What Conservatism Must Conserve

As we stand on the verge of Democrats taking control of the federal government, and as emboldened liberals across media, politics, punditry, and the general population seek to silence and punish conservatives—even going so far as to draft legislation that would criminalize the political rallies of their opponents—it seems a good time to take a step back and remind everyone what exactly conservatism is trying to conserve. Or, for those who need a refresher, what conservatism should be conserving.

Conservatism must conserve the U.S. Constitution. The United States of America is not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. As the young United States was floundering under the weak Articles of Confederation, Founding Fathers such as Alexander Hamilton and Fisher Ames knew well that in order to “preserve the Union” and to protect liberty, a sound Constitution was required.

Among many other magnificent things, in order to provide for a unique “Union” of a variety of states, the U.S. Constitution represents a brilliant compromise between large states and small states on balanced representation in Congress and the manner in which the U.S. President is chosen. Among many other magnificent things, the Bill of Rights protects religion, speech, assembly, and the right to bear arms. The U.S. Constitution is the world’s most enduring charter of government. In 1878, William Gladstone rightly described our Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Conservatism must conserve law and order. “States are laboratories for democracy,” we are told. Of course, under federalism, this would be the case with local governments as well, especially large cities. The most repeated and verified political experiment in U.S. history is this: via liberalism, or leftism—whatever you want to call it—Democrats have turned American cities into some of the most dangerous, dirty, and lawless places in the world.

Under authoritarianism—the ultimate goal for American leftists—the regime is the law. For American colonists languishing under the British Monarchy, this would be translated as “the King is the law.” As Thomas Paine put it in Common Sense, “In America, the law is king.” And the “supreme Law of the Land” in America is the U.S. Constitution. If the law is ignored, if the Constitution is ignored, chaos reigns—borders are dangerously porous, the police are reviled, buildings are burned (without repercussions!), businesses are looted (without repercussions!), elections are corrupt, and so on.

Conservatism must conserve capitalism. The U.S. has long been the world’s leading economic power. Nothing contrived by man is more responsible for this than capitalism. Likewise, no other economic system the world over has done more to lift people out of poverty than capitalism. As history has clearly demonstrated, no economic system has proven better than the free-market economics touted by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.

Published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations would have an almost immediate impact on government financial policy worldwide and is considered by many to be the most important treatise on economics ever written. Smith’s seminal work was enthusiastically embraced by America’s Founding Fathers, and thus capitalism in America was born. Walmart, Ford, Exxon, IBM, CVS, AT&T, Kroger, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and the like all owe their existence to American capitalism. Not one of these companies would exist as they do today without hopeful investors seeking a profitable return—even Jeff Bezos went to such with his hat in his hand—and without customers operating in a free market.

Conservatism must conserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life. Again, marriage is the oldest institution in the history of humanity—older than God's covenant with the nation of Israel, older than The Law, older than the church. Marriage is one of the earliest truths revealed by God. If anything is true, marriage as the union of one man and one woman is true. On this, there can never be compromise.

Married mothers and fathers are the foundation of every sound society the world has ever known. No law written by human beings should ever subvert this ancient and foundational institution. President Ronald Reagan summed it up well when he noted, “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society…in the family we learn our first lessons of God and man, love and discipline, rights and responsibilities…the strength of our families is vital to the strength of our nation.”

Conservatism must conserve life. From America’s beginning, it was clear that the “right to life” was considered “unalienable” by America’s Founders. In other words, this right is conferred upon us by our Creator, and any effort to take this away—no matter the stage of life—is a struggle against the One who made us all and His eternal Law.

The plight of the unborn is the greatest civil rights battle of all time. Any person who refuses to protect the most innocent and helpless among us should never be placed in a position of power in any nation, but this should especially be the case in the United States of America.

Above all, conservatism must conserve that we are “one nation under God.” Conservatism must conserve the idea that there is a God who created all things, who is the Author of all life, who is the Lawgiver, the ultimate Arbiter for what is moral, the final Judge, the Savior of all humanity, and the One to whom we owe our ultimate and final allegiance. Because all law is rooted in someone’s idea of what is moral, conservatives must reject the foolish notion that we should not “legislate morality.”

