"Land of the Free"

  I recently returned from a missionary trip to Asia. I flew out of Jacksonville , Florida to Dallas. I flew from Dallas to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Manila, and then from Manila to my final destination somewhere else in the Philippines.  I covered  almost 20,000 miles on  by the time it was over and I would like to simply relate to you a handful of anecdotes that reflect, in my opinion the true state of freedom in America.
  To begin with, this trip was in the works for months, and  my  biggest concern was  not the Muslim hotbed I was traveling to , but rather what my own countrymen might do to me as I tried to leave.  As it stands, if you are making a trip of this magnitude, it is, as far as I can tell, impossible not to interact with the Department of Homeland Security.  I had no desire to be groped or  body-scanned, but the TSA is counting on the fact that you are  willing to endure such  abuses in order to make your trip.  I could have made a scene, but they would have  stopped me from traveling (at  the very least) and processed me as a bad guy at the very worst.  So I stood in line, removed my shoes, my belt, my hat, and emptied my pockets.  I  stepped inside the body scanner and adopted the 'I surrender' pose and then  on the other side of the scanner began to redress myself in full view of strangers.  I know this is the new normal, but that, dear readers, is not normal.  On the far wall,  visible as you are being violated is a sign that says something like '9/11-We will Never forget'. I suppose that is there to make me feel better about the process, but since I think 9/11 was an inside job, the fact that I was being reminded to remember did nothing to lessen my anxiety.    Just before you step into the body scanner there is an interesting  sign. The sign says, more or less that TSA employees are people too, with feelings. The sign goes on to say that snide comments  towards TSA employees or derogatory comments about the procedures will be taken as a threat to their persons and dealt with accordingly.
  Now, before my neo-con friends interrupt me with songs of praise for the  'first responders' in the 'new war on America' and before my conservative friends warn me about the Muslim hiding behind every bush or start to chirp about 'freedom isn't free' ,  please keep reading.
  I left Jacksonville after having been seen nude by  a total stranger and flew to Dallas where I had a substantial lay-over.  Over the loudspeaker at the Dallas airport I was constantly reminded that  the DHS had   laid down new rules and regulations with which I was expected to comply.  Literally every  5 or 6 minutes they would announce that  any  bags left unattended for any period of time would be  confiscated and destroyed.  By sheer repetition I began to feel paranoid and   did not take my eyes off of my bag.  Everywhere in the airport there were direction to do this or don't do that. DHS  and TSA  people were seemingly everywhere and eyed everybody suspiciously.
  From Dallas I took a 17 hour trip to Hong Kong, which is titularly  owned and run by the communist Chinese.  I went through their security checkpoint and was expecting nothing short of a cavity search.  While I  have no love for the communists, I will say this; the  checkpoint was ridiculously humane compared to the TSA.  I  set  my bag down, sending it through an x-ray machine. I walked through a metal detector, shoes on , and was instructed to  empty my pockets on the other side. I was wanded, thanked for my time, and was through the entire security apparatus in less than 3 minutes.  The overall vibe was  one notch above a security guard at the mall.
  I can already  tell what you're thinking. You are thinking that the TSA HAS to act like a bunch of  thugs.  After all,  terrorists are  hiding behind every bush and they won't rest until America the Great Satan has fallen.  I've  heard it all, trust me, and assuming that  to be the case, let me  encourage you to keep reading.
  From Hong Kong I flew to Manila.  Manila is  possibly the most horrid airport on earth, although I suppose until I have visited every airport on earth, I can't say for certain.  Manila is however, an amazing example of third-world inefficiency.  Nobody knows where anything is in the Manila airport and nothing opens or closes when it is supposed to.  But still airport terminals are a temporary place by nature so I soldiered on to my final destination in Mindanao.
