Why Doug Collins Needs to Win the Georgia Senate Race

As is well known, Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson resigned in December due to health issues. He never should have run for reelection in 2016, but that's another matter. He had three years left in his term, and Governor Brian Kemp solicited applications from Georgians to fill his seat for 2020. Kemp received over 500 applications, one of which was from Representative Doug Collins, of my congressional district—the Georgia 9th. Collins was President Trump’s choice to replace Isakson. The president reportedly asked Governor Kemp on several occasions to appoint Collins to the senate, but Kemp bucked the president and chose political outsider and multimillionaire businesswoman, Kelly Loeffler, co-owner of the WNBA team, the Atlanta Dream.

Loeffler will serve as senator during 2020, and then there will be a special election this November in which the voters will choose who will serve the last two years of Isakson’s term. Georgia has a strange way of electing replacements to Congress when there’s an opening mid-term. All of the qualifying candidates will be on the ballot in November—democrats, republicans, and independents—a “jungle” election. If no one receives a majority of the votes, the top two will face a runoff in December to decide the winner. Some of our state legislators attempted to pass legislation to enact a spring primary and avoid the “jungle” vote so that the parties could unite behind their one candidate, but Governor Kemp threatened to veto the measure. The change would likely have favored Collins instead of Kemp’s pick, Loeffler. As of today, there are five declared republicans in the race (Collins and Loeffler are the most notable) five democrats, and one independent.

I don’t always agree with Doug Collins’s voting record, and in fact, I helped to manage my uncle’s congressional campaign when he ran against Doug in the GOP primary in 2012 and 2016. However, one thing that I love about Doug is that he has been an absolute bulldog when it comes to supporting and defending President Trump during the impeachment nonsense. He seems to have Trump’s back wholeheartedly, and that goes a very long way in my book. Doug has an established record of protecting the unborn, defending our 2nd Amendment rights, and exposing the corruption that plagues those who are opposed to the truth. He is a proven commodity, he is honorable, and I believe we can trust him to stand on conservative principles as long as he serves in Congress.

From a peek into her past, it appears that Loeffler is no reliable conservative. She uses the correct talking points now, but what I’ve been reading lately from some trusted friends who know the politics of Georgia quite well is that she’s a “globalist,” along the lines of the George Bushes and Mitt Romney, or worse.

Reportedly, Governor Kemp’s motivation in appointing Loeffler was two-fold: 1. She can pour millions of her own dollars into her re-election campaign, and 2. He hopes she will attract women voters who have supposedly left the party and ensure that republicans keep the seat in November. Those seem like pretty shallow reasons to me. As a woman, I don’t trust Kelly Loeffler to be the true conservative that she needs to be, once the pressure is off and she is sitting comfortably in her senate seat.

I couldn’t care less whether my senator is male or female, so her gender holds no sway for me. What matters is whether he or she is principled, trustworthy, and has a proven history of supporting conservative values. I simply don’t see that in Loeffler, who cozies up to the likes of Democrat Stacey Abrams, donates thousands of dollars to democrats like Senators Chris Dodd, Debbie Stabenow, Tom Harkin, and so forth, organizes her team against Georgia’s religious freedom legislation, and supports Planned Parenthood with revenue from her team’s ticket sales. The WNBA is a terribly liberal organization, so it begs the question why and how someone with strong morals and conservative principles would co-own one of the teams. Loeffler simply doesn’t pass the smell test, in my humble view.

According to a statement from Concerned Women for America in late November, shortly before Governor Kemp announced that Loeffler would assume Isakson’s senate seat:

Governor Kemp needs to know Kelly Loeffler would be the wrong choice for conservatives in Georgia and supporters of President Trump on several fronts. She sits on the board of a hospital in Atlanta that employs five abortionists and actually runs the largest training program for abortionists in Georgia. She is also part owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream franchise. The WNBA has been an outspoken supporter of Planned Parenthood, even partnering with the pro-abortion organization in opposing President Trump’s pro-life policies. Likewise the WNBA has remained disturbingly silent about China’s persecution of the citizens of Hong Kong, even after an NBA general manager courageously spoke out about it. Ms. Loeffler also sits on the board of a psychiatric treatment facility that provides transgender affirming counsel to minors. Likewise she has given thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to liberal and pro-abortion candidates. There are better choices for Gov. Kemp when it comes to the next U.S. Senator from Georgia. Gov. Kemp has a list of fantastic pro-life candidates. We hope he doesn’t pick the one the pro-life community will have to oppose.

We can’t take chances with something as important as a U.S. Senate seat, and we certainly don’t need any more Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski-types there. This position is too important to the future of our nation. We need someone to represent Georgia who has proven that he or she will stand for life, biblical marriage, the family, the 2nd Amendment, border security, national sovereignty, religious liberty, and so on. Governor Brian Kemp disappointed much of his conservative base when he went against President Trump’s wishes and chose Kelly Loeffler for U.S. Senate, and we voters need to send a strong message in November that we won’t stand for playing patty cake with our senate seats.

What we absolutely need to avoid in November is splitting the republican base and ending up with a democrat senator from Georgia. Since this is a jungle vote and there is no primary to allow us to choose one candidate, conservatives need to unite behind the only reliable candidate in the race. Not only does Doug Collins need to win, but he needs a landslide of republican support. There needs to be a clear mandate from the conservative base that we want a proven, principled conservative. Doug Collins needs to defeat Kelly Loeffler so we can keep Georgia solidly, reliably red and maintain the republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Michelle Thomas is a Christ follower, wife to Trevor Thomas, and homeschooling mom of four. Her books include Lord, I Need You, Through Deep Waters, and Debt-Free Living in a Debt-Filled World. Her website is KingdomCrossing.com, and her email is michelle@kingdomcrossing.com.

Hollywood: Do You Know Why You’re in Georgia?

After Georgia lost out to Louisiana on the production of Ray (the film about Georgia native Ray Charles) in 2008, then Georgia governor—now U.S. Secretary of Agriculture—Sonny Perdue, a Republican, signed tax-incentive legislation that was intended to lure the film industry to Georgia. It worked, and in a big way. Georgia is now often referred to as “the Hollywood of the South.” However, the way things are trending in film production, California may soon seek to become “the Georgia of the West.”

Just a couple of weeks ago, a report by Atlanta’s NBC News affiliate “11-Alive” described Georgia as “the top filming location in the world.” In 2016 and 2017, Georgia led the U.S. in the number of top-grossing feature films produced. In that two-year period, Georgia produced 32 such films, while California was second with 22 top-grossing films. In 2016, Georgia led the world in the production of top-grossing films.

Additionally, in the last decade Georgia has seen a massive investment in film and television infrastructure. U.S. News reports that, “According to Adweek, 16 film and TV studios announced plans to locate or expand facilities in Georgia since 2010.” In 2014, Pinewood Studios Group built its massive Georgia campus. According to U.S. News,

After two expansions, the 700-acre site now houses 18 sound stages with nearly 1 million square feet of covered space. Outside of California, Pinewood Atlanta is the largest purpose-built studio complex in the country, meaning it was built specifically to fit the needs of the film industry.

