I mean seriously folks, how can you continue to debate tertiary considerations like moral character, policy position, political philosophy, consistency, trustworthiness, or experience while this primary consideration is still so hotly contested? Can we really risk the chance of having another Andrew Jackson or Martin Van Buren? I mean, whoever we pick could someday end up on our money, hair and all!

Speaking of hair, isn’t it about time we had a President with facial hair again? I mean it has been nearly 100 years since we had a president with a mustache (Taft, 1913) and almost 120 years since we had a president with a full beard (Harrison, 1893)! If the president had one, then maybe BYU would start allowing students to have them too.

Whichever candidate grows a beard before the election will get my vote. Even if it is Michelle Bachmann. That’s just how important this election is.

Nearly as important, I already have a pretty good idea of which actor would play Mitt Romney in the inevitable movie, should he win. But who would play Newt Gingrich if he wins?!

[All satire aside, isn't it scary to think that a large number of citizens choose the candidate for whom they will vote based upon criteria not so different from this. If they bother to vote at all...]

So here is a little supposal:

Think of a presidential candidate that you do not support.  Now put the candidate’s name into the appropriate places in the following passage:

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should support [a specific candidate] for President; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I supported a [candidate of that ideology/party/record]. And I shrunk and would that I might not support [her/him].

And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold it is the Lord’s desire that [that candidate] be President of the United States…

We spend a lot of time debating and defending our political beliefs, and comparing political candidates to our ideals. But what if, regardless of political party, or ideology, or record, or aptitude, or personality, or anything else we might use to judge our candidates, the Lord for His own reasons wants you to support a candidate different than the one you would choose?

It seems likely that most of the time He will leave it up to our best judgement. But we should also be open to the possibility that He will prompt us contrary to our reasoning. We should make sure that we consult with the Lord in prayer about who we should support in our political decisions and not rely solely on our own understanding and political philosophies.

So, continuing with the supposal:

Once the Lord has communicated his desire, how do you go about supporting the candidate? You can’t say that you honestly agree with the candidate’s positions.

You could say that he is the best person for the job, but since you don’t know the reason why the Lord wants him in office, you don’t know that for sure. Maybe she is not the best person, but the Lord wants her in office for some other reason.  All you know is that for some unknown reason, God has told you to support the election of this person.

You do not have the authority or stewardship to tell others that they should vote for the candidate because you have received a revelation that the Lord wants that candidate to be president.

And you’ve spent the last few years establishing your bonafides in a political position contrary to that of the candidate.  Now you will look like a flip-flopper, or even worse, incoherent.

So what do you do?

Chapter 3 of the book of 3rd Nephi in the Book of Mormon is interesting in that it is one of the few sections of the text which purports to give us a glimpse of how the Gadianton Robbers viewed themselves, rather than how they were viewed by Mormon and his Nephite protagonists. Verses 2 through 10 are the record of an epistle written to the governor of the Nephites, Lachoneus, from the leader of the Gadianton Robbers, Giddianhi:

“2. Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so.

“3. And it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus, that ye should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command, who do now at this time stand in their arms, and do await with great anxiety for the word—Go down upon the Nephites and destroy them.

“4. And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing of their everlasting hatred towards you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction.

“5. Therefore I have written this epistle, sealing it with mine own hand, feeling for your welfare, because of your firmness in that which ye believe to be right, and your noble spirit in the field of battle.

“6. Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.

“7. Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.

“8. And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct.

“9. And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this the secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us.

“10. And I write this epistle unto you, Lachoneus, and I hope that ye will deliver up your lands and your possessions, without the shedding of blood, that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government, and except ye do this, I will avenge their wrongs. I am Giddianhi.”

I hadn’t noticed this until recently, but it is remarkable how much Giddianhi sounds like a Marxist Revolutionary:

The works of the Gadiantons are “good.” They have been alienated by the wickedness of the Nephites who have withheld from them their rights, their rights of government, and done many wrongs to them. Significantly, in order to recover those rights they demand that the Nephites relinquish all their properties (“cities”, “lands”, “possessions”). They invite the Nephites to join them and become partners in all of their collective substance. If they refuse, they will be violently destroyed, with the implication that their possessions will be taken into the collective by force anyway, but that they will be killed instead of being able to enjoy them collectively.

Over the last few years there has been an effort among some liberal Mormons to legitimize the view that Socialism is compatible with the Restored Gospel. They sometimes cite Book of Mormon and other scriptural descriptions of an ideal, Zion society in which the people have “all things in common” and “no poor among them” as well as injunctions to care for the poor and needy, and condemnations of the “love of money” and those who “covet their own property.”

When the ancient scriptures describe Zion societies, with all things in common and no poor, they are curiously silent about the specifics. They describe the ends, but do not explain the means other than that it has to do with the righteousness of the people.

But Giddianhi’s epistle illustrates that not every society in which the participants are equal partners and have all property in common is a Zion Society, even if they do use the rhetoric of rights and justice. Sometimes those who propose to share all substance in common really are just robbers, even if in their own minds they think they are justified by the wickedness of others.

Some LDS advocates for Socialism cite the ends as if that alone were sufficient argument for the political means they propose to achieve them. And when someone disagrees, rather than defend the means they propose, they insinuate that those who disagree do so because they are opposed to the ends. But it is the means by which Socialists propose to create such a society that are the sticky point.

Are the means moral and compatible with the principles of the Restored Gospel?

Are the means capable of really accomplishing the ends they claim?

Do the means have unintended consequences that undermine their ends?

Do the means achieve the spiritual and moral objectives associated with the ends or just a superficial physical, material equality?

Do they create a Zion in the hearts of the people which then flows outward into society or do they create an artificial outward appearance of Zion, externally imposed on still covetous, wicked hearts?