  Mindanao, in case you didn't know, does have a substantial  population of Muslims.  You see them everywhere and although I don't endorse Islam by a long shot, I must say that if Islam really was the problem, it would seem like the bombs would never stop in Mindanao.  This may be the opinion of an unenlightened  buffoon, but there it is.  Despite being everywhere you go, there was no overt hostility towards me even as I preached in public to large crowds of them.  The concerns of my fellow Americans that I would  be beheaded the first day  have proven to be unfounded.
  The other thing that didn't happen in Mindanao was that  the police weren't called.  As a public  preacher in America I deal with the  police regularly, but while  overseas I preached  everywhere from a street corner to a Catholic nursing home and not once did anyone complain. Not once did an officer of the law stop me or  harass me. I literally stood on the top of a van in the  market with a loudspeaker and preached to people buying their groceries and nobody called the authorities. I had to explain to my  Filipino brothers that  it was not so in the 'land of the free'.
  Mindanao has had it's share of Muslim-tinged violence.  There really has been bombings, as opposed to the phony terror plots trotted out by the DHS  to justify their jobs.  So how did they address the need for beefed up security? Well when I went to the mall there was a private security guard there who  briefly ran his hand over the small of my back to make sure I didn't have a gun. I may have had to also take my hat off. That was it, That was the entire exercise, and once you got accustomed to it, you could almost go through it without breaking stride.
  After a few days in country, it was time to return back to America.  I checked my bags in Mindanao and was waiting for the plane to begin boarding when my name was called over the intercom. I headed back through the reasonable security and was flagged down by a  very courteous baggage handler. He led me to a back room where several security officers were waiting.  I must admit, I thought this could go very badly. They asked  me politely (and by politely I mean they really were polite, as opposed to the  faux-politeness of American thugs) to open my bag. They stood by quietly as I rummaged through dirty laundry until I located the object of their concern; a bracket that sort of looked like a weapon. I removed it, showed it to them, and explained it's function. Despite the language barrier, they agreed that it wasn't a weapon, and they thanked me for my time.  I  walked back through the security checkpoint and was waived through because they recognized me.  I boarded the plane and headed back to Manila.  From Manila I went to Hong Kong where I once again went through the security checkpoint that took almost 4 minutes this time.  I boarded the plane and we landed in Dallas.
  Back in the 'land of the free' we were herded into a disorganized and confused line where  our bags were searched  and our personages  assaulted.  We were handed confusing declaratory  forms while  costumed uniformed officers wandered up and down the  line barking out  orders for us to have our papers in order lest we  be detained.  To leave the airport we had to  go through the same procedures as if we were entering the airport and it took  almost two hours to clear it all. One lady in line with us  told a completely unsympathetic officer that at this rate she would miss her connecting flight. The officer shrugged his shoulders in helplessness and  proceeded on down the line to remind us that all they needed to see was our documentation, The man actually said, at the top of his lungs, "We don't want to see your vacation pictures."
   I am not unbiased in all this, and never claimed to be. I think the 'war on terror' is  almost entirely a hoax, and I believe  most of what  DHS and TSA does to be unconstitutional., so yes I have a small axe to  grind, but I have not cherry-picked these incidents to prove my point. In light of my experience, I  ask you dear reader to draw your own conclusion about 'freedom'.

