Independence Day evokes thoughts of patriotism, liberty, and courage, but these virtues are not exclusive to the American Revolution. As the world watches recent events in Iran we expose ten enemies of freedom.
Independence Day evokes thoughts of patriotism, liberty, and courage, but these virtues are not exclusive to the American Revolution. They can be found in cities like Prague and Budapest, in a square called Tiananmen, and at a crumbling wall in Berlin. The virtues of which I speak do not belong to one political party or candidate. They are as old as the scriptures from which comes the declaration etched upon the Liberty Bell, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." As the world watches recent events in Iran we expose ten enemies of freedom:
1. Religious suppression.
2. Censorship of the press.
3. Excessive force on peaceful protestors.
4. Imprisonment for challenging the government.
5. Oppression on the basis of gender, class, or race.
6. Corruption and influence peddling.
7. Elections that lack genuine accountability
8. Violations of civil and human rights.
9. The silencing of a voice and a vote.
10. Apathy and fear.
The American colonists dared to believe in a day when oppression would end and the will of the people would reign. As citizens of the United States we must join with those brave individuals around the globe who call for freedom and liberty in their home countries. We must raise our voices in moral outrage each time one is imprisoned or killed simply because that person wants to be granted human rights. To do otherwise is to betray the devotion and sacrifice of those who made our freedom possible.
Bill Shuler is Senior Pastor at Capital Life Church in Arlington, Virginia.
Showing posts with label tyranny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tyranny. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Why Do We Need the Electoral College?
Activists seeking to eliminate the Electoral College in favor of a popular vote to elect the president boast that their movement is almost one-fifth the way to its goal.
Four states – Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey – which represent 50 of the 270 electoral votes needed to declare a presidential election winner, have committed to an agreement whereby they would grant their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, a move that – if adopted by enough states – would reduce the Electoral College to irrelevancy.
With most of the nation's states considering similar bills pending in their respective legislatures, activists are looking to 2016 as a possible death date for the Electoral College.
John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, a group leading the charge to eliminate the Electoral College, explains the agreement won't go into effect until states with a total of 270 electoral votes join in.
"We have 20 percent of the electoral votes we need," Koza told the Washington Times. "The whole idea of the bill is that no state can do this alone. It only goes into effect when we have 270 electoral votes."
Advocates of the change in national election policy argue that it would end the current practice of candidates focusing on "swing states," and compel them to address the nation at large. It would also prevent a situation, such as happened with George W. Bush in the 2000 election, where a candidate loses the popular vote but wins in the Electoral College.
Opponents of the change argue that turning the election over to the popular vote would result in candidates focusing only on major metropolitan areas and television campaigns, cutting out rural America altogether, and that it would overturn our Founding Fathers' vision of a republican form of government, replacing it with a pure democracy, where the majority has mob rule.
Koza explained his support of a popular vote system to the Times by arguing that two-thirds of the campaign dollars in the 2008 election were spent in six swing states and 90 percent was spent in only 15 states.
"When you're in a non-battleground state, which is two-thirds of the states, you tend to get ignored," Koza said. "People are figuring out that in most states, they don't count. If anything, this presidential election reminded them that they don't count."
The Times reports that nearly every state has introduced popular vote legislation this year, and seven states have passed it in one chamber. Colorado, where the Senate has passed the legislation twice before, may be the next state to approve it, since the House passed it for the first time last month.
"The winner-take-all system isn't only undemocratic, it's also dysfunctional," said Colorado state Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat who sponsored the Colorado legislation.
Opponents of electing a president by popular election, however, argue that the change would cause candidates to concentrate on major population centers, where votes can be scored in bunches, rather than traveling the country through states whose electoral votes are currently needed for victory. Transferring the campaign dollars from focusing on states to focusing on metropolitan population centers, they argue, isn't any more "fair" of a system.
"Those swing states can actually be quite diverse," said Colorado Sen. Shawn Mitchell, a Republican who opposes the popular-vote legislation. "It's a slam-dunk that the 10 battleground states are more representative of the broad national interest than the 10 biggest metropolitan areas."