If conservatism seeks to conserve anything, it is those things that have been settled for all time. If conservatism seeks to conserve anything, it is the idea that there is an Author of truth and that the laws of mankind and all good government must be rooted in His Law. If we want our nation to endure as our Founders envisioned it, these things must be conserved.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2021, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith and Reason.
www.TrevorGrantThomas.com 
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@TrevorGrantThomas.com

If You Kill Capitalism, You Kill the Media

The economic destruction of our government-imposed, nationwide (for the most part) shutdown has been unprecedented, widely felt, and well documented. There’s no need to get into all of those details here, save one exception: newspapers. The UK’s The Guardian provides revealing details:

The devastating sweep of Covid-19 is the biggest story in a generation, and for most newspapers and news sites it has triggered record numbers of readers. Yet the virus, industry experts warn, will spell the end for “hundreds” of those organizations, laying off journalists and closing titles.

Media outlets across the US have already responded to a huge drop in advertising triggered by the economic shutdown by sacking scores of employees. Some newspapers, just as demand is at its highest, have stopped printing – reverting to a digital-only operation that is just as vulnerable to the whims of advertisers.

The decrease in advertising was swift, as businesses tightened spending due to the economic impact of Covid-19. For a journalism industry already barely scraping by, the impact was almost immediate.

The Guardian goes on to quote Penny Abernathy, “the Knight chair in journalism and digital media economics at the University of North Carolina.” Ms. Abernathy predicts that hundreds of U.S. newspapers and websites will close. She graphically describes it as, “An extinction-level event will probably hit the smaller ones really hard, as well as the ones that are part of the huge chains.” Hey media, are you ready to end the shutdown yet?

I was aware of what The Guardian was reporting, though not the scale, days prior to encountering the article referenced above. This is due to an email we received from our local newspaper last week. As most well know, for a couple of decades now, newspapers across America have been on the decline. Newspapers in Northeast Georgia have been no exception.

Since about half of newspaper revenue comes from advertising, the main reason local newspapers are suffering now like never before is because this shutdown has so devastated local businesses, many of whom currently have little to no reason to advertise. Our small local newspaper, The Gainesville Times, recently detailed their financial struggles in an email and in an online article.

Things have gotten so bad for our local paper that they are now asking for donations to support their journalistic efforts. In addition, they seem to be hoping for a federal bailout. Just a few days ago, after their request for donations, The Gainesville Times ran an article detailing how a letter to President Trump from members of Congress suggested “federal spending to go toward advertising that would benefit local media outlets.”

The article hopefully quotes the Congressional letter:

Local news and information on radio, television and newsprint is more in demand than ever, yet local media outlets are experiencing catastrophic losses in the advertising revenue that allows them to continue investing in providing that news to the public. This national emergency has caused a near halt to local business activity and in turn, the regular and vital advertising they purchase from local media. Without advertising revenue, local media outlets cannot survive.

I hate what this “national emergency”—or, more accurately, our government-inflicted economic destruction—is doing to all areas of our economy—including journalism. However, like virtually all of the mainstream media throughout America, I can recall nothing The Gainesville Times has done to at least give voice to those who believe it’s time to end this shutdown!

In addition to near-endless fearmongering over the Wuhan virus and downplaying any success in fighting it, the mainstream media has virtually ignored the widespread economic suffering that is the result of our government-imposed shutdown. Where are the stories on local businesses and employees suffering because of the shutdown? Where are the stories on those perhaps on the verge of losing their businesses? Where are the stories on families suffering because parents are unable to work? No doubt those stories exist.

To be fair, we do not take the print edition of any newspaper, so perhaps some of those stories are there. Even if that is the case, they have been far too rare. What’s more, in their latest editorial (Sunday, April 19), The Gainesville Times editorial board continued the fatalistic and foolish message that “We have to stay the course, stay home and stay smart if we are to stay healthy and stay alive.” Okay, but if that is the case, American capitalism will remain severely hamstrung, and the advertising revenue newspapers so depend upon will continue to dry up. In other words, a federal bailout can never replace capitalism.