A Time magazine piece last year reports on “How Georgia Became the Hollywood of the South.” The piece contains several photos of the booming film infrastructure present in Georgia. The piece also notes,

In 2007, the film industry spent $93 million on productions in Georgia. In 2016, it spent over $2 billion. In the past decade, the tax perk has attracted the Hunger Games franchise, the Fast and Furious movies and superproducer Tyler Perry, who has made the state his base. Television hits like Stranger Things, critical darlings like Atlanta and reality series like The Real Housewives of Atlanta have all set up shop in the capital, often for years at a time. Georgia’s government estimates that in 2016 alone, the film industry gave the state a $7 billion economic boost through job creation and tourism.

In other words, the film industry and the state of Georgia have a nice little thing going that seems to be extremely financially beneficial to both sides. However, it doesn’t seem widely understood among those in Hollywood why things in Georgia are so favorable for their industry. This especially seems to be the case with those who make their living in front of the cameras. For those of you who need reminding or are confused or ignorant about why the film industry likes Georgia, allow me to shed a bit of light on the matter.

For over a decade, the Republican Party has dominated Georgia’s politics. The GOP in Georgia has had a “political trifecta”—control of the office of the governor, the state House, and the state Senate—since 2005. Republicans have won every state-wide race since 2010. Notice how GOP control of Georgia politics coincides with the meteoric rise of the film industry in Georgia. It was a GOP Governor, House, and Senate in Georgia that gave Hollywood the favorable financial conditions it now enjoys, and it is Georgia republicans who keep such conditions in place.

The Georgia GOP has won elections, not just by promising to govern as economic conservatives, but because of their conservative positions on the moral issues as well—especially the issues of life in the womb and marriage. Recall that like dozens of other U.S. states, the Georgia electorate—the voters, not the politicians or courts, mind you—overwhelmingly chose to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Unsurprisingly, for well over a decade now, these same voters have decided that they want politicians who share their worldview on the moral issues.

In other words, if you want the benefits of financial conservatism, then you’re going to have to be at least content with conservative legislation on abortion and the like. The same political worldview that has created an economic climate that allows for the creation of thousands of jobs and billions in revenue in the film industry is the same political worldview that protects life in the womb, believes marriage is the union of one man and one woman, believes that boys don’t belong in girls’ locker rooms, and so on. These positions have proved quite politically popular in Georgia, and that is why the GOP is in power here.

Ignorant of such facts, for weeks now dozens of Hollywood actors and actresses have threatened the state of Georgia over a recently passed—but yet to be signed into law—pro-life “fetal heartbeat” law. A few days after the Georgia Senate passed the LIFE Act, Alyssa Milano—who thinks MAGA hats are “the new white hood”—penned a brief and angry op-ed for Deadline. A day after Milano’s op-ed, the Writers Guild of America also took their “brave” stand against defending the most helpless and innocent among us. As if we all didn’t already know, Hollywood again made it clear that their “right” to do whatever they wish in the sexual realm trumps almost everything else.

Filmmakers may well decide that instead of making movies and TV shows in Georgia, they would rather take a “principled” stand in favor of killing the unborn and take their business elsewhere. If they hope to find another state that will give them a similar sweet deal on taxes as has Georgia, almost certainly such a state will also be filled with conservatives and conservative politicians who share Georgia’s views on the unborn.

Along with believing in capitalism and the free market, conservatives all over the U.S. generally also believe in the right to life, marriage as the union of one man and one woman, that science determines sex, and so on. We conservatives—especially Christian conservatives—reject the immoral “theology of self” that so permeates Hollywood. We believe that there is a higher Law that all other law and good government must be rooted in and subject to.

Thankfully—unlike Georgia’s last republican governor—in Brian Kemp it seems we now have a governor who’s actually willing to govern according to conservative principles. Though, signing into law a bill that almost certainly will—at least temporarily—be blocked by the courts is not the bravest political act Governor Kemp could—or should—perform. There are other grave moral matters that deserve his, and the Georgia legislature’s, attention.

A strong religious liberty bill (succeeding where former Governor Deal failed), protecting female athletes and students from the transgender madness that is sweeping the nation—these also need sound conservative action in Georgia. Such legislation will be much more likely to withstand legal challenges. And make no mistake about it, as is the case with abortion, Hollywood perverts will howl about any legislation that doesn’t conform to their immoral worldview.

On abortion, Governor Kemp—along with all Georgia republicans—should call the bluff of the Hollywood elite. Let’s see if they really are willing to abandon the tens-of-millions in profits that Georgia’s conservative tax laws allow them, along with the multi-million dollar infrastructure investments already in place in Georgia. In other words, if Hollywood wants to continue to do business in Georgia, they can surrender to the will of Georgians when it comes to our laws. If not, then good riddance, and good luck finding a political climate that will give you what you want on the economic and the moral issues. 

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, 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

Harvey Weinstein Proves Why the Left Really Hates Trump

Chalk up the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal as one of the most unsurprising big media stories of the modern era. It’s like when a magazine run by liberals and devoted to promoting and encouraging the “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll” lifestyle flubs a story about campus rape. (And subsequently—and quite deservedly—gets sued into near oblivion.) In other words, almost no one should be surprised that a big-time Hollywood producer and film studio executive such as Harvey Weinstein is a sexual miscreant.

If you want to find a “rape culture,” look no further than Tinseltown. Hollywood is littered with men—and women—who are sexual predators and provocateurs ready and willing to take advantage of most anyone and/or any situation in order to satisfy their lust and/or greed. Again, it should come as little surprise that an industry built on the notion that “sex sells” is filled with people who act out that perverse proverb for their personal pleasure or personal profit. People who have no qualms about filling their movies and television shows with smut are also prone to filling their personal lives with smut.

I can think of no culture, no industry, no group of people less qualified to lecture anyone—especially the culture at large—about sexual immorality than the depraved, sex-crazed deviants that permeate Hollywood, U.S.A. The smug Jimmy Kimmel—whose early claim to fame was as the co-host of Comedy Central’s trashy The Man Show—should get nowhere near a compass of any sort, but especially a “moral compass.” Likewise, most every well-known Hollywood actor, actress, producer, director, et al, has played a role in corrupting the sexual mores of America.

Thus, when these “nasty” Hollywood harlots, gigolos, pimps, perverts, and like-minded stooges in the general public (thank God, an electoral minority—for now!) don their vagina hats and Antifa masks and start howling about the sexual misconduct of President Trump—or any other politician or pundit of whom they disapprove (read: Christian, conservative, or republican)—we know that it’s not really the sexual immorality that troubles them.

In spite of the claims of Hillary Clinton and her ilk, nothing President Trump has done in the sexual realm runs afoul of the sexual standards presented by Hollywood—which, of course, are the sexual standards of liberalism. It’s not what President Trump “has said about women”—like many of us, in his worst moments he sounds like one corrupted by liberalism—that sets liberal snowflakes to melting. Rather, it’s the threat that conservatism and Christianity present to their selfish, hedonistic lifestyles that really terrifies these Hollywood hypocrites.

