McChristians

To the dismay of many Christians, John McCain was not elected president of the United States. Were it not for the support of evangelicals and other conservative Christians, McCain would have been more soundly defeated in what was probably his last election. It didn’t really matter what McCain believed or didn’t believe; these Christians turned out in droves to vote for him because he was a Republican. As bad as Barack Obama was, most Christians who voted for McCain would have voted Republican no matter who the Democratic and Republican nominees were.

Throughout the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, Yellow Dog Democrats in the South consistently voted for Democrats no matter who the Democratic and Republican nominees were. The idea was that they would rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican. Christians who consistently vote Republican – and especially after decades of Republican compromises and sellouts – are even worse. They would vote for a dead yellow dog over a Democrat.

But it gets even worse. Instead of Christians admitting how detrimental to freedom the Bush administration was, acknowledging that McCain was a pathetic excuse for a real conservative, conceding that the Republicans badly disappointed them once again, holding their noses shut with the firmest of grips, positioning in front of their mouths a barf bag saved from their last airline trip, closing their eyes tightly – and then voting for McCain, some Christians, or rather, McChristians, actively supported him. Some even went so far as to put McCain/Palin bumper stickers on their cars, signs in their yards, and buttons on their shirts.

It is bad enough for a Christian to do evil by voting for what he thinks is the lesser of two evils; it is another thing to embrace, defend, and promote evil.

Whenever I hear anyone, and especially conservative Christian Republicans, talk about voting for the lesser of two evils, I think of an election between Stalin and Hitler. I can just imagine one group of people saying that they are voting for Stalin because Hitler believes in a, b, and c, while the other side says that they are voting for Hitler because Stalin believes in x, y, and z.

This analogy really fits the recent election since the choice was between a socialist or national socialist. The newspaper headlines for the day after Election Day should all have read: SOCIALIST WINS OVER NATIONAL SOCIALIST.

As bad as Obama is, it doesn’t change the fact that the Republicans deserved to lose. But because the Democrats didn’t deserve to win, some Christians thought they faced a dilemma and, after assuming the position outlined above, voted for McCain.

But there was no dilemma. There were other choices on the ballot – like Chuck Baldwin, a conservative Christian who is miles ahead of McCain when it comes to being a real conservative. But it comes as no surprise that Baldwin was rejected since Ron Paul was likewise rejected in the Republican primaries.

Christians also had the option of abstaining "from all appearance of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22); that is, not voting. For the Christian, it is better to endure an evil than to commit one. Even if McCain is the lesser of two evils, he is still evil. And it is never right to do evil. Period. The Apostle Paul said it was slanderously reported of him that he believed in a philosophy of "let us do evil that good may come" (Romans 3:8). But that is the philosophy of many Christians.

But is McCain the lesser of two evils? Consider his record:

* McCain scores a dismal 36 on the New American magazine’s Freedom index.
* McCain is worse on foreign policy than Bush.
* McCain joined with Ted Kennedy to sponsor an illegal-alien amnesty bill (S.1033, 2005).
* McCain is a CFR member who supports expanding the power of the UN.
* McCain has voted against income tax, capital gains, and estate tax cuts.
* McCain was rated an F– on gun issues by Gun Owners of America in 2004 and 2006.
* McCain is the Republican behind the attack on free speech known as McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
* McCain supports draconian environmentalist legislation.

Both McCain and Obama voted for the Wall Street bailout bill. Both support more government intervention to "fix" the economy. Both support the war on drugs and the war on terror. Both support the Federal Reserve. Both support maintaining the welfare state and the warfare state. And as Anthony Gregory pointed out before the election: "Both are for preserving virtually everything the government does" and "neither proposes to abolish anything."

McCain is marginally better on some issues than Obama, but how hard is that? There is not a dime’s worth of difference between McCain and Obama when it comes to issues of substance like peace, liberty, property, free markets, sound money, and the size and scope of government.

I suppose that the main reason Christians think that McCain is less of an evil than Obama is the abortion issue. There is no question that Obama’s views on abortion are reprehensible. But then he doesn’t claim to be pro-life like McCain does. If McCain is so pro-life then why did he vote to confirm to the U.S. Supreme Court pro-abortion justices like Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, and David Souter? Why did he consider the pro-abortion senator Joe Lieberman for his vice presidential running mate? Why does he think it is okay to kill babies who had the misfortune to be conceived via rape or incest? Why has he voted for Health and Human Services Title X funding for Planned Parenthood?