Does it create a society of “shared substance” like the Gadianton Robbers or a Zion society of “all things in common”?

Before you get worked up about this, and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, it’s important to identify exactly what has changed so that you don’t end up fighting the wrong battles.

First of all, the decision only applies to Section 3 of DOMA, which is the part that establishes a federal definition of marriage that overrides individual state definitions as far as national government policy and laws are concerned.  It does not apply to Section 2 which exempts states from having to recognize any same-sex marriages enacted by other states.  The DOJ will continue to defend the constitutionality of Section 2.

Secondly, the decision means that the DoJ will no longer defend the constitutionality of Section 3 in court but the Obama administration is still constitutionally obligated to continue enforcing the law (including Section 3) until it is either declared unconstitutional in court or Congress repeals it, and there is no indication that they wont continue to do so.

Third, while it does deviate from a long-standing tradition in which the DoJ defends the constitutionality of laws properly enacted until they are declared unconstitutional by the judicial branch, there is nothing directly unconstitutional about President Obama’s decision. He is breaking with tradition, but not violating the constitution.

Finally, there may have been some people who voted for Obama partially because they were under the impression that he was against same-sex marriage who now feel like Obama has changed positions.  But he hasn’t changed positions.  Even while campaigning for the presidency, Obama was the most pro-same-sex-marriage candidate ever from either of the two major parties. Throughout his campaign Obama gave different groups of potential voters different impressions of his position on same-sex marriage and let them believe he was saying what they wanted him to be saying.  Personally, he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.  But he has always explicitly said that he intended to work for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and that he opposed Proposition 8 in California.  I wrote about this during his campaign (See: LDS Church vs Barack Obama on Same-Sex Marriage, Neglected VP Debate Issue: Obama’s Same-Sex Marriage Policy ).  So if you thought that you were voting for someone who was going to defend traditional marriage, you weren’t paying close enough attention.  But don’t blame yourself too much, Obama wanted you to come away with that impression. Be more careful in the future.

Anyhow, armed with proper information, you can now get outraged and go out and do what you can to oppose Obama’s efforts to undermine and eventually repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Hi. This is Regina work. Sort of. I’m calling to set the record straight about my friend Mike Lee. The truth is the bikes the key part of all the clear waste out of Utah we work together. I’ve got her husband’s Council. He stopped it from being transferred across our highways ad for big story, it does West desert. You may not know but my ex father. Rex week passed away from cancer related to be there with her. So, if you might expect. Mike, please record his commitment to keeping you talk to say from high level nuclear waste a second not anybody who tells you otherwise. If it’s a resort. It’s a last minute mislead attack ads for the role personal game. That’s the truth. Again, I’m not sure of the calling to set the record straight, and I encourage you to join me support likely the upcoming primary election. Thank you. Goodbye just calling to pay for. I found it and I agree.

That’s right, the primary elections are here in Utah once again! Tuesday June 22 is election day so make sure you take the time to vote.  If you are registered to vote, you can find out the location where you should vote at the Utah State website.  The site will also tell you what party you are currently registered with and let you see samples of both the Ballot for your party and the non-partisan elections for your area.  Also check out Abigail Adams Project – UTAH for information about the candidates.

If the erroneously transcribed voice mail above was complete nonsense to you, then don’t worry, a lot of the information that has been published during this campaign has been just as messed up even when properly transcribed.

I’ve been participating in local Utah elections actively for the last six years, and every time the dirty politics, acrimony, and enmity is thoroughly discouraging.  For example, last Saturday I received the two campaign fliers in the mail from the Bridgewater campaign.  Here’s a photo:

The first flier reads (more or less):

No wonder D. C. Lawyer Mike Lee is running a negative, D. C. Style Campaign.  Mike Lee has distorted businessman Tim Bridgewater’s record.  Here are the facts about Time Bridgewater:

Tim Has A Plan.

Blah blah blah…

Tim Is A Proven Fighter.

Blah blah blah…

Tim is a solid Fiscal Conservative

Blah blah blah

A campaign based on issues, not negative attacks

Blah blah blah

Paid for by Bridgewater for Senate

The second flier reads

Do we really want to be the world’s dumping ground?

You should know D. C. Lawyer Mike Lee is directly tied to the nuclear waste industry…

[On the back it makes several statements about how Mike Lee is really a puppet of Energy Solutions and wants to dump nuclear waste in Utah]

Paid for by Bridgewater for Senate

Now the accusations here are not really that important.  It’s the irony, the cliché, and the pettiness. “Hey! I’m negatively attacking my opponent by pointing out his negative attacks!  So vote for me because I’m campaigning on the issues and not negative attacks….P.S. See the photo of my opponent looking angry?  I told you he was negative.  P.P.S. Did you notice that I’m not wearing a tie and have a blue shirt?  I’m cool like that. I’m anti-establishment. P.P.P.S. Did you know that my opponent is part of a conspiracy run by an evil organization owned by radioactive SATAN? So freak out and vote for me instead.”

Nice.

Mike Lee’s campaign hasn’t been much better when it comes to magnifying to distortion some of Bridgewater’s background. Here’s Bridgewater’s response to some of the Lee campaign’s claims.  Others have responded to Bridgewater’s Energy Solutions accusations against Lee.

And then there is the whole “fake flier that appears to be from Mike Lee but is really from an anonymous group against Mike Lee that was intended to trash his campaign by making it look as if Lee was leveraging religion to trash his opponents when he really wasn’t, which was facilitated by a former long-time Senator Bennett staffer.”  If that seems incomprehensibly convoluted to you that’s because it is.  It’s a reverse-psychology dirty-trick you see.

Does your brain hurt yet?