As WND reported, an analysis of the issue by Wallbuilders, a Christian organization with expertise in historical and constitutional issues, also warned that the popular vote system would introduce its own dangers.
The analysis quoted Curtis Gans, of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, who said getting rid of the Electoral College would reduce political campaigns in the United States to "television advertising" and "tarmac."
"There would be virtually no incentive to try to mobilize constituencies, organize specific interests, or devote any resources to such things as voter registration and education," said Gans. "What we would have is a political system that combines the worst of network television with the worst of the modern campaign."
Wallbuilders also noted that – along with proposals to have Congress or the state legislatures choose a president – the idea of a national popular vote was discussed by the authors of the Constitution:
"This idea was rejected not because the framers distrusted the people but rather because the larger populous states would have much greater influence than the smaller states and therefore the interests of those smaller states could be disregarded or trampled," Wallbuilders said.
The hotly contested 2000 election illustrated how the Electoral College preserves the voice of the smaller states and more rural areas. Though candidate Al Gore won the popular vote – and therefore would have won the presidency under the proposed changes – his edge came largely from concentrated urban areas: Gore carried only 676 American counties, while Bush carried 2,436 counties.
Following the 2000 election, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, made the argument in a column called "A Republic, Not a Democracy" that the Electoral College is a necessary extension of the Founding Fathers' vision for our country:
"The Founding Fathers were concerned with liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: 'The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government (emphasis added).' The emphasis on democracy in our modern political discourse has no historical or constitutional basis," wrote Paul.
"Our Founders instituted a republican system to protect individual rights and property rights from tyranny, regardless of whether the tyrant was a king, a monarchy, a congress, or an unelected mob," Paul continued. "They believed that a representative government, restrained by the Bill of Rights and divided into three power-sharing branches, would balance the competing interests of the population. They also knew that unbridled democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny suffered by the colonies under King George. In other words, the Founders had no illusions about democracy. Democracy represented unlimited rule by an omnipotent majority, while a constitutionally limited republic was seen as the best system to preserve liberty. Inalienable individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights would be threatened by the 'excesses of democracy.'"
Paul's spokesperson, Jeff Deist, summarized the congressman's argument against purely democratic rule.
"Majority tyranny is just as bad as any other kind of tyranny," said Deist. "It makes no difference whether your liberty and property are taken by a king or a majority of individuals."
Four states – Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey – which represent 50 of the 270 electoral votes needed to declare a presidential election winner, have committed to an agreement whereby they would grant their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, a move that – if adopted by enough states – would reduce the Electoral College to irrelevancy.
With most of the nation's states considering similar bills pending in their respective legislatures, activists are looking to 2016 as a possible death date for the Electoral College.
John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, a group leading the charge to eliminate the Electoral College, explains the agreement won't go into effect until states with a total of 270 electoral votes join in.
"We have 20 percent of the electoral votes we need," Koza told the Washington Times. "The whole idea of the bill is that no state can do this alone. It only goes into effect when we have 270 electoral votes."
Advocates of the change in national election policy argue that it would end the current practice of candidates focusing on "swing states," and compel them to address the nation at large. It would also prevent a situation, such as happened with George W. Bush in the 2000 election, where a candidate loses the popular vote but wins in the Electoral College.
Opponents of the change argue that turning the election over to the popular vote would result in candidates focusing only on major metropolitan areas and television campaigns, cutting out rural America altogether, and that it would overturn our Founding Fathers' vision of a republican form of government, replacing it with a pure democracy, where the majority has mob rule.
Koza explained his support of a popular vote system to the Times by arguing that two-thirds of the campaign dollars in the 2008 election were spent in six swing states and 90 percent was spent in only 15 states.
"When you're in a non-battleground state, which is two-thirds of the states, you tend to get ignored," Koza said. "People are figuring out that in most states, they don't count. If anything, this presidential election reminded them that they don't count."
The Times reports that nearly every state has introduced popular vote legislation this year, and seven states have passed it in one chamber. Colorado, where the Senate has passed the legislation twice before, may be the next state to approve it, since the House passed it for the first time last month.
"The winner-take-all system isn't only undemocratic, it's also dysfunctional," said Colorado state Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat who sponsored the Colorado legislation.