Still Not the Anarchists Cookbook

  A friend of mine has written something brilliant, and this brilliance grew out of an ongoing email discussion that we were having about government and its relationship to the Christian.   Now I feel I have to do some explaining to the readers who weren’t privy to the discussion, and also to do justice to his remarks.  This friend is genuinely one of the most thoughtful guys I know, and I’m not just saying this because he reads my blog. Even when we disagree, he makes me think, and what more could you ask?

  Although I do consider myself a libertarian, he does not. He wrote extensively on what he feels is a huge flaw in libertarian philosophy, and made some excellent points. He has been, in the past, highly critical of some people who espouse a philosophy of liberty but practice a philosophy of rebellion, and it’s an important distinction to draw since it is after all a condition of the heart.  His take on most libertarians is that they say what they say not necessarily because they want liberty, but rather out of resentment towards any sort of authority (2 Pet 2:19, 2 Pet 2:10).  I think that’s a valid observation, although it’s painting with a broad brush since any label you could pick  would cover a lot of people who may not even agree with each other.  But let me throw in my two cents, and we’ll see what happens.  I apologize in advance if I am just hitting the high points of my overall thoughts on this, but I’m trying to cover a lot of ground here.

  The source of all liberty is God (Luke 4:18, 2 Cor 3:17).  The source of all authority is also God (1 Pet 3:22, Dan 3:28, Col 1:16).  I believe in ‘natural rights’ although I’ve always found the term a little odd, because my rights are not derived from rocks and trees and rivers and streams, they come from God.  They didn’t  pop into existence in 1776.  I have the right to property defined as assets that are specifically mine and God weighs in with a commandment of “Thou shalt not steal”. I have a right to life, and God   confirms this with a commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.  God couples these rights with accountability to him as to how I use them.   After all, I wasn’t given eyes so that I could look at other men’s wives; I was given eyes so that I could perceive and marvel at his creation.   I wasn’t given a voice so that I could gossip, I was given a voice to praise him with. Since they are my eyes and my voice, I can use them either way, but I will give an account either way (Gal 5:13).  

  In the meantime, he institutes governing authorities in my life and over my life.  These range from my parents when I was a kid to my pastor to the local government to the court system to the federal government.  Some people are born to better parents than others just as some are born under governments that allow more freedom than others.  Some of these   authorities are temporary, like my parents.  Some of these authorities can be changed, like my pastor.  Some require tremendous changes, like expatriation.  But the fact is, somebody is always going to be in charge of you, to one   degree or another, and this is God’s will.

  When a people turn their back on God, generally speaking , they lose liberty (Prov 29:2). This is merely God withdrawing his favor from a people who do not want him.  People get the government that reflects their willingness to serve God.  .  He does this in a variety of ways.  Sometimes he allows corrupt people to seize the reins of power. Sometimes he allows an invading army to come in.  All of these reductions in practical liberty are a result of God’s judgment on people who have misused their initial liberty.  My favorite Biblical example is the Babylonian captivity, in which the children of Israel were rewarded for their idolatry by having a barbarian horde drag their children off in chains.  This judgment went on for 70 years, and people saw their children, and grand children and great grandchildren grow up surrounded by idolatry because they had loved their idols so much. They had misused their liberty, so God took it away.  But it would be incorrect to cite this as an example that God is against liberty.  God is for both liberty, and authority, as they both work hand in hand in a people whose heart is after God.

 If all that’s true, and I believe that it is, , then the real issue isn’t what Obama is going to do. The real issue is what are you going to do. If you are really in favor of liberty, then you have an obligation to live right, and obey the whole counsel of God, not just the parts you like or the parts line up with your philosophy (Psalm 119:45).  The strong  (and frankly mystifying) anti-God streak present in a lot of libertarian circles is the Achilles heel of the modern liberty movement, and it is quite likely the reason why  we have not seen the sort of success God gave to the colonial Americans in re-establishing liberty.

  So what, as a Christian, should be my position towards the authority God has put over my life?  Should I be shouting for its overthrow?  Should I be instigating violence against it?  Should I browbeat and belittle it at every opportunity?  Scripture is pretty clear on this.  I am supposed to live the best life possible under my current situation, with the idea in sight that I will give account to God as to how I lived and fared under an oppressive corrupt system ( Eph 6:1-10).  If I am in a position of authority, I should strive to be just. (2 Sam 23:3, Heb 13:17).  I should police my own life to ensure that I am not the part of the reason for God’s favor turning from us.  I should pray for the authority over me, not send out mocking emails (Jude 1:8).  In those prayers, I don’t ask for their death, but rather that God will turn their hearts (Matt 5:44, Prov 21:1).  In the meantime, I should try my best to live out the commandments of God as much as I can, and live under these temporary circumstances in light of an eternal reality.  And for the record, I’m not particularly good at anything I just listed. I probably have a lot more rebellion in my heart than I realize.

  Now I currently live under a system where I still have some  ability to at least make my disagreement known.  I have the right, under this authority, to protest policy. I have the right to call my Congressman, to vote, to make my voice heard.  It is legitmate to point out when those in authority overstep their  authority, but I don’t have the right, as a Christian, to rise up against what God has put over me (Titus 3:1).  I am not required to be a yes-man or a lapdog to corrupt men, but I must be very careful as a Christian to not step over from disagreement into rebellion.  I could go a bit further into where I think that line is, but that’s a topic for another time.

