TEA Party vs. Occupy Wall Street

There are several ways that a person can tell with which of the current popular political movements—the TEA Party or Occupy Wall Street—one most identifies. As a public service, I’ve compiled a set of identifying characteristics to aid you in your discernment.

If you cannot afford to camp out for days or even weeks on end at a rally because: a.) you have a job that requires your presence; b.) you are busy looking for a job; or c.) you are a student who actually attends your classes, you probably support the TEA Party. If you like to defecate on police cars, or paint your nude body in 1960s style psychedelic colors and designs, you probably support the Occupy Wall Street movement.

If you know why you are attending a rally and can reasonably articulate the reason(s), you are probably at a TEA Party rally. If you are (if you are) at a rally (at a rally) where they mindlessly repeat (where they mindlessly repeat) everything spoken (everything spoken) like a moron (like a moron) at a cult gathering (at a cult gathering), you are at the Occupy Atlanta rally. Yes we can! (Yes we can!)

If someone approaches you and hands you a pocket-sized U.S. Constitution or an American flag, you are at a TEA Party event. If someone approaches you offering free condoms or a joint (probably not free), you are at an Occupy event.

If you have bathed in a real bathroom within the last week and if, after your rally, you clean up after yourself, you’re probably a TEA Party supporter. If your protest site “smells like a sewer” (as Britain’s Daily Mail reported), you’re at the Occupy New York protest.

If your protest includes singing the national anthem, reciting the pledge of allegiance and/or the Lord’s Prayer, or Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” being loudly broadcast, you are attending a TEA Party event. If your gathering includes several Hollywood leftists, bussed-in union members, and recruited homeless in order to “swell the ranks” (as reported by the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank), you are at an Occupy rally.

If you and your fellow protestors recognize and celebrate the heroic acts of American soldiers, you are at a TEA Party event. If your camp is infiltrated by party goers celebrating acts of sex and drug abuse (as the Daily Mail reported), you are at an Occupy event.

It is rather refreshing, if not also a bit shocking, to see such liberal values so prominently displayed. It paints a rather clear picture for any American who is in doubt about which movement is more in line with his or her values. What a dilemma for the democrats! On the one hand, they must pay homage and attempt to sympathize with the Occupy loons, who are a significant part of their base, but on the other hand, democrats know (surely they know) that a significant majority of U.S. voters rejects the “values” (forget the ideas, because there really aren’t any) that are flaunted at the Occupy protests.

What’s more, many of the Occupy protestors are hardly what one could consider oppressed or down-trodden. Several were photographed wearing designer clothes and sporting the latest electronic gadgets. Also, as one paper reported, “youngsters…have joined the movement, many of whom study at colleges which cost their parents up to $200,000.”

Another bit of irony that seems to be lost on most of the Occupiers is that Barack Obama received about twice as much in campaign contributions from Wall Street in the 2008 presidential campaign as did John McCain.

However, the most ironic, and moronic, thing about the Occupy movement is that the vast majority of those involved seek to place more power in the hands of those who were most instrumental in our economic collapse: the federal government. As Herman Cain pointed out, “You can demonstrate all you want on Wall Street. The problem is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!”

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

Good Samaritans or Bad Government

Spurred on by Wolf Blitzer’s lame attempt at a “Good Samaritan” scenario, liberal pundits all over the country have climbed upon their health-care “high-horses.” Leading the parade of liberals wallowing in self-righteousness, New York Times’ columnist, Paul Krugman, laments the fact that today’s GOP has gone from Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” to Ron Paul’s “free to die.”

He comes to this conclusion as a result of last weeks GOP presidential debate where CNN’s Blitzer presented Paul, and other republicans, with a hypothetical: A 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly finds himself in need of six months of intensive care—Blitzer wants to know what the “compassionate conservative” response would be.

Congressman Paul stated, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” Thrilling liberals everywhere, Blitzer pressed the matter and asked whether “society should just let him die.” A member of the audience shouted “Yeah!” [Though Krugman reported it as a “crowd erupt(ing) with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”] Krugman then piously concluded that, “The incident highlighted something that I don’t think most political commentators have fully absorbed: at this point, American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions.”

