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The New Despotism – Part I

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : April 2, 2013
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Category: Archives, Socialism

Equality is a good thing. Right? Your first reaction may be, “Of course it is. It‘s even in the Declaration of Independence… ‘All men are created equal’.” But let’s give a little more thought and consideration to this topic. Do you really want your doctor to be equal to all other doctors? Do you want the airline pilot on whose plane you are a passenger to be equal with all other airline pilots? Of course not! You want your doctor to be the best doctor available when dealing with your health and that of your family. The same goes for the airline pilot on whose plane you are a passenger. So, we can’t just worship at the shrine of equality and say that equality in everything is good as so much of society seems to be doing these days.

In the culture wars, both sides support equality but have fundamentally different notions about what equality means and how it should be implemented and administered in all institutions of American life. One understanding of the meaning of equality has contributed to the United States becoming the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. The other meaning is contributing significantly to the disintegration of American culture as envisioned by the Founders.

Now, I don’t want your eyes to glaze over as you think about the concept of equality. This is not an academic exercise because a correct understanding of equality will help you determine on which side of the culture war you stand and allow you to recognize and defend the meaning of equality as understood by the Founders in establishing this nation and designing our Constitution.

We begin with an abbreviated summation of the meaning of equality. Here we speak of equality in light of the individual within the Founders’ meaning on the one hand versus the meaning as defined by the humanist levelers of the 21st century.

The founding Americans held a biblical worldview and relied on order that rested upon a respect for prescriptive rights and customs as opposed to the egalitarian notions of the French philosophers during the French Revolution. This difference was made clear by John Adams’ definition of equality which strikes at the heart of what it really means—a moral and political equality only—by which is meant equality before God and before the law. This definition does not teach that all men are born to equal powers, mental abilities, influence in society, property, and other advantages. Rather, all men are born to equal rights before God and the law and by implication to enjoy equal opportunity.

The humanistic definition of equality is clearly stated in Humanist Manifesto II’s eleventh common principle, “The principle of moral equality must be furthered…This means equality of opportunity…” But, the humanists’ meaning of “equal opportunity” is immediately and drastically corrupted to mean an equality of outcome as measured by humanist requirements. To further clarify the intent of the signors of the Manifesto, the document states that, “If unable [by means of equal opportunity], society should provide means to satisfy their basic economic, health, and cultural needs, including whatever resources make possible, a minimum guaranteed annual income.” This concept of human equality flows from the flawed humanistic assumption of the perfectibility of man. Under this concept, what men are comes from experience. Therefore, men are equal at birth, and differences and inequalities arise due to environment.

The goal of humanists was to achieve an egalitarian society (and eliminate inequalities due to environment) through political means in which man, achieving perfect equality in their political rights, would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. When humanists failed to achieve equality of outcome through political equality, the levelers demanded economic democracy, a new and expanded humanist definition of equality. However, economic democracy still means an equality of condition as opposed to equality of opportunity and is to be achieved through recognition of invented or synthetic rights coupled with broad but non-specific egalitarian ideals. As society is leveled with guarantees of certain outcomes to its citizens, political equality suffers, that is, imposed equality of outcome will destroy equality before the law.

We see evidence of the humanistic definition of equality being imposed on every institution of American life and the ensuing erosion of equality before the law. On an almost 24/7 basis we see and hear media reports from the battle fronts of the culture wars with regard to issues of perceived inequality including gay marriage, universal health care, women in combat roles, immigration, race, and employment. Some are issues dealing with equality before the law (excluding laws based on synthetic or invented rights), and the nation has and is promoting equality in those areas (e.g., race and employment discrimination). But even in those legitimate areas of concern, humanist organizations, politicians, and bureaucrats push the envelope beyond equality of opportunity.

Democracies are under grave and severe attack by a new despotism. Humanistic definitions of equality have played a central role in the ascendance of this despotism. In Part II we shall name this despotism and diagnose its operation and impact on the nation.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 394-395.

Paul Kurtz, ed., Humanist Manifestos I and II, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), p. 20.

Thank you, Grace. You are worthy of your name.

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 28, 2013
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Category: Archives, Homosexuality

Grace Evans is an 11-year old Minnesota girl who testified earlier this month before a Minnesota statehouse committee as it deliberated on a bill to permit gay marriage. (The committee subsequently approved the bill which was sent to the full house. A similar bill is in the state senate.)

Speaking against passage of the bill to allow gay marriage in Minnesota, Grace talked of the importance of each of her parents and that each parent provides something unique to her life that can’t be provided by the other. “Even though I’m only 11 years old, I know that everyone deserves to have a mom and a dad. If you change the law to say two moms and two dads can get married, it would take away something very important for children like me across the state.”

Grace’s approximate two-minute address included twenty-one seconds of silence as she twice asked the committee members, “I know some disagree, but I want to ask you this question: Which parent do I not need – my mom or my dad?” She waited, but no committee member answered her question.