Craving the power that big government affords them—and with little to no qualms about any perceived (or real) hypocrisy—these liberals take every opportunity presented them to go after republican politicians—especially the President. Joy Behar recently explained this quite well when discussing Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy. Murphy, from Pennsylvania and a member of the U.S. House Pro-Life Caucus, was caught encouraging his mistress to get an abortion. He is resigning next month, as well he should.

Addressing her aghast audience, Behar attempted to explain how democrats like herself don’t have a hypocrisy problem when complaining about the behavior of men like Tim Murphy. As she tellingly revealed, “the difference between me and the people who voted for [Murphy] is the Democrats are not the family of values…They’re not hypocrites — they’re just dogs. You see the difference?” Yeah, we got it. According to Behar’s liberal logic, it’s better to be a reliably immoral “dog” than a hypocrite.

Yet, whether in their TV monologues, protests, talk shows, political speeches, tweets, posts, and so on, as they attack President Trump and court the American electorate, liberals aren’t presenting themselves as “dogs.” Far from it. As they continue the Obama mission of remaking America into a nation our Founders would not recognize, the modern American left presents itself as wise, rational, reasonable, and compassionate. They brazenly tell us that they have the solutions we crave if only we would give them the power to act.

As long as President Trump acts on conservative—especially Christian conservative—principles, he is undermining the left’s agenda and reminds them that, at least to some extent, they are losing their grip on the American culture. Thus, he must be politically destroyed.

Andrew Breitbart often declared that politics is downstream from culture. If this is to be believed, then the last decade has seen the culture—at least the voting culture—slip from the hands of the modern left. In addition to the federal courts, the U.S. Presidency was the last firm grip liberals had on power in D.C., and until about 9 p.m. on November 8, 2016, they were quite sure they were going to control at least the executive branch of the U.S. government. When this was lost, an angry despair set in, one that has rarely let up since.

The more that Trump appoints sound conservative judges and officials, the more he works at repealing Obamacare and building a wall, the more tax money he keeps out of the hands of abortionists, the more religious liberty is restored—the more that the federal government operates according to the laws of the Law Giver, the more President Trump and his allies will be vilified and attacked.

(Read this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2017, 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

Should Cruz/Rubio Go Third Party? (Updated)

Many conservatives (and republicans alike) feared that a Trump candidacy for the GOP nomination for U.S. President would lead to a third party run. What was once feared may now give rise to hope. A third-party run may now be the best option for American conservatives. (I'm far from alone that this may be a real viable option for U.S. conservatives.)

With Trump looking more and more like the GOP nominee, and with Christian conservatives like myself aghast at the option of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for U.S. President, a Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio ticket sounds very appealing. It would not matter to me which one was at the top of the ticket.

A Cruz/Rubio ticket would have severe political ramifications. First of all, with Cruz/Rubio taking on both Trump and Clinton, we would likely see no candidate receive the necessary 270 electoral votes to become U.S. President. Thus, for the first time since the Presidential election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives would choose our President.

In 1824, despite finishing behind Andrew Jackson in both electoral votes and popular vote, John Quincy Adams became the sixth President of the United States. With the Democratic-Republican Party--then the only national political organization in the U.S.--unable to choose a single candidate, four separate candidates for U.S. President emerged.

With 131 electoral votes necessary to win, Jackson won 41% of the popular vote and 99 electoral votes. Adams won 31% of the popular vote and 84 electoral votes. Henry Clay from Kentucky won 13% of the popular vote and 37 electoral votes, and for William H. Crawford from Georgia it was 11% of the popular vote and 41 electoral votes.

Although it had no impact on the results of the election, this was the first U.S. Presidential election where the popular vote was counted. However, at this time, not every state selected their Presidential electors by popular vote. Some states still had their legislators choose their Presidential electors.

As one would expect (as most of us have witnessed in our time (Bush v. Gore)), Jackson and his supporters were very bitter at the outcome. The Jackson faction would become the Democrat Party. (Like Rush Limbaugh, I don't use the other moniker for the modern political party dominated by today's perverse liberalism.) The Adams/Clay faction would become the Whig Party. The Whig Party would fall apart over the issue of slavery and the anti-slavery Republican Party would rise in its place and become the chief opposition to the Democrat Party.

As slavery divided the U.S. in the 19th century, the modern moral issues facing America today have created a split in the U.S. unseen since the early to mid-1800s. Given the importance placed on today's moral issues--especially when it comes to issues important to the family, such as abortion and marriage--many Christian conservatives simply see no way they can support Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. (As I have pointed out, led by their liberal "values," I don't think either can be trusted on ANY issue.) This creates a very interesting opportunity for a Cruz/Rubio candidacy.

If there's a three-way race and the Republican controlled U.S. House must choose our President, I believe that Cruz/Rubio would be the choice. If this happens, several fascinating questions must be considered. First of all, what happens to the Republican Party? Also, would we see it replaced by a "Conservative Party?" Would we see the rise of other political parties?

Of course, this is all academic. Much is still to be decided. However, as we get closer and closer to actually choosing a GOP candidate, this scenario should be weighed.

Update:

Just a few minutes after posting my piece, I saw this by Rick Moran at PJ Media. He reports on a Politico piece that gives details of a memo prepared by a Florida research firm hired by big-money GOP donors. The memo reveals that significant factions within the GOP are looking to funding a run by a third-party candidate. No candidate is name, but it is clear that this scenario is gaining significant traction.

Copyright 2016, 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

Scalia's Death and Supreme Politics

The announcement of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death has sent shock waves across the political spectrum of the United States. Scalia was the leading conservative on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was an intellectual giant, and an unapologetic "originalist" when it came to the U.S. Constitution. He will be sorely missed.

Unsurprisingly, in today's hyper-political culture, the news of Scalia's death was soon overtaken by the political ramifications that loom as the result of his death. Leading Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have already stated that the Senate will wait until after the election before confirming Scalia's replacement. Of course, Democrats are clamoring (howling maybe?) for Obama to get his replacement approved. Obama is saying he will nominate a replacement for Scalia "in due time."

I have long noted that one of the most important things to consider when voting for president is the power of the U.S. President to appoint federal judges. The U.S. Supreme Court imposed legalized abortion on the whole of the United States. This infamous ruling has endured now for well over four decades. The Supreme Court let Obamacare stand. For the last two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has played no small role in forcing legitimization of homosexuality across the U.S. And of course, last year, the U.S. Supreme Court imposed a perverse re-definition of marriage on the whole of the United States.

It was not only judges appointed by liberal presidents who sided with those opposed to the Laws of the Law Giver. Republican nominees to the Court have failed us in this way as well. This is why, not simply a Republican, but a strong, principled constitutional conservative in the White House is of the utmost importance.

The Senate must stay strong in opposition to Obama and his liberal lackeys when it comes to Scalia's replacement. Conservatives--those in the Senate, those running for President, and pundits across the country--must make this an election issue. It is rare that the U.S. President's power to appoint judges is at the forefront of the issues before an electorate during a presidential election. We must take advantage and paint a clear picture for American voters of what's at stake.

