The Morality of a Nation

Winston Churchill once pointed out that “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  This statement emphasizes the fact that, though times change, our inherent human nature remains the same.  Sinful actions and desires may change in deed, but they will never change in nature.  If we are to understand the fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and problems of humanity today, we must examine those of the humanity that has gone before.

Consider the following statements and what time and place in history they describe:

-          People, especially educated ones, have rejected traditional religion. 

-          Astrology is practiced. 

-          Patriotism has declined. 

-          The upper class is consumed with pleasure. 

-          Education stresses knowledge more than character, and produces masses of half-educated people. 

-          Public athletic games have turned into professional contests. 

-          Homosexuality is popular. 

-          The dramas of the day are full of seduction and adultery. 

-          A women’s liberation movement has brought women into active roles in a previously male-oriented culture. 

-          Motherhood is devalued, and the bearing of children is viewed as an inconvenience. 

-          Abortion is commonly practiced.

-          There is fighting and unrest within the nation between people of different faiths and ethnic groups.

-          Willingness to join the military is decreasing.

-          The government is called upon to provide for the everyday needs of citizens.

This list is taken from the first chapter of Assumptions that Affect our Lives by Christian Overman.  These statements, though intended to describe Ancient Greece on the verge of decline, apply sadly and surprisingly to modern America.  We have seen some significant changes in people’s assumptions in America’s past.  For example, it is assumed in today’s society that if a boy brings a deadly weapon to school, mass murder will result.  Fifty years ago, children in junior high brought guns to school for show-and-tell.  They were cool—and for hunting rabbits.  Times have changed.  4,000 unborn children die every day in America, something that would have been unthinkable a hundred years ago.  America is on a steep decline, in all the same ways as Ancient Greece right before its fall.

A Biblical set of assumptions addresses every sphere of life: education, church, government, and parenting.  These may contrast popular thought and culture but are still upheld by a significant number of God’s people.  In Ancient Greece, children were handed over to the state at an early age to be trained up in the service of the nation.  However, education is not the responsibility of the state or the government, but of parents and grandparents who will bring up their children in the way they should go.  The church is not a building only, and not restrained to a specific location; it is the body of Christ’s believers in fellowship wherever they are.  Government is under God and subject to Him, for the purpose of protecting the people’s physical well-being and has no control over their hearts, minds, and religious beliefs.  Parenting is closely tied to education, for every aspect of both education and parenting is essential to a child’s mental and spiritual well-being.

I have several practical life ‘assumptions’ that rest near to my heart.  The first and most significant is the deity of Jesus Christ.  He willingly gave his life to save mine, and his love and joy are inherent to my very being.  All the rest follow this: my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and should be used to his glory.  My family members are my friends, gifts from God that are not to be taken for granted.  My Christian friends are my family: we are to hold each other up through fellowship in the Spirit.  My unbelieving friends are my mission field—I am to be Jesus to them.  Life is sacred, because we are created in God’s image and He loves each of us as if there were only one of us.  Marriage is a gift from God and is between one man and one woman.  My faith in a loving Creator gives rise to my entire worldview.

Unfortunately, many Americans no longer hold to the Christian faith, and so no longer maintain a worldview that treasures life, values marriage, or understands the significance of inter-generational communities, especially parents, to the formation of young people, the importance of performing civic duties, and the necessity of a limited government to the liberty of the individual.  Look again at the list above.  Need I say more?

There must be a way to return America to its moral foundation—the government is even now attempting to do so.  However, requiring positive moral conduct through federal legislation is ineffective and unwise.  All legislation must have the consent of the governed, or it is both unconstitutional and imprudent.  Our founders recognized that it is of the essence of government to tend toward tyranny, which is why they granted as little power to the federal government as possible.  Patrick Henry acknowledged that “the Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”  Law can never create morality. 

Where, then, can we find hope?  Look to the fundamental assumptions that shape your own worldview.  Righteousness comes only through faith.  Only Jesus, not the law, can mediate between God and man.  It is not the government’s place to legislate issues of virtue; that is what the government of England attempted to do, and that is what the first Pilgrims fled.  Indeed, our founders knew that “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”  We see this sentiment echoed in our own Constitution.  The First Amendment forbids the government from imposing a certain religion on the people or limiting freedom thereof; the Ninth Amendment recognizes that the people may be granted certain rights not specifically listed in the Constitution; and in the Tenth Amendment all powers not explicitly granted to the Federal Government are reserved to the states and to the people.  Thomas Jefferson wrote that “the legitimate powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions.”  Upon a thorough examination of the Constitution, one will notice that nowhere is the government granted the power to dictate morals.  The government stays out.