The sad thing is that both of these men would probably be good, solidly conservative senators, probably.

Mike Lee knows the Constitution inside and out, and he is very consistent in his support for following the Constitution, even when it means taking the side of Energy Solutions when it comes to international contracts because international contracts fall under the constitutional authority of the National and not the State governments.  He is a real constitutional scholar with practical experience in applying the constitution to real-world situations.

Tim Bridgewater is an experienced businessman who truly believes in the free market, and understands the real-world consequences of National interference in the economy, taxes, and health-insurance.  He truly believes in limited government and is a real fiscal conservative with practical experience.

I’ll be voting for Mike Lee.  Why?  Here are my reasons:

1. Outgoing Senator Bob Bennett endorsed Bridgewater.  I was against Bennett before the convention because I want to replace Establishment Republicans with new, conservative outsiders who are focused on the Constitution.  By endorsing Bridgewater, Bennett essentially gave the Establishment Stamp of Approval to Bridgewater.  Establishment endorsement  = vote for the other guy.

2. The reverse-psychology dirty trick mentioned above really makes me angry.  Using those kinds of tactics to defeat a candidate makes me think that he must be a threat to the establishment.  And the fact that it was facilitated by a middle-man who was a D.C. staffer for Senator Bennett for many years reinforces that perception.  Dirty tricks by Establishment Republicans = vote for their target

3. Bridgewater’s ironic “my campaign is based on issues not negative attacks…Mike Lee is an evil, radioactive corporate pawn” fliers were craptastic.  Good bye moral high ground.  I first heard the Energy Solutions/Nuclear Waste attack against Lee in my caucus meeting from people who were big Bob Bennett supporters. Contradictory moralizing = fail!

4. I was attracted to Lee early on because of his firm understanding of the Constitution.  However, I was honestly worried about his positions because of some of the more radical conservatives who were rabidly supporting him and even linked to his campaign.  I contacted the campaign with my concerns.  I received a personal call from Mr. Lee and he chatted with me about his views, and those of some of his supporters for a good half an hour.  He and I don’t agree on everything, but he isn’t a Birther, or a 9/11 Truther, or any other kind of crazy.  Serious constitutional conservative – the crazy = my vote.

5. While I find Bridgewater’s business experience appealing, Free Market principles and practical experience alone are not going to be enough to get us out of the mess we are in.  We need someone with a solid, comprehensive, personal understanding of constitutional principles.  Bridgewater may not like D.C. Lawyers, but since his experience is in business not constitutional law, he’s going to have to hire a bunch of them to advise him if he wins anyway.  I’d rather have a candidate with an expert knowledge of the Constitution himself, and experience in applying it.  Outsourced constitutional knowledge = Fail! (If Bridgewater does win, I hope he’ll hire Mike Lee to advise him and vise-versa. Lincoln-style Appointing rivals = Win!)

6. The Mike Lee Campaign’s Google Voice Transcribed Voice Message is AWESOME!  I needed a laugh.

Anyhow, visit the candidate’s websites and vote for whomever you think would be best.

Utah County Candidates

I also feel strongly that we need some changes in the Alpine School District.  Consider voting for the following candidates:

A1-Lehi/Saratoga Springs/Eagle Mountain

Paula Hill (http://paulahill4u.wordpress.com/)

Casey Voeks (http://www.caseyvoeks.com/)

A2-Highland/Alpine/Cedar Hills/Small segment of Northeast Lehi

Wendy Hart (http://wendyhart2010.com)

Zonda Perry (http://www.zonda.org)

A3-American Fork

Incumbent-Tim Osborn (http://www.electtimosborn.com/)

A5-Southwest Orem

Scott Bell (http://www.BELLforSchoolBoard.com)

Brad Thompson

…Hi, this is J. Max Wilson. Sort of. I found it and I agree.

However, I thought it was super funny that the service that they have chosen to use to publish the visitor log data on the web, Socrata, has a button right at the top of the display that says “Socialize This.”  Almost every other service in the world uses the word “Share” on their links and buttons for posting information to social networks like twitter or facebook.

It’s a Freudian slip from the collective administration subconscious.

That is all.

UPDATE: 4:00pm – Since I took the screenshot they have hidden the button under a menu selection, and in the menu it says “Socialize this Dataset” but if you view it full screen you will still see the “Socialize This” button.

To set things up, let me share my personal experience with the economic crisis.

Depression

In January 2009 I found myself sitting in a conference room of the company I had worked for during the last four years listening to the chairman of the board of directors explain that the company was running out of money and that they were replacing the company founder and president with a new, hand-picked CEO.

Only six months earlier the company had been on top of the world: honored with prestigious awards and accolades and a three-year sales growth of 620 percent.

As if the mood wasn’t somber enough, the chairman then went on to explain that the economy was in a very bad way, and that it wasn’t just a cyclical recession, but it was going to be a depression.  He expected that many, many companies would fail but that those companies that survived the depression would be wildly successful afterward.

Now, from any board chairman this kind of talk would be alarming, but from our chairman, Mark H. Willes, it was downright horrifying.  You see, Willes had been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1977 to 1980.  He had been President and CEO of of General Mills, Inc., President and CEO of The Times Mirror Company, director of Black and Decker, and a somewhat controversial publisher of the L.A. Times.

In other words, he was very, very well connected to insiders across a large number of industries. He had been involved with recessions from various angles for nearly four decades.  He said that neither he nor his associates had never seen anything like what was happening in the economy in their lives.

Within a month or two of our meeting, Mark was named as the new President and CEO of the Deseret Management Corporation by the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Deseret Management Corporation oversees all of the church’s for-profit commercial enterprises.

Within three months of the depressing company meeting with Willes, my award winning company had dwindled from layoffs and resignations.  I was fortunate to find employment with a more stable company.