Opponents of electing a president by popular election, however, argue that the change would cause candidates to concentrate on major population centers, where votes can be scored in bunches, rather than traveling the country through states whose electoral votes are currently needed for victory. Transferring the campaign dollars from focusing on states to focusing on metropolitan population centers, they argue, isn't any more "fair" of a system.
"Those swing states can actually be quite diverse," said Colorado Sen. Shawn Mitchell, a Republican who opposes the popular-vote legislation. "It's a slam-dunk that the 10 battleground states are more representative of the broad national interest than the 10 biggest metropolitan areas."
As WND reported, an analysis of the issue by Wallbuilders, a Christian organization with expertise in historical and constitutional issues, also warned that the popular vote system would introduce its own dangers.
The analysis quoted Curtis Gans, of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, who said getting rid of the Electoral College would reduce political campaigns in the United States to "television advertising" and "tarmac."
"There would be virtually no incentive to try to mobilize constituencies, organize specific interests, or devote any resources to such things as voter registration and education," said Gans. "What we would have is a political system that combines the worst of network television with the worst of the modern campaign."
Wallbuilders also noted that – along with proposals to have Congress or the state legislatures choose a president – the idea of a national popular vote was discussed by the authors of the Constitution:
"This idea was rejected not because the framers distrusted the people but rather because the larger populous states would have much greater influence than the smaller states and therefore the interests of those smaller states could be disregarded or trampled," Wallbuilders said.
The hotly contested 2000 election illustrated how the Electoral College preserves the voice of the smaller states and more rural areas. Though candidate Al Gore won the popular vote – and therefore would have won the presidency under the proposed changes – his edge came largely from concentrated urban areas: Gore carried only 676 American counties, while Bush carried 2,436 counties.
Following the 2000 election, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, made the argument in a column called "A Republic, Not a Democracy" that the Electoral College is a necessary extension of the Founding Fathers' vision for our country:
"The Founding Fathers were concerned with liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: 'The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government (emphasis added).' The emphasis on democracy in our modern political discourse has no historical or constitutional basis," wrote Paul.
"Our Founders instituted a republican system to protect individual rights and property rights from tyranny, regardless of whether the tyrant was a king, a monarchy, a congress, or an unelected mob," Paul continued. "They believed that a representative government, restrained by the Bill of Rights and divided into three power-sharing branches, would balance the competing interests of the population. They also knew that unbridled democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny suffered by the colonies under King George. In other words, the Founders had no illusions about democracy. Democracy represented unlimited rule by an omnipotent majority, while a constitutionally limited republic was seen as the best system to preserve liberty. Inalienable individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights would be threatened by the 'excesses of democracy.'"
Paul's spokesperson, Jeff Deist, summarized the congressman's argument against purely democratic rule.
"Majority tyranny is just as bad as any other kind of tyranny," said Deist. "It makes no difference whether your liberty and property are taken by a king or a majority of individuals."
Friday, March 20, 2009
Attend a TEA Party if.......
Are you fed up with a Congress and a president who:
vote for a $500 billion tax bill without even reading it
are spending trillions of borrowed dollars, leaving a debt our great-grandchildren will be paying?
consistently give special interest groups billions of dollars in earmarks to help get themselves re-elected?
want to take your wealth and redistribute it to others?
punish those who practice responsible financial behavior and reward those who do not?
admit to using the financial hurt of millions as an opportunity to push their political agenda?
run up trillions of dollars of debt and then sell that debt to countries such as China?
want government-controlled health care?
want to take away the right to vote with a secret ballot in union elections?
refuse to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants into our country?
appoint a defender of child pornography to the No. 2 position in the Justice Department?
want to force doctors and other medical workers to perform abortions against their will?
want to impose a carbon tax on your electricity, gas and home-heating fuels?
want to reduce your tax deductibility for charitable gifts?
take money from your family budget to pay their federal budget?