As bad as The Gainesville Times has been on matters concerning our shutdown, Georgia’s largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC)—otherwise known as head of DNC print propaganda for the southeastern United States—has been worse.

Not even 24 hours after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced his first stage in the “reopening” of Georgia—because the models that Gov. Kemp had been relying on finally caught up with the real data—the AJC went on the attack. To begin their efforts at undermining the reopening of Georgia, the AJC ran an article that supposedly detailed how many of Kemp’s Wuhan virus task force “didn’t know about his order to reopen businesses.”

However, the article only mentions a handful of unhappy committee members (out of nearly 100), and how they were unaware of “some businesses” Kemp was allowing to reopen. Of course, that’s the real story here, isn’t it? Businesses all across America are being allowed to run because of a decision from a government executive. That should bother or scare nearly every right-thinking American, yet as our shutdown rolls on, the media merely yawns, implying “nothing to see here.”

And how many of those criticizing Kemp’s decision are sitting at home and doing without a significant portion of their income? It seems that the loudest critics of the “end the shutdown” movement—whether politicians, media, or others still working or getting paid—are not being hurt by the economic devastation sweeping the U.S.

After their task force article, the same day (4/21) the AJC ran an opinion piece, featured prominently on their website entitled, “When it comes to his pandemic decision, Brian Kemp is who he said he was.” The piece begins by labeling Operation Gridlock as a “Fox News-endorsed protest against shelter-in-place policies.” The column ignores the fact that the Operation Gridlock protests across the U.S. are the result of lives and businesses being destroyed because of these government-imposed shutdowns.

Later in the day, the AJC continued attacking Kemp with an article—not an “opinion” piece—whose headline declared, “As business restrictions ease, Georgians on their own to fight virus.” As I stated at the time, this headline was nothing but pure evil—a brazen propagandist lie! Before editing their online piece—almost certainly after they saw my comments on the article—the author implied that Kemp was telling Georgians that it was “safe” to go about their business.

Of course, Kemp wasn’t telling people that it was “safe” to do anything, and neither is he telling business owners that they must open or customers that they must patronize any business. He was merely allowing people—again, tragic that we’re in such a position at all—who want to get on with their lives to do so. And neither was he leaving anyone “on their own” in our fight against the Wuhan virus. I doubt the AJC author himself really believes that. That accusation was made merely to hurt Kemp politically and further the preferred politics of the liberal fools that dominate the AJC. For publishing such garbage, the AJC richly deserves every decrease in advertising revenue that they experience!

Instead of fostering seemingly endless fear and sheltering in place orders over the Wuhan virus, the American media could do much to help end our shutdown. However, because they have been so focused on hurting—and ultimately getting rid of—President Trump and his allies like Gov. Kemp, the shutdown messaging dominates the mainstream media. Thus businesses—small and large alike—across America continue to struggle, and advertising budgets continue to shrink. So another great lesson from the Wuhan shutdown is revealed: if you kill capitalism in America, the media dies with it (right ESPN?).

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Capitalism: A Great Weapon against the Wuhan Virus

As the Wuhan virus wreaks havoc across the world and here in the U.S., Americans would do well to remember one of the biggest reasons why we will most likely weather this storm better than any other nation. After our faith in the One who made us and in His great wisdom, mercy and love, perhaps the greatest weapon in the world against the Wuhan virus is American capitalism.

Whether or not you agree that the concern—or panic—over the Wuhan virus is real or manufactured, there is little doubt that we are in unprecedented times. In my 50 years of life, I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve seen our nation scared over health concerns, national security concerns, and the like, but never to the point of shutting down churches, schools, entertainment, businesses, and so on, on the scale that we are now witnessing.

There’s no doubt that such a shut-down will drastically impact our lives and our economy. In fact, as dire as the health consequences from the Wuhan virus might be, the economic consequences of this pandemic could be even worse. However, we will make it through this—even the vast majority who contract the virus will recover—and hopefully most of us will be no worse for the wear. If this is indeed the case, Americans will owe a great deal to American capitalism and the businesses and corporations that our economic system created.