Even though Grace is only eleven, she recognizes that marriage between a man and a woman is a cultural universal. It transcends time and space because it is a reflection of the nature of God. To give a better understanding of what I mean and what Grace understands, I quote from my book:

As one reflects on how humans have organized themselves over time, there is and has been a great diversity of societal forms in different cultures and periods of history. However, underlying this variety is a structured order or arrangement that reflects the “creational givens.” One of these givens is that the family structure is a societal institution established by the Creator. And the family structure consisting of “…a father, mother and children living together in bonds of committed caring is not an arbitrary happenstance; nor is it mere convention that can be dismissed when it has outlived its usefulness.” This ordered family structure is a part of the human constitution and is ingrained in man’s nature in all of its facets—biological, emotional, social and moral. This structure allows for variety but sets definite boundaries, i.e., lines that cannot be crossed without being in opposition to the structured order of the family. [Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp.307-308; quoted portions are from: Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 2nd Ed., (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), p. 95.]

In Christianity, the marriage relationship was of such importance that it is described in terms of Christ’s relationship with the church (his bride) and is a reflection of the character or nature of God. And that marriage relationship is unmistakably to be between a man and a woman for the Bible gives a very clear understanding of God’s view of homosexuality in the book of Romans.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. [Romans 1:24-27 RSV.]

Even though the legitimization of same-sex marriage is relatively new, its devastating effects are already being felt in those countries that have allowed it. Documenting 10 years of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Hoover Institution researcher Stanley Kurtz has found that it has led to far fewer marriages and soaring illegitimacy in which “80 percent of firstborn children are born out of wedlock, and 60 percent of children born thereafter are born to unwed parents. This has a devastating impact on children since unmarried parents are much more likely to separate.” Kurtz wrote, “Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution. And the mainspring of the decline—an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood—can be linked to gay marriage.”

Of course Grace and her parents have received much attention since her testimony. She has been called many things including a “stupid indoctrinated child” and an “11-year old bigot” (a favorite word for those who defend gay marriage). Her parents have been described as spoon feeding the script to Grace and that they need to check into a mental hospital. Given the amount of vitriol spewed against the opponents of the bill, my guess is that we can’t depend on the assurances of supporters of gay marriage that its passage won’t affect religious freedom or freedom of speech.

Should the bill become the law of Minnesota, one can easily envision parents such as the Evanses being charged with child abuse or having their children removed from their home for teaching the biblical view of homosexuality and marriage. If one is doubtful of the intentions and reach of bureaucrats and judges with a humanistic worldview, review the case of a 10-year old New Hampshire girl. A New Hampshire court ordered the home-schooled girl into a government-run school because “her religious beliefs (Christian) are a bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews…” The court agreed that the 10-year-old Christian girl is “social and interactive with her peers” and “intellectually at or superior to grade level…” However, the court found that the girl “appeared to reflect her mother’s rigidity on questions of faith” and that her interests “would be best served by exposure to a public school setting” with “different points of view.” [“Home-Schooler Ordered to Attend Public Classes,” Pentecostal Evangel, November 15, 2009, 23.]

One of the definitions of “grace” found in Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary reads as follows: “That [quality] in manner, deportment or language which renders it appropriate and agreeable; suitableness; elegance with appropriate dignity. We say, a speaker delivers his address with grace…” Grace, your name fits you well. You are a true Culture Warrior. Thank you for your courage.

Larry G. Johnson

Reliance on God’s Law – Utopia or a Dangerous Thing?

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 25, 2013
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Category: Archives, God's Law v. Man's Law

On February 22, 1756, John Adams wrote in his diary his thoughts regarding the Bible as a law book. This diary entry was written about twenty years before the Declaration of Independence and about forty years before Adams became the second President of the United States.

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God…What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be. (emphasis added) [Diary entry quoted by: William J. Federer, America’s God and Country – Encyclopedia of Quotations, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc., 1996), p. 7]

While a senator, President Barak Obama gave a speech in 2006 titled “Our Future and Vision for America.”

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values….I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will…Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing… (emphasis added)

It is evident that the anchor for Adams’ law was the objective truths or absolutes found in the Bible and called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms. However, the anchor for President Obama’s policy making is man’s law. Man’s law is based on the humanists’ belief that all social constructions are culturally relative as they are shaped by class, gender, and ethnicity. Thus, there can be no universal truths because all viewpoints, lifestyles, and beliefs are equally valid. As a result, no man or group can claim to be infallible with regard to truth and virtue. Rather, truth is produced by the free give and take of competing claims and opinions—that is, truth can be manufactured. In the modern vernacular, Obama’s truths are anchored in moral relativism which denies the existence of an objective moral order and objective truth. Under man’s law fashioned upon a rudderless moral relativism, there can be no room for finding objective truth or judging something based on the concept of right or wrong.

Unlike our Founders it is apparent that President Obama and many of our modern-day leaders see our promise in being a secular nation and, more specifically, a secular nation that is not a Christian nation.

However, the Founders were religion specific—and the basis for their religion was the God of the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians as recorded in the Bible. It was those biblical values that the Founders would not compromise, and it was those values that became the central cultural vision of the United States.