Trevor Thomas

America Shouldn’t Gamble With Donald Trump

(See also: "God, Conservatism, and Donald Trump.")

As many of you probably well know, for over 17 years now, my wife Michelle and I have been on an unusual financial journey. (In case you haven’t heard, we’ve penned a book on the matter.) In short, about 17 years ago we committed to living our lives completely debt free. We built our home without a mortgage. We haven’t had a car loan in 16 years. Our four children attend a private Christian academy. All this, and we’ve never made more than $100,000 in any single year. We budget. We save. We invest. And we never gamble. Ever. We’ve never even purchased a lottery ticket. (Even when the payout is north of $1 billion.)

We consider ourselves financial disciples of the late-great Larry Burkett. The greatest lesson he taught us is the principle of stewardship. In fact, stewardship is the most important financial principle taught in Scripture. The Bible reveals that none of us really “owns” anything. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” We are merely stewards, or managers, of God’s property. Until we come to grips with this, we can never truly understand money and wealth.

If nothing else, gambling is poor stewardship. However, Larry had a lot more to say on the matter. Larry notes that, whatever the reason one gambles (an attempt to supplement or replace income, as entertainment, because of compulsion), all gamblers are guilty of the same thing: materialism. What’s more, gambling is “the ultimate in ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes since it fits all the criteria: Participants are encouraged to risk money they usually can't afford to lose; they know little or nothing about what they are doing; they're forced to make hasty decisions; and the idea operates on the ‘greater sucker’ theory. (That is, when you dump money into a slot machine, you believe there was a greater sucker who risked money and then quit just before the big jackpot.)”

On whether gambling is a sin, Larry writes, “In the strictest sense, gambling is a sin as much as false weights and measures. Enticing someone to gain money at the certain loss of another violates virtually every principle Christ taught. It not only breeds selfishness, greed and covetousness, but, in fact, promotes them: ‘For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things’ (Phil. 3:18,19).”

As we are now just days away from the beginning of the primary season, the practice of gambling has weighed on my mind more than usual. I’m no more tempted by it than usual, but the fact that one of the leading candidates for President of the United States has made a significant portion of his billion dollar fortune from casinos is indeed a troubling matter.

Donald Trump has been involved in multiple casino ventures in his lengthy financial career, and though he has made tens-of-millions of dollars from casinos, his investors have not been so lucky. In 1990 Trump opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City with typical Trump showmanship. (As the Boston Globe describes, “Trump strode onto a stage as ‘Eye of the Tiger’ blared on loudspeakers. He rubbed a giant replica of Aladdin’s lamp and a genie appeared on a large video screen, promising the young casino mogul, ‘Your dream is our command.’”) One year later the casino was $3 billion in debt and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Trump has had four bankruptcies related to his casinos.

On Trump, Phillip Sternberg, a former Trump investor who was part of a committee appointed by shareholders to negotiate with Trump during one of his bankruptcies, said “He’s the biggest [jerk] I’ve ever known…There’s nothing nice I can say about him. He hurt so many people. He bankrupted families that were two-and three-generation electricians, plumbers.” This is quite ironic for a man that many see as the hero for the American working class, and a savior of the U.S. economy.

Trump’s unscrupulous ties to casino gambling alone should be enough to give any conservative serious pause when considering him as a presidential candidate. However, there is also the matter of his three marriages, his adultery, his previous support for abortion (even partial-birth abortion), his glaring ignorance of basic Christian doctrines and practices, and so on. (Matt Walsh chronicles many of Trump’s moral shortcomings here.) In other words, for most of his life, Trump has lived out well his “New York values.”

Trump’s tough comments on immigration have perhaps drawn him the most enthusiastic support. However, tough talk (something at which Trump seems to excel) is cheap. How can we trust that he will do what he says? Even the shallowest of political observers knows well that Washington, D.C. is one of the most difficult places in the world to remain a principled person. The temptations for corruption are rampant. What is there in Trump’s life that tells us that once he gets to D.C. he will act according to conservative principles? Nearly nothing.

On gambling and the government, Larry Burkett wrote, “When governments resort to enticing citizens to gamble to raise funds, we know the state of our society.” What does it say about our society if we elect a casino mogul as President of the United States?

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

A Good Election Night for Conservatives

Whether gubernatorial races, or ballot measures on the moral issues, last night was a very good election night for conservatives across America.

In Kentucky, by a margin of 53-44, Republican Matt Bevin easily defeated his Democrat challenger, Attorney General Jack Conway. What makes this result most interesting is that most political experts had given the TEA Party favorite Bevin little chance of winning. Conway's Real Clear Politics ending poll advantage was +3, with no polls in Bevin's favor. As WSB's Jamie Dupree notes, all of the polling trends were in Conway's favor.

Dupree attributes Bevin's win to a recent ad that tied the Democrat Conway to President Obama:

Likewise, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post notes the same video, and says that Bevin, who "wasn't a very good candidate," (Cillizza's a liberal and a regular on MSNBC) has Barack Obama to thank for his win. An interesting side note to Bevin's big win: his running mate, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, Jenean Hampton (also a TEA Party favorite), is the first black elected to statewide office in Kentucky history.

With little real opposition, Mississippi's Republican Governor Phil Bryant easily won a second term.

In a stiff rebuke to Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe, Virginia Republicans held onto all of their state senate seats, and maintained their senate majority. The GOP dominates the Virginia House, and McAuliffe and the Democrats spent millions attempting to turn the senate.

By a nearly two-to-one margin (65-35), Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have legalized recreational marijuana. 

Similarly, in liberal Houston (they have a lesbian mayor), the electorate soundly rejected the foolishly misnamed "Equal Rights Ordinance." The ordinance, which was championed by Mayor Annise Parker--did I mention that she's a lesbian?--would have allowed people to use restrooms, showers and other public accommodations based on their "gender identity," and not their biological sex. In other words, people could've simply walked into any restroom or bathhouse they so desired.

The liberals on Houston's council had, by an 11-6 vote, passed the law in May of 2014. Through the efforts of conservatives, the Texas Supreme Court ordered the law repealed or placed on the ballot. If you recall, it was this perverse law which led to Mayor Parker attempting to subpoena sermons and the like by Houston area pastors who spoke out against the law and homosexuality in general. 

As I've said before, whatever the outcome of any election, Christians should never be too elated or too downtrodden. Politics is a realm occupied by men and women, who will almost certainly let us down. This is not to say that Christians should not be involved in, or concerned with, politics. We most certainly should. However, we must live knowing that our hope is not in any individual or institution in this world. As S.M. Lockridge put it when it comes to the One Christians serve, "You can't impeach Him, and He's not going to resign." 

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

If You're a Social Liberal, You're a Liberal

As liberalism continues to promote bondage of one form or another—financial, sexual, and so on—and as liberals continue to wage war on the truth to the point that a seemingly never-ending number of Americans are living in a world where children in the womb aren't really human, where humans with a penis and the Y-chromosome aren't really men, where white is black, where the criminals are the good guys and the police the bad guys, where marriage is not the union of one man and one woman, where student loans don't have to be repaid, and where blizzards are evidence for global warming, it is becoming more important than ever that conservatives be able to distinguish themselves clearly from such nonsense.

