As I reflect on the proud history of our great country, I can’t help but also mourn that we continue to progressively reject the traditional American economic principles, freedoms, and values, and the vision of American exceptionalism that have made these great United States the global economic engine and the global shining light of freedom for the last century. The dual forces of progressive ideology and the corrupt (corrupting) political process have severely eroded our liberty and strength that arose from the protection of our God-given unalienable rights guaranteed to us in the founding principles of our Constitution.
Progressive ideology and its wealth redistribution policies threaten the American foundational concept of property rights. Protection of the fruits of an individual’s physical and intellectual labor has been the cornerstone of our country’s unmatched economic growth over the last 2 centuries. Imprudently, and to our country’s economic and societal detriment, our country is moving in the polar opposite direction of protecting property rights with the growing welfare state that encourages dependency and unearned entitlement, and discourages self-responsibility and initiative. Further, the welfare state can only incompletely fund these entitlements even with increasingly confiscatory tax rates on the present and future taxpayers.
This same “enlightened” progressive thought relativizes morality in the name of broad tolerance and “evolutionary” ethics, and rejects traditional American values of self-reliance and self-responsibility, individual charity and looking out for one’s neighbors, living within one’s means, honesty, fidelity, patriotism, and traditional family. “Politically correct” relative morality threatens to completely unravel the fabric of traditional American society’s values system, which is inherent and necessary in a government founded in God-given unalienable rights. Without a strong moral code, liberty – economic, political, and social – falls into licentiousness and injustice.
No less damaging to our liberty has been the corrupted political system that serves self and special interests rather than the citizens it allegedly represents. As a result of the nearly irresistible allure to remain in political office and to enjoy the assured level of comfort, power and privilege, our political establishment has proven to be incompatible with the ability to truly problem solve and address the daunting problems facing our nation. Simple cursory review of the passed financial “reform” bill reveals that it does not address the excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that lead to the mortgage market collapse or truly address the “too big to fail” policies that encourage injudicious risk-taking by large financial institutions. Similarly, health-care “reform” failed to tackle the prime issue in health-care – the uncontrolled cost escalation that threatens the financial viability of individuals, families, businesses, and state and Federal government. Instead, the passed bill increased costs and the national debt continues to rise.
National debt at $14 trillion now equals our GDP and yet that number pales to the true debt including unfunded liabilities, e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, state deficits, which add up to nearly 10 times that number. Deficit entitlement spending has turned upside-down the hallowed American tradition of parents and grandparents sacrificing to give their children a better future. Not only are we failing to save and invest in their future, we instead are taking money from their future for our present consumption. This ever increasing deficit spending and the widening discrepancy between GDP growth and debt growth can only end in economic calamity.
The economy continues to struggle with persistent and high unemployment. Long term joblessness (>26 weeks) has never been recorded higher than the current 46% of the unemployed. The number of individuals dependent on government continues to grow – Heritage Foundation recently assessed that number at 60 million – threatening the very essence of our republican system of government. In 2009, 47% of Federal tax filers paid no income tax and nearly 40% actually received a payment in the form of a tax credit. As taxpayers, we understand as unemployment persists or grows and citizenry dependence on government grows, we and future taxpayers will personally assume increasing excessive (confiscatory) tax liability. Yet we must also recognize the terrible injustice of past and ongoing faulty and misguided government policies that hurt the economy, increase unemployment, and encourage this dependence on government. These terrible policies, in the end, take away the individual’s right and bestowed human dignity to support one’s self and family and to make one’s own life’s decisions.
American exceptionalism that grew out of a Republic founded on the protection of unalienable human rights has been steadily replaced by the progressive mantra of equality of goodness of all the world’s political and social systems and the call to create an equal and just world society based on ever evolving enlightened human-conceived “rights”. The rejection of this vision of American exceptionalism has brought us to the brink of a fiscal and economic crisis that threatens our country’s prosperity, security, and ultimately our very sovereignty and identity. We must fight to restore our great country and our place as “the city on the hill” in this world by once again embracing the vision of American exceptionalism and the traditional American economic principles, individual freedoms and responsibilities, and values that made our great land the global economic engine and bastion of freedom – principles, freedoms, responsibilities, and values inherent in and nurtured by a system of government based on the safeguarding our God-given unalienable individual rights.