   I also have friends  who are  'anarchists' and 'stateless libertarians'  and 'anarchocaps' and all sorts of other interesting labels. I encourage them to  look up the verses, and by all means join the discusion.

The Preachers and the Patriot, Part 1

  It has been my great privilege to have lived my life in a land where great religious liberty still exists.  Even in it’s decline, America has seen more freedom than possibly any other nation, but it would do the reader well to understand that it was not always so.  The Puritans who had fled to the New World for the chance to exercise their own conscience in matters of worship eventually became the very thing they fled.  Colonial America wasn’t an idyllic utopia of liberty, but rather a patchwork quilt of different understandings and tolerances of what freedom was all about. In many places, especially in Church of England dominated-areas, the line between church and state was so blurry as to be almost non-existent.    Church officials held  political offices and  church  officials exercised police powers, with a careful eye towards maintaining the status quo of doctrinal purity. This mindset revealed itself in activities like the witch trials in Salem or the ordinance passed in Massachusetts in 1644 that specifically referred to Anabaptists as “the troublers of churches in all places where they have been”. In 1656 when the first Quakers began to arrive on the shores of Massachusetts, the Quakers in question were imprisoned by their Puritan brothers, the women strip-searched under pretense of looking for witches,  and their religious literature burned as heresy.

  It was this way, at least in the beginning because that was how the people of a community chose to live.  Those who disagreed could leave, and often did, starting their own small communities a bit deeper in the great American wilderness.   Some were banished. But not everyone could leave, and not everyone thought they should have to leave.  For those that stayed, life was harsh in the ‘land of the free’.  With the codification of church law into secular law came an entire hierarchy of church officials and creeds that   attempted to coerce the consciences of everyone under their jurisdiction to worship as the hierarchy decided.  James Madison had said “All men with power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree ” and that certainly  rang true as well-intentioned men persecuted their brothers and sisters , using the power of the state to enforce their religious convictions.

  Existing side by side with these large religious behemoths were small pockets of men and women who followed their conscience regardless of what the ruling powers thought.   They worshipped both in secret, and in open, and preached outside of the established church buildings, taking the gospel out in public as the Bible commands.  For this they were fined, banished, beaten, arrested, and imprisoned. Their ears were, in some cases, cut off, and hot irons   driven through their ‘blasphemous tongues’. Their church buildings were burned, their properties seized.  They were Quakers, and Baptists, and Anabaptists, and a variety of other groups who simply sought to live and worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. They sought to practice what would later be called ‘soul liberty’.

  From these oppressions came a shift in the way of colonial thinking.  The heavy heel of ecclesiastical oppression was fuel for the fire of soul liberty, and as men began to ask themselves what freedom was all about, there came a rebirth of the commitment to religious liberty.  People saw what they were becoming, and it shocked them enough to change course. Because of that change, generations have reaped the benefits of religious freedom.

  This story is just one small facet of that larger story.  It involves a handful of Baptist preachers, and a famous name among famous names; Patrick Henry of Virginia. This story covers one small trial, in one small area, just a little sliver of the life of one of America’s founders, but this sliver set the stage for a discussion, and eventually a debate that changed the course of history.   Of course for the sliver to have any context, the lives of the principals prior to the incident must be presented.  Let me take this opportunity to encourage the reader to read beyond this work and to dig further into the lives of John Waller, Lewis Craig, James Chiles, James Read and Patrick Henry.  If you are an American or a Christian or both, this is not only their story; it is your story, and a heritage undimmed by the passing of time.

  Keep in mind that these were men of like passions such as we are, with wives and children and expenses and reputations, but yet they risked all for the proclamation of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. As their legacy, we should be willing to do no less.

John Waller

  John Waller was born 2 days before Christmas in 1741 to a respectable family in Virginia.  He however, was not respectable. As a gambler with a bad temper, he was referred to as “Swearing Jack” or more colorfully as “the Devil’s Adjutant”. From a single incident in which he was involved, he reportedly had three separate warrants issued for his arrest.  He had some legal training, and took great pleasure in the persecution of Baptist in Spotsylvania County, which in the minds of some in Spotsylvania County, made up for  his self-destructive tendencies .  He was assigned to a grand jury in 1766 and it was in this capacity that he first met Lewis Craig.