And then there is the issue of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and God knows where else the U.S. military will be sent on the next mission of death and destruction. There is no ethical difference between being rabidly pro-abortion and being rabidly pro-war. Obama is the former and McCain is the latter – but both positions are anything but pro-life. Killing babies outside of the womb in Iraq is just as much an evil as killing babies inside the womb in America.

But far worse than voting for the perceived lesser of two evils is championing evil. Christians who embraced, defended, and promoted John McCain because he was a Republican and was not Barack Obama should be ashamed of themselves for being pragmatic instead of being dogmatic. They should also be embarrassed, not only that they were so uninformed about McCain (I guess they relied too much on those Christian Coalition voter guides), but because about the only thing they could think of to say about him started with either "Barack Obama is" or "Barack Obama will."

How shallow and how pathetic are these McChristians. They can be counted on to enthusiastically and unconditionally support the next litter of yellow dog Republican candidates.


This piece was written by Laurence M. Vance. The original can be viewed here.

They Didn’t Attack Switzerland

by Bill Walker

Switzerland has not been in a foreign war of any kind since 1815. This would be astounding, even miraculous, for any nation. But Switzerland borders Germany. And France. And Italy. And Austria. And Liechtenstein. Now Liechtenstein has rarely lashed out in Blitzkrieg in a desperate bid to reign über alles, but ALL of Switzerland's other neighbors have spent their entire histories invading other countries.

In addition to the encircling foreign marauders, Switzerland itself is composed of four different ethnic groups (German, French, Italian, Romansh) that get along as well as, e.g., Germans and French. They don’t even speak the same language.

Yet the Swiss peace prevails through the centuries. The Kaiser didn’t attack the Swiss. Hitler didn’t attack the Swiss (though he thought about it a lot). Stalin started to pursue some refugees into Liechtenstein at the end of WWII, but retreated rather than face the Swiss-Liechtenstein alliance. Terrorists don’t attack the Swiss.

Nobody attacks the Swiss. Not even the Swiss attack the Swiss; their crime rate is minuscule.

The features of the Swiss system for keeping the peace are simple. They have a president with no power to declare war (of course ours can’t either, but no one has told HIM). They have a very small professional army, even small per capita. And they have very strict gun control. By which they mean that every Swiss male must have a gun, except for those who also have to carry a missile launcher or a mortar. Swiss women are not subject to compulsory military service, but many of them frequent the rifle ranges anyway. In the event of any attack on Switzerland, the whole Swiss population becomes the army.

As an additional deterrent against megalomania, the Swiss have rigged the tunnel vaults of their banks for demolition. Any dictator attacking Switzerland will find the gold in his numbered bank account buried in rubble hundreds of meters under mountains swarming with snipers and missile launchers. It is known that Hitler had a numbered account... maybe that was in the back of his mind when he chickened out.

Switzerland has also provided for defense of the lives of its civilian population against nuclear terrorism. Realizing during the Cold War that nuclear weapons in the hands of power-mad politicians posed a potential public health threat, the Swiss started a nationwide shelter-building program in 1960. By 1991, there were enough shelter spaces in Switzerland to protect everyone in their home or apartment, and also at their workplaces and schools. A Swiss citizen is never more than a few minutes from a fallout shelter with an air filter.

The entire Swiss shelter program was accomplished for somewhere on the order of 35 dollars (1990 dollars) per year per capita. The US spends vastly more every year to support a military capable only of intervening in Third World nations that do not have WMDs.

The huge US war machine could not even intercept civilian airliners on 9-11, let alone credibly stop nuclear-tipped cruise and ballistic missiles from a major power. Nor are there bunkers with filtered air supplies under our glass cities or particle-board suburbs. The only civil defense in the US is for the President and the backup supply of bureaucrats under Iron Mountain. Everyone else is nuclear fodder, except for those provident few (such as the Mormons) who build their own shelters to protect their families.

