Are they really pro-choice?

Super Bowl Sunday is approaching and this year it seems that the commercials are garnering more attention than the game itself.  Focus on the Family is sponsoring an ad this year that stars Tim Tebow and his mom, Pam Tebow.

I don't know what is in the ad, but from all reports, it is a celebration of family and of the decision that Pam made not to abort him when she was being urged by her doctors to do so, due to her illness and the drugs she was taking that could have possibly caused birth defects.

The rumor mill of what the ad contains has created a firestorm in the media and among the "pro-choice" crowd who has issued demands that CBS censor it.  Isn't it ironic to see people who present themselves as "pro-choice" get upset when someone exercises a choice to keep her baby.  CBS has invited the protesters to run their own ad, but so far has no takers.  They just want to squelch the Christian, pro-life message.

My question is, "If they are really "pro-choice", then one of those choices has to be to keep the baby by not aborting him.   So why all the ruckus?"

Our drift toward socialsim

 

Consider the following two quotes:

“What is government but itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:  you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government”.

“Implicit in [the Constitution’s] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism”, any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course…….”

The first quote is by James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” and our fourth President which is from Federalist Paper # 51.  The second is by Barack Obama, our forty-fourth and current President and is quoted in his book, “The Audacity of Hope”.  One has to ask, why the obvious difference in worldview?  Why would Madison feel the need to explain the case for limited government and Obama feel the need to explain why politicians can’t let the Constitution inhibit them?

I believe the difference is to a large degree the result of a state run educational system.  I’m not talking about the dumbing down of the American electorate to the point that they cannot follow anything more complex than a ten second sound bite. That is a discussion for another day.  What I am talking about is the systematic divorcing of a Biblical worldview from education over the last sixty years. [

The educator Samuel Johnson once said that the primary purpose of education is to teach students right from wrong and to get them to prefer the right.  And that is the primary difference between the educational system that was in place in this country up until the 1940’s and the educational system that we have had since then.  Those responsible for forming the nation were the products of a liberal arts education informed by a Biblical worldview.  Our present day legislators were educated with a secular worldview. They therefore reject the concept of absolute truth, the idea that man is subject to God’s laws, they do not have a proper understanding of the nature of man or understand the proper role of government.  The fruits of these different worldviews can be seen in the legislation passed by both groups.

The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, was probably one of the greatest acts of impartial legislation ever passed in this country.  It took the land in the West--one of the greatest assets held by any government in history— and gave it in 160 parcels to anyone willing to settle it.  As a result we witnessed the greatest spurt in economic development in our history.

The Homestead Act gave land to any citizen, regardless of race or economic status and with the certainty that those settling on this land would not be constrained to vote for a certain politician.  The land was available to all Americans, with no strings attached, in perfect keeping with the spirit of ‘promoting the general welfare’. It wasn’t just available some particular minority group or constituency.

What is important is the worldview behind this legislation. There were two parts:  The idea of human equality, that all men were created by God with equal rights and the idea that there were universal moral laws, i.e., the  “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and that government was subject to those laws and should be limited in its reach. It was these beliefs that allowed Congress to dispense a national asset while forgoing the opportunity to expand federal power.

For our first 100 years, legislators understood themselves to bound and limited by the laws of God.  It is precisely this understanding that is missing among our political leadership today and in fact this concept is anathema to them.  For example, when Clarence Thomas was undergoing grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings, the most intense questioning was about the idea of natural law.  This was a dangerous idea to the senators.  They did not wish to have a Supreme Court Judge who viewed himself under the authority of God.  It would hinder their political ambitions.

Today’s senators and congressmen have been educated with the idea that government is the ultimate authority and that they can and should use it as a means to change society to conform to their idea of what it should be, regardless of what the Constitution says.  Hence we get the current health care legislation that Democrats seemed determined to force on us, “for our own good”, despite the opposition of an overwhelming majority of Americans. The Democrats have forgotten the lessons of history: that once government takes the view that the king is law it quickly becomes a despot.

