You can probably guess the context of that statement easily enough if you know the nature of the people that made it. The full quote is, “Compassionate Conservatism, No Millionaire Left Behind.” The idea you are supposed to come away with is that Bush loves rich people and doesn’t care about the poor and that conservatives in general are cold-hearted at their best, as when they are even making the attempt to be compassionate. Let’s look at the major components of this statement.

First, the statement that the President cares only about millionaires and that his policies ensure their good fortune is uninterrupted at the expense of everyone else is made despite the fact that Bush doesn’t write or vote on the laws that would have to be in place to accomplish such a thing. It is correct to say that the President has an agenda with which he attempts to give direction to Congress. Members of Congress then write the necessary laws that would accomplish those goals and then – if Congress agrees with the agenda put forth, if the citizens who elected them agree with the agenda – it might get enough votes to be passed into law. At best the President can only have an indirect influence, at worst he may have no influence at all upon what Congress actually does, depending on what the makeup of the Congress is in any given session. Blaming the President for something that he really has no direct control over is pretty dumb, but then we all know that all the comedy you truly need can be found oozing from the mouths of the relativists and morons in the social justice crowd.

More evidence can be produced to show that despite the lack of direct control over the process which produces the laws that the left seems to think is harming the poor the President actually has done a great deal to further the causes of the left – if not the poor themselves – because in reality what furthers the liberal agenda most often doesn’t do anything for the people they say it is meant to help. The Education bill written by Senator Ted Kennedy was signed into law with little change and much praise by Bush himself for the efforts of the Senator even though conservatives found it to be a huge blow to the cause of accountability in government.

The Farm Bill was another total failure of the Bush Administration to hold the government accountable for the money it spends and where it is going to. American farmers complain that competition from outside the nation is sapping their ability to compete, yet the Agriculture Department sets prices to insulate the farmers from competition and even pays them not to grow crops leaving the land unused. Throughout the country farmers get subsidies from the government, the government ensures their profits and yet they continue to complain and excuse their own illicit hiring of illegal aliens as a necessary evil because of the competition of world markets. President Bush has given to almost every major liberal cause what the democrats in Congress have asked for and in return he has earned for himself ridicule, abuse and lies.

Second, the idea that millionaires are too fragile to fend for themselves is idiocy plain and simple. Socialists love to lie about the true nature of the successful in the world saying that they are life’s lottery winners, that they were born with silver spoons in their mouths or that they were just at the right place at the right time. Whatever the reason they give to explain why someone is successful and rich it never sites the individual’s own efforts or talents; it is always just some lucky boob that stumbled into a pile of money they didn’t earn much less deserve to keep. This really is the whole crux behind the idea of socialism: The transfer of money from the rich to the poor, not because the poor did anything to deserve the money, but because according to the socialists the rich aren’t worthy of the money they have. It is the oldest of human sins: arrogance, coupled with the most compelling of human vices: jealousy. The communists/socialists (Really is there a difference between the two?) are by their nature and what they focus on, the greediest among us. Their arrogance and self-righteousness helps them to believe that they are altruistic and their ideas would benefit all mankind when really all they want to do is see people who have contributed to the world and made life easier for everyone with their ideas and innovations knocked down a few pegs.

It has been proven time and time again that most millionaires in the world, and even most of the world’s billionaires are new to the world of the rich. They have made their money on their own. They are the first generation of their family to be considered truly wealthy if not the first to even be among the middle class. Some are second generation rich like Warren Buffet whose father was well off by most standards, but had nothing compared to his son.

