Efforts to Defund Planned Parenthood Must Continue

The recent failure of the GOP to achieve the federal defunding of Planned Parenthood should not deter further efforts to remove taxpayer funds from the largest abortion provider in the U.S. In fact, the issue should remain front and center at every level in the 2012 political campaign.

Make no mistake about it, as Jordan Sekulow noted just prior to the latest federal budget deal, Planned Parenthood (PP) owns the Democrats. Therefore, for the Democrats, shutting down the federal government was worth it as long as it ensured continued taxpayer funding for PP.

In the middle of March of this year, when asked about amendments that would defund PP, Harry Reid was quoted as saying “not only no, but hell no.” Just hours prior to the budget agreement, Reid declared that the only issue holding up a budget deal was funding for PP. He declared, “Republicans want to shut down our nation's government because they want to make it harder for women to get the health services they need.”

It’s amazing that a U.S. senator can use the phrase “health services” in describing an organization that is dedicated to ending human life. However, this is how the liberal mind of the leader of the U.S. senate works.

Joining the chorus of PP supporters was the number three ranking Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. “The dangerous, ideological cuts to Planned Parenthood that passed the House are never, never, never going to pass the Senate,” said Schumer. Giving his best Winston Churchill impersonation, Schumer added, “Let me repeat that, so all those who want to stomp on women’s health and women’s rights can hear us loud and clear. The dangerous, ideological cuts to Planned Parenthood that passed the House are never, never, never going to pass the Senate.”

He may be right about this Senate, but the next one will almost certainly be a different story. In the 2012 election, the GOP has to defend only 10 U.S. Senate seats, while the Democrats have to defend 23. Of the 10 seats the GOP defends, six of them are from GOP strongholds (AZ, MS, TN, TX, UT, and WY). Of the other four seats, two have been in GOP hands for at least three election cycles (18 years). The other two seats belong to Scott Brown of Massachusetts and John Ensign of Nevada.

Of the 23 Democratic seats (two are actually independents who caucus with the Democrats), three are from GOP strongholds (MT, NE, ND), eight are from states that elected GOP governors in 2010 or 2009 (FL, MI, NJ, NM, OH, PA, VA, WI), and six are from states that elected a GOP senator in 2010 (FL, MO, ND, OH, PA, WI).

Thus, with the Republicans needing to flip only four seats for control, it is highly likely that the GOP will take charge of the U.S. senate after the 2012 elections. (Notice that FL, OH, PA, and WI elected GOP governors and senators in 2010.) If this happens, Republicans should act quickly and make Schumer eat his “never, never, never” declaration.

In light of the current economic climate, there has never been a better political climate for cutting off the over $360 million in federal funds that PP receives. Besides, our federal government has no business being in business with an abortion provider. “But no taxpayer funds are used for abortions—federal law already prohibits that,” PP supporters say. This is an asinine and absurd argument. With around 1/3 of its budget coming from taxpayer funds, it is clear that federal money enables PP to function and do what it does “best:” provide abortions.

Of course, with President Obama on record supporting what many consider infanticide, even if congress passes a bill defunding PP, he would almost certainly veto it. According to The Susan B. Anthony List, almost all current GOP candidates for president support defunding PP. This is an issue that pro-lifers need to keep a significant part of the 2012 campaign. In more ways than one, the U.S. federal government cannot afford its relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Copyright 2011, 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

Facing the New “Red Menace”

“Are we good guys or bad guys?” the animated (cartoon) Little John asked Robin Hood in the 1973 Disney classic. “You know,” John continued, “Our robbing the rich to feed the poor?” “Rob?!” Robin exclaimed. Then, sounding much like today’s Democrats, he declared, “That’s a naughty word. We never rob; we just sort of borrow a bit from those who can afford it.” “Borrow?!” cried John. “Boy, are we in debt!”

I wonder how Little John would feel about $14 trillion of debt. Since the youth of America are going to pay for most of this, perhaps Disney should make a child’s film about the U.S. debt. They could call it Pinocchio: How Decades of Lies Grew the American Debt; or Alice in Entitlementland; or Fantasia: The Money Printer’s Apprentice. You get the idea.

It seems that the idea of Democrats being compared to Robin Hood is gaining in popularity.