Sadly, the lure of liberalism has proven too much for some otherwise well-meaning Americans, and what it means to be a conservative has become far too ambiguous. This is especially the case when it comes to the “social issues.” In spite of much evidence to the contrary, for many years now the GOP has been told that it’s time to capitulate on, or abandon, the social issues.

This is especially the case with libertarians. A few months ago, libertarian Neal Boortz went on another rant against the time and attention GOP candidates give the social issues. Abandoning the social issues has long been a favorite idea of libertarians. Unable to win elections on their own, they continuously attempt to pull republican candidates leftward on abortion, homosexuality, marriage, and the like.

Recently, though less combatively, libertarian Greg Gutfeld from Fox’s The Five, also lamely attempted to push republicans into dropping their opposition (those republicans who still bravely maintain such opposition) to same-sex “marriage.” He went so far as to use the “born that way” myth, and even suggested that same-sex “marriage” was a conservative idea. It seems that Mr. Gutfeld and those like him need to hear a good definition of what it means to be a conservative.

Of course, some of the best definitions for “conservative” or “conservatism” have been around for decades, or even centuries, and are still in much use today. In Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address, a 7,000-word speech where he argued against expanding slavery into the western territories, and the speech that some believe won him the presidency, Lincoln asked, “What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?”

In a 1977 speech to CPAC, Ronald Reagan said, “Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before. The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind…the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations—found through the often bitter testing of pain or sacrifice and sorrow.”

A recent Townhall column asked, “Who is Really a Conservative?” The columnist looked to Calvin Coolidge—“perhaps the most conservative president of the last century.” Coolidge noted that in America’s founding documents, “there resulted the recognition that freedom was a birthright. It was the natural and inalienable condition of beings who were created ‘a little lower than the angels.’ With it went the principle of equality, not an equality of possessions, not an equality of degree, but an equality in the attributes of humanity, an equality of kind. Each is possessed of the divine power to know the truth.”

The columnist also quotes conservative commentator Dennis Prager, who defines conservatism “by what he calls ‘The American Trinity,’ which preserves three fundamental truths. First, ‘In God We Trust’ is the foundation for the rule of law. Manmade laws are designed to protect God-given human rights. From that, ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ a unified and diverse people are encouraged to live peaceably, with ‘liberty’ in their pursuit of happiness.”

If you’re looking to define conservatism—and for that matter, what conservatism is not—you had better take into account what Rush Limbaugh has to say on the matter. After a week off from his top-rated talk show, Rush returned this week, and one of the first things he addressed was an email that he received while on vacation. Evidently the email linked to a Business Insider piece entitled, “Wall Street is getting tired of funding socially conservative Republicans running for president.”

The piece begins, “For years, when it came to presidential candidates, Wall Street made huge compromises in order to support the Republican Party. The money men in New York City set aside their socially liberal views in order to support fiscally conservative candidates because that was the only way to get on the same page as the GOP base. The result has been a series of candidates Wall Street's big donors didn't really want. It seems those donors are getting tired of that outcome.”

Responding to the piece, Rush said, “This irritates me to no end. I've had—as I've reported to you on several occasions here—many of my Republican friends over the course of the years have also said the same thing to me as though somehow I'm the leader of the social movement aspect of the Republican Party. They come up to me and they practically wag their fingers at me. ‘We just can't win. We got get rid of the social issues.’”

Of course, “socially liberal” almost always implies issues that reside within the sexual realm. Thus, as I’ve noted before, “social issues” is a bit of a misnomer. We’re really talking about “moral issues.” Those who want to focus on government spending, job creation, or other conservative fiscal policies often fail to realize that the morality that tells us that “It is no act of charity to be generous with someone else’s money,” is the same morality that tells us that it is wrong to kill a child in the womb, and that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

Thus, in spite of all the science and the sound morality that reveal otherwise, if you’ll cave when it comes to the life of the most helpless among us—a child in the womb—and if you’ll cave on the oldest institution in the history of humanity, the institution at the foundation of every culture that has ever existed, the real question is, how can you be trusted on ANY issue? In other words, if you are a liberal on the most important moral issues of our time, then you are not a conservative.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

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

A Message to Millennials

While much is being made of the political ramifications of a recent report on Millennials from the Pew Research Center, instead of conservatives wringing our hands about what to do with these young “Spicolis,” in order to straighten them out, we need more conversation about how we have gotten here. Also, Millennials need a clear understanding of the political choices that they face.

There is much to address with the generation that, more than any other, is responsible for electing Barack Obama leader of the free world—twice. Sadly, this is the case for Millennials who call themselves conservatives as well as their uber-liberal counterparts.

First of all, they’ve all been lied to—a great deal, particularly about sex. Such deception is nothing new. It has been going on for millennia. As J.R.R. Tolkien put it nearly three-quarters of a century ago, “The dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been ‘going to the bad’ all down the ages… [T]he ‘hard spirit of concupiscence’ has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell.”

However, growing up in the age of technology that we all enjoy, Millennials have been saturated with sexual propaganda like no other generation. This is significant in that so much of what we debate in the moral realm of our culture centers on sex.

Abortion, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, divorce, pornography, contraception, and the like are ultimately all about sex. For decades now, these issues have been hotly debated everywhere from the dinner table to the Supreme Court of the United States. Far too many Millennials have voted for politicians based solely on where they stand on these matters. Thus, they certainly need and deserve the truth when it comes to these moral issues.

Second, the oft-repeated protest that goes something like, “We need to stop legislating morality!” is a tired, foolish, and ignorant complaint. Likewise, and just as foolish and ignorant, is the idea that conservatives can be “socially conservative in their private activities without trying to impose their views on other people.” Why aren’t liberals implored (especially by conservative Millennials) to be socially liberal in their private activities without trying to impose their views on other people?

Conservatives did not ask for these battles. We are not the aggressors in the moral wars. For example, after the Lawrence vs. Texas ruling (which overturned the remaining anti-sodomy laws in the U.S.) by the U.S. Supreme Court, most conservatives would have been content with the “live and let live approach.” However, having government “out of the bedrooms” was not good enough for liberals. Thus, the assault on marriage began.

Make no mistake about it; someone’s morality is going to rule us. Before shunning the Christian morality (upon which this country was founded), that teaches among many other wonderful things that sex outside of marriage is wrong and that marriage is a union of one man and one woman for life, Millennials would do well to examine the evidence.

Many of them need to look no further than their own upbringing. Millennials are more likely than any other generation in American history to have been brought up in homes that suffered divorce or no marriage at all. The consequences that children endure as a result of their parents divorcing or as a result of growing up in a single-parent home (almost always without a father) or with same-sex parents are tragic and well documented.