Showing posts with label The Fight for Traditional America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Fight for Traditional America. Show all posts
Monday, July 5, 2010
Monday, November 30, 2009
Religion and Politics: The Manhattan Declaration
Last week, a group of religious leaders released the Manhattan Declaration - a statement reaffirming the essential justice and goodness of upholding and protecting the sanctity of life, traditional marriage between a man and a woman, and of the rights of religious conscience and liberty. Although written from a Christian perspective, the ethos of the declaration conforms to the foundational Judeo-Christian heritage of our traditional American values and morality. The document urges believers and non-believers alike to recognize the evident detrimental societal ramifications caused by the steady erosion of these 3 principles. It is not written simply from a perspective of fidelity to the Christian faith, but from that of the well being of society and of love for all individuals. The declaration also calls on people of conscience to actively promote these doctrines in our American society and further to civilly resist attacks on and abandonment of these doctrines.
This point of view undoubtedly will be assailed from the left as bigotry, intolerance, and imposing church on the state. They incorrectly argue that the principle of separation of church and state that prohibits a state sponsored religion also requires a person to exclude their religious perspective from their politics. This position not only is a misunderstanding of that principle but also fails to grasp that a person’s belief system is their religion. It is their framework for understanding this world, this life, and their purpose or vocation in this life. Further, a person’s belief system intrinsically has an associated code of morality or ethics. This moral code provides an ethical standard by which a person measures the conduct of their lives. For many, this cosmologic and ethical framework arises from their belief in an eternal, omnipotent, and loving God. For others, their belief system arises from their secular understanding of the world. In either case, what they believe is their “religion.” One’s politics can not possibly be separated from one’s “religion”. It is facetious for a “non-religious” person to say that a Christian’s political position which is based in their religious beliefs should not be expressed in the political process and yet insist that their political position that is based in their secular beliefs are legitimately expressed in the political process.
Ironically while many on the progressive left claim to espouse broad tolerance of individual beliefs, they do so only as long as those beliefs conform to their beliefs. As Americans, we rightly pride ourselves in freedom of beliefs and in that sense we certainly live in a tolerant society. However, living in a free, democratic, and tolerant society does not mean that all beliefs should have equal expression in that society. Our American freedom confers the right to any citizen to utilize the political process to incorporate into our society those beliefs they consider beneficial and to exclude those they believe to be detrimental.
The principles and objectives of the Manhattan Declaration will also meet resistance from the right. Some conservatives argue that these issues of sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty are peripheral social issues that divide and thereby weaken the conservative movement. They feel debate of these issues only distracts from the more important conservative effort to promote traditional American individual freedoms and the traditional American economic principles of free markets. This stance however, does not recognize that the same liberal ideology underlying the systematic attack on traditional American morality also underlies the attack on traditional American individual freedoms and economic principles. Progressive ideology comprehensively rejects the intrinsic, absolute, and personal nature of individual freedoms, talents, and responsibilities as understood in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Rather than primacy of the individual person and of the individual family, the progressive movement emphasizes the ascendancy of the non-personal collective society. Rather than the absolute and unchanging morality of our Judeo-Christian heritage, the progressive movement champions a changing and relative morality that “fits” with our societal and scientific “progress”. We must understand that the attack on traditional American individual freedoms and economic principles is part of the broader systemic ideological assault on all of traditional American society and must be resisted on all fronts.