Go here to find a TEA Party near you:
http://www.teapartyday.com/
vote for a $500 billion tax bill without even reading it
are spending trillions of borrowed dollars, leaving a debt our great-grandchildren will be paying?
consistently give special interest groups billions of dollars in earmarks to help get themselves re-elected?
want to take your wealth and redistribute it to others?
punish those who practice responsible financial behavior and reward those who do not?
admit to using the financial hurt of millions as an opportunity to push their political agenda?
run up trillions of dollars of debt and then sell that debt to countries such as China?
want government-controlled health care?
want to take away the right to vote with a secret ballot in union elections?
refuse to stop the flow of millions of illegal immigrants into our country?
appoint a defender of child pornography to the No. 2 position in the Justice Department?
want to force doctors and other medical workers to perform abortions against their will?
want to impose a carbon tax on your electricity, gas and home-heating fuels?
want to reduce your tax deductibility for charitable gifts?
take money from your family budget to pay their federal budget?
Go here to find a TEA Party near you:
http://www.teapartyday.com/
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Why is Gov't Evil?
From WND
Did you ever stop to wonder why most governments – no matter where on earth you look, or what time period you consider – tend toward being dishonest, predatory and tyrannical?
Iraq was one big torture chamber before America and its coalition partners liberated it. North Korea is a national concentration camp, where every citizen is the slave of a demented little dictator named Kim Jong-il (who may or may not still be alive – hard to tell in such a fantastically closed society). Zimbabwe, once a major breadbasket for all of Africa, has sewers clogged with aborted babies, an inflation rate of over 11 million percent, and its average life expectancy has been cut almost in half, from 57 to only 34 years.
Yes, I know, these are some of the worst governments on earth. But a great many other nations are not much better. Burma and Sudan are ruled by brutal military dictatorships and mass slaughter and genocide are normal there. The vast Middle East is made up largely of Arab-Muslim police states, almost two dozen of them, where Islam's strict, medieval Shariah law reduces everyday life to one of repression, cruelty and paralyzing fear at best – and at worst, terrorism, "honor killings" and death by stoning for relatively minor offenses (and sometimes for no offense) – all sugar-coated with a stiflingly rigid and intolerant religious code.
China, with a quarter of the world's population – 1.3 billion souls – is still at core a ruthless and suffocating communist dictatorship, despite its massive economic growth. Russia has deteriorated dramatically in recent years; its judicial system is almost dysfunctional, there's virtually no freedom of the press, and international human rights organizations report widespread abuses, including systematic torture of people held by police.
We could continue on with our tour, but we'd just find that most other governments on this earth, from the Far East to Africa to South America, are corrupt, predatory and power-hungry. Each typically perfumes its tyranny with an idealistic, utopian philosophy like communism or Islamic fundamentalism to help control the population. Even Europe and the United Kingdom, once the crown of Western Civilization, are firmly in the grip of secular (de facto atheistic) socialism, which suffocates their once-vibrant Christian culture and seduces their citizens into giving up their hard-won freedoms, independence and wealth in exchange for "cradle-to-grave" security.
That brings us to America.
The United States of America has a transcendent heritage of liberty rooted in self-government and personal responsibility, the result of a revolutionary 200-year-old "experiment" so gloriously successful it became a shining light in an otherwise mostly dark world.
Yet, in recent decades, we too have been seduced. Many of us have been taught in our universities that the "self-evident truths" the founders relied upon are just outdated and dangerous myths. The press routinely portrays values the founders considered to be evil (high taxes, unrestrained federal power, permissive sexual morals) as good, and good as evil. Same with Hollywood, which once showcased pro-American and patriotic themes, but now glorifies sex, violence and total moral confusion.
With this constant cultural subversion in the background, no wonder millions of Americans have gradually been demoralized into depending on government to solve all of their problems, fueling today's uncontrolled, cancer-like growth in government.
Power-hungry demagogues have always used basically the same methods: They demonize "the rich," implying they obtained their wealth by exploiting and stealing from the downtrodden; they stir up racial or tribal hatreds at every opportunity; they blame convenient scapegoats for problems they themselves have caused; and they promise universal peace and happiness if we'll just give them unlimited power over us.