Those who became rich on their own whose parents weren’t regulars at the country club outnumber the ones who inherited their wealth. The Rockefellers, Fords, Carnegies, etc. are the exception, not the rule. In fact the number of people joining the ranks of the rich is growing significantly every year. Most financial magazines tout this fact annually. And the features of the articles are the ones who made it big with all the odds against them. Single mothers who struck out on their own, starting a business in their kitchen, or a second bedroom of an apartment aren’t an uncommon sight. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Michael Dell, the founders of Yahoo and Amazon.com are all recent additions to the world of the rich, yet they are some of the biggest names in business here in the U.S. Forbes Magazine reports that this year there are 793 billionaires in the world. In 2003 there were only 376. Most of the people who were added to the list are people who have made the money themselves. Of the people on the list nearly half – 371 – are Americans. These people aren’t beneficiaries of George Bush and a bias from the White House against every one else. A very small percentage of them are even involved in anything to do with energy exploration, “big oil” or the military. Thus the idea that millionaires and the rich are winners of life’s lottery or that conservatives are just ‘good ol’ boys’ protecting each other and their own interests against the rest of society is without foundation and ridiculous.

Perhaps a brief explanation of conservative philosophy on the matter of money would help put this in perspective. Conservatives believe that hard work and perseverance will lead to success even if it takes multiple tries. It’s the old adage of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The millionaires are the survivors, the ones who take a bad situation and turn it around on their own without help from the outside. The other half of this belief is that it is wrong to take money that you haven’t earned such as welfare for example. That isn’t to say that some times in people’s life the circumstances can’t get out of hand and you end up taking a little public assistance in order to survive. No one can fault you for things that you didn’t do, however everyone has a choice to make: Live on the assistance and take advantage of the system longer than necessary - sometimes permanently, or do whatever it takes to get back on your feet and off the public’s money. The successful ones in life are the ones who take public assistance as a last option. To them it is a shameful act to take money they haven’t earned unless there is no way around it. They try as many times as it is necessary to stand on their own two feet because it is a matter of honor. They are driven to succeed.

Socialists believe that they are just lucky, that the money they have they got by cheating others and taking obscene profits from the less fortunate people around them. Logically this is absurd for several reasons, but then socialists rarely delve into the realm of logic. Business men who take advantage of others do not get ahead in a free market society because competitors who treat their customer’s better or have better prices will earn the consumer’s trust and their business which takes the market share away from the business which doesn’t respect their customers or fails to innovate. This is why Wal-Mart – despite the criticism from the left – is the most successful store of its kind in the U.S. The accusation that Wal-Mart is in business to shut down other small businesses is a stretch to say the least and most likely not provable in any case. They simply build stores because there is an opportunity for growth. The other businesses in the area can adjust, innovate and do what is necessary to survive or they will lose their customers. The competition in business allows the consumer to have an active role in refining the business’ practices and this goes for all businesses – except the ones which are propped up by government money such as the farms and the educational institutions; they just perpetuate themselves by paying off politicians.

So business is in a lot of ways a great example of real-world evolution. The strongest and most adaptable organizations survive, the weak don’t. Thus the millionaires among us are the leaders, the ones to look to for clues as to how we can better ourselves and become rich too.

The third problem with that bumper sticker is the implication that conservatives are not compassionate but rather cold-hearted selfish people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Apart from the statistics of who gives the most to charities in this country – conservatives give by far the greatest percentage to all charities, there is absolutely nothing compassionate about socialism! Socialism says, “Oh you poor unfortunate soul, here have some money so you can be comfortable.” Socialism leaves the poor in the mire they are in, and then simply adds to their ranks by punishing those who have the drive to be successful. They tax the money away from the successful to give to those who don’t have a job or don’t want to work. They enable those who are poor to be dependent on the assistance they are given. Meanwhile the rich, who are the ones who create most of the new jobs that the poor are looking for, have the resources they would otherwise use to create new jobs, new products and new companies taxed away. So not only are the people on public assistance a drain to society because they aren’t paying taxes, but the people who enable them to stay dependent have robbed society of countless innovations that could have been available to everyone if only their resources for research and development had not been confiscated and given to people who did not earn the money.

Compassion is helping someone become better; compassion is not helping someone do nothing with their lives. Compassion sees the possibilities and potential and pushes people to reach for them; socialism sees the problems and creates jealousy of and anger towards those in society who have contributed the most. Liberals speak with words that are soaked with honey so you cannot see the fork in their tongues.

If the bumper sticker was truthful it would read something like this: Conservatism breeds millionaires, come join the fun!