We have reached a defining crossroads in our nation’s history. We can sit back and watch the “enlightened” progressive economic and moral principles insidiously supplant our traditional American principles and values; or we can each step up, and actively participate in an unprecedented grass roots political movement that embraces and promotes traditional American free market principles, individual freedoms, and morality. Please read the Manhattan declaration. It is a compelling and lucid statements. Aand, if it conforms to your beliefs, add your signature (http://manhattandeclaration.org/images/content/ManhattanDeclaration.pdf). Forward the document to those who care for traditional America. Write your congressman and senators (contact info found at http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm). Join and contribute your time, energy, and money as you are able to grass root organizations such as the American’s for Prosperity http://americansforprosperity.org/national-site, American Liberty Alliance http://americanlibertyalliance.com//, and other traditional American values based grass roots organizations.
This point of view undoubtedly will be assailed from the left as bigotry, intolerance, and imposing church on the state. They incorrectly argue that the principle of separation of church and state that prohibits a state sponsored religion also requires a person to exclude their religious perspective from their politics. This position not only is a misunderstanding of that principle but also fails to grasp that a person’s belief system is their religion. It is their framework for understanding this world, this life, and their purpose or vocation in this life. Further, a person’s belief system intrinsically has an associated code of morality or ethics. This moral code provides an ethical standard by which a person measures the conduct of their lives. For many, this cosmologic and ethical framework arises from their belief in an eternal, omnipotent, and loving God. For others, their belief system arises from their secular understanding of the world. In either case, what they believe is their “religion.” One’s politics can not possibly be separated from one’s “religion”. It is facetious for a “non-religious” person to say that a Christian’s political position which is based in their religious beliefs should not be expressed in the political process and yet insist that their political position that is based in their secular beliefs are legitimately expressed in the political process.
Ironically while many on the progressive left claim to espouse broad tolerance of individual beliefs, they do so only as long as those beliefs conform to their beliefs. As Americans, we rightly pride ourselves in freedom of beliefs and in that sense we certainly live in a tolerant society. However, living in a free, democratic, and tolerant society does not mean that all beliefs should have equal expression in that society. Our American freedom confers the right to any citizen to utilize the political process to incorporate into our society those beliefs they consider beneficial and to exclude those they believe to be detrimental.
The principles and objectives of the Manhattan Declaration will also meet resistance from the right. Some conservatives argue that these issues of sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty are peripheral social issues that divide and thereby weaken the conservative movement. They feel debate of these issues only distracts from the more important conservative effort to promote traditional American individual freedoms and the traditional American economic principles of free markets. This stance however, does not recognize that the same liberal ideology underlying the systematic attack on traditional American morality also underlies the attack on traditional American individual freedoms and economic principles. Progressive ideology comprehensively rejects the intrinsic, absolute, and personal nature of individual freedoms, talents, and responsibilities as understood in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Rather than primacy of the individual person and of the individual family, the progressive movement emphasizes the ascendancy of the non-personal collective society. Rather than the absolute and unchanging morality of our Judeo-Christian heritage, the progressive movement champions a changing and relative morality that “fits” with our societal and scientific “progress”. We must understand that the attack on traditional American individual freedoms and economic principles is part of the broader systemic ideological assault on all of traditional American society and must be resisted on all fronts.
We have reached a defining crossroads in our nation’s history. We can sit back and watch the “enlightened” progressive economic and moral principles insidiously supplant our traditional American principles and values; or we can each step up, and actively participate in an unprecedented grass roots political movement that embraces and promotes traditional American free market principles, individual freedoms, and morality. Please read the Manhattan declaration. It is a compelling and lucid statements. Aand, if it conforms to your beliefs, add your signature (http://manhattandeclaration.org/images/content/ManhattanDeclaration.pdf). Forward the document to those who care for traditional America. Write your congressman and senators (contact info found at http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm). Join and contribute your time, energy, and money as you are able to grass root organizations such as the American’s for Prosperity http://americansforprosperity.org/national-site, American Liberty Alliance http://americanlibertyalliance.com//, and other traditional American values based grass roots organizations.
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