Larry G. Johnson

Dis-united States of America

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 17, 2013
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Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars

George Washington’s farewell address to the nation was published on September 17, 1796 near the end of his eight years as the first president of the newly minted United States. He spoke of his concern for the nation’s welfare as he expressed his “sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people…” His advice, warnings, and prescriptions have influenced generations of Americans but have been largely forgotten or ignored in modern times. Upon the occasion of his recent February birthday, it is well that we review some of the salient points from his farewell address that are particularly pointed and appropriate in twenty-first century America. I will quote liberally from his address and then revisit those quotes in light of the disunity caused by the culture wars and the resultant American angst.

Washington expressed his greatest concern with regard to maintaining the unity of the nation, both geographically and culturally. Unity and the prescriptions for its preservation were the central themes of his address. Speaking of the importance and source of the nation’s unity, Washington said:

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth…

In other words, unity of government is the main pillar of America’s independence, tranquility at home, peace abroad, safety, prosperity, and liberty.

For this [unity of government] you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles….

Whether a person was native or foreign born, Washington believed that America has a right to concentrate its citizens’ affections such that local or tribal differences would be subservient to the quest for national unity. As the eighteenth century was near its end, Washington was most concerned with the geographical differences that might damage the national unity. Those things which gave him hope that unity would be preserved and the nation would survive were the similarities of its citizens’ religion, manners, habits, and political principles. Effectively, Washington was saying that Americans to whom he addressed his farewell had a central cultural vision, a common worldview if you will, that would sustain them in a quest for unity. Furthermore, Washington said that America had a right to concentrate its citizens’ affections in the preservation of national unity.

Let’s fast forward to the twenty-first century and examine our national unity or, more accurately, our national disunity. First, we must recognize that the rapidity of modern communication and transportation generally have erased the boundaries imposed by geographical self-interests as was the case in Washington’s time. If that is the case, why is America not all the more unified than it was in the 1790s? The answer is evident when we look at America’s failure to concentrate the affections of its citizens as Washington believed it should. In other words we have lost a common central cultural vision (worldview) held by the Founders and the great majority of America’s citizens up until the mid-twentieth century.

This common cultural vision was biblical Christianity. Of course those imbued with modern sensibilities dominated by a humanistic worldview will scoff at this suggestion and point to the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion. However, it is important to understand that the United States is not a nation that attempts to impose Christianity on all of its citizens, but rather it is a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles that form the nation’s central cultural vision. Americans can worship anyway they please or choose to not believe in a divine creator altogether. This is what the Founders meant by “…the free exercise of religion,” but freedom of religion does not mean we abandon the central cultural vision upon which the nation was founded.

To understand why American culture is in decline, one must understand the larger picture as to why cultures in general decline and ultimately fail over time. First, a culture declines and ultimately fails as it loses it cohesiveness or unity. Washington recognized this and made it the central theme of his farewell address. Second, even if a culture maintains unity and cohesiveness, its worldview must over the long term be based on truth. Again, Washington’s words point to the importance of truth in a nation’s central cultural vision.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of a particular structure, reason, and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Now, who is this God in whom the Founders believed? Is He some “generic, one-size-fits-all, and all religions lead to the same God” variety? No! The Founders’ God is the God of the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians as revealed in the Bible. From these beliefs arose the power of Christian teaching over private conscience that made possible an American democratic society that is unrivaled in the history of the world.

In twenty-first century America, a majority of its citizens still hold the biblical worldview, but most of the leadership of American institutions have abandoned it for the humanistic worldview. For America to survive, we must once again “concentrate our affections” and restore unity under the central cultural vision of the Founders.

Larry G. Johnson

Postcard – Help for the low information voter

Posted by :Larry G. Johnson On : March 6, 2013
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Category: Archives, Government

Although there is an information explosion in the modern world, much of the information needed to be a well-informed voter is missing, irrelevant, or misleading. The low information voter is inundated with media sound bites, tweets, twitters, talking heads, etc. which may produce much heat but little light. So what is the low information voter to do? A good start would be to go back to the basics. Read books and other documents free from the clutches of revisionist historians with worldviews and agendas different from those of the Founders. A good acquaintance with much of the content of the books and documents listed below will move you to the head of the class, and you will no longer be a low information voter.

Our political foundation: The Constitution of the United States

America’s founding principles: The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk

Founder’s beliefs in their own words: America’s God and Country – Encyclopedia of Quotations, William J. Federer

Democracy in America: Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

General history of America since Columbus: A Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen

Prerequisites for Culture: Visions of Order and Ideas Have Consequences, Russell M. Weaver

Our modern malaise: Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork

Marriage and Family: The Broken Hearth, William J. Bennett

Heart of the culture wars: Witness, Whitaker Chambers

Socialism: The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek

Worldview: How Now Shall We Live? Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey

Humanism: Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, Larry G. Johnson

WARNING! Reading this material will dramatically change your life and way of thinking. Proceed at your own risk, but do it anyway for the good of America.

Larry G. Johnson