 Have you been paying attention to the theme that has been playing in the media for several months now concerning Iraq and the War on Terror? If you have and you aren’t on mood altering drugs yet I commend you for your fortitude, because frankly it is depressing to see just how irrelevant and misguided the stories ran really are.

Recently at a press conference after the killing of the top leader of Al-Queada in Iraq, several reporters asked amazingly disturbing questions such as whether or not the photos of Zarqawi’s face were “photo-shopped”, and if the U.S. troops had killed him in the end. They asked about the possibility of children being in the house that was bombed and why the military hadn’t decided to go in and get him instead of bombing the house. Other questions dealt with issues such as Muslim burial concerns and the possibility of Zarqawi’s wife being there at the time. The vast majority of the questions centered on Zarqawi and his followers regarding how the U.S. military had treated them in the attack, whether or not first aid was administered and whether the attack was necessary in the first place. Only one reporter asked the obvious and relevant question: Was any positive intelligence gained from the papers retrieved after the attack and how this is helping in the hunt for the terrorist insurgents killing our troops everyday. One question in probably two dozen at least was relevant. The rest was the touchy feely crap that doesn’t matter to anyone except the press and relativists who can’t fathom the concept of absolute right or wrong.

How in the short span of 50 years has the attitude of the press gone from one of writing headlines that were elated at our victory in World War Two, to theorizing and pursuing accusations of conspiracies and “ill-treatment” of our enemies by our own military today?

According to the social relativists we are supposed to have a kinder, gentler military which tries its hardest to reduce or even eliminate – not the enemy – but “civilian” casualties. The media is obsessed with pursuing the idea that we need to restrain ourselves from damaging relationships with the Iraqi government but at the same time they loudly proclaim, repeatedly I might add, every single casualty of our troops. The message is that we need to get out. We need to cut and run. It is proclaimed to be too much for “the average American” to take, and so we need to withdraw the troops, or redeploy them somewhere else. Anything but actually fight the people who’s only desire in this life is to kill Americans and install totalitarian Muslim law around the globe.

Where does the media get the idea that most Americans want troop withdrawal? They take polls showing that most people think we are going in the wrong direction in Iraq. They take polls showing that America is fatigued by the war and want something to change. They take polls on President Bush’s war performance, the budget for the war, the casualties in the war and every other aspect they can possibly paint as a negative against the war. They see that as a positive for the social justice fools and a way to defeat the conservatives at the ballot box, but they are wrong.

The question of whether people agree with how the war is being handled is only part of the picture. The question they don’t ask is the clue to how the average American really thinks about the War and also a tell-tail sign about the media’s agenda against the War on Terror. I would bet my whole year’s wages on the outcome of a poll which asked this simple question: “Do you think that President Bush should use all necessary means to stop the insurgency in Iraq as fast as possible?” To any normal person the obvious answer would be a resounding yes. In fact, I would be willing to go double or nothing that the person asking the question will get many very good suggestions as to how to accomplish that which would make the little effeminates in the media run for cover. That of course is the very reason why the results of that poll would never be published. Americans are angry with the timidity displayed by the Bush administration and the Pentagon in how they are handling this war. I mean really, “Shock and Awe?” How about droop and yawn? With the amount and kind of force we have at our fingertips the fact that we are unwilling to use it even to save our own boys on the battlefield is really very telling. What shocks and awes me is was not the show of force we displayed when we invaded Iraq, because realistically that wasn’t really necessary. A few well-aimed Inter-Continental Ballistic Nuclear Missiles would have done nicely without having to commit a single man to more than pushing a few buttons.

The shock comes from how we are treating our enemies versus how we are treating our own soldiers. Anyone remember Abu-Ghraib? The prison guards stripped a few prisoners and made them form a human pyramid then took pictures while the prisoners were blindfolded. The result was a resounding uproar from the relativists and the talking-heads. The so-called prisoner abuse was what most people in America would recognize as a harmless college fraternity prank. No one was shot, no one was even hurt. Humiliated? Yes, but nothing worse than what our soldiers endure in boot camp in the hands of their drill-sergeant. But the heads had to roll, because the talking-heads were. Everyone I talked to during that episode was perplexed as to why that even was an issue. They agreed that deliberate humiliation of prisoners needed to be discouraged, however it wasn’t worth jail time or a court-martialing of the soldiers involved.