Just two days after I transcribed the little cartoon exchange with the idea for this column, on February 28, 3M Chief Executive Officer George Buckley called President Barack Obama “anti-business,” adding, “I judge people by their feet, not their mouth.” Buckley told the Financial Times, “We know what his instincts are. They are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business. There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It's about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington…”

According to recent reports, by the end of this fiscal year, September 30, the total U.S. debt will equal nearly $15.5 trillion, and for the first time since 1947, will surpass the total U.S. GDP. All of this red ink, according to Indiana Governor and possible GOP presidential candidate Mitch Daniels, is our new “Red Menace.”

Of course this “menace” looms not only in the federal government, but in state and local governments across the country. And, of course, just as with the communist threat, liberals all over the U.S. are finding themselves on the wrong side of history.

Every year Moody’s publishes its State Debt Medians Report. According to Moody’s 2010 report, “Debt burden is one of many factors that Moody’s uses to determine state credit quality. In considering debt burden, the focus is largely on Net Tax Supported Debt,” which is defined as “debt secured by state operating resources which could otherwise be used for state operations. Any debt to which state resources are pledged for repayment is considered to be net tax-supported debt.”

Again, according to Moody’s 2010 report, “Two measures of state debt burden – debt per capita and debt as a percentage of personal income – are commonly used by analysts to compare the debt burden of one state to another.”

The states with the most debt per capita: 1.) Connecticut 2.) Massachusetts 3.) Hawaii 4.) New Jersey 5.) New York 6.) Delaware 7.) California 8.) Washington 9.) Rhode Island 10.) Oregon.

The states with the largest debt as a percentage of personal income: 1.) Hawaii 2.) Massachusetts 3.) Connecticut 4.) New Jersey 5.) New York 6.) Delaware 7.) California 8.) Kentucky 9.) Washington 10.) Rhode Island

Notice the “blueness?”

As most everyone now knows, especially given the recent events in Wisconsin, one of the greatest contributors to local and state debt is pension liabilities. However, in Moody’s numbers above, pension liabilities were not included. Moody’s has now changed that.

Earlier this year, Moody’s Investors Service released a report on state debt that included a broader approach to measuring a state’s financial health. As the Financial Times put it, “In a bid to give a broader picture of state finances, Moody’s combined their net tax supported debt and unfunded pension liabilities to assess how leveraged states are.” In other words, Moody’s is now calculating a state’s debt burden by including the unfunded pension obligations owed to state employees.

When state pension liabilities are included, the top ten states in total debt are: 1.) Connecticut 2.) Hawaii 3.) Massachusetts 4.) New Jersey 5.) Illinois 6.) Alaska 7.) Rhode Island 8.) Kentucky 9.) Mississippi 10.) West Virginia.

Again, the blue states lead.

As I noted a couple of years ago, U.S. states have frequently been called “laboratories of democracy.” If you want to see how something will work in the federal government, look to the states.

Given the picture painted above, it is quite clear where liberals have taken the state governments of which they have been in control. For the most part, it is also quite clear on which side liberals stand with our new “Red Menace.” Sadly, it is not with the “good guys.”

Copyright 2011, 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

The Will to Love

Today is Valentine’s Day, and thus “I will show you the most excellent way.”

I believe that the one most revealing, the most essential characteristic of our Creator is love. By His love He made us, and because of His love He redeemed us. We are closest to His nature and what He created us to be when we are living our lives according to His idea of love.

He also told us that His entire law can be summed up with one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What does that mean? What does it mean to love your neighbor as you love yourself?

First of all, who is our “neighbor?” Most of us have heard of the “Good Samaritan.” Through this parable, Christ taught us that our neighbor means more than those who live near us, or those within our circle of family and friends. In effect, what He was saying was that loving our neighbor also means loving our enemies.

Secondly, how do we “love” ourselves? If we are honest, we should all admit that there are times when none of us is particularly loveable. In fact, most of us have probably been pretty disappointed in and disgusted by our own behavior, and thus, in ourselves. We may even have seen ourselves as downright nasty.

Therefore, loving our neighbor does not mean always having pleasant feelings about him, or being happy with everything she does. As C.S. Lewis put it, it does not mean “thinking them nice either.” In fact, love in the Christian sense isn’t a feeling at all. It is a matter of the will.

As Lewis put it, “It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we naturally have about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.” In other words, do not bother so much about how you feel towards someone; act like you love them. In other words, do and say the things that true love requires. Feelings and emotions come and go, but our will can be forever unwavering.