Now, experts will certainly argue with Willes about whether the current economic crisis actually constitutes a depression.  In fact, a good number believe that the economy is already well on its way to recovery from a severe recession. Others disagree and are predicting that the supposed recovery is superficial and will not last.

I have no idea who is right.  Though, as I watch increasing numbers of friends lose their jobs, I am not very optimistic.  But regardless of whether this is an actual depression, everyone seems to agree that it is among the worst economic crises we’ve had in a very long time.

The Causes of the Economic Crisis

In order to draw my analogy, it is important to first look at how this economic crisis came about.  As usual, even experts disagree about some of the roots of the crisis, and like the Great Depression, I am sure that they will be arguing about them for decades to come.  However, most of the explanations I have seen point to the Housing Market Bubble , Subprime Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities as the crux of the crisis.

Perhaps the most layman-accessible explanation I have seen is an 12 minute video entitled “The Crisis of Credit Visualized” by Jonathan Jarvis.

I encourage you to watch the video.

Now, one thing that I should point out is that the video puts the blame for subprime mortgages squarely on the lenders and investors without mentioning that government programs intended to promote home ownership among lower income, minority families as a form of social engineering created artificial incentives for lenders to lend to subprime applicants.

It also neglects the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act passed by the Republican controlled 106th Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1999 which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which had prohibited individual institutions from acting as both an investment bank and commercial bank, or as both a bank and an insurer; prohibitions that had been enacted specifically to prevent the kind of circumstance they believed led to the Great Depression.

The key point here is that the the credit crisis was incubating for a long time before it actually hit.  Laws and policies enacted nearly a decade ago, if not more, did not bear fruit until this last year.

A decade ago  I was newly married and worried more about school, work, and family problems than obscure shifts in banking law and social initiatives being made by the Clinton administration and my Republican representatives in Congress.  I would have never believed that the bad subprime lending practices of lenders and the greed of investment bankers far away from my simple, honest attempt to make a living could damage my own job and threaten the value of my home.

And that is why the subprime credit crisis provides a good analogy for the potential dangers of redefining marriage.

An Analogy

Over and over again I hear supporters of same-sex marriage ask derisively how a same-sex marriage could possibly destroy anyone else’s marriage.  More recently they point to Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been legal since May 2004, and declare triumphantly that the societal meltdown prophesied by opponents has not materialized.

But as the subprime mortgage crisis demonstrates, in complex systems seemingly small policy changes, and millions of individual decisions, can over a longer time-scale cause disastrous results for even those who were not involved in the bad decisions, even if things look peachy in the interim.  Five years ago we might have asked derisivly “How can my neighbor’s subprime mortgage hurt my mortagage?”  And now we know how.

Redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is analogous to redefining lending guidelines to offer mortgages to applicants who under previous definitions would not qualify.  We are creating subprime marriages.

The motivation for changing the definition is also similar.  Home ownership is a stabilizing institution.  Government programs sought to lower the standards for mortgage qualifications in order to encourage the stabilizing influence of home ownership among lower-income families and minorities.  Plus everyone wants the benefits of home ownership, and the government and businesses wanted the increased revenue by lending and taxing people who were previously not eligible.

But by lowering the standards they set up a system that in the long term destabilized the entire housing market.

Likewise, marriage is a stabilizing institution.  Some same-sex marriage proponents argue that by allowing homosexuals to marry they will stabilize relationships that are at the present notoriously unstable.  They want the benefits of marriage. Who doesn’t?  But just like home ownership, but even more so, marriage is a long term investment.  It is an investment in the next generation of citizens consisting of the children raised by marriages, and by proxy an investment in society.  By redefining marriage, we potentially destabilize the entire system in the long term, even if things look peachy in the interim.

Of course, same-sex marriage is only one type of subprime marriage.  For decades now we have been investing in other forms of subprime marriages as we grow increasingly tollerant of pornography, infidelity, abuse, and divorce.  In many ways same-sex marriage is as much a result of these existing subprime marriages.

To look at five years of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and declare triumphantly that there are no deleterious consequences is like declaring in 2005, at the height of the housing bubble, that extending homeownership to people who were previously inelligibe and breaking down the barriers to banking, the whole country has benefitted across the board.  It’s short term thinking.

The possible effects of subprime marriage may not be felt for decades, or even two or three generations.

While I empathize a great deal with same-sex couples and their desire to redefine marriage and claim its benefits, like subprime mortgages, in the long run investing in subprime marriage is a bad investment with the potential to be amplified through the complexity of society with disasterous long-term results that affect everyone.

Barack Obama has attempted to targeted this impulse for positive change with his rhetoric of “hope.” I have a number of friends and family members for whom this message is reasonably attractive. Obama has painted himself as a proponent of “new politics,” rising above the partisanship of the past.

I firmly believe, however, that this post-partisan visage is demonstrably a hypocritical mask, calculated to play upon the righteous sentiments of the people in a way to win votes, but offered completely insincerely. The mainstream media have been complicit in perpetuating this lie.

As part of this false post-partisan persona, Barack Obama has tried to paint his primary opponent as merely a continuation of the Bush administration, pointing out that John McCain has voted in-line with the Republican Party 95% of the time. But, according to non-partisan sources, Barack Obama has voted in line with his party 96% of the time (see this analysis from FactCheck.org)

For me, this fact is central to the presidential decision. While the slogan of voting for the man, not the party is a noble idea, it is ultimately a naive one. The reality is that, because of the way national politics works, when you vote for a man you are also voting for the party to which he is inextricably bound. Regardless of his post-partisan mantra, Obama has voted 96% of the time with his party. He has never taken a strong, public stand against his own party on any meaningful issue. He is a democratic partisan through and through. To believe otherwise is gullible in the extreme.

