Civics Lesson

 

Government MUST Obey the Constitution

None of our problems are beyond our constitutional order’s power to solve. What is it we need, after all? We need a Congress that acts like a legislature rather than a company of moralizing performance artists. We need a president who acts like a responsible chief executive rather than a drunken king. We need a judiciary that acts impartially in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the land rather than in a partisan manner. And we need to disperse the political power that is now concentrated in the hands of the Washington establishment.

In short, the solution to our problems is not to scrap or transcend the Constitution, but to start obeying and applying it again. Under that document, “We the People” already possess every power we need to reestablish majority rule, minority rights, democratic accountability, equal justice under law, and national sovereignty.

Kevin D. Roberts, Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order, Imprimis, October 2024

We Need to Overrule the LEFT

With few exceptions, the Left as we know it today has rejected populism out of hand, embracing instead Big Government, Big Business, Big Banks, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Labor, Big Ag, Big Media, and Big Entertainment. For the most part, today’s Left is hard at work fortifying the power these institutions wield against the rigors of democratic accountability.

Thus the only hope for a sustainable, democratically legitimate populist reform movement today is on the Right. The question is whether the leaders of the movement can harness the highly negative energy from which the populism emerges and channel it toward a coherent, positive politics of national renewal and reform.

Kevin D. Roberts, Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order, Imprimis, October 2024

A Prodigal Son

When a prodigal son wants to follow his appetites, or the latest fashion in idols, he tells himself that he has made a careful evaluation of everything when he is in reality just going along with the crowd. At such time, the last thing he wants to listen to is wise counsel.

Phillip E. Johnson, The Wedge of Truth

The Only Foundation

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

John Adams, 21 June 1776

Society Shifting to a Dangerous Worldview

The view that treats puberty and pregnancy as undesirable processes stems from a more fundamental shift in thinking. Society has slowly abandoned the Christian worldview and its theistic implications. If there’s no God, then there’s no Creator who made our bodies to operate in a certain way. Organs don’t have a teleology—a way that they’re designed to function. If there’s no design, no standard, or no optimal way for organs to operate, then there can be no substandard or less-than-optimal way they function. A uterus can gestate a fetus or not. It can grow fibroids or not. It can be kept in a woman’s body or removed. Likewise, it is reasoned, genes and the endocrine system can progress a body through puberty or not. We can accept the process of puberty or block the hormonal pathways that lead to it. There’s no way our body is supposed to be. It just is, and we can do what we want with it.

As a result of this worldview shift in our culture, some people think it’s possible that any process of the body is optional. That’s why they think puberty might need consent. Indeed, even life itself is a matter of consent for some, which is why physician-assisted suicide is gaining in popularity.

Alan Shlemon, Do Children Need to Consent to Puberty?

You Don't Have to Defend Truth

Truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 to AD 430)

Origin Ideas Steer Values

A culture’s understanding of the origins issue steers the value of its people: The Judeo-Christian origins perspective tells the story of morally culpable human beings made in God’s image and for companionship with one another. This understanding alone leads to a particular view of free will, the intrinsic value of human life, and traditional marriage as a part of God’s plan. The Darwinian origins story, on the other hand, is one of individuals in constant competition, seeking not to flourish in harmony but to survive at the expense of the other, which justifies Nietzsche’s view of the world—the pursuit of unbridled power. Where you begin will determine where you end up, and this carries great consequences for everything in our lives, especially how human society should be organized.

Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg. 256.

LEFTISM Doesn't Work

 

A Warning to Heed

Ethics of Marxism

The value of hatred is right and good in the Marxist ethical code as long as it is directed toward the property owners, the bourgeoisie. Hatred is needed to fuel the clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. To keep their followers in a perpetual revolutionary mind-set, Marxist leaders, such as Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong Eun, decades after their respective revolutions wound down, dressed in military garb and peppered their speeches with revolutionary language. Marxism draws its inspiration from the hope of a more harmonious future but draws its energy from the rehearsal of grievances against the bourgeoisie.

Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg. 235-236.

Tolerance vs Intolerance?

Sometimes Christians are criticized as intolerant busybodies who make rules about other people’s business. However, intolerance works both ways. Those who become angry at restrictions on which gender of person they may marry are often delighted to support policies requiring employers to provide contraception and abortion services to their employees.

Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg.227