Consider 1 Corinthians chapter 13, where the Apostle Paul reveals to us what true love is. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Patience, kindness, a lack of envy or boasting; humility, politeness, and controlling your temper; keeping no record of wrongs, and so on—these all are matters of the will. As soon as you do these things, Lewis notes, “we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

Jesus said that the greatest act of love is to lay down one’s life for another. What is that if not an act of the will? No one “feels” like doing such a thing. Jesus even prayed that His act of sacrifice, if possible, would pass from Him, but His will was surrendered: “Not My will, but Yours be done.”

Now, of course, romantic love can generate a torrent of emotions within us. Most all of us have been tied in knots over one person or another in our lives. But, even in the strongest of relationships, these feelings don’t last—and thank goodness! How would we function day-to-day and year-to-year with such emotions?!

Yet popular culture has chosen to highlight this brief and passing aspect of love and held it up as the ideal. Of course, popular culture has also made love synonymous with sex. This is especially true with our youth. They enter relationships—even marriage—with their hearts and minds full of the wrong ideas about love.

Thus, the most important relationship on the earth—that between a husband and a wife—often rests upon a very shaky foundation. If a marriage rests upon this feeling of “being in love” alone, it almost certainly will fail. Couples need to understand that when this feeling subsides, it does not mean that we should stop loving. Love in this deeper sense is about a promise or vow that nearly every couple makes upon marrying. And keeping this promise is a matter of the will.

However, Christians know that, left to ourselves, our own will is not enough. On our own we cannot love as we should. The selflessness that true love requires runs very contrary to our born nature. That is why, in order to love truly, we must look to the One who is love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Copyright 2011, 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

More Tragic Results of Progressive "Values"

The only real hope for any of us lies not in a political philosophy. However, good government is a significant part of the fiber of any great nation. Thomas Jefferson said, “The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the only legitimate object of good government.” Given that America just marked the 38th anniversary of the federal endorsement of abortion on demand, which has seen over 50 million children die in the womb, Jefferson would surely cringe at where we are today.

For a most horrific snapshot of where we are, we must look no further than Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. In what has been called “one of the most disgusting litanies of murder we've seen in all of western culture,” Gosnell has been criminally charged with, among other things, eight counts of murder. Seven of them were babies who, moments after birth, had their spinal cords severed with surgical scissors inserted into the back of their necks.

Though not receiving the coverage of the Loughner tragedy, as it was not to the liking of much of the liberal media, news of Gosnell’s butchery garnered much shock and disgust. Yet, in the shadow of Roe v. Wade and the culture of death that it wrought, as Kevin McCullough concludes, it is no surprise that there is a Dr. Gosnell among us.

Despite much effort to the contrary, for nearly four decades progressivism has lulled far too many Americans into complacency when it comes to life in the womb. For nearly four decades, despite more and more sound science to the contrary, Americans have been told that a fetus is a not a person and is undeserving of the same protections as the rest of us. The left is littered with politicians, all the way up to and including U.S. Presidents, who have been complicit in perpetuating this deceit.

Hoping for America to wake up, Deacon Keith Fournier (www.catholic.org) notes that, “There are times when the truth concerning what actually happens in every procured abortion becomes obvious and the Nation is shaken out of its complacency. Perhaps the House of Horrors found in Philadelphia will be one of those moments. What was hidden is now being revealed. The truth is what ‘Doctor’ Gosnell did is no different than what is done in every procured abortion. The only difference is that it is hidden from view.”

Of course, with abortion being a lynchpin of progressivism, many leading liberals are taking a very measured tone when it comes to this tragedy. Towing the classic liberal line, writing for Salon.com, Rebekah Kuschmider notes that in such matters, “We need to start with sex. People have sex. You may wish they wouldn't and many preach that, without benefit of marriage, people shouldn't, but people have sex… And you do not have the right to impose your personal sexual morals on anyone else. You don't. It's rude. So please don't try.”

Paving the way for legalized abortion-on-demand, pornography, homosexual marriage, and so on was—again, courtesy of progressivism—the “sexual revolution.” Thus, not only have we abandoned nearly all reason and morality when it comes to life in the womb, but many Americans have also been deceived into believing that nearly any sexual act to which we are tempted is healthy, normal, and without dire consequences.

Therefore, along with Gosnell, we also have MTV. With its infamous new series “Skins,” the number one peddler of youth entertainment poison set the entertainment world abuzz. Citing its “foul language, illegal drug use, illegal activity as well as thoroughly pervasive sexual content,” the Parents Television Council called “Skins” the “most dangerous program that has ever been foisted on your children.”