I am awed by the idiocy displayed by our military commanders in taking the enemies words on the conduct of our soldiers above their own and the lack of any evidence proving guilt, resulting in the shackling and charges of murder being now leveled against 7 Marines and one young man in the Navy for the killing of one Iraqi. The family of the dead Iraqi claims he was just minding his own business and that the troops stormed the house for no reason, shot him, then proceeded to make it look like he was an insurgent by placing a gun and a shovel by his side. Our troops say that they were making a routine sweep of the area because an IED had gone off in the column they were in and their job is to hunt down the people responsible in a quick response before the people involved have a chance to get far. They go into buildings with guns firing, not because they thirst for blood but because they are taught to do it that way for their own safety. And yet when one Iraqi is killed they are charged with murder? How does this make any sense? It just doesn’t.

This isn’t your grandpa’s country anymore. We have been feminized, sensitized and the cahoney’s this country displayed in centuries past were sold by the Clinton Administration - probably for a sexual favor. The questions the media asks the generals are proof enough. The assumptions attached to those questions are insidious and insulting but they fit in a greater context that can easily be seen if we take a step back and look at the process of change this country has had forced upon it in the last couple of decades alone.

Total immorality blatantly displayed and defended in the public square is the norm today. Gay marriage, gay pride, abortion on demand, condoms handed out to under-age students in high schools across the nation. Thousands march in the street supporting the undermining of the laws in our country by excusing illegal immigrants no matter how egregious their trespass. There is one factor that all of these issues have in common though: they are illegitimate in the eyes of the average American citizen.

The American people have not come out by the hundreds of thousands demanding gay marriage, or even abortion on demand. 75% of the people or more are against every one of these issues, but if you listen to the media it is the exact opposite ratio. To them it is only the small minority who are the “extremists” and the “bigots” that would actually deny two gay men the ability to destroy their own lives in peace and give them responsibility for an innocent baby’s upbringing – oh and incidentally that probably means they are also gay but unwilling to admit it.

Where is my proof? How about measure 36 here in Oregon in the last election? It was against gay marriage and it passed by more than 60 percent in one of the most liberal states in the nation. Similar bills were proposed in ten other states that same November and all of them passed. 75% of American citizens are against legalization of the millions of illegal aliens who have smuggled themselves into the country. No amnesty plan is acceptable to the vast majority; however the media focuses on the suffering of the Mexican nationals in the Arizona desert and inflates the rallies that took place in favor of amnesty while downplaying the significant role that communist organizations played in the orchestration of those rallies.

Planned Parenthood won’t admit it, but all over the U.S. the tide is turning against them. Abortion is less and less popular by the hour and the voters have proven that this is a losing issue by electing Bush over the pro-abortion Senator Kerry as well as all the other factors, but the media won’t report it as such and amidst all of the reasons why there is one that flows through every issue subtly but certainly a large factor.

The feminist movement in the U.S. which in its modern incarnation has destabilized the family and dehumanized masculinity has literally crushed the idea of what it is to be a man and given only one alternative: be a woman. You can see it in the TV shows, the relentless portrayal of men as idiots in commercials, you can see it in the news, you can look around society and know it deep within you as a man because we all know we are not allowed to be who we were meant to be. We are told to behave, be nice, be oriented around feelings but never be ourselves. Thus a generation of men have grown up and become leaders of our higher education, or news organizations and our politics thinking that their instincts of justice and punishment for wrong are unnatural.

Men were created to build, destroy, work hard and gain satisfaction by our efforts and the tasks that we have accomplished in life. That includes the natural instinct to defend our family and our homes which naturally extends itself to our nation. Women were created to nurture and to find meaning in relationships. They know this by instinct to be protective and gentle and this is good. But it is not good when socialists and morons chant incessantly that men are supposed to do the same thing and anyone who has the gall to solve a problem like John Wayne would, or even Clint Eastwood is thought of as not macho but unstable and even a menace to society.

