CHCH News - God Save Us From These Christians!

"Do unto others as you would have done unto you."

--Jesus of Nazareth

"America is great because it is good; and when it ceases to be good, it will no longer be great."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

"Stroke of the pen; law of the land. Pretty neat, huh?"

--Paul Begala, Chief of Staff, Clinton Administration

The battlegrounds of liberals' quest for a godless America changes with the calendar; and the focus moves from the palpable threats of creches and crosses to the potential for vile obscenity in the midst of the Presidential Inaugural. Rumor has it...the itinerary includes...it is confirmed...George Bush, radical neocon who is taking this nation where it has never been since before Norman Lear, plans to include invocation and prayer in the celebration!

He'll even allow a minister to lead him in prayer! On public property! This is more obscene than if he had gone right on the sidewalk and...no, wait. The ACLU worked to protect that right..

Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptist Assembly has been misquoted often enough. The lettter assuring them of a "Separation of Church and State" was a promise of freedom to practice their minority faith in Connecticut. NOT, as modern "liberals" would have you believe, the duty of the State to suppress it. The Founding Fathers were deeply religious men, committed to founding a nation "under God" yet respective of secular diversity. From the first, the land was settled by people seeking a haven where they could honor their Creator as they understood Him; and not as directed by their King or local nobility or officials of sanctioned state churches.

Freedom to worship...and not a godless secular society. That vision belonged to another group of men, of a later time, another culture..

Nonetheless, a combination of indolence, ignorance and intentional misquoting has turned the debate over to a group who wishes to model, not Jefferson but Marx. With proof they are not only misguided but wrong, the question remains: WHY?

It serves no purpose. It's reckless...especially so in view of the modern "liberals'" vision of the unfettered, all-empowered State.

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The French had an expression for it - "Noblesse Oblige," the obligation of the nobility. It was the belief that the highborn, which wielded power, also bore the responsibility to care for the peasantry; to act responsibly on their behalf. An obligation, essentially, to do what was right.

The American system of government limited by a Constitution was to provide a better guarantee than mere moral suasion. The citizen was recognized as sovereign, and his rights given by God. Government officials were the servants of the People, chosen by ballot and limited in their power. The idea was to limit the damage when, as would inevitably happen, bad or immoral or uncontrolled persons happened into positions of authority.

But a contract only works if the principals accept the contract as good, as desirable and right - and not as legal folderol to be bypassed with legalism or deceit.

Many Americans today don't realize this. The Constitution spells out the structure of the American Government - but it's only a blueprint. If elected officials reject its power, if the courts don't see fit to impose limitations, if the Congress doesn't punish misbehavior and the electorate accepts it all...then it, the Constitution, is nothing more than fishwrap. And the dishonest readings of some "rights" and denial of other, explicit rights, by the now-Imperial Supreme Court, is a step in that direction. A very large step.

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Incrementalism is a tenet of the Left in America. While liberals mocked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who was besotted but as it turns out, correct, modern educrats were introducing new concepts into American government schools. These were seemingly thoughtful approaches to creative thinking - situationals given to highschool freshmen, in the line of "What would you do?" I remember one well - your wife, or your mother, is dying of a rare disease. There is a marvelous new medicine that can cure it, and you cannot afford it. Would you be wrong in stealing it - to save your mother's life?

The concept, unspoken, was situational ethics. That the individual had the right, based on the situation, to determine for himself what was right and wrong. That morality was negotiable, not fixed.

It doesn't take a lot of thought to see the potential for abuse . The human animal being what he is, he will conveniently confuse truly moral needs with his wants and impulses. All behavior becomes moral if it can be rationalized - and kept undetected.

But in the way of such a candystore of carnal delights, stands God. God must be banished. Just as the State, in the modern liberal view, supercedes the individual, the individual with his moral relativism supercedes the inflexible edict of the Creator.

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A moral free-for-all can be great fun: sexual license; avarice unbound. But when it permeates the culture, it leads to legalism - where laws replace morals and the State becomes a sort of God - an easily deceived, easily swayed god.

It's easy to tell good law from bad law. Consider: the Ten Commandments are easily understood...and hard to follow. The United States Code is impossible to understand, and quite easy to dodge. The Commandments are concise and simple - and inflexible and absolute. The USC is loaded with doublespeak, exceptions, contradictions. Federal Hate-Crime specifications, one example, are dependent on the racial group of victims and perpetrators, subject to judicial interpretations - and open to jury nullification.

Moral imperative, with its absolutism, versus legalism, subject to nuance, interpretation, group pressure and subsequent revisionism.

It carries far beyond sexual mores, or even questions of business ethics or dealings between in-groups and out-groups. It creates anarchy of values - where the ends justify the means; where power is all and might makes right. And it opens the door to later reassessments, when power has shifted from one person or group to another.