With actors as young as 15, there has been much discussion about whether the show has actually engaged in child pornography. As even the New York Times suggested, when you come into work and there is a meeting centering on whether you’ve crossed the line into child pornography, you’re probably in the wrong job.

What was that about imposing “your personal sexual morals?” Whose sexual “morals” do you prefer, MTV’s or the Southern Baptists’? Hollywood’s or Focus on the Family’s? The fact is that there is no neutrality in the matter. Every law, every decision is rooted in some morality. As I have noted before, according to the late philosopher Dr. Greg Bahnsen, “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.”

As I hinted at the beginning, it will take more than a shift in political philosophies for America to turn from this dark path. However, our politics—and our politicians—reflect our morality and have great impact on our lives and culture. Hopefully more and more Americans dislike what they see as they look to the left.

Copyright 2011, 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

Jared Loughner: A Product of Progressive Values

“But do remember,” said the demon master Screwtape to his protégé Wormwood, “the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.”

With the little that we still know about Jared Loughner, I do believe it is safe to assume that this young man is far from God.

In the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy that left 6 dead and several, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, seriously wounded, many liberal politicians, pundits, and the mainstream media who aid and abet them, rushed to tar the TEA Party, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and Michael Savage, (even the Congressional reading of the Constitution!), and anyone or anything else linked to conservatism.

How ironic and backwards is it that the politics of those who have given us abortion on demand, gay marriage, funding for blasphemous art, removal of school prayer, removal of the Ten Commandments, and constitutional rights for pornography now tells us that it is the right’s fault when a seemingly deranged young man goes on a killing spree? I submit to you that the evil deeds of Mr. Loughner are much more a product of progressive values and influences than conservative ones.

Evidence of this has surfaced in a recent interview by ABC of Loughner’s friend, Zach Osler. As Jesse Walker of Reason.com notes, “Loughner turns out to be a fan of Zeitgeist, a feature-length online documentary that is one-third arguments that Jesus never existed and religion is an evil fraud, one-third 9/11 trutherism, and one-third conspiracy theories about bankers.” Now tell me, which political ideology is most hostile to religion, especially Christianity, includes the “truthers,” and is hostile to the banking industry? Exactly.

Also, George Will recently hinted at Loughner’s progressive influences when he wrote, “A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism.”

In other words, liberals are driven by the idea that human perfection can be achieved through human means. Of course, that explains their lust for everything government. For decades now, liberals have been striving for utopia through government means. Trillions of dollars have been spent on nearly countless social programs in these attempts.

Also, in seeking to explain the world and all that is in it, most on the left have prostrated themselves before the alter of “science.” Whether social, biological, chemical, physical, and so on, everything must have a scientific explanation.

As C.S. Lewis notes, “Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave…But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes—something of a different kind—this is not a scientific question.” Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, author of Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, and a graduate of M.I.T., Harvard, Yale, University of Nice, France, and the University of Texas Medical School, says that “science cannot tell us what is right and wrong; it can only tell us what is.”

For far too many liberals, science is their god. To them, religion, especially Christianity, is a crutch—something for the weak minded, and thus never to be taken seriously. Right and wrong, good and evil are arbitrary and cultural—products of human progress. Such a worldview leaves absolutely no room for the supernatural, and thus, no room for God. Therefore, along with championing “social justice,” for decades liberals have also fought vociferously to expel God from our culture. Of course, Jared Loughner is what you end up with when God is shunned.

Of the liberals who do claim a religion, their faith usually takes a backseat to the godless worldview of those who share their politics. Thus, the modern Democrat party is synonymous with abortion, sexual promiscuity, removal of the Ten Commandments, redefinition of marriage, the welfare state, earth worshipping environmentalism, and so on.

These “values” are then championed by the TV, film, and music industries, including the mainstream press. Day after day we, especially our youth, are bombarded with glorification of violence, sexual perversions, foul language, and all manner of godlessness. With such influences in our culture, the amazing—perhaps miraculous—thing is that we are not turning out more Jared Loughners.

The Christian worldview, which is rampant in conservatism, sees the Tucson tragedy in the following light: Simply put, Jared Loughner is a product of sin in a fallen world. His deeds are evil and he is responsible for his actions, which deserve just consequences—even death. However, the Christian worldview also recognizes that Loughner has a Creator Who loves him and desires his repentance. Only a proper recognition of such offers any real hope for him and any real comfort for his family, his victims, their families, and the rest of us.

Copyright 2011, 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