Thus the pansies have the upper-hand, even if it is limp. To combat violent murderers they propose confiscation of your ability to defend yourself. To stop intolerance silence anyone who disagrees with them. And they always fight for causes that make them feel good about themselves whether or not they will help anyone in the long run.

The Miss-information that has taken over the media and our system of higher education will, unless it is stopped, be seen in the future as the downfall of the West and of the greatest power for good this world has ever seen, America. Our enemies don’t have our media’s preoccupation with gentleness and self-loathing. And if our media is allowed to continue degrading our sense of justice and our sense of pride in being Americans they and we will all soon be speaking Arabic.

The way everyone in the media keeps saying that we’re a democracy and President Bush repeats the line that we’re spreading democracy to other nations, you’d think it was some sort of religious epiphany they all had been coming to. Most people think that the U.S. is a democracy, and currently they would be mostly right, however the misconception is that we were always a democracy since our founding.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would sooner have let King George reign supreme and have all the taxes he could get than have created a democracy. That might be a strong statement, but largely I am sure it can be proved because many of the checks and balances they built into the government at its founding are totally opposed to how a democratic government is run, or at least how ours is presently configured. The first ingredient is defining what a democracy is verses what a republic is.

Examples of a working democracy seemingly are all around us, even if they don’t last that long. Classically democracy was defined by the founders as, “Mob Rule.” The basic philosophy of a democracy is to give equal representation to all people by their government no matter how educated, experienced or relevant their opinion on any particular matter might be. The major problem with this which was foreseen by the founders and was the reason they detested the idea of creating a democracy in the first place is that when everyone has an equal say by virtue of their vote then the tendency becomes to create voting blocks which are opposed to each others interests. Some may be better organized than another with an equally valid point and so their issues might be dealt with while others who are either less organized or perhaps unpopular at the moment are ignored or even maligned. Politicians could use the emotional bickering of different people groups to gain favor and also pay off the voters with benefits that are unethically taken from another group with less power. As you can see because of nature of the beast called democracy discrimination is practically built in and there is no cure.

Beyond the potential problems there is more evidence that the founders didn’t intend for us to be a democracy. In the beginning of our republic not everyone was allowed to vote, but the exclusions weren’t only women and minorities. Originally only those who owned land or a business were allowed to vote. There were specific and good reasons for this. Those who owned property were the educated that also paid the bulk of the taxes. They were the ones with means who were able to do most of the purchasing and producing of goods and since most taxes were based on consumption of goods they were the ones most affected by any change in the tax laws. It makes sense then to have the property and business owners be the ones who regulated how much the government was allowed to dole out by virtue of their ability to determine the outcome of elections.

When you throw in the votes of those who don’t directly benefit from the government’s programs it dilutes the regulatory influence on the government’s ability to confiscate your property, because the politicians can now bribe the other voters who will not immediately suffer by the businessman’s losses with benefits they ethically are not entitled to at the expense of those who are the creators of the wealth in the country.

This is why the founders referred to democratic forms of government as “Mob Rule.” The desire of the majority of people, whether their demands are legitimate or not, override the actual needs of the community by virtue of their numbers. Any perceived benefit that the majority can take from the minority – the business and property owners – will be dangled by the politicians in order to gain favor from the majority and thus stay in office. Once you start down this path however, the government at one point or another will either bankrupt itself or the society will fissure into competing interest groups that effectively destroy the nation’s sense of identity from within. Both are currently happening to the U.S. This is why no democracy in the history of the planet has ever lasted. No matter how altruistic the intentions of the founders of a democracy, the simple rules of human nature will dictate that it will always crumble, usually from within long before any outside force is able to conquer it. Rome is the ultimate example.

Democracy’s current incarnation in the U.S. isn’t quite 100% a democracy yet. For all intents and purposes however, the difference is benign. The only real vestige of our once great republic that hasn’t been totally ignored is the Electoral College. Some would disagree and say the Constitution still is the supreme law of the land. For those who labor under this delusion I’d like to ask them to show me just one piece of the Constitution that hasn’t been twisted and misused in order to increase the government’s authority over the lives of those it governs.