  Craig had been brought to trial for holding ‘illegal religious meetings’.   This charge was often brought against non-church of England ministers and particularly publick ministers.  Craig had a history of this, and the grand jury decreed that evidence was sufficient for him to go to trial. Many of the grand jury members felt that not only had justice been served, but that yet another of those pesky Baptist street preachers had been dealt with. They adjourned to the local tavern to celebrate.

  What happened next was to affect John Waller’s life forever.  That pesky publick preacher Lewis Craig followed them to the tavern, and bought them a round of drinks, telling them:

“ I thank you, Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, for the honor you have done me. While I was wicked and injurious, you took no note of me, but since I altered my course of life and endeavored to reform my neighbors, you concern yourself much about me.  I have gotten this mug of grog, to treat you with, and shall take the spoiling of my goods joyfully.”

  Such talk bothered John Waller, but his well-earned reputation as an enemy of the faith prevented him from letting his disturbed conscience show.  He began to secretly attend Baptist meetings including those held by Lewis Craig.  When Craig and his company would hold their publick meetings, Waller would stay at the edge of the crowd, listening, but appearing not to. In 1767, less than a year after the grand jury experience, Waller surrendered his all to Jesus Christ. He relates it this way:

“ I had long felt the greatest abhorrence  of myself  and began almost to despair of the mercy of God.  However I determined never to rest until it pleased God to show mercy or cut me off. Under these impressions, I was at a certain place, sitting under preaching.  On a sudden, a man exclaimed that he had found mercy and began to praise God.  No mouth can describe the horror with which I was seized that instant. I began to conclude that my damnation was certain.  Leaving the meeting, I hastened unto a neighboring wood and dropped on my knees before God to beg for mercy. In an instant, I felt my heart melt, and the sweet application of the redeemer’s love to my poor soul.”

  Following his conversion, Waller became one of the most ardent proclaimers of the gospel in Orange and Spotsylvania County. He was baptized by James Read.  He sold his property to pay off his gambling debts, and became the firm companion for his new friend and brother in Christ, Lewis Craig.  By the ungodly he was considered “a bold, inexorable fanatic, which would do much mischief unless restrained.”

   In time he would organize a church and be their pastor. During the course of his life he endured great persecution including a beating in 1771 at the hands of the local sheriff that scarred him for the rest of his life.  He would spend 113 days in 4 different jails over the next 35 years. But it is his arrest in 1768, while still a young man, that we must concern ourselves.

Lewis Craig

  Lewis Craig was born in Virginia to a pious family of Puritans, but according to   all accounts, he was dead in trespasses in sins despite an outward religiosity until his conscience was pricked under the preaching of Samuel Harris when he was 25 or 26 years old. For months he would follow Samuel Harris around, peppering him with questions about eternal things, and lamenting that he must surely be lost and undone before God. When he was 27, he settled it all within his heart and  immediately began to preach, even attempting to give the gospel to his old Anglican priest.( Note: Some accounts list him as the child of a good devout Baptist family) This newfound zeal caused a split with his family, and with the Anglican community.  Soon Lewis Craig found himself   preaching all over Virginia. His soul winning efforts led to the establishment of the first Baptist church in Lower Spotsylvania, according to James Taylor.

“ He travelled almost  constantly, and the large congregations which everywhere attended his ministry, were entreated to escape the divine wrath, with the most impassioned earnestness.  Nothing could exceed the burning zeal with which he persuaded men to be reconciled to God. His sermons consisted in a plain pungent exhibition of the evil of sin, and its ruinous consequences, with the glad tidings of redeeming love, through a Saviour. Hundreds of his hearers found in these announcements, the means to salvation. The Gospel came to them not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, with much assurance.”

  In 1780, amidst the lingering persecution in Virginia, he took his congregation and headed to Kentucky with them, where he established a profitable work until his death in his eighties. He was one of those who lived on both sides of America’s experience with religious intolerance, and could tell the tale of the way things ‘used to be’.  So much of his life, and his ministry happened   after his arrest in 1768,  and they are stories worth telling, but alas, it is there, in  June of 1768 that we must focus our attentions.