Washington Post columnist and creator of the infamous liberal blog-spot, JournoList, Ezra Klein, stated that, “It’s all well and good to say personal responsibility is the bedrock of liberty, but even the hardest of libertarians has always understood that there are places where your person ends and mine begins…in health care, it has to do with compassion.”

Asking “Where Are the Compassionate Conservatives,” Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, notes that Blitzer next turned to Michele Bachmann, “whose popularity with evangelical Christian voters stems, at least in part, from her own professed born-again faith. Asked what she would do about the man in the coma, Bachmann ignored the question and launched into a canned explanation of why she wants to repeal President Obama's Affordable Care Act.”

Robinson then declares that, “According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told the Pharisees that God commands us to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ There is no asterisk making this obligation null and void if circumstances require its fulfillment via government.”

However, the book of Luke records that, when Jesus is asked by “an expert in the Law” what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asks him what the Law requires. The man answers correctly: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Sounding like a liberal pundit at a GOP debate, or as Scripture puts it, “attempting to justify himself,” the man smugly asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” That is when Jesus launches into the Good Samaritan parable. Of course, the parable reveals that, as a true act of love, a Samaritan—whom the Jews of Jesus’ day generally despised—took care of an injured man on his own time and with his own resources. Not quite the picture of Obamacare that today’s liberals would have us believe.

Liberals love to quote Scripture when they think it might help them further their big government social agenda. They also love to talk about compassion and morality but would prefer it if you left Scripture out of it. Perhaps if more liberals were for posting the Ten Commandments in every public school and post office in the U.S., more Americans would feel comfortable putting health care in the hands of the federal government.

Perhaps if more liberals were willing to allow their morality and compassion to move them to protect the most defenseless among us—the unborn—more Americans would take them seriously when they talk in terms of “moral visions” and “compassion.”

Taking a stand against big government—even during a severe economic crisis—President Grover Cleveland denied aid to a very deserving orphanage in New York City. Cleveland, a Democrat, said, “I will not be a party to stealing money from one group of citizens to give to another group of citizens. No matter what the need or apparent justification, once the coffers of the federal government are opened to the public, there will be no shutting them again…”

Of course, later democrats (and republicans) ignored Cleveland’s warnings, and the coffers of the federal government have been wide open for decades. As a result, most of America is suffering as we are now “reaping what we have sown.”

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

Are We Too Fat or Too Hungry?

I’m confused (no jokes, please). The Obama administration and the mainstream media really need to work on coordinating their message better. I mean, usually memos and pressers from the White House, the pages of the New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post (et al), and the broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC are nearly indistinguishable. Thus, this recent piece from ABC news left me rather perplexed.

According to the story, “Every day, children in every county in the United States wake up hungry. They go to school hungry. They turn out the lights at night hungry…To put it another way, one in four children in the (U.S.) is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life.”

Yet, barely a year ago, in February of 2010, the Washington Times revealed that “Nearly one-third of U.S. children are overweight or obese — a rate that has tripled among adolescents and doubled in younger children over the past 30 years. In addition, one-third of children born in 2000 or later eventually will suffer from diabetes, according to the White House.”

Thus we end up with Michelle Obama involved in policy and get bombarded with messages of “Let’s Move!” We also end up with school systems telling children that they can’t bring their own lunch to school.

So, in barely a year we’ve gone from one-third of all U.S. children being overweight or obese, to one-fourth of them continuously being hungry (and three-fourths of all U.S. high school students can’t correctly place in least-to-greatest order the three fractions I just used, but I digress). No wonder C.S. Lewis bemoaned, “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?”

And who is better at creating, or at least dictating, the “great issues” than liberals within the U.S. federal government? The aforementioned report trumpeted by ABC was on the subject of a study funded by ConAgra Foods, which was “based on 2009 statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

If one wants more government, the quickest way to such an end is to create a “crisis” that only government can solve. After all, there is no way that we can fight obesity and hunger without the government, right? Evidently not, because, again according to the ABC report, “a shocking 49 percent of all babies born in the U.S. are born to families receiving food supplements from the WIC program,” which is operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

To qualify for WIC, women, or families, with children under 5 must have a household income that is less than 185% of the federal poverty guidelines. Why not 175% or 150%? What government bean counter decided 185% was the magic number?

