin, who is a constitutional attorney, recently engaged my friend, attorney Ed Vieira, Jr., in a spirited and intellectual written debate on the rightness or wrongness of State secession. Vieira took the unionist position that states do not have the constitutional right to secede. Tim took the freedomist position that states have both a constitutional and Natural Law right to secede (a position with which I firmly agree, as most readers know).

Here is the link to Tim’s columns:

http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?cat=5

And here is the link to Vieira’s columns:

http://newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwinA.htm

One element that neither writer covered (understandably so, given the legal nature of the debate) was the BIBLICAL right of secession. Christians rightly square everything with the principles and precepts of the Holy Scriptures. So, is there Biblical approbation and authority for State secession?

Before answering the Biblical question, let me briefly touch upon the Christian reaction to State secession both here in America and overseas. First, overseas. I doubt that there are many Christian pastors and churchmen who would be willing to denounce, denigrate, or declare as illegitimate the nation-state of Norway today. What Christian would advocate cutting off trade or diplomatic relations with Norway? Where is the Christian denomination or Church that would not recognize the right of Norway to peacefully exist?

Of course, Norway’s parliament dissolved the union between Sweden and Norway on June 7, 1905. While an attempted dissolution that had taken place in 1814 was squashed by a Swedish military victory, the separation of 1905 was done peacefully and without bloodshed (although Norway was willing to shed blood, had it been required). Since Norway’s secession in 1905, the two neighboring countries have enjoyed extremely close–even brotherly–relations.

Herman Cain led a Q and A session at the Douglas County Georgia Tea Party when a young woman asked him about the attack of our Judeo-Christian heritage in America, but no one in the crowd expected what happened next.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

End story.

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

In their new book, Nullifying Tyranny: Creating Moral Communities in an Immoral Society, James and Walter Kennedy address the case for nullifying unconstitutional federal legislation to “fellow Christians who . . . understand that the government . . . has been slowly taken over. . . by an anti-Christian secular humanist element . . .” It is, in essence, an attempt to wake Christians up to the fact that the “god” of democracy results in a situation where immoral people can force everyone to comply with their edicts. “Government, even when sanctified by a majority vote, cannot turn an otherwise immoral act into a moral act.”

Amen.

Government under democracy is nothing more than legalized theft on a massive scale, the Kennedy brothers say in their Rothbardian analysis of the state. Whether it is monarchy or democracy, government steals private property (through taxation, mostly) “in order to pay for the loyalty of . . . supporters those close to the source of power who have a natural interest in maintaining the status quo.” Moreover, “A loyal court, a loyal police and military, and a loyal religious establishment” all “lead parasitic lives. The cost is paid by the productive who must labor to earn enough for the king” (or the state in general, under democracy).

Many Christians misread Jesus’s command, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are Gods,” they write. What Jesus said was NOT to obey ALL of Caesar’s commands, but only to “render unto Caesar things that belong to the realm of government, obey [only] legitimate laws enacted by government . . .” For “the larger the government the greater harm it will eventually do to society’s morals . . . . the only way to maintain a moral community is to keep the

by: Dave Belden
Hat tip: Tykkun
May 24th, 2010

I was taken with this email from the PICO network. PICO is a organization that does Saul Alinsky-type community organizing with congregations, and has done a great deal of lobbying for adequate political responses to help people hurt by the mortgage crisis, by our health care system (that should really be “health” “care” “system” as all three words are inaccurate) and many other issues. Here in this email is one piece of news of ordinary people in a congregation working together and making an impact relevant to BP and the Gulf. I was intrigued to find that the action asked is to pray, and not just to pray but to sign a petition promising to pray, so that the activists on this issue will be able to show the support they are getting from prayers (which, as Elizabeth Cunningham noted here last week in Becoming A Prayer is a noun that can describe the person praying as well as the words prayed). I am posting it to celebrate their success and to note this web-based example of the public use of prayer, which has been used for political causes, good and bad, down through the millennia:

Dear Friend,

Last week, a group of Vietnamese-American and African-American residents from my church — Mary Queen of Viet Nam, a member of PICO affiliate Micah Project in New Orleans — won an important victory against BP and other oil and gas companies.
Now we need your help as we continue to oppose unjust corporate practices that are harming families throughout our region. We are asking you to commit to pray for the families in the Gulf Coast Region today.

hat tip: voices for creative nonviolence

By Joshua Brollier

Patient Waiting for War’s End

Islamabad—

Through the Soviet invasion and occupation, the Afghan civil war and now the United States war and occupation, a young man named Zainullah, around 25 years of age, has seen war his whole life. But you’d never know it by his engaging smile and his relaxed countenance. Zainullah currently lives at a paraplegic center in Hayatabad, Pakistan, a suburb of Peshawar, the capital city of the North-West Frontier Province. He is originally from the Helmand province of Afghanistan, which has been one of the most intense battlegrounds during the “war on terror” launched by the United States in 2001.

Zainullah was paralyzed about nine months ago after being struck with shrapnel from a U.S. cruise missile. On the day of the attack, Zainullah was getting ready to start his prayers. He heard a bomb blast, and before he had a chance to realize that he was the target, Zainullah was laying prostrate on the ground with a piece of metal lodged in his spinal cord. Two men from his village carried him to the nearest clinic. There he was given an injection and then taken to the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) facility in Helmand. Now paralyzed from the waist down, Zainullah spent one month at the ICRC , and then decided to seek more extensive rehabilitation treatment in Pakistan.

With the help of friends, Zainullah was able to arrange travel to Karachi, where he spent 15 days, and afterwards he was transferred to a facility in Gwadar. He spent the next two months in Gwadar awaiting admittance to the paraplegic center in Hayatabad. Given the circumstances, Zainullah is doing very well at the Rehab center. The center provides quality care that stresses independence and encourages patients to reach their fullest capacity possible. Zainullah has a busy schedule which includes daily prayers and going to the campus Mosque, walking with a set of leg braces, life-skills and independence classes, occupation training and socializing with others at the center. In the half year he has been at the center, Zainullah has learned to tailor clothes and has shown considerable progress in his ability to walk with the braces.