But as I was saying, in recent years the Electoral College has come up as a contentious issue – for democrat party at least – and the reason behind that is because the Electoral College is a body of representatives of the political parties that vote in proxy for the people in the final vote that actually elects the President. Electoral College representatives who are appointed by the party of the candidate that won their state’s votes are not legally bound to vote as the people who they represent voted. They can change their vote, but only once in the history of the Electoral College has anyone done this. The reason this check in the people’s power to directly elect their president was put into the Constitution is the same theme the democrat party has been yelling about in every election they lose – election fraud, and the founders were of the mind that the general population had no business electing the president. Only those that really care about the country enough to be involved politically on a scale that would gain them recognition and admiration within their own party would have the right to elect the leader of the country – for a good reason: they know the issues, the background, the contributing factors and largely they are not influenced by false reports and propaganda as those in the general public are, because they are usually the ones who were there at the actual events those propagandists are trying to distort.

First hand knowledge of the political process and the reasons behind what is going on. First hand knowledge of the leaders of the parties and the ones who will actually be voted on. First hand experience working with those in the party who have been activists for change and have supported the men being voted on. And with this first hand knowledge, comes the ability to see facts amidst the rumors, half-truths and lies being told by either side. After all, have you ever met the President? Have you ever sat down with him in some strategy meeting five years before he announced his candidacy and heard him complain about even the mundane things in life? Can you tell where his heart is at when you watch his polished speeches on the evening news? No, of course we have not. We can only guess, but there are those behind the scenes who know and have the ability to change his mind by their proximity to him. Shouldn’t these people who represent the issues the party says it believes in have the ability to say, “Yes, I’ve seen him at his worst and best and know him to be an honest man who will be able to make a positive difference for the country.”

These people who make up the Electoral College are given the chance to influence the process of the election of the President because they know him, they have worked with him and they have seen the sides that have been either exaggerated or belittled. They know the truth of the matter and bring us that are on the outside closer by virtue of their ability to change the outcome of the election. If they are honest and did change their vote based on the conviction of their conscience, we would know that the man they know is not the same man we thought he was. We will have insight that wasn’t available to us without their integrity.

If we take the Electoral College out of the picture, not only will we have thrown away the last vestige of our republic, we will also have totally separated ourselves as individuals in those parties from the President we elect in an effort to bring him closer. How ironic.

A republic is based on the idea that those that work hard and produce something for themselves and the others around them will have a voice in the government for the purpose of keeping the government from taking away their ability to produce – namely their property. When our republic was founded, the intention wasn’t to give voice to everyone regardless of who they were, it was to ensure freedom for everyone regardless of who they were. There is a big distinction in this difference. As an American our Constitution – if it was followed – would ensure your freedom to buy from anyone, speak to anyone, do with your own property as you saw fit and as long as you didn’t infringe on other’s rights to do the same you were fine. Those that used this freedom to gain property and to produce things that others wanted to buy were given a voice in the government because no one is free if they aren’t allowed to govern their own property.

At the beginning of our Republic, the public did not elect the Senators in the U.S. Congress, the state legislatures did. This gave the states a voice and allowed them to have the ability to regulate how much power the federal government had over the states. The sovereignty of the individual states was a very important issue to the colonists, because they did not want anything to do with having a centralized government that would act like a monarchy – totally detached from the people’s will and too far away from most of them to do anything about it. By the same token, the U.S. Supreme Court justices were selected by the president and approved by the Senate, but no direct input is given by the public. The reasons for this way of thinking comes from the idea that even though men are created equally, they do not all end up that way. Yes all men have the same rights, however not all exercise the best judgment and therefore some are better suited to lead. What one man prizes may be totally against the societies values at large and so giving everyone the right to decide who is in the government is really counter-productive to proper governance. It was very logical to the founders that those who demonstrated responsibility through hard work and the ability to manage such things as business and property had learned what was necessary to be a part of the governing process. In this way, I think that the republican form of government is a much higher form than what we are now experiencing.