Switzerland does not send troops to intervene in other nations. Switzerland does not spend tens of billions of dollars yearly to fund dictators around the world, nor did Switzerland donate hundreds of billions of dollars to the Warsaw Pact through bank "loans." Switzerland does not send billions of dollars worth of weaponry every year to the warring tribes in the Middle East. Switzerland has no enemies. Yet the Swiss are armed to the teeth and dug into every hill and under every building.

The US intervenes everywhere, spies on everyone, supports every faction in every fight. We have as many enemies as there are hate-filled people in the world. We have a vastly expensive conventional army (though the best units are marching back and forth in Middle Eastern deserts, Afghanistan, Korea, and other "strategic" places). We have vast numbers of offensive nuclear weapons for murdering the civilian populations of cities (but against whom will we retaliate in the event of an anonymous nuclear terrorist attack?).

But we have no civil defenses for our children, no shelters, no thought-out plan for recovery from attack. In fact, when we suffered a few thousand dead on 9-11, we panicked and did ten times more economic damage to ourselves than the terrorists had. We also let ourselves be suckered into joining a Middle Eastern tribal war without end, on transparently fraudulent grounds.

Worse, our fears have destroyed much of our own Constitutional freedom. Would we be braver now, if a few anonymous smuggled nuclear bombs killed millions? Or would we just descend tamely into dictatorship without a struggle?

Our Founding Fathers studied the Swiss when they designed our system of government. Maybe it would pay us to study the long Swiss peace again... before it's too late.

Declaring & Waging War: The U.S. Constitution

This is an old column but well worth the read. It's taken from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Excuse me for asking an indelicate question in the midst of war, but where does President Bush derive the power to send the United States into war against another nation? The question becomes increasingly important given that the president has indicated that once the Afghan War has been brought to a conclusion, he intends to use U.S. military forces to attack other sovereign nations.

It is important to keep in mind that our system of government was designed to be unlike any other in history. First, the federal government was brought into existence by the people through our Constitution. Second, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land that controls the actions of our public officials in all three branches of the federal government. Third, the powers of the federal government and its officials are not general but instead are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution.

Fourth, the government is divided into three branches, each with its own enumerated powers, and one branch cannot exercise the powers of another branch. Fifth, the Constitution expressly constrains democratic, majority rule. Sixth, public officials are not legally permitted to ignore any constitutional constraint on their power but must instead seek a constitutional amendment from the people to eliminate the constraint.

Why did the Founders implement such a weak, divided government? One big reason: they clearly understood that historically the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of a people comes not from foreign enemies but instead from their own government officials, even democratically elected ones. And they understood that that threat to the citizenry was always greatest during war.

Consider the words of James Madison, the father of our Constitution: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

What does our Constitution say about war? Our Founders divided war into two separate powers: Congress was given the power to declare war and the president was given the power to wage war. What that means is that under our system of government, the president cannot legally wage war against another nation in the absence of a declaration of war against that nation from Congress.

Again, reflect on the words of Madison: “The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war [and] the power of raising armies. A delegation of such powers [to the president] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments. The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.”

Therefore, under our system of government although the president is personally convinced that war against a certain nation is just and morally right, he is nevertheless prohibited by our supreme law of the land from waging it unless he first secures a declaration of war from Congress. That was precisely why presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, who both believed that U.S. intervention in World Wars I and II was right and just, nevertheless had to wait for a congressional declaration of war before entering the conflict. And the fact that later presidents have violated the declaration-of-war requirement does not operate as a grant of power for other presidents to do the same.

What about the congressional resolution that granted President Bush the power to wage war against unnamed nations and organizations that the president determines were linked to the September 11 attacks? Doesn’t that constitute a congressional declaration of war? No, it is instead a congressional grant to the president of Caesar-like powers to wage war, a grant that the Constitution does not authorize Congress to make.

Therefore, when a U.S. president wages what might otherwise be considered a just war, if he has failed to secure a congressional declaration of war, he is waging an illegal war — illegal from the standpoint of our own legal and governmental system. And when the American people support any such war, no matter how just and right they believe it is, they are standing not only against their own principles and heritage, not only against their own system of government and laws, but also against the only barrier standing between them and the tyranny of their own government — the Constitution.

Thought for the Day

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
~Thucydides

The Cost Of War

In actual dollars. Scary.