Last week, while announcing a national emergency over the Wuhan virus, President Trump surrounded himself with the leaders of several U.S. corporations including Walmart, Target, and CVS. Part of the Trump administration’s goal in enlisting pharmacies and retailers is to provide Wuhan virus testing in “critical locations,” as determined by healthcare professionals.

Also, prior to announcing the national emergency, as reported by CNBC,

Trump hosted executives from Gilead Sciences, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Moderna, GlaxcoSmithKline, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi to discuss efforts to create a vaccine and therapeutics.

“Today, we are meeting with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies — the biggest in the world, most prestigious, the ones that get down to the bottom line very quickly,” Trump declared at the meeting’s onset.

In addition, prior to announcing the national emergency, in order to “help beat back falsehoods and use artificial intelligence to glean new insights into the fast-spreading virus,” the Trump administration met with technology giants Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, and the like. Fox Business reported that after meeting with “big tech,” the same day the Trump administration also met with big banks in order to “discuss not only combating coronavirus but likely also the extreme market swings that have dominated the past few weeks.”

Deborah Birx, Trump’s Wuhan virus coordinator, recently declared:

Seeing the spread of the virus around the globe, the president realized that our current approach to testing was inadequate to meet the needs of the American public. He asked for an entire overhaul of the testing approach. He immediately called the private sector laboratories to the White House, as noted, and charged them with developing a high-throughput quality platform that can meet the needs of the American public.

As vast numbers of Americans are now having to spend most of their time at home, online shopping and home deliveries of various products have skyrocketed. So much so that Amazon recently announced significant pay raises for hourly workers along with plans to hire 100,000 new workers. Thanks to the efforts of companies like Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Instacart, DoorDash, Netflix, Hulu, Home Depot, Best Buy, Macy’s, and so on, Americans can get everything from groceries to medicine, clothing, furniture, electronics, entertainment, ready-to-eat meals, and the like, delivered right to their front doors.

All of this is possible because of the vast internet network created and run by thousands of U.S. internet providers. America has more internet providers—about 7,000—than the rest of the world combined (approximately 5,000). What’s more, this network—along with large numbers of Americans owning or having access to a computer—has made it much easier to do home school.

Whether at the K-12 or college/university level, the numbers of Americans doing school from home continues to grow. Of course, with most traditional American schools now temporarily shut down, millions more American students are now getting to experience home school. This is only possible because of what U.S. technology companies have built and the services they provide.

As I note in The Miracle and Magnificence of America, technology companies are now the world’s most valuable corporations. The world’s top five most valuable technology companies—Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Facebook—are all American companies. Additionally, eight of the world’s top ten most valuable brands are American. Many of these have been and will continue to be very valuable in our fight against the Wuhan virus.

Many companies are smartly and quickly adjusting their products and services in order to better serve homebound Americans. Along with the technology that allows millions of Americans to work, shop, or do school from home, the food industry is stepping up as well. Restaurants are offering expanded, as well as better, take-out opportunities along with home meal deliveries. In order to help independently owned restaurants, Uber Eats is waiving delivery fees for such businesses. Moe’s, KFC, Chipotle, and others are offering some version of free delivery during this crisis.

Since our founding, millions of Americans have done foolish and awful things with their God-given freedoms. However, the liberty enjoyed in America has also produced the most prosperous and generous nation in the history of humanity. Millions of Americans have been lifted out of poverty and now enjoy a standard of living that is the envy of the world. This is because, the founders of America knew well that, since the creation of the world, the “natural” state of mankind has been “clearly seen.” As Scripture reveals at the Garden of Eden, Natural Law begat liberty. In other words, our natural state is to be free. We were created that way. With God’s laws as the foundation for our government, with God’s law written on the hearts of so many Americans, and with a thirst for liberty, a free-market capitalistic society was simply the logical and right direction for the United States of America.

It was wise for President Trump to enlist the resources, knowledge, and might of American corporations and businesses in our battle against the Wuhan virus. I hope he continues to rely on America’s free markets in this fight. In times like these, we should be especially thankful for all that American capitalism has made possible. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2020, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

The Roots of American Prosperity

(Another (unedited) excerpt from my forthcoming book.)