Children of divorce are more likely to be poor, have behavior problems, and use illegal drugs. They are also more likely to struggle academically, suffer with depression, and commit suicide. Children born out of wedlock suffer even worse. They are significantly more likely to be poor; they have more health problems; and they have much slower cognitive and social development. Children born out of wedlock achieve significantly less academically as well as occupationally.

These consequences are devastating not only for individuals and families, but for the nation at large. Even liberals realize this, although their solutions, of course, involve bigger government. A case in point is the recent column by DeWayne Wickham on how President Obama “seeks to fix what ails minority males.”

A great many of these minority males were brought up in homes without fathers. Do you think Obama, Wickham, and the like will urge these men not to perpetuate this crisis by fathering children out of wedlock? Do you think traditional marriage—where mothers and fathers are together in the home and both invested in their children—will be part of their solution?

Of course not. Wickham wants another “War on Poverty.” (Because the first one worked so well—evidenced by the record number of Americans on food stamps.) Obama advisor Valarie Jarrett is “pumped up…to have the federal government do all it can to support this effort.” Whenever liberals say “federal support,” it’s time to hide your wallet. Whenever liberals say that they are “pumped up” about “federal support,” it’s time to visit banks in the Caymans.

Even more disturbing are the proposed solutions to “fix” our economy offered up recently by Millennial Jesse Myerson. (The fact that Rolling Stone saw fit to print his drivel is also quite disturbing.) In what almost seems like satire meant to deride liberals, Myerson presents a socialist smorgasbord that every Millennial “should be fighting for.”

As a solution to unemployment, he proposes government-guaranteed “work for everybody.” Such work would, of course, pay a “living wage,” that, of course, would be determined by the government. “But let’s think even bigger,” Myerson declares as he next suggests Social Security payments for everyone; “universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month.” Thus, Myerson amazingly concludes (giving us even more reason to stereotype young liberals as lazy), participation in the labor force would become “truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.”

The third proposal is to “take back the land.” Myerson then goes into a rant about landlords who “don't really do anything to earn their money. They just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn't build and rarely if ever improve.”

Did you catch that? Myerson’s stupidity and hypocrisy are stunning. Just a few sentences after he lauds the idea of a nation where work is optional, Myerson criticizes property owners for not having to work—while patting himself on the back as someone “who actually work[s]!”

After Jonah Goldberg took Myerson to task, Emmett Rensin of the L.A. Times ran to Myerson’s defense. Rensin concluded that “Young leftists like Myerson and myself share a moral outlook that fundamentally differs from conservatives like Goldberg: Freedom, in the most prosperous nation on Earth, must entail the freedom to act without the constant specter of homelessness, hunger and preventable illness.”

In other words, Rensin and his comrades want to live by the pagan “do as thou wilt” philosophy and not have to suffer any consequences for their choices. Or, to paraphrase George Costanza, such “leftists” would prefer to live in the fantasy world of Cosmo Kramer: do nothing, make money without working, mooch food (and health care, etc.) off their neighbors, and have all the sex they want without any of the costs.

All of this begs a question of Millennials—especially those calling themselves conservatives. What do you prefer: to be guided by, and have a government that reflects, principles that place “moral chains” upon our appetites (as Edmund Burke instructs us) in order to help us prevent social and economic crises; or expensive Big Government programs to “fix” them? (Immorality is expensive—in more ways than one!) You’re going to have to live with one or the other.

It is folly to pursue politics that take a conservative approach to economic issues and a liberal approach to the moral ones. There is no going halfway here. It’s time for Millennials who want to be conservatives to be big boys and girls and swallow the whole pill. Conservatives cannot leave our morality at the door when it comes to issues involving sex. The moral arguments in favor of sound fiscal policy (“It is no act of charity to be generous with someone else’s money.”) are rooted in the same morality that teaches us that marriage is a union of one man and one woman and that killing a child in the womb is wrong.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2014, 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

On Social Issues, Neal Boortz is Lost

While substituting for Sean Hannity recently, Neal Boortz went into another of his “libertarian” rants against “social” conservatives. Taking note of the recent flak involving Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, while pleading that the fate of the republic may depend upon republicans retaking the U.S. Senate, Boortz forebodingly predicted that republicans would fail in this task because, “they [republicans] simply cannot resist the urge, the impulse to get into this social conservatism.”

Long known for his disdain of the “social” (I prefer “moral”) issues, like many others, Boortz masquerades as libertarian while in reality being nothing more than a liberal on the moral issues of our time.

Contrary to what self-described libertarians such as Boortz and John Stossel would have us believe, if conservatives simply shut up about issues like abortion and marriage and focus on things like debt and fiscal responsibility, there’s no guarantee when it comes to election time. It is a long-held myth, typically perpetuated by self-described liberals in the mainstream media but also by self-described libertarians, that whenever the moral issues are prominent in elections, conservatives lose. As I have noted before, Jeffrey Bell in his book The Case for Polarized Politics helps dispel this myth.

“Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964,” notes Bell. “The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period. . . . When social issues came into the mix—I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections.”

Bell concludes, as have many others, that American social conservatism began in response to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Thus, it is unsurprising that all of the most significant “social” issues in America today are sexual issues. Abortion, homosexuality, marriage, contraception, and the like, are not hot political topics merely because they relate to people’s personal lives. They are hot political topics because they reside deep within the moral realm of our culture.

Whether liberals or libertarians admit it, somebody’s morality is going to govern us. Libertarians would do well to examine America’s history before ranting about the morality of today’s [Christian] conservatives. Like our founders, most conservatives today understand well that religion (especially Christianity) is an indispensible tenet of liberty.

America’s “Schoolmaster” Noah Webster bore this out in his 1832 History of the United States when he wrote that “our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion.” Webster rightly concluded that, “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles…to this we owe our free Constitutions of Government.”

Additionally, and again contrary to popular myth and what pundits like Mr. Boortz would have us believe, Christian conservatives aren’t the aggressors in the so-called “culture wars.” It has been liberals with the aid of those like-minded in our courts and our media who have forced their moral views on our culture. Whether it’s abortion, the environment, public displays of religion, marriage, or other issues, liberals have taken the view of what is typically a small minority and imposed their will on the country.

In more ways than one, the results have been disastrous and (speaking of debt) expensive. As an example, consider the environment and the myth of man-made global warming. Starting out with a small minority, through judicial fiat and a relentless media campaign, liberals began preaching that through the use of fossil fuels, human beings were warming the globe and that (of course) drastic political measures needed to be taken to “save the planet.”

Though most Americans do not consider global warming a significant issue for our government, decades of propaganda have taken a toll on our nation. For too long, conservatives didn’t do enough to combat the tactics of liberals on this issue, and today far too many Americans believe the lie that the actions of humans are warming the planet. So much so that, the last republican-elected president, George W. Bush, signed a significant piece of legislation that was premised on the notion of man-made global warming.

After signing the Energy Independence and Security Act, President Bush declared, “Today…We make a major step toward reducing our dependence on oil, confronting global climate change, expanding production of renewable fuels and giving future generations a nation that is stronger, cleaner and more secure.”