Obama’s partisanship is revealed in his scant record:

1. Barack Obama wants to recind the Defense of Marriage Act, which is what prevents states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriages enacted in other states. His position on same-sex marriage has been purposefully obscured to attract supporters from both sides.

2. Obama repeatedly voted against laws designed to protect babies born in botched late-term, partial birth abortions from being killed or left to die because the laws might be used to restrict other kinds of abortions. Truly disgusting.

3. Obama is a ruthless partisan who won his seat in the Illinois senate by hiring a team of lawyers to crawl through the paperwork of his opponents and get every one of them thrown off the ballot on technicalities , so that he was the only choice. Is this a “new kind of politics?”

4. Obama has had long standing relationships with radical progressives and has systematically tried to white-wash his past to make himself more palatable to Americans, only distancing himself as it became prudent to win the election.

5. Obama purposefully obscures his socialist tax-credit system by falsely describing them as “tax-cuts.” The top 25% richest Americans already pay 83.88% of all the taxes. The lower 50% only pay 3%. That’s an even more progressive, socialist tax system than many European nations. And Obama wants to be even more socialist than that . We need less socialism, not more.

6. Obama has tried to blame the Bush Administration for the economic collapse caused by the housing and credit crisis. While it is true that Republicans repealed laws set up after the great depression to protect the country from another banking disaster, that repeal happened back in the late 90s’ and was signed into law by President Clinton. The problem was then exacerbated by affirmative-action style mortgage lending policies promoted by the Democrats . When the Republican’s proposed stronger controls on the industry to prevent the crisis, the Democrats blocked them. Worst of all, in only 4 years in the Senate, Barack Obama accepted more money from corrupt Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac than all but one other senator had in the last 20 years. See also: Planting Seeds of Disaster

7. Obama’s defeatism and opposition to the Surge in Iraq, which was not only an increase in troops, but a radical change in strategy, is unacceptable. Losing the war in Iraq is not an option. Retreating would have emboldened our enemies and lead to increased terrorist conflict. Contrary to Obama’s statements, the Surge has worked. Obama has no foreign policy experience and it shows. Even the President of France described his approach to foreign affairs as utterly immature . What do you do when you don’t have experience? You fall back on the party line, and that is what we can expect from Obama.

8. Obama has purposefully turned off security protections on his website donation pages so that he can accept illegal contributions from foreigners, people posting under fake names, and people using untraceable gift cards. This is a calculated move that some people estimate may account for close to 181 million dollars of his record breaking donations. This is down and dirty politics, not hope and change.

While it is true that the Bush Administration has an abysmal approval record, the current congress has been controlled mostly by democrats for the last two years, and in that time the approval rating of the congress has plummeted to the lowest in history.

And then there is the important concern for the Supreme Court. Four or eight years of Obama would be nothing, really, compared to the next 50 years of whatever liberal Supreme Court Justices he is sure to appoint. I have had enough of the “living-constitution” approach to the constitution, and while I am well aware of the problems with originalism, I want more conservative judicial review. (My favorite Justice is Clarance Thomas).

So, if what you are looking for is a post-partisan, moderate outsider, 96%-Democrat Obama is an ignis fatuus, a will-o’-the-whisp that will dazzle you as you follow him through the darkness, down unfamiliar paths to the edge of a partisan precipice where the illusion will vanish.

I cannot endorse such two-facedness. And while I empathize with the democratic impulse toward helping the poor and needy, and protecting the weak from calculating, predatory businesses , as a conservative I cannot support methods that the democratic party advocates to address these issues, nor can I support the the pro-abortion, pro-same-sex-marriage, anti-religious, big-government, socialist, fascist tendencies of the progressive movement.

I recommend that you vote against Barack Obama for president.

For more, check out this Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama .

But who do I endorse?

That is a harder question. There are many things I dislike about John McCain. And the Republicans in general appear in many instances to have abandoned principles for power. Personally, the things on which I have disagreed with the Bush administration have been in those matters when they have acted more like Big Government Democrats instead of Limited-Government Conservatives.

LDS Author, Orson Scott Card makes a pretty good case for voting for McCain and against Obama. Card is a conservative-leaning democrat.

To a certain extent, a quote from Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings communicates my feelings on this decision. When the hobbits meet Aragorn, he seems an unruly, disagreeable type. When Merry asks why they should trust him, Frodo responds “I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer, and feel fouler.”

There are many aspects of John McCain that look foul.

I voted against McCain not only in this election’s primaries, but also back in 2000. He has never been an appealing candidate for me. I dislike a number of his positions as well as parts of his personality and personal life.

But even though I disagree with him, I do believe that he is sincere in doing what he believes is right. I don’t believe he is fake. He is certainly a politician and plays the game. He can be temperamental and even downright nasty. But he does have a real record of bi-partisanship, and that says something. I think he knows that his party has been a poor steward and that he is sincere about trying to do things differently. I think he is what he says he is, even if I don’t like everything about what he is.

McCain looks foul and feels fair to me—well, at least fairer to me. Obama, on the other hand looks fair and feels foul.

So, I reluctantly endorse John McCain for president.

However, for those friends who cannot bring themselves to vote for McCain, either because they refuse to vote for a Republican this year out of protest, because of his policies and record, or because of his personal life, I recommend that you vote for a third party candidate that best matches the principles you believe in:

Consider:

Chuck Baldwin for the Constitution Party
Bob Barr for the Libertarian Party

Or write in Mitt Romney. Seriously.

But don’t vote for Obama. What you see is not what you will get.

Well, part of the reason is that the official Utah voter website isn’t on utah.gov. No, that would make too much sense. It is at www.LeaveYourPrint.com . Which doesn’t make any sense at all, because finger prints are not required to vote in Utah.