Speaking of the federal poverty limit, according to the U.S. census, 30 million Americans are living in poverty. That’s about one in ten Americans. What does it mean to live in poverty in the U.S.? According to a recent Heritage Foundation report, which used the government’s own data, the average household in America that “lives in poverty” has air conditioning, cable TV, a microwave, and a washer and dryer. They also have a car, two color televisions, a DVD player, and if a child is in the home, an electronic game system.

Not quite the emaciated African we’ve often seen in those moving television ads, is it? But that’s what happens when we allow our secular federal government to define things. That’s what happens when we give the purse strings of a trillion dollar kitty to professional politicians. That’s how we end up with the conflicting, confusing, and asinine messages of “fight obesity, but not too hard!” It’s how far too many politicians buy votes and create a perpetual and seemingly unending culture of dependency on government.

I know! Perhaps we need a government agency to prevent contradictory federal programs. We could call it the Washington Institute to Stop Everything Undertaken by Progressives, or W.I.S.E. U.P., for short. To work there, one would have to be able to identify at least 50 oxymoronic federal behaviors. Their motto would be, “The Bucks Stop With Us!”

(See this column on American Thinker.)

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 Consequences of Redefining Marriage

Several recent developments have me thinking again about the consequences of legalized gay—I mean “same-sex”—marriage.

First of all, in the battle to redefine marriage, almost certainly the next step after gay marriage is polygamy. As I noted in 2008, with the attention received by then fugitive Warren Jeffs, president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, polygamy was declared “the next civil rights battle.”

“Reality TV” last year gave us TLC’s “Sister Wives.” The show documents the lives of polygamist Kody Brown, his four wives, and their 16 children. Upon receiving strong ratings, the show was renewed for a second season. The emboldened cast recently declared that they were suing Utah’s governor over the state’s long-standing law against polygamy.

The lawsuit says that, “By criminalizing religious-based plural families and intimate relationships under the criminal bigamy law, Utah officials prosecute private conduct between consenting adults.” (Never mind that laws often govern the behavior between “consenting adults.”)

In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 ruling, overturned the Texas anti-sodomy law, and thus invalidated similar laws in the 12 states that still had them on their books. In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of…laws based on moral choices.”

As late as 1986, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy law. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens declared that “the fact that the governing majority in a State has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice.”

Given that from the Georgia to the Texas ruling the Court reversed itself and embraced Stevens’ conclusions on law and morality, Scalia declared that the Court had effectively decreed “the end of all morals legislation.”

Thus, as Scalia feared, in the U.S. today, “private conduct between consenting adults” often trumps traditional (especially Christian) morality. Never mind that all laws (and behaviors) are governed by some morality.

Secondly, in what seems to be an attempt to stake out a more moderate position on same-sex marriage, potential GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said of the recent events in NY, “Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That’s New York, and that’s their business, and that’s fine with me.”

The problem with the “states’ rights” approach is that doesn’t prevent the federal government, especially via the courts, from stepping in, as it has before, when it deems states to be “discriminating” against its own citizens. The states’ rights argument also fails to address how the law should handle same-sex couples who are legally married in one state, but then move (or travel) to a state where same-sex marriage is illegal.

Finally, there is this interesting scenario posed by an American Thinker blogger: “Indeed, ‘gay marriage’ does roll more trippingly off the tongue [than ‘same-sex marriage’], but it's really not ‘gay marriage’ at all. When applying for a marriage license, there is no box to check, no oath to take, no questions about a person's sexual proclivity. Ironically, the very heart of the ‘gay marriage’ movement -- homosexuality -- gets nary a mention on the marriage application.”

Thus, concludes Fred Kopp, “In several states it's now legal for any two people to get married, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual preference. I'm not saying that two straight women or two straight guys are going to rush right out and get married just because they can. I'm sure that would be extremely rare (at first), but the point is that they can, and to leave this little tidbit out of the marriage discussion is disingenuous.”