 

To build a moral society, we have to start from the bottom, with natural law as found in the Bible, and build up.  If you were to build a house, you would first lay the foundation; you wouldn’t start with the roof and work your way down.  Likewise, we cannot create a moral nation starting with the government and working our way down with legislation.  The foundation is already given to us in the Bible; we only have to build upon it.  Upon this set of assumptions, individuals must build their worldview.  Then, it is upon the individual—upon the collective worldviews of the individuals—that government is formed.  It is our duty, the duty of the Christian citizen, to build upon that foundation through education and evangelization.  America is a great nation; but every other great nation throughout history has come to an end through moral decay and internal struggles.  Let us learn from history, so that America does not meet the same fate.

The Liberty Formula ~ As Government Expands, Liberty Contracts

I don’t like math… but sometimes you just can’t get away from it.  There’s a very simple mathematical formula at work in today’s America, one that we need to recognize and work to reverse.  In the words of Ronald Reagan, “As government expands, liberty contracts.”  Our country’s founders sought to provide as much liberty to the people as possible without creating anarchy.  When it was signed in 1787, the United States Constitution granted more freedom—and more responsibility—to the American people than had ever been given to a nation before.  Early Americans had suffered under tyrannical governments; they had felt the wrath of kings who tried to impose a certain religion on their subjects; they had borne high taxes and tight regulations.  They sought to protect our infant nation from such an outrage.  Our government is a Democratic-Republic, a self-government, reliant on the personal responsibility, accountability, and morality of citizens to restrain the government and preserve individual liberty.  Ronald Reagan joked that “The most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”  Thomas Jefferson put it best: “When the people fear the government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people there is liberty.”  Keep that formula in mind: as government expands, liberty contracts.  American liberty depends on two closely related factors: citizens must care to learn how the government works so that they can cast educated votes and otherwise participate in the political process, and the government must remain small so that the people’s voice is heard and tyranny is avoided.  Those two things are, well, let’s just say they’re not as prevalent as our founders intended; thus, American liberty is… dying.

Until the early 1900s, the United States had a limited government and liberty thrived.  Since the Great Depression, however, the general attitude towards government has changed, resulting in bigger government.  In well-intended efforts to ease the effects of the Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted a set of “New Deal” programs.  He began handing out Federal subsidies to the unemployed and underemployed, introduced Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, established a Federal minimum wage, and artificially created jobs, just for a start.  The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) laid out mandatory guidelines for businesses to help increase employment, maintain wages, and reduce unwanted competition.  The NIRA established about 540 specific codes, all of which actually tended to raise prices and wages, reduce hours, and remove competition and opportunity for innovation. 

Today, we are seeing even bolder federal intervention, and our freedom is declining dramatically.  Government initiatives such as minimum wage laws, rent control, international trade barriers, price supports, health and housing subsidies, and bailouts of corporations cause increased economic disorder and limit individual freedom and opportunity.  Take price controls for instance.  In a free economy, prices are allowed to follow the laws of supply and demand.  When there is a surplus of an item, its price goes down because it is in lower demand; when an item is in scarce supply, demand for that item increases, so its price also increases.  Consumers shop for the lowest price on the products they want or need.  Producers want to charge high prices for their products, but they also want to offer low prices that will compete with other producers and attract buyers.  Each individual, in pursuit of his own best interest, is free to gauge his opportunities and make the choices that will be most beneficial to him.  When the government reaches beyond its natural bounds to impose price controls, the laws of supply and demand lose some of their superiority, and competition in the market is reduced from the perspectives of both the producer and the consumer. 

The minimum wage is another good example of government intervention causing unwanted consequences.  The problems with minimum wage—problems that grow as we increase the minimum wage—are threefold.  First, it reduces job opportunities for unskilled workers.  Most minimum wage jobs are entry-level positions filled by people with limited education and experience; these lower-paying jobs teach such workers essential skills.  The higher the minimum wage, the more it costs employers to hire unskilled workers, so they’ll be much more likely to look for a better equipped worker—to put it bluntly, they’ll hold out for someone who’s worth a higher wage, thus eliminating entry-level positions.  Second, it causes prices to rise.  When it costs a businessman more to hire employees, he has to charge more for his products to make up for it.  Finally, minimum wage laws reduce competition, just like price controls.  When employers are free to offer any wage they please for the position they need to fill, two beneficial things happen.  Potential employees increase their skills to appeal to an employer who will offer them the highest pay, and employers in turn offer higher pay to compete with other employers.  Thus, wages and quality both go up and up and up.  A minimum wage reduces the incentive both for workers to make themselves worth a higher wage and for employers to offer a higher wage.  Minimum wage therefore causes the unemployment rate to stay stagnant or rise, increases prices unnecessarily, and reduces quality by reducing competition.  In spite of all these negative impacts—in the name of reducing income inequality—our president is currently fighting to raise the minimum wage again, to a level higher than history has ever seen it.