James Chiles

  Even less is known about James Chiles.  He was said to possess “a sturdy set of limbs and a resolute spirit” which he used to  “bruise the  bodies of his countrymen”. Converted while in his  20’s, he was with Craig and Waller that day in Spotsylvania

The Trial

  The facts of the actual trial are very scanty, and no court records exist. The story has to be pieced together from multiple eyewitness accounts.

  On the 4^th of June 1768 John Waller, Lewis Craig, James Chiles and James Read were all arrested while preaching in publick.  The charge was that they were disturbing the peace, with the prosecutor at their trial claiming “May it please your worships, these men are great disturbers of the peace; they cannot meet a man upon the road but they must ram a text of Scripture down his throat.”  After their arrest, the charge of holding ‘religious meetings contrary to the law of the land’ was added as they had no license from the Church of England. The bond was set as 2000 pounds, which one historian cites as ‘a king’s ransom’.  John Corbly, a local preacher, met with them and offered to be surety for them, putting his family farm at risk, should they decide to   post bond. They declined.

 Waller, with his partial law school education, argued their case before the magistrates, and a deal was offered them.   They would be released on the condition that they agree to not preach in publick for the length of one year and one day. The preachers refused and were thusly marched to the jail in Fredericksburg. Along the way, they broke out in a chorus of an old Isaac watts hymn “Broad is the way that leadeth to death”:

Broad is the road that leads to death,

And thousands walk together there;

But wisdom shows a narrower path,

With here and there a traveler.

Deny thyself, and take thy cross,

Is the Redeemer’s great command:

Nature must count her gold but dross,

If she would gain this heavenly land.

The fearful soul that tires and faints,

And walks the ways of God no more,

Is but esteemed almost a saint,

And makes his own destruction sure.

Lord let all my hopes be not in vain,

Create my hope entirely new,

Which hypocrites could ne’er attain,

Which false apostates never knew.

   After a month in captivity, two of them had secured their release. Accounts differ as to whether it was Lewis Craig or Elijah Craig, but John Waller was certainly one of them.  The two preachers, whoever they were, made a trip to the Deputy Governor in Williamsburg to plead the case of their comrades still in jail. In July of 1768, a letter was written on their behalf from the deputy governor to the king’s attorney.

Sir,

  I lately received a letter signed by a good number of worthy gentlemen who are not here, complaining of the Baptists; the particulars of their misbehavior are not told any farther than their running into private houses and making dissensions. Mr. Craig and Mr. Waller are with me and deny the charge. They told me they are willing to take the oath as others have. I told them the attorney general is of the opinion that the general court only has the power to grant licenses and referred them to the court. But on their application to the attorney general they brought me his letter, advising me to write you that their petition is a matter of right and that you may not molest these conscientious people so long as they  behave themselves in a manner becoming pious Christians and in obedience to the laws, till the court, when they apply for their licenses and when the gentlemen who complain, may make their objections and be heard. The act of toleration (it being found by experience that persecuting dissenters increases their number) has given them a right to apply, in a proper manner, for licensed houses of worship of God according to their consciences; and I persuade myself that the gentlemen will quietly overlook their meetings till the court. I am told they administer the sacraments of the Lord’s supper near the manner we do but differ in nothing from our church but in that of baptism, and in their renewing of the ancient discipline...they have reformed some sinners and brought some to be truly penitent; nay if a man of theirs is idle and neglect to labour and provide for his family as he ought, he incurs their censures which have had good effects. If this be their behavior, it were to be wished we had some of it among us; but at least I hope all men may remain quiet until court. I am, with great respects to the gentlemen, your humble servant.

Williamsburg

July 16, 1768

 John Blair

  This  pleading failed, and  the case went to trial.