Let me also include one other piece: I do not own property, and I do not own a business. In the old system I would have no right to vote. However, I would have a greater desire to contribute and to work hard so that I could vote and contribute to the governance of the society I was a part of. If the U.S. was to ever have the political will again to discipline itself and go back to being a republic, this one adjustment alone would radically change our society for the better.

In the first column in this series I talked about the tendency of good people to be complacent and preoccupied in their everyday lives which results in a vacuum of influence for our society and how destructive it really is. The results of this is that pretty much every major moral taboo that was considered anathema at the beginning of the 20th century is now celebrated openly in our culture. The major reason of course is the coercion that has taken place by the social "moderates" and liberals that have basically pointed their finger every time someone opens their mouth in objection to their low standards and cries, "Jesus said not to judge!" among other hollow arguments. And the good people have largely retreated, to their homes and their families and their television sets where the barrage of lewd and downright disgusting behavior being transmitted into our homes has been desensitizing our children and us to Hollywood's brand of moral relativism.

The cure is a total change of world view. No really! I know, it has all been tried before many times. Countless people of conscience have warned, begged and screamed from pulpits, stages and roof-tops that we need to wake up to reality and do something about it. But none of the ranting will do much good unless a few things are explained as to why it is we are where we are in the first place. So let us take a trip back to the heady days just before WWI.

It is 1913 in Washington D.C. The large banks of New York have pressured the Congress into producing the Federal Reserve Act which had to be passed in a night session during a holiday to actually have enough votes. The argument was that we needed a more stable banking system. The fact is the Federal Reserve Act took the authority granted to the Congress by the Constitution to regulate the nation's money supply away and gave it to a private corporation that is not run by the government at all. This was absolutely unconstitutional, nonetheless the Federal Reserve Act was passed and is considered the law of the land today. Fast forward 16 years to 1929. The Federal Reserve shorted the supply of money to the nation's economy and the Great Depression ensued. The Depression was needed by the Fed to destroy any lingering independent banks in the country that had refused to be bought out by the member banks so as to consolidate power.

Up until the time of the Great Depression our society had no Social Security system in place. There was no welfare provided by the government. It was the churches and the various charities in the cities and towns that provided for those who were needy and unable to provide for themselves. The Christian churches of this country did the lion-share of the rehabilitative work. But as the monetary system was pulled out from under us the ratio of people who had money to give to others was drastically reduced and the churches were helpless against the massive increase of poor and needy families. Before the Great Depression it was a moral obligation to give to and look out for your neighbor. People were more conscientious towards each other and when aid was given the recipient was obligated to know the giver or at least the giver's general world view by which organization or congregation they received the assistance from. Thus values were communicated from one individual to another. Very little of the money that was given by one individual didn't reach the hands of the one whom was seeking it and if the organization was inefficient it was easy enough for the donors to take their donations elsewhere.

The Great Depression and FDR's "New Deal" - from here on referred to as the Raw Deal - took the responsibility and the capability of caring for the poor and needy out of the hands of the churches and gave it to a monopoly whose methods of doling out the cash they received is both inefficient and amoral by nature.

Since the US Court system has ruled that the First Amendment of the Constitution includes the infamous "separation of church and state" clause, the government and all its representatives - regardless of personal moral convictions - must be totally indiscriminate in how it disperses the money to individuals when considering matters of morals such as alcoholism, smoking or having children out of wedlock. Not only can they not discriminate in who they give the money to on this and other basis but they also cannot require behavioral changes based in moral judgments in order to receive the benefit the person is seeking. These are the major inequities when comparing a private charity to the Government's programs assuming they are both wasting the same percentage of every dollar they receive. Lets do that for now, because an entire study of the statistics on how much money the country would save if we privatized all of the social programs the Federal Government now runs would take up a vast amount of space that I'd rather not fill right now.