We can look at other examples of big government infringing on the liberties of individuals.  The Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, recently passed by Congress and currently being implemented, contains a wagonload of oversteps of the government’s limits.  The obvious ones are the Individual Mandate and the Employer Mandate.  The Individual Mandate requires individuals to obtain health insurance or pay a fee.  It eliminates certain types of health insurance, so many Americans have to forfeit the health plan or doctor they had chosen.  Under the Employer Mandate, which goes into effect in 2015, employers are required to provide health insurance for their full-time employees.  This is increasing the cost of running a business, and causing businesses to cut workers’ hours down to part-time.  Individuals and families also receive subsidies based on their incomes—but there’s a catch.  Because of the way the numbers are crunched, couples are actually penalized for getting married.  If you have two hard working people who aren’t married but simply cohabit, their incomes are counted and subsidized separately.  If they get married, their incomes are combined, so it receives a lower subsidy.  This is being called the Federal Wedding Tax.  That’s not freedom.

Our founders intended for the government to have very little impact on the lives of private citizens.  Individuals, private corporations, and the free market were supposed to bear most of the responsibility, because they can do things most efficiently and productively.  In a famous conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev, the last premier of the Soviet Union, and Margaret Thatcher, then British prime minister, a perplexed Gorbachev purportedly asked Thatcher who saw to it that the British people got fed.  “No one,” she answered, “the price system does that.”  Our government today is trending towards Gorbachev’s line of thinking, that the government has to micromanage everything.  And when it tries to, things go downhill; but Americans are forgetting that.  Thomas Jefferson warned that “a government large enough to give you everything you need is a government large enough to take everything you have.”  We The People need to take this nation back.  As John F. Kennedy admonished, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!”

Changing Times ~ The Fourth Amendment and Freedom from Government Intrusion

America, the land of the free. The Bill of Rights protects freedom of speech, religion, press, and expression in the first amendment, personal weapons in the second, and freedom from an unjust trial or cruel and unusual punishment in the 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th. The common theme is protection of private citizens from unfair treatment by an overbearing government. The fourth amendment reads “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” Our founders penned this intending to forever protect our natural and God-given right to privacy, a fundamental of liberty. It’s interesting to compare what it meant then with what it should mean now; the essence of privacy hasn’t changed, but technology has added myriad means of compromise.

In colonial America, the British government held the colonies in a tight grip and squeezed every penny they could out of them. Resentment drove certain production and trade underground, which in turn provoked the king of England to use further oppressive tactics to satisfy his greed. Writs of assistance were general search warrants that allowed soldiers virtually unrestrained search and seizure of property in homes and workplaces, and the people were powerless to legally resist. The warrants did not expire until the issuing king himself expired!

The 4th amendment was the Founders' remedy.  It requires that search warrants be obtained that specifically detail the place to be searched, and the evidence or goods to be sought and seized.  This eliminated the incredibly invasive and unpredictable searches and seizures.  Restrained by this amendment, the government would have to mind its own business.  But how could our Founders have anticipated the technology that has forever changed the very idea of privacy itself and therefore complicated the application of the 4^th amendment in recent history?

Contrary, I am certain, to our founders’ intentions, the federal government now operates with bold disregard for the fourth amendment. The National Security Agency, NSA, was created to protect national security and prevent terrorist attacks by scanning messages and communications for suspicious keywords, phrases, patterns, or connections.  Now, the agency possesses a complete record of every phone call, and receives copies of all electronic communications. 

In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, people traveled to each other’s homes regularly for business or friendly visits.  Early Americans would have been appalled if the government had listened in on private conversations; but today, the government is doing just that.  The telephone was invented in 1876, and began to be commercialized in 1878; if you think about it, all it did was extend the distance of private conversations—enhance your ability to talk with someone as though they were sitting right there in your living room.  Though it isn’t actually listening in on conversations—at least not to our knowledge—the NSA now possesses a complete record of who we are calling, and how often.  This is every bit as intrusive as a writ of assistance from the king. 

Sometimes the best communications medium was mail – long carried by horseback or coach, and then rail. Letters were often sealed with wax and signet to prove authority and authenticity and protect privacy. It was difficult to access the contents of such a letter undetected. Today, much of this “snail mail” has been supplanted by email, or electronically transmitted mail, which travels by cable and fiber-optic networks. The NSA has installed “splitters” at many of the telecommunication network junctions in the United States for the sole purpose of intercepting and copying data.  These devices forward one copy to our intended recipient and the other to the NSA.  To our founders it would have been an abomination that the government would pilfer our private correspondence this way.

The fourth amendment was intended to and for a time did significantly reduce government interference in the lives of private citizens. While technology can be a valuable tool, it should not dictate changes in values, and we need to take steps to honor and restore the spirit of the 4^th Amendment by being aware and vigilant to protect our personal privacy in this elusive but burgeoning new dimension of personal communication options. 

Works Cited

"How the NSA's Domestic Spying Program Works" Electronic Frontier Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 14  Oct. 2013. <https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/how-it-works>.

"NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls." USATODAY.com. N.p., 11 May 2006. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm>.