But they win our support only by appealing to the basest part of us – anger, dissatisfaction, greed and especially envy. They know instinctively that if they can stir up and ignite these dark and addictive passions in all of us, they will seduce us away from our inner dependency on God, and instead create a massive voting bloc of people dependent upon them. The reward for this transference of fidelity is great power for them, and confusion, demoralization and ultimate bondage for us. In its purest form, this phenomenon is known today as Marxism, communism, socialism – the spiritual core of which is raw envy.
Communism, as we know, is atheistic – where the government is the only true god, the giver of blessings, the solver of problems.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91407
Did you ever stop to wonder why most governments – no matter where on earth you look, or what time period you consider – tend toward being dishonest, predatory and tyrannical?
Iraq was one big torture chamber before America and its coalition partners liberated it. North Korea is a national concentration camp, where every citizen is the slave of a demented little dictator named Kim Jong-il (who may or may not still be alive – hard to tell in such a fantastically closed society). Zimbabwe, once a major breadbasket for all of Africa, has sewers clogged with aborted babies, an inflation rate of over 11 million percent, and its average life expectancy has been cut almost in half, from 57 to only 34 years.
Yes, I know, these are some of the worst governments on earth. But a great many other nations are not much better. Burma and Sudan are ruled by brutal military dictatorships and mass slaughter and genocide are normal there. The vast Middle East is made up largely of Arab-Muslim police states, almost two dozen of them, where Islam's strict, medieval Shariah law reduces everyday life to one of repression, cruelty and paralyzing fear at best – and at worst, terrorism, "honor killings" and death by stoning for relatively minor offenses (and sometimes for no offense) – all sugar-coated with a stiflingly rigid and intolerant religious code.
China, with a quarter of the world's population – 1.3 billion souls – is still at core a ruthless and suffocating communist dictatorship, despite its massive economic growth. Russia has deteriorated dramatically in recent years; its judicial system is almost dysfunctional, there's virtually no freedom of the press, and international human rights organizations report widespread abuses, including systematic torture of people held by police.
We could continue on with our tour, but we'd just find that most other governments on this earth, from the Far East to Africa to South America, are corrupt, predatory and power-hungry. Each typically perfumes its tyranny with an idealistic, utopian philosophy like communism or Islamic fundamentalism to help control the population. Even Europe and the United Kingdom, once the crown of Western Civilization, are firmly in the grip of secular (de facto atheistic) socialism, which suffocates their once-vibrant Christian culture and seduces their citizens into giving up their hard-won freedoms, independence and wealth in exchange for "cradle-to-grave" security.
That brings us to America.
The United States of America has a transcendent heritage of liberty rooted in self-government and personal responsibility, the result of a revolutionary 200-year-old "experiment" so gloriously successful it became a shining light in an otherwise mostly dark world.
Yet, in recent decades, we too have been seduced. Many of us have been taught in our universities that the "self-evident truths" the founders relied upon are just outdated and dangerous myths. The press routinely portrays values the founders considered to be evil (high taxes, unrestrained federal power, permissive sexual morals) as good, and good as evil. Same with Hollywood, which once showcased pro-American and patriotic themes, but now glorifies sex, violence and total moral confusion.
With this constant cultural subversion in the background, no wonder millions of Americans have gradually been demoralized into depending on government to solve all of their problems, fueling today's uncontrolled, cancer-like growth in government.
Power-hungry demagogues have always used basically the same methods: They demonize "the rich," implying they obtained their wealth by exploiting and stealing from the downtrodden; they stir up racial or tribal hatreds at every opportunity; they blame convenient scapegoats for problems they themselves have caused; and they promise universal peace and happiness if we'll just give them unlimited power over us.
But they win our support only by appealing to the basest part of us – anger, dissatisfaction, greed and especially envy. They know instinctively that if they can stir up and ignite these dark and addictive passions in all of us, they will seduce us away from our inner dependency on God, and instead create a massive voting bloc of people dependent upon them. The reward for this transference of fidelity is great power for them, and confusion, demoralization and ultimate bondage for us. In its purest form, this phenomenon is known today as Marxism, communism, socialism – the spiritual core of which is raw envy.
Communism, as we know, is atheistic – where the government is the only true god, the giver of blessings, the solver of problems.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91407
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