The Leave Your Print website IS the official government voter portal. So why isn’t there a big announcement for it right on the homepage of utah.gov? 21 Days left before the election and there isn’t a single link to LeaveYourprint.com anywhere from the official state website?

That said, LeaveYourPrint.com is a vast improvement over what has previously been available. If you live in Utah, I recommend that you go there as soon as possible. The interface is fairly clean, though the red theme is a bit strong.

The website will ask you for your name, birth date, the county in which you live, and the numerical portion of the beginning of the address of your residence.

Based on that information the website will tell you whether or not you are registered to vote, what party you are affiliated with if any, and your Precinct. Then it will then give you a list of all of the candidates, initiatives, constitutional amendments, etc. that will appear on your ballot. Each ballot item is a link to information about the candidate, with contact information and websites so you can learn more. The candidate information portion of the website could be better implemented. Currently it is just a bunch of PDF documents. But it is better than nothing.

The website really should include mash-ups with Google maps to show precinct, district, and county boundaries, as well as your voting location, but it doesn’t. At least it tells you where you are supposed to go to vote, though.

Remember, the last day for registering to vote by mail has already passed. You can still register in person at your county clerk’s office through October 20th. However, if you were not registered to vote by October 6, you are not eligible for early voting, so if you register in person by the 20th, you will have to vote on November 4th.

You should re-register if your name has changed, or you have moved to a new residence since you last registered.

Please take the time to learn about the candidates before the election.

So in sum: the new tools provided on the website are a great step forward. But the “Leave Your Print” domain name and website name is lame and confusing and frankly, a waste of money. The marketing guy who came up with it should be fired. These tools should simply be at vote.utah.gov with a great big, obvious link on the front page of the utah.gov website. The fact that there are NO LINKS to the new website from utah.gov, let alone on the front page, is completely inexcusable.

[Link to Video]

Also from the church’s newsroom, excerpts from the special broadcast given for the members in the state of California:

[Link to Video]

If you missed it you can watch it online at:

debatehub.c-span.org

One issue that stuck out to me that hasn’t received much commentary in LDS circles that I have seen is the exchange concerning same-sex marriage and rights policies of the respective candidates (probably because everyone is sick of the topic in general).

In his first response to the issue, Biden clearly stated, “We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.” (emphasis mine)

So Biden, either on purpose, or by Freudian slip, refers to “committed couples in a same-sex marriage” as if it were a given. Perhaps he meant “same-sex relationship” but he said “same-sex marriage.”

Then, after Palin had clearly stated that she supports rights for same-sex couples, but not if it means changing the definition of marriage to anything other than between one man and one woman, the moderator asked Biden for a non-nuanced clarification. “Do you support gay marriage?”

Biden responded, “No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.”

It seems clear to me that, despite the moderator’s exhortation to avoid nuance, Biden’s words were very calculated to be nuanced. Either that or garbled and self-contradictory. On the one hand he says that they do not support redefining marriage from a civil side, but then he continues on to say that the decision of what to call it should be left up to individual faiths. So which is it? Do they think that it should it be defined by the civil government or should it be left up to individual faiths?

If Obama and Biden do not support redefining civil marriage, then how is that not a contradiction of the letter sent from Obama to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club in July, previously discussed on this blog, in which he not only opposes Proposition 8 in California, which would specifically define civil marriage as between one man and one woman, but that he wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which is what protects individual states from having to recognize same-sex marriage contracted in other states.

So which is it? Is the Obama campaign for or against redefining civil marriage to include same-sex couples or not? On a state level or a federal level?

The Issues section of the Obama website is woefully vague. Which section should I read to find his same-sex marriage position? Civil Rights? Nope. Nothing there. Family? Nope. Nada there either.

Let’s try site google to search the site for gay . Results: A number of blog posts, some of which seem to say he is against redefining marriage, a PDF Flyer that discusses his support for “Full Civil Unions” and against a federal marriage amendment, but no definitive, official statements about same-sex marriage.

Let’s try googling the site for marriage . Results: The same PDF Flyer, plus a different one with essentially the same content, more of the same blog posts. No definitive, official statement on same-sex marriage policy.

Why doesn’t Obama have a clear statement on same-sex marriage in an easy to find location on his website? If, as Joe Biden claimed in the debate, they are both against changing the civil definition of marriage, then why isn’t there a clear, easy to find statement?

Their lack of a clear position reinforces the view that McCain and Palin have both tried to pin on Obama by contrast: that he tells different groups contradictory things depending on what they want to hear. He wants the gay and lesbian vote, and he wants to attract moderate Christians, who don’t want to redefine marriage but are attracted to his other policies. So he lets them both believe that he is on their side on the issue of homosexual marriage.

I want a definitive statement. And I think that LDS Members who are concerned about the redefinition of marriage in California and elsewhere should demand a statement before they decide to vote for Obama.

To be fair, it isn’t obvious from the main Issues section of the McCain website where to find a statement on same-sex marriage, but if you poke around a little, there it is under Human Dignity and the Sanctity of Life

McCain’s statement is basically that traditional marriage is the ideal and to leave it up to the states to enact constitutional amendments defining marriage according to the will of their own people and not up to the courts.

I would have liked something a bit stronger, but at least it is clear and relatively accessible on the website.

Here is the full transcript of the pertinent portion of the debate:

IFILL: The next round of—pardon me, the next round of questions starts with you, Senator Biden. Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.

The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted—same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That’s only fair.

It’s what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

IFILL: Governor, would you support expanding that beyond Alaska to the rest of the nation?

PALIN: Well, not if it goes closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition of marriage between one man and one woman. And unfortunately that’s sometimes where those steps lead.