We have beeen educated out of the immutable truths of God and the fallout is destroying the republic. Courts and politicians have abandoned the concept of adhering to original intent and embraced the “living Constitution” so that it can be manipulated at the whim of those in power. This is why Obama refers to the thought of absolute truth being tyrannical.  Absolute truth is an impediment to  “change” and to those who have determined that their version of change is what is good.   Once the idea of absolute truth is abandoned, the definition of “good” becomes subjective and the only standard of behavior is what politicians want, and they justify bullying the rest of us to get what they want.

Health care or tyranny?

When the President, Democrats and liberals (but I repeat myself) talk abut the need for health care "reform" and mention health care as being a basic right of all Americans, the public should know that what they really mean is that they view government as having the right to forcefully take money out of one person's pocket and give it to another. If an individual did this he would be prosecuted for robbery.

This effort to insert government bureaucracy into the health care system with taxpayer money, if successful, will eventually destroy the system and bankrupt the country. Our present system admittedly has flaws, but is still the best in the world and a government takeover will most certainly lead to a decline in both quality and quantity. What we are witnessing is not about reforming health care anyway, it is grab for power and a blatant attempt to impose government control over what for 250 years has been none of the government's business.

Professor and author J.P. Moreland explains the principle paradigm behind this movement in his book, "Love Your God With All of Your Mind". To quote Moreland:

"A congresswoman made the following comment: "Government should honor children's rights. Therefore, just as government should vouchsafe a child's right not to be molested, so it should do so for a child's right to government sponsored day care".

"Now what is wrong with this argument as it stands? Do you see what I see in this piece of reasoning? It may help your seeing if I place a mental distinction in your mind: the distinction between negative and positive rights. A negative right is a right to be protected from some sort of harm. Negative rights place a duty on the government to keep others from doing something to me. A positive right is a right to to have something provided for me. Positive rights place a duty on the government to force others (for instance by taxation) to do something for me. For example, if health care is a negative right, the government must see to it that I can get whatever health care I can afford by my own labor unhindered by unfair limitations based on race, creed or gender. But if health care is a positive right, the government has a duty to raise the taxes sufficient to provide me with health care."

Viewing rights as positive rights stands in direct contrast to the political views of those who wrote the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers had a political philosophy, informed by a Biblical worldview, in which they absolutely feared a powerful federal government, which they knew would gather to itself more and more power. The Founding Father's concept of liberty embraced negative rights. They viewed freedom as being "freedom from", i.e., freedom from tyranny. etc. In their political theory, the government's role was to maintain order, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare by ensuring justice in domestic matters, i.e., a level playing field for all citizens. In fact, the Bill of Rights is a list of negative rights providing protection from the federal government, with the 10th Amendment specifically limiting its power to intrude into the lives of citizens.

Now one has to admit that Republicans are just as guilty as Democrats in not letting a silly thing like our governing document stand in the way of creating "rights" and then providing seemingly free goodies to their constituents to ensure re-election, but this President and this Democratic Congress want to take things to a new level. When the federal government can forcefully take over banks, the automobile industry, tell corporate CEO's how much money that they can make and do a host of other unconstitutional things , then the very structure of our government has already been altered. Now Democrats and the President want to institute government control over the most elementary decisions of Americans to force them into a single payer government health care system which the country can't afford and which will give bureaucrats final say over who gets what health care.

How will they do this? Embedded in every overhaul proposal currently being considered by Democrats (no sane person would call it reform) are provisions that would force citizens to carry health insurance or face fines. In a note written by Thomas Barthold, chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation, refusal to pay those fines could result in a misdemeanor charge by the Internal Revenue Service with Americans facing $250,000 in fines and a year in jail. The founding Fathers in their wildest dreams did not envision a federal government with the power to remove the freedom of its citizens with threats of fines and incarceration because they simply refused to buy a product.

There is a Constitutional right associated with government health care, but not in the sense that liberals mean when they assert that every American has a right to tax funded health insurance. The right associated with health care is a negative right. The right to be free from government tyranny.