No Matter Who Won, We Lost

  It  has been interesting to watch the news coverage of the latest SCOTUS  fiasco.  As usual, the  elctronic media  hypnotists do their  dead-level  best to   misdirect you and  point your focus somewhere other than where it should be. I have seen almost no  television coverage of any substance regarding the horrific gutting of the 5th Amendment by our good friends in the 'conservative leaning' Supreme Court.  That is  massively more impactful to my day to day  life and liberty than DOMA, which was a poorly thought out law to begin with.  The media instead  have   tapped into the deeply emotional nature of the DOMA debacle, which  to me was the least surprising thing the  Supremes have done lately.  But even  while covering it, they have failed to  look at it in any depth.  The narrative is painted as a simple one reinforced with looped footage; happy  homosexuals on one side of the argument, and foaming at the  mouth religious people on the other.  I'd like to think I don't fit into either group, in fact I can assure you that I don't  qualify for the first group with my  wife as  the star witness.  but I would like to weigh in with my own analysis of  these events, and throw my 2 cents into the national debate.
  DOMA was a bad idea, because there exists nowhere in the Constitution the authority for the federal government to regulate or define marriage. I'm not even entirely certain where we got this notion from.  Legislation intended to shape or steer a society is  often the most dangerous stuff you  can dream up. Had I been a Congressman I would have voted against it.  An individual has a right to  conduct their own personal affairs and enter into any sort of  relationship that they desire. I may not approve of it, I  may even preach against it, but in the end, according to scripture they are sinning against their own body and is not something  Congress needs to pay any attention too.  I will go on further to say they  have the right to call that relationship whatever they want, but as we  say back home 'putting a cat in the oven don't make it a biscuit'.  You don't have the right to  redefine a word  to suit your own agenda at anyone else's expense.  At this point , the individuals involved have only harmed and involved themselves. DOMA gave Congress unconstitutional powers to regulate  something that only affects the people involved.
  So as an example, let's say I joined a  2 person club. Me and my  fellow club-member agree that when one of us dies, the other one gets  his stuff.  We both agree to this, and  even put it  in writing.  We decide to call our club "The  Coolest Club in the Universe". Silly? Absolutely.  You might even say that the club name is misleading ( really Mike? the whole universe?). You may not like it, you may not approve of it and even speak out against it but really, it's none of your business what we are doing, and what we call it.   What you lack is the legitimate authority to outlaw it.  Later on, we decide to expand the club parameters to allow a 3rd person to join.   Does it suddenly become your business legislatively?
  Here's where it gets hairy and here is exactly where I think , as bad an idea as DOMA is, the SCOTUS decision is just as  bad.  I now take my club and  go to your restaurant and say 'you must offer my  club the discounts and  privileges you offer other  clubs, or I will cry foul'.  A  rational response would be to assess what business impact this would have  on your restaurant, along with your personal feelings about our club, and make your decision from there.  You may decide to offer me what you have offered others, or you may  decide to tell me to  hit the bricks. Either way, I should  have no authority to FORCE you to  cater to our little group of weirdos because you are under no obligation to  honor a agreement that you weren't part of. Our club has no 'rights' other than the right to  associate with whom we please. We should not be able to force you to associate or acknowledge us.  We certainly shouldn't have the right to legislatively force you to modify your business practices to accommodate us against your  will.
  The long term fallout of the SCOTUS decision will be in its application, and my prediction is that  a new 'right' will spring out of whole cloth, and with it the justification for  the state to  force other people to acknowledge a union that they were never part of. I  expect discrimination  lawsuits and defamation campaigns to   be generated against those  that choose not to  acknowledge the latest 'club'.  Those that speak  out against the club will be vilified even worse than they already are, and their speech curtailed under the jackboot of the  police state. I expect the  heavy hand of government will  violate  people's right to association and to their own  property and business practices in order to force this new reality down every ones throats.  The end result will be less freedom for everyone, the  homosexuals included ,and more  government interference in people's bedrooms.
  Nobody wins.