But I also want to clarify, if there’s any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don’t agree with me on this issue.

But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.

But I will tell Americans straight up that I don’t support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go round and round about what that actually means.

But I’m being as straight up with Americans as I can in my non- support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.

IFILL: Let’s try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

The bottom line though is, and I’m glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that’s the case, we really don’t have a difference.

IFILL: Is that what your said?

PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.

IFILL: Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let’s move to foreign policy.

But since today are the Utah State Neighborhood Caucuses, I wanted to encourage all of you to attend your Precinct meeting tonight.

I have been involved with my local precincts for a number of years now.

Did you know that unless you participate in the Caucuses tonight it is very likely that some of your elected representatives will be put into office without you having a say in it? For some elections the winner is decided only by those delegates you elect in your caucuses, so that there is never a primary or general election vote.

A friend of mine spent the time to quickly write a Beginner’s Guide to the Utah Neighborhood Caucuses, which I am posting here for those of you who want to understand what the caucus is for and why it is important that you attend.

These are his first drafts, so they could use some editing, but they should be helpful anyway.

Download and read the following two PDF documents. Email them to your friends and family. The first is an overview of what the caucuses are and how they work. The second discusses some real-life Utah politics examples of how elections are influenced by the caucuses.

CaucusesExplained.pdf
CaucusExamples.pdf

Hope some of you find this information useful.

Soon I will return to more regular blogging, with some exciting new projects, some new original poetry, and more commentary on things that are important to me.

I’ll update this post with embedded video when it becomes available.

Watch the video on Youtube

There were many memorable and quotable parts the speech. I liked that Romney referred to Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield Illinois on The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions in which Lincoln describes our nation’s “political religion” as the commitment to defend the rule of law and the Constitution. The relevant part of Lincoln’s speech referred to by Romney is as follows:

Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges;—let it be written in Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
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While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.
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When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.

Lincoln’s address is also worth reading in full if you get a moment.

Primarily I want to draw attention to one part of Romney’s address in particular, if only because it is something I have been meaning to write about myself for some months.

Romney said:

I’m not sure that we fully appreciate the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty. I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired … so grand … so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too ‘enlightened’ to venture inside and kneel in prayer. The establishment of state religions in Europe did no favor to Europe’s churches. And though you will find many people of strong faith there, the churches themselves seem to be withering away.

This statement reminded me of an article I read back in July from The Wall Street Journal entitled In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead that I have been meaning to blog about.

Basically, the thesis of the article is that Europe is less religious than America not because of modernism but because established religions thwart religious competition:

Now even Europe, the heartland of secularization, is raising questions about whether God really is dead. The enemy of faith, say the supply-siders, is not modernity but state-regulated markets that shield big, established churches from competition. In America, where church and state stand apart, more than 50% of the population worships at least once a month. In Europe, where the state has often supported—but also controlled—the church with money and favors, the rate in many countries is 20% or less.
…
In 1776, he says, around 17% of Americans belonged to churches.
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In the U.S., the American Revolution ended ecclesiastical hegemony in the 11 colonies that had an established church and unleashed a raucous tide of religious competition. As Methodists, Baptists, Shakers and other churches proliferated, church-going rose, reaching around 50% in the early part of the 20th century, he says.
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Europe never developed such a religious bazaar. The Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Catholic Church in Italy and France, state-funded churches in Germany and others lost their de-facto “monopoly” status to other denominations over a century ago. But they retained their ties to the state and economic privileges.

Mitt Romney appears to be propagating this theory in his speech. It is an intriguing idea, with a lot of room for debate.

In an anti-voucher PowerPoint presentation he acquired, Oak uncovered given to Oak by a nameless source, the the following incriminating meta-data was noticed:

Created: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:08 PM
Modified: Friday, October 12, 2007 10:13 AM
Last saved by: Cache County School District
Revision number: 30
Total editing time: 689 Minutes

Here is the screenshot:

Now it may be that the file was created by someone else, and merely opened and saved by an individual in the Cache County District . However, if it was actually created at a Cache County District computer, and they used 689 minutes of their time to create it, then that is a serious abuse and against state election laws.

Whether or not you agree with or oppose the the voucher laws (HB 148 and HB 174) that have been proposed, we should all oppose this kind of illegal misuse of school resources.

In full disclosure, while they are certainly not perfect, I favor the voucher laws. However, if Pro-Voucher advocates were illegally using school resources to further their cause, I would oppose their actions just as much.

UPDATE: Oak has sent me a copy of the PowerPoint document. When I open it in OpenOffice and look at the document properties, it says that it was created by someone named “Mandy” on July 31, 2007 at 21:08:54 hours. Opening the file properties in Windows also lists the author as “Mandy.” It was last modified by the “Cache County School District” on Oct. 3, 2007 at 07:08:48 hours.

I also have a forwarded copy of the email used to transmit the PowerPoint presentation, which appears to have been sent using official @cache.k12.ut.us email addresses to what appears to be a listserv or email distribution list on the @cache.k12.ut.us.

If anyone wants a copy of the PowerPoint file or the email, let me know in the comments and I will send it to you.

When those with more liberal views than I say that the nation as the founders established it was not a Christian Nation, they are superficially correct. However, the nation was arguably founded explicitly as a Theistic Nation, a fact which they often ignore or deny. And Christianity had an undeniable influence on the formation of the United States and its government even if it was not explicitly Christian. While there was to be no established religious sect or creed, the government and nation were expected to officially recognize the authority of a vague, generic Supreme Creator as the source and judge of their laws and actions and to recognize the necessity of His approbation of their collective actions.

To prove that the government was intended to be Theistic we can look at the philosophy of the founding documents and the national symbols and heraldry created by the founders.