Ask most Americans what was the most important document produced in 1776 and almost no one would answer with Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (more commonly known as The Wealth of Nations). However, some would argue that Smith’s work had more of a global impact than even the Declaration of Independence.

The first edition of The Wealth of Nations sold out in six months. It would have an almost immediate impact on government financial policy, and is considered by many to be the most important treatise on economics ever written. Adam Smith is often called the “Founding Father” of capitalism.

American Founders soon recognized the importance of The Wealth of Nations when it came to economics and sound fiscal policy. Writing to John Norvell in 1807, Thomas Jefferson said that on “the subjects of money & commerce, Smith's Wealth of Nations is the best book to be read.” The Wealth of Nations is a collection of five books and is widely considered the world’s earliest, most comprehensive defense of a free-market economy.

Given the revival, and Revolution in America during the 18th century, and the given the amazing natural resources of America, the opportunity for incredible economic growth in the new United States was present from our founding. And as author W. Cleon Skousen put it in The 5,000 Year Leap, Smith’s doctrines of free-market economics “fit into the thinking and experiences of the Founders like a hand in a glove.”

As Skousen also points outs, the U.S. was the first nation on earth of any size or consequence “to undertake the structuring of a whole national economy on the basis of natural law and the free-market concept described by Adam Smith.”

Natural Law, or “[The] Law of Nature,” wrote English philosopher John Locke (who profoundly influenced our Founders), “stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must…be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e. to the will of God…”

“True law,” as Cicero called it, is the “one eternal and unchangeable law [that] will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law…”

Blackstone declared in his presuppositional basis for law that, “These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil…This law of nature dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this…”

C.S. Lewis concludes that, “Natural Law or Traditional Morality [whatever one chooses to call it]…is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.”

Throughout the early colonies, the incorporation of Natural (or “Divine”) Law was prevalent. As noted earlier, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (the first constitution written in America), as well as similar documents in Rhode Island and New Haven, specifically mentioned that their civil law rested upon “the rule of the word of God,” or “all those perfect and most absolute laws of His.”

References to, not vague religious babble, but specific biblical texts, such as the Ten Commandments, can be found in the civil law of every original U.S. Colony. It is a fact of history that throughout our pre-Colonial, Colonial, Revolutionary period and beyond, America’s lawmakers and laws were steeped in Natural Law.

When Jefferson wrote of the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” he was borrowing from Lord Bolingbroke, of whom Jefferson was a student. In a famous letter to Alexander Pope, Bolingbroke writes, “You will find that it is the modest, not the presumptuous enquirer, who makes a real, and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows nature, and nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works, and in his word.”

Thus we see that, belief and acceptance of Natural Law, as understood by America’s founders, is exactly in line with what Scripture reveals. As Paul writes in Romans, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse (Rom. 1:18-20).”

With God’s laws as the foundation for government, and with God’s law written on the hearts of so many Americans, and with a thirst for liberty, a free-market capitalistic society was simply the logical and right direction for the United States of America. In How Christianity Created Capitalism, philosopher Michael Novak writes, “It was the church more than any other agency, writes historian Randall Collins, that put in place what Weber called the preconditions of capitalism: the rule of law and a bureaucracy for resolving disputes rationally; a specialized and mobile labor force; the institutional permanence that allows for transgenerational investment and sustained intellectual and physical efforts, together with the accumulation of long-term capital; and a zest for discovery, enterprise, wealth creation, and new undertakings.”

In other words, America did not become, and for well over a century now, remain the most prosperous nation on earth merely by the blind forces of unfettered capitalism. The Christianity practiced by millions of Americans, and the Christian principles that formed the foundation of our laws and government produced a free, moral (but not perfect), and capitalistic society unlike anything the world has ever known. Thus, a prosperity like the world has never seen resulted.

Copyright 2015, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

When Will the Catholic Church Learn?

As a writer, little is more flattering than to have someone (especially another good writer) examine your work and say, “That’s exactly what I would have written.” Or even better, “I wish I had written that.”