Now combine the “any two people” scenario with the “any number of people” scenario that polygamy provides. Not only could we could see things like heterosexual friends marrying to provide one with health care, or to allow one to receive the Social Security or Medicare benefits of the other, but we could see an individual marrying multiples to do the same. We could see one couple marrying another couple so that they could file joint tax returns, or three lesbians marrying because they enjoy each other’s company.

Again, as I have noted multiple times before, redefining marriage will have profound consequences. Much of the above may seem absurd, but that’s what happens when one redefines a fundamental truth that lies at the very foundation of our nation.

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

“Every Form of Refuge Has Its Price”

Make no mistake about it, the heart of the current (and future) financial crisis lay with entitlements, or what some deem “federal benefits.” Though many point to the collapse of mortgage-backed securities and the real estate market as triggering the Great Recession, ultimately we are where we are as a result of far too much debt in the U.S. economy. In other words, as the current debate over the debt ceiling illustrates, ours is a crisis of debt.

Very early in our marriage, my wife and I learned a valuable and simple lesson when it comes to managing money: how to live on budget. As I have written before, upon making an early commitment never again to be in debt, we have lived the last 12 years of our 13-and-a-half year marriage completely debt free. This includes owning our home, cars, (along with having four children), and so on. (See a video of our financial testimony here.) Our budget discipline played a huge role in achieving this tremendous financial freedom.

Of course, any American with an intellectual capacity greater than that of fans of Jersey Shore understands the lack of budget discipline that has plagued Washington D.C. for decades. One statistic stands out above all others as an illustration of the fiscal folly perpetuated by the federal government: According to the U.S. census, in 2009, nearly 139 million Americans—over 46%--received at least one federal benefit.

Included in these numbers: 46.5 million received Social Security; 42.6 million Medicare; 42.4 million Medicaid; 36.1 million food stamps; 22.2 million WIC; 12.4 million housing subsidies; 6.1 million unemployment. The United States has created an unprecedented culture of dependency.

Sadly, far too many Americans are content with our current welfare state. A recent Wall St Journal-NBC News poll reveals that fewer than 25 percent of Americans favor cutbacks to Social Security or Medicare to reduce the federal deficit. As the Journal noted, “Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security ‘unacceptable.’”

For another illustration of how numerous Americans are willing to take us even further down our debt hole, last year, when President Obama spoke to an audience of college students on the subject of health care, he declared that the students will now be able to remain on their parents’ health insurance plan until age 26. Upon hearing this, columnist Dennis Prager noted, “I do not ever recall hearing a louder, more thunderous and sustained applause than I did then. I do not believe that if the president had announced that a cure for cancer had been discovered that the applause would have been louder or longer.”

The Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Dependence on Government, which “is designed to measure the pace at which federal government services and programs have grown in areas in which private or community-based services and programs exist or existed to address the same or similar needs,” had a 2009 measure of 272. In 1990 it was 123. In 1962 it was 19. Thus, in about 50 years, according to this Index, dependence on the federal government has grown by over 1300%.

Republicans and Democrats alike—in other words most Americans—are to blame for the monstrosity that is the U.S. federal government. We like to point fingers, but the sad truth of the matter is that, by and large, our government is simply a reflection of its citizenry. Far too many Americans have decided to look to government to provide for them, with far too few understanding the real price of such a relationship.

“Every form of refuge has its price,” sang the Eagles’ Glen Frey in 1975. The line is from the Eagles’ hit song “Lyin’ Eyes.” Don Henley and Frey wrote the song about a beautiful woman who (seemingly) marries a “rich old man” so “she won’t have to worry.” However, though she has many of the finer things in life, she finds herself rather unfulfilled.

It is time for America to realize the price of having our government provide us with so much. It is a price that we literally cannot afford. To roll things back will not be painless; however, as President Grover Cleveland (a democrat) noted, “It is the responsibility of citizens to support their government. It is not the responsibility of government to support its citizens.”

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