According to the New York Times, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi echoed Bush’s sentiments by describing “the bill as groundbreaking because it would reduce oil imports, cut production of the gases that scientists blame for global warming and significantly increase the efficiency of the nation’s auto fleet.”

Boortz would do well to note that this is what happens when conservatives acquiesce to the positions of liberals. We get conservatives at the highest level parroting liberal speak and the government spending billions of dollars on a problem that doesn’t exist—even telling us what light bulbs we can use. However, this is nothing compared to the slaughter of tens of millions of children in the womb or the legal redefinition of the institution upon which our republic rests.

So-called libertarians like Boortz can moan and groan about the moral positions of “social” conservatives all they want, but it doesn’t change the facts. All law is rooted in some morality; thus somebody’s morality is going to “determine the fate of this republic.” Libertarians need to decide with whom it’s easier to live: those who share the morality of the vast majority of our founders, who gave us the greatest document for self governance ever created by men; or those who seek fundamentally to change this republic into something that conservatives and libertarians both will lament.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

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

Why Big Government Can't Do Charity

Lost in all the uproar over Obamacare, and for that matter, in virtually every debate over government “entitlements” or “handouts” or whatever you want to call them, is the fact that, when it comes to charity, our government is just about the last place that one should turn. Time and again, Big Government liberals love to paint themselves as the champions of the poor and down-trodden—while at the same time making conservatives out to be selfish brutes (when, in reality, conservatives are far and away more personally generous than liberals).

That liberal of liberals, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, recently did so. “Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else,” he wrote on Halloween. He added that, “[Republicans are] still clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible…” This is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) lies of liberalism.

In general, liberals aren’t for the poor and others in need. This may have been somewhat true of classic liberalism, but today most liberals are for those in need as long as it helps them feel good about their immoral anti-God behavior, make money, win elections, and/or remain in power (or keep other like-minded liberals in power).

So just why should we help those in need? The answer is not as obvious (to most) as it seems. First of all, the truly needy must be identified. To pad their voting rolls, liberalism has made this purposefully difficult. Of course, not all those who ask for help need it or deserve it. So what is our standard? Where do we look for moral guidance in this significant (literally to the tune of trillions of dollars) matter? The same place that we should look in all such matters: Scripture.

If you are secular minded, don’t balk. In his attempts to justify his extremely liberal Big Government agenda, Obama himself has made many appeals to the Bible (as do other like-minded liberals). In the 2008 election, when Obama was asked by pastor Rick Warren what he thought was, “the greatest moral failure of America,” Obama (almost certainly with his Big Government agenda on his mind) responded that, “I think America’s greatest moral failure in my lifetime has been that we still don’t abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me…”

When describing the “least” of us, Scripture often mentions those such as orphans, widows, and the physically impaired (lame, blind). Of course, people in those circumstances will usually be “poor.” The first laws God gave concerning those in need (in Leviticus) instructed the Israelites to refrain from “gleaning” their vineyards or reaping the corners of their fields (in other words, gathering every last morsel).

This was so that the “needy,” the “stranger,” or the “alien” would have something to harvest. Notice that even those described as needy were expected to work and gather for themselves. Those who owned the fields and vineyards were simply instructed to provide the “needy” with an opportunity.

In the New Testament, Jesus often spoke of ministering to the poor (sometimes more accurately described as “the poor in spirit”). Among other things, He instructed His followers to give to those in need without expecting anything (in this world) in return. Jesus’ ministry modeled such generosity. He went about healing those who were desperately ill, feeding the hungry, delivering the demon possessed, and even raising the dead. He told His followers to “go and do likewise.”

However, (and this is what often escapes those who attempt to justify their Big Government policies with the words and deeds of Jesus), Jesus didn’t perform acts of charity simply to fulfill some physical need a person had. Consider that the greatest miracle recorded in Scripture, performed by Christ, was raising someone from the dead. (There are three recorded instances of this occurring.) This was not done merely out of “niceness,” only to save the lives of those who had died. They would, after all (with apologies to James Bond), “die another day.” His ultimate goal was to give them “everlasting life.”

This could be said of every miracle Christ performed. It is true that He healed, fed, and cast out demons because of His great love for those in need. However, these acts alone did not save anyone. Those healed of one disease or sickness would someday die of another. Those fed would someday be hungry again. Christ’s ultimate goal was to bring people into His Kingdom. In other words, God became man not simply to help us with our troubles in this world, but to make us into new creatures.

“Niceness” and “good deeds” are excellent things. Jesus told His followers to “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).” Inversely, as C.S. Lewis puts it, “When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world.”

Lewis continues, “We must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our power, to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up ‘nice’ (performing good deeds); just as we must try to produce a world where we all have plenty to eat. But we must not suppose that even if we succeed in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world—and might even be more difficult to save.”

Thus we see, the ministry of God—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick—can never be separated from the message of God—to repent of our sins and believe that Jesus was who He claimed to be: the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

It should also be pointed out that, in today’s American culture that is so obsessed with self, especially the sexual gratification of self, the message of “repent of your sin” must include the truth about marriage (one man for one woman for life) and the sins of homosexuality, abortion, divorce, and the like. The ministry of God and the message of God—both together complete the mission of God. And this is why a secular government can never effectively do charity.

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

Beware of Scientism and the Technocrats

At the beginning of the movie “Van Helsing,” Dracula, sounding much like a faithful member of today’s left, joyfully exclaims to Dr. Frankenstein that his monster, just brought to life, is a “victory of science over God.” Writing in the UK’s Guardian, Julian Baggini declared that any religion “that seeks to explain the hows of the universe…is competing with science. In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab.”

Scientist and former White House senior policy advisor Jeff Schweitzer recently declared that “Religion and science are incompatible at every level. The two seek different answers to separate questions using fundamentally and inherently incompatible methods. Nothing can truly bring the two together without sacrificing intellectual honesty.”

Renowned Darwinist Jerry Coyne, who also believes that religion and science are fundamentally incompatible, recently made the asinine and ignorant conclusion that “all the achievements of both ancient and modern science have been made by explicitly rejecting the theistic view that God has a hand in the universe, and that religion, if it ever did inspire scientific research, doesn’t do so any longer.”

The word “science” is derived from the Latin word “scientia,” meaning “knowledge.” All knowledge is derived from certain governing presuppositions. In other words, each side of every issue that human beings debate ultimately has certain un-provable assumptions upon which they must eventually rely. As the late philosopher, Dr. Greg Bahnsen, put it, “At the most fundamental level of everyone's thinking and beliefs there are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth, behavior, and such things. Convictions about which all other experience is organized, interpreted, and applied.”

Likewise, theologian, author, and pastor, R.C. Sproul, recently discussed the “lasting impression” that the book, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, which he read over 50 years ago, had made upon him. He noted that the book was so influential to him because it “clearly set forth the importance of understanding that all scientific theories presuppose certain philosophical premises.”

The concept of “primary convictions” or presupposed “philosophical premises” is important when it comes to the nonsense that is religion vs. science. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive arenas where we must leave one completely behind as we cross over into the other.