Not that any professional writer would be very flattered to receive my praise (I mostly get paid to teach mathematics), but after all of the recent hoopla over the second major teaching document issued by Pope Francis (but the first written by him), Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), I sat down to pen my thoughts on the matter. Then I came across this piece by David Harsanyi of The Federalist. “No need for me to continue,” was my thought after reading his take on the Pope’s criticisms of modern capitalism.

Some of my favorite lines: “As fascinating as the context of [the] Pope’s message might be, there is—or seems to be—something new about this rhetoric. You could always detect a pinch of socialistic seasoning in the Church’s theological stew…In this case, the Pope didn’t simply point out that the wealthy weren’t doing enough to help alleviate poverty. He used the recognizable rhetoric of the Left to accuse free-market systems of generating and nurturing that poverty. And these platitudes—things that run wild in the liberal imagination like unfettered capitalism and ‘trickle-down’ economics—were clearly aimed at the United States.”

And: “[I]s it really true that ‘absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation’ are the driving reasons for poverty and inequality? People in places like Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Malawi, or Mozambique live under corrupt authoritarian regimes where crippling poverty has a thousand fathers — none of them named capitalism. The people of Togo do not suffer in destitution because of some derivative scheme on Wall Street or the fallout from a tech IPO.”

There are many other good points in Harsanyi’s piece (on trickle-down economic theory, federal economic regulation, abortion, and more), and a full read of the piece is well worth your time. There is one thing in particular that I would have added.

As a part of his solution for addressing the “economy of exclusion and inequality,” Pope Francis bemoans the rejection of “the right of states” to exercise properly “any form of control” over financial markets. While criticizing trickle-down economics, the Pope also expresses frustration in what he perceives as a “crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

The Pontiff later adds that, “A financial reform open to such ethical considerations would require a vigorous change of approach on the part of political leaders. I urge them to face this challenge with determi­nation and an eye to the future…” Besides the blatant falseness of “any form of control” in U.S. markets (As Harsanyi notes, “The Federal Registry of the United States regularly comes in over 60,000 pages.”), why does the Pope express such “crude and naïve trust” in our secular government to regulate properly U.S. markets? When will the Catholic Church learn its lesson? Big Government can never fix immorality.

Was Obamacare not lesson enough? The Catholic Church teaches that health care is “a basic human right,” and true to the Pope’s Big Government ideas on financial reform, has been very supportive of efforts in the U.S. to implement universal healthcare. Enter Obamacare. For months leading up to the final passage of Obamacare, Catholic Bishops lobbied heavily for its passage—minus federal funding of abortion. Once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to add the Stupak amendment to the House version of Obamacare, the Bishops were onboard.

Though the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed the version of Obamacare that passed (because of the removal of the Stupak amendment), they did not support GOP efforts to repeal it once republicans took control of congress. Also, some Catholic leaders supported Obamacare in spite of the lack of the Stupak amendment.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the Catholic Church was in an all out war with the Obama administration over contraception. Again, why the “crude and naïve trust”? Why does the Pope lament the lack of angels in the boardrooms of large corporations but ignore the demons patrolling the halls of Big Government?

In other words, as is typical with almost every elected liberal in the U.S. government, there was no reason to believe that Obama was going to be anything other than a radical liberal on social issues. The time for “war” with Obama was BEFORE he was elected leader of the free world. However, in partnering with democrats and liberals, it seems that many within the leadership of the Catholic Church have for far too long been willing to violate my proverb that, “It is no act of charity to be generous with someone else’s money.”

Or, as Paul Rahe put it in early 2012, the American Catholic Church decades ago “fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States—the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity—and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor.”

The contraception mandate is a classic example of “state paternalism.” It is exactly what one gets when the people surrender that kind of power to a secular government led by those determined to ignore God’s laws. If such liberals remain in power, the result will be no different when the issue comes to economics or marriage or any other matter precious to Christians and other like-minded Americans.

Left unfettered, the slow creep of liberalism knows no bounds. Elections have consequences. If the Catholic Church continues to preach a willingness to surrender more liberty in order to receive another entitlement, or to “spread the wealth around,” we will even further embolden those, who, while claiming to serve us, are seeking to become our masters.

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com