The philosophy of the Declaration of Independence was that the equity of the laws and actions of any nation could be judged by the people by comparing them to a Natural Law of Justice and Morality established by Nature’s God. It was by appealing those higher laws and the Supreme Being that the colonists justified their rebellion against Britain and the formation of a new government.

While the Constitution itself never appeals to God explicitly, the form of government it establishes was designed to create a “more perfect union” and “establish justice.” In other words, it assumes the same philosophy as the Declaration of Independence because the founders believed that the way to measure whether the new union is “more perfect” than the previous union and that the laws are more just than before was by comparing them to the higher standard cited by the Declaration: the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God. The checks and balances of the Constitution are all made in an implicit attempt to create a government that adheres more closely to ideals established by a Superior Power. The Constitution is the practical implementation of the philosophy, or in other words an incarnation of the spirit, of the Declaration of Independence.

In this way, the founding documents are inherently Theistic even though they are not explicitly Christian.

Additionally, the national symbology of the United States makes this marriage of Theism and the U.S. government explicit in a way that is hard to deny.

In one of its first post-declaration actions on July 4th 1776, the Continental Congress formed a committee to create a Seal for the new nation. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were assigned to the first committee charged with designing the Great Seal.

Benjamin Franklin proposed an image of “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity.” And he proposed the motto: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Thomas Jefferson proposed a depiction of the children of Israel guided through the wilderness by a daytime cloud and a nighttime pillar of fire.

Several committees later in 1782 the final Great Seal was adopted. It symbolically expressed these same Theistic attitudes about the relation between God and Government, even though in the end they did not use Franklin or Jefferson’s specific symbols. The official blazon of the Great Seal, as adopted by the very first U.S. Congress explains that: “The pyramid signifies Strength and Duration: The Eye over it & the Motto allude to the many signal interpositions of Providence in favour of the American cause.” The motto referred to appears in the seal as “Annuit Cœptis” and means literally “he nods in assent to the things that have been started.” It is officially interpreted to mean “He (God) has favored our undertakings.”

The fact that the pyramid representing our nation is unfinished but is being built in the mirror image of the triangle containing the eye of providence above it can be interpreted to represent that our nation is continually built in the image of an ideal established by God—an work that is unfinished yet.

So the official symbol and heraldry of the U.S., as established by the founders themselves, explicitly invokes God in our political institutions. The seal has appeared on every official action by the government since that time, though it is often the obverse side and not the reverse where the pyramid and motto are shown. Everyone has seen it on the one-dollar bill. It proclaims that God should “nod in assent” to what we undertake as a nation. “In God We Trust” may have been added much later, but it was clearly consistent with the original founding notions of the nation’s symbols and motto.

Those who, contrary to these facts, proclaim that the founding was essentially atheistic, often point to the few iconoclastic but highly influential founders like Washington, Franklin, Madison, Adams, and Jefferson. They describe them as Deists. However, while Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God, he also declared that the fundamental ethical teachings of Jesus were sublime and the best of moral philosophy. In an ethical sense at least he, Franklin, Washington, and Madison were “Christians.” And, as their proposals for the Great Seal demonstrate, they believed in a God who worked within history through the imposition of his will in the affairs of mankind, and that his aide and favor could be acquired through supplication—beliefs which are foreign to what we mean modernly when we speak of “Deism” and contrary to the notions of those who preach an atheistic founding.

Additionally, if we consider all of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, attended the Constitutional Convention, signed the Constitution, or served in the First Federal Congress that adopted the Bill of Rights and established the direction of the country, there were about 200 individuals involved in the founding, the vast majority of whom were adherents of a Christian sect—predominantly Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist. At very least one must recognize a reflection of the democratic processes of Congregationalist parishes in the Democratic forms of the government that was formed.

The negative aspects of historical Christianity clearly also played a role, as the founders sought to avoid the folly of the bloody sectarian violence that had plagued Europe, however, as I hope is evident from the Great Seal, their goal was anti-sectarian, not anti-Theism.

Even among the pilgrims, Roger Williams’ argument for religious tolerance, upon which he founded Providence, Rhode Island with separation of Church and State, was based in ideals explicitly derived from Christianity and the teachings of Jesus (as Williams, who was a Christian theologian, understood them). Religious Tolerance and the Separation of Church and State themselves were originally rooted in and justified by Christian thought and teaching, as was the freedom of the press (see John Milton’s Areopagitica).

Obviously there were other philosophical influences on the founders in addition to Christianity, but most of those philosophies had been filtered through the lens of Christianity simply because of the cultural environment in which the founding occurred.

So the U.S. was intended by its founders to be an explicitly Theistic Nation with ideals derived from at least the ethical teachings of Christianity.

I do not want to make our nation more explicitly “Christian.” As a Latter-day Saint, I do not want other Christians to enforce their particular sectarian views upon me. I want the nation to tolerate a variety of views, including atheism. But, I am strongly opposed to those who would remove the explicit Theism of the founding completely from our institutions. In my view, the Theism of the founding is essential to, and inextricable from the form of government we enjoy and if we attempt to excise it from the government we will leave our institutions without a foundation and they will eventually crumble.

If our rights come from man and not from the Creator, then they can be revoked by man. But our rights don’t come from men. They come from God. That is why most modern totalitarian endeavors so often seek to eliminate religion. Because as long as the people believe that there is a higher authority to which they can appeal over their political rulers, as did our nation’s founders, totalitarian systems are in the long run doomed. If we cease to look to God to “nod in assent to our undertakings” we will lose out freedoms and rights because it is he who has endowed us with them.

One can disagree that Theism is essential to our government, but one should not pretend that such views are historical or consistent with those of the founders.

Annuit Cœptis.