Anyone can practice good science while operating from a biblical worldview (such as Pasteur, Pascal, Newton, Kepler, et al). If this is not the case, then how did Newton, considered by many the greatest scientist of all time, ever invent calculus and develop his laws of motion and universal gravitation while operating from a strict biblical worldview? Newton also calculated the age of the earth to be only a few thousand years old and declared, “For an educated man…any suggestion that the human past extended back further than 6,000 years was a vain and foolish speculation.”

If science and religion are “fundamentally incompatible,” how did Pasteur, the father of modern medicine and a firm believer in God and His Word, ever discover the principles of vaccination, fermentation, and pasteurization? If, as Coyne declares, Darwinian evolution is “biology’s greatest theory,” then why did Pasteur directly oppose Darwin and his theory, all the while conducting experiments to enhance the Law of Biogenesis?

Just as there were centuries ago, today there are scientists with a biblical worldview in every field of science. They go to school, study, graduate; they go to church, worship, pray, read (and believe) Scripture; and they go to work, conduct research, develop products, heal the sick; all the while operating completely unfettered (except by the opposition they endure from the enemies of faith) in their fields.

Likewise, some things involving matters of faith can be tested (observed, measured, and repeated). There is bountiful evidence (the field of archaeology has been a great friend to Christianity) for everything I believe about God and His creation. In other words, there is no battle between science and religion. The only competition that exists when it comes to our pursuit of knowledge and truth lies in our worldviews, or one might say, our presupposed “philosophical premises.”

Nevertheless, the idea that there is some battle between science and religion—especially Christianity—simply won’t go away. According to today's left, politicians, judges, military officers, policemen, teachers, and so forth are never to be guided by religion, but always by “science.” Thus, with their common liberal worldview (that is extremely hostile to religion—especially Christianity), we now have a disastrous marriage between the liberals who dominate “modern science” and those who dominate Big Government.

I wonder if “geniuses” such as Baggini, Schweitzer, and Coyne applied their massive intellectual powers to the merits of the disaster that is now Obamacare, or to the debate over when human life begins, or to the many dangers of homosexual behavior, or to the myth of anthropogenic global warming. Wouldn’t you want to wager that, in spite of what many see as clear moral and scientific evidence to the contrary, such “scientists” abandon almost all reason and tow the liberal line when it comes to issues such as health-care, abortion, homosexuality, marriage, guns, and “climate change”?

Writing about the “great issues” of his day, C.S. Lewis wrote in 1940, “Lord! How I loathe great issues…Could one start a Stagnation Party— which at General Elections would boast that during its term of office no event of the least importance had taken place?” Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, John G. West writes that “According to stepson David Gresham, Lewis was skeptical of politicians and not really interested in current events. His concern was not policy but principle; political problems of the day were interesting to him only insofar as they involved matters that endured.”

Nevertheless, West adds that Lewis did indeed have a “great deal” to say about politics, writing about such things as crime, obscenity, capital punishment, communism, fascism, socialism, war, the welfare state, and so on. West noted that, “It is precisely because Lewis was so uninterested in ordinary political affairs that he has so much to tell us about politics in the broad sense of the term. By avoiding the partisan strife of his own time, he was able to articulate enduring political standards for all time.”

Nowhere is this clearer, West states, than in Lewis’ writings on tyranny and morality. According to West, Lewis was particularly concerned with the tyranny that could result from the union of modern science and the modern state.

Lewis disputed the notion that we must rely on the counsel of scientists because only they have the answers to today's complicated problems. He did not dispute their knowledge, but concluded that most of it was irrelevant. In West’s words, “Political problems are preeminently moral problems, and scientists are not equipped to function as moralists.” Lewis added that, “I dread specialists in power [such as our now numerous political “czars”] because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value.”

What such “specialists in power” do is give a Big Government, which is already too willing to encroach on our lives, even more of a reason for doing so. This is especially true in times of crisis. (“Never let a crisis go to waste,” right?) In such times many of us are far too eager to become what Lewis called in 1958 “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.”

Typically, in order for any oligarchy effectively to rise and rule, it needs some “extreme peril,” something to cure, some desperate need that the rulers promise to fulfill. As Lewis asked, is this not “the ideal opportunity for enslavement?”

When a generation lives in fear or dread of some looming crisis or when a society is made to believe that someone else can provide the things that it cannot live without, is this not the opportunity for those who seek to rule over us to be seen as liberators rather than the tyrants that they are? Were not Stalin and Hitler first seen as saviors and deliverers? 

Following two world wars and in the midst of a cold war, Lewis wrote that “The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance…The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good…Read Montaigne; that’s the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer?”

To “fix” our problems (whether real or perceived) and to exert the power and influence necessary, the new ruling class must more and more rely on the “experts.” This means that the politicians must increasingly rely on the knowledge and advice of scientists, until, in the end, the politicians become “merely the scientists’ puppets.”

Thus, we get the motto of the technocrats: “only science can save us now.” Whether it is global warming, stem-cell research, the beginning of life, healthcare, crime, homosexuality and marriage, or even gun control or economic policies, the technocrats have the answers. After all, as Lewis also noted, “If we are to be mothered, mother must know best.”

In other words, many of our politicians (and scientists alike) are surrendering themselves to scientism. Scientism is not science. It is an ideology that is often confused with science. It is, rather, an abuse of the scientific method and scientific authority.

Scientism can also be classified as a religion. It is a religion with many denominations: Darwinism, environmentalism, feminism, hedonism, humanism, Marxism, socialism, and so on. How many Americans now find their fulfillment and purpose in these movements? They celebrate Earth Day and Darwin Day. They boldly assert, “Science is my Savior.”

Also, scientism arrogantly attempts to lift itself above all other beliefs and disciplines—philosophy and theology included. “Philosophy is dead,” declared Stephen Hawking in his 2010 book The Grand Design. It is dead because, “Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”

Thus, as we see, scientism seeks to elevate the methods of natural science to a level where it is the bar by which every other intellectual discipline is held. Scientism ridicules faith and religion and tells us that “God is dead.” Scientism tells us that the “debate is over,” so shut up and get in line.

And, of course, scientism leads us to technocracy. “I dread government in the name of science,” said Lewis. “That is how tyrannies come in.” What a profound conclusion! How many of us have been duped in the name of “science”? How many of us cower and yield, because, well, if the “scientists” (and then the politicians) tell us so, then it must be so?

We can see the results: generations are taught that life began without God; that the use of fossil fuels is warming the earth; that homosexuality is genetic and unchangeable; that abortion is not really the taking of a life; that marriage is whatever we want it to be; that confiscating the wealth of some to give to others is “fair;” that guns are evil; and so on. Of course, we then get laws and official government policy based on such conclusions.

Sadly, too many of us then grow accustomed to our chains. We become children, or pupils of the State (like “Julia”). We continue to elect leaders who perpetuate the cycle of the “Welfare State” based significantly on the lies of scientism. It’s time for Americans to wake up to this perversion of science and return science, faith, philosophy, and by all means, common sense, to their proper place.

(A version of this appeared in American Thinker in 2012.)

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