Rand is not Ron

  I was doing a radio interview recently regarding SWINDLED, and the host asked me what my impression was of  Rand Paul, the  junior Senator from Kentucky and heir-apparent to his father's philosophical empire. My response was simple , "I have Rand issues."
  Trust me, I've heard all the arguments in favor of the Rand Paul "libertarian when I need to be" philosophy. I've heard how he needs to "play the game" in order to "get anything done". Well that certainly implies that we need government to get anything done, doesn't it? I thought we  held that  liberty and freedom and individuals were the solutions, not partisan politics. I don't 'need ' Washington. All I 'need' them to do is leave me alone, a simple task they seem incapable of doing. Compromise  is what  got us where we are now, isn't it?
  I've  been pointed towards some of the  brave stands he has taken, such as his  drone filibuster. That's all  fine and good, but I would like to see a little more consistency in the man. He  has supported sanctions against Iran, which his father  claimed was an act of war.  Since Iran seems to be the new neocon litmus test, Rand's willingness to play  political games with the lives of other people's children seems to me to be  at odds with his  libertarian soundness in other areas. His last name isn't enough for me to give him carte blanche enough to hide in his father's shadow.
  A perfect example of my Rand issues came to light   in the Senates  recent unanaimous vote to  push us one step closer to war with Iran. The media has already started to portray the regime as Enemy of the Month, and already the  average amn on the street  is being programmed to think "We gotta do soemthign about those guys".  Trust me, unless something drastically changes, I  completely see us  parking  ourselves in yet another  country, toppling the regime, and   spilling  precious blood and  squandering  precious treasure in an attempt to control what happens afterwards.  This apparently is what we do now.
  I assume Mr. Paul ( the younger) has presidential aspirations, and maybe he saw how his father was shut out by the  establishment and he seeks to  endear himself   to the establishment while keeping his liberty  street cred.  But I  submit to you that such a tightrope act is not only impossible, but unwise, and won't win him any points with me.
  Rand, its not too late to  change course. Some of us are still watching to see how you turn out.

The Birth of Religious Freedom in America

  There are, in my estimation, some freedoms that, unless you have them,  make other freedoms   rather meaningless, but if you  do have them, other freedoms are not only possible, but amplified in their effectiveness.  A quick example is the right to  property. If you don't have this right, then the fact that you are 'free' to barbeque on weekends is really rather meaningless , since you exercise that 'freedom' at the good pleasure of whoever the overlord of the moment happens to be.
  One of the others is religious freedom. If anyone can compel you to believe something, or compel you through whatever means to confess to things you do not  really hold to be true, then you have lost the battle for your own conscience, and whatever other 'liberties' you might enjoy   pale rather  quickly by comparison.  For a man to hold power over another man's conscience through state power or ecclesaistical power ( which often masquerades one as the other), it is  the worst sort of tyranny, for it claims jurisdiction over the  innermost parts of  a man and seeks to reign over his soul.
   It is a great irony in American history that the Puritans who had fled to the New World for the chance to exercise their own conscience in matters of worship eventually became the very thing they fled.  Colonial America wasn’t an idyllic utopia of liberty, but rather a patchwork quilt of different understandings and tolerances of what freedom was all about. In many places, especially in Church of England dominated-areas, the line between church and state was so blurry as to be almost non-existent.    Church officials held  political offices and  church  officials exercised police powers, with a careful eye towards maintaining the status quo of doctrinal purity. This mindset revealed itself in activities like the witch trials in Salem or the ordinance passed in Massachusetts in 1644 that specifically referred to Anabaptists as “the troublers of churches in all places where they have been”. In 1656 when the first Quakers began to arrive on the shores of Massachusetts, the Quakers in question were imprisoned by their Puritan brothers, the women strip-searched under pretense of looking for witches,  and their religious literature burned as heresy.

  Existing side by side with these large religious behemoths were small pockets of men and women who followed their conscience regardless of what the ruling powers thought.   They worshipped both in secret, and in open, and preached outside of the established church buildings, taking the gospel out in public as the Bible commands.  For this they were fined, banished, beaten, arrested, and imprisoned. Their ears were, in some cases, cut off, and hot irons  driven through their ‘blasphemous tongues’. Their church buildings were burned, their properties seized.  They were Quakers, and Baptists, and Anabaptists, and a variety of other groups who simply sought to live and worship according to the dictates of their own conscience. They sought to practice what would later be called ‘soul liberty’.

  Because those abuses were so blatant, it drew the attention, and earned the condemnation of some of the most prominent thinkers in the colonies. As  we are seeing again today, the  state  overreacted, overstepped its bounds, and  men of courage called them on it. In June of 1768, four Baptist preachers were imprisoned in Spotsylvania County, Virginia for  preaching without  a