It's no surprise, then, that the common fate of former Heads of State in Marxist Utopias is death, prison or banishment. Power is all and the law, which is the only morality, reflects the group that holds power.

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The Founding Fathers had an instinctive grasp, 100 years before Karl Marx. They stressed from the beginning: "All men are created equal, with certain inalienable Rights endowed by their Creator." Not all of them were deeply religious men - something the Left delights in pointing out. What modern "progressives" fail to grasp is that the concept of God, as author of a rooted morality, is useful even to an agnostic.

Morals, rules, need to be firmly rooted. It's impossible to play a game, say a round of Five-Card-Stud without rules. Those rules are agreed upon and hold throughout the game. Of course they didn't come down from a deity - but they were agreed upon, and changes in the rules change the character of the game. Changes in the middle of the game turn the game into a fight.

One argument used in classrooms in the 1970s, was of the Eskimos. When an old person in the tribe was no longer able to function, his children gave him a day's food, a dry bed and a bonfire. They then abandoned him to death in the elements or by predators.

To us, today, this is obscene. To the Eskimos of the time it was functional. Proof, says the Left, all values are relative.

This is true, and not true. Other cultures have other ways of dealing with the moral issues of their times. Islamic societies stone rape victims to death as punishment for having "dishonored" their families.

And certainly some cultures are more successful than others. Only a fool, or a sophist, would argue that the aboriginal lifestyle of the Plains Indians or the Bedouin culture of today's Arab states, is superior to Western industrialized society.

Nor does an individual have the right to decide whether he will abide by the laws and morals of his culture. In times past, if he couldn't conform, he was banished or executed - as was Socrates. Today, he is shunned or imprisoned, as an example to others. Just as a poker-player who cheats will be thrown out of the game, out on the sidewalk.

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When Bill Clinton, situational ethicist, enfant terrible and man of a thousand lies, took the Oath of Office for the Presidency, he promised his fawning admirers that he would run "the most ethical administration in history."

Yes, but whose ethics? That bizarre promise was followed by vindictive firings, malicious prosecutions, passoffs of national secrets and receipt of foreign campaign funds, threats and intimidations, and perjury.

Yet Clinton maintained he did no wrong. He saw no reason to resign in shame, and his apologists maintain that he is an "honest man."

Obviously Clinton has his standards, and he himself lives up to them. Where those standards come from, I do'nt know...but I would wager they come from Bill Clinton.

And after covering for a duplicitous President, crediting him for good times in which he played no part, the Progressive Left and Democrats blanch when confronted with a President who speaks openly, unashamedly, of his relationship with his Creator.

They speak mockingly of a man who has "imaginary friends" or who has a "personal relationship" with someone dead for 2000 years. They even compare it to Nancy Reagan's use of astrologers, and talk of this nation's future being "altared" (sic) by the President's "religious fanaticism."

Somehow they find it terrible that the President, the most powerful man on Earth, sees fit to humble himself before a Higher Power and accept His moral imperatives.

Somehow they find a President who adheres to a code of morals and spiritual laws repugnant; while one in constant pursuit of pleasure and self-aggrandization and ruled by his avaricious wife, is one to be celebrated. Even as they remove limits on the powers of government, the Left wants to remove what checks there are on leaders within government - to create a world where men without moral limits run government without firm boundaries.

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Today's "liberals" have an agenda, and it's one in conflict with the U.S. Constitution and Judeo-Christian morality. Property rights have no place in their vision; they wish a culture of "enlightened" sexuality even as they place limits on personal non-sexual choices and behavior. They place group identity over individual rights and want to confer special "rights" to groups. They wish to emphasize government control from the top down, rather than one primarily of local control and local options - the idea seemingly that national political leaders are somehow better equipped to determine what is "best" and should be in a position to implement it.

They are on a dangerous road. The program of "empowering" government brings persons to whom power is a be-all and end all, who are happy to play to the crowd as long as it puts them in control. Such types always look for the main chance; at the close of the War Between the States, they were the "carpetbaggers" who sensed an opportunity in the war-torn South. Today they smell opportunity in the ranks of the Greens and civil-rights activists; they see their main chance in Kyoto and Universal Healthcare.

With all of this history, today's so-called liberals remain adamant: God must go. Rigid morality must go. The Constitution, the plainspoken framework for government, must be reduced to a rubbery "nuanced" document. This must happen to empower, glorify, elevate the State - in a cultural procession down a dead-end pathway, to history's trash heap.

But history will not be silenced. History holds a different perspective. And history will be honored when President Bush, beginning his second term, recites the Oath of Office, as stipulated by Article II, Section 1:

"I, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God."

To say or do any other, to delete Washington's traditional close, would be un-American.

Cheektowaga, New York

January 15, 2005

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JustPassinThru is a forty-six-year-old adolescent in varying stages of employment. He alternates between sorting the shambles of his life and sharing his misconceptions of on the Web.

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