The purpose of this article is to expose to the reader the definite inability of the government to pass values from one individual to another. It is of paramount importance that you understand the absolute ineptitude of a bureaucratic system to improve the lives of its beneficiaries and correct the behavioral traits that got them in the situation of needing assistance to begin with. The government can not and will not tell the person who takes your dollars that it was given by someone who wishes they know the love of God, or who would love to see them become active members of society again and is there to encourage them in their time of need. The government cannot fulfill your God-given responsibility to the people around you. The government has instead alienated you from those around you and from those who could benefit from your influence in their lives.

The crux of the argument is that as Christians - if you count yourself as one - it is inevitable that when you examine what you believe verses what the government says you believe by where it puts your money, you will be convinced of the fact that not only are your values and wishes concerning your money not being considered or implemented, but values totally contrary to the yours are being espoused. As a result, your money is serving to destroy the foundations of our society and your ability to fulfill your calling by God: to preach the gospel.

The old proverb has really been proven over the years hasn’t it? Good men have worked at their jobs and their retirement. Good women raise their kids and work or stay at home. We all have extraordinarily busy lives, and yet what do we actually accomplish with them? We become followers of our favorite TV shows, we read the new novel, or go see the latest action adventure flick. We abandon our kids to the television set and the video games while their teachers are busy teaching them to ignore us and everything we believe in. We strive for the newest car, that elusive title or a bigger house. We spend hours browsing the internet, emailing our friends or just waste time. Some of us are even awake enough to notice all the evil taking place around us, but we’re too busy with our unstructured lives and all of our vague interests that we don’t take time to do the things which are really going to make a difference.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to continue to be caught up in acquiring that new plasma TV, a better computer, daytime television, the latest and greatest in make up or whatever you’re needlessly caught up in, etc, etc, etc.

The big lie that the “good” people have thoroughly swallowed is multi-faceted. Success is defined as having that fat 401K and the house on the hill with the obligatory sports car in the driveway. Being a good citizen is paying your taxes, living and letting others live however and whatever they want to. Volunteerism seems to be on the rise but even it is for causes that present short-term fixes to long-term problems such as AIDS and welfare dependency.

We have bought into the idea that politics and religion are not good topics for mixed company, when in reality the government’s power to take your freedoms and all the things you’ve worked hard for is the most essential topic we could talk about and is second only to the other societal taboo of religion. Christians too have for the most part adopted the societal norms in these areas, even when a century ago the Christian who didn’t talk about these things was considered the abnormal one.

The complacency of the good men and women of this country is a disease which has spread and is consuming the hearts and minds of those around them. It has even gone so far as to deaden the hearts and minds of those who once would have stood up and attempted to do something about it. The disease is a permeating anti-intellectualism in the Christian church and the general population at large. If you want proof of what I am saying look at the contrast between how easy it is to get people to vote for their favorite American Idol candidate verses how many turn up for electing those who have the power to change the laws that govern their everyday lives. Another suitable illustration is the pervasiveness of multiculturalism and political correctness in our society. Things that would have been unthinkable a couple of decades ago are now being propelled to the forefront of society, such as gay marriage. Then there is the recent phenomena of teenagers having more metal in their faces than a 71 Lincoln Continental – don’t get me started on self-mutilation.

The point is that all of this is happening because of the lackadaisical attitude of the men and women of this country who instead of voicing their concerns and being outraged that our culture is in a shambles just decide to look the other way. They’ll complain about it with like-minded people, but they won’t stand up and be counted in society at large. Votes go a long way to help – if the politicians are accountable and have integrity. But actually taking the time to change someone else’s mind about the ‘conventional wisdom’ they have bought into, at the risk of being called a nasty and meaningless name is what really changes society. I can’t think of one time in history where a people stuck to themselves and petitioned the government for change that was successful. Successful changes in the government and even just the attitude of the general population was always started with basic communication of values between citizens coupled with action.

If we as good men and women and as Christians have any hope for this country getting to be a place where we even would like to bring children into we need to take action now and not just in our groups of friends or our churches. Wasting time on the newest TV show, or to earn our way to the good life is time that the proponents of evil won’t give us back. If we want to wake up ten years from now knowing our country is still free for anything but the basest and most disgraceful we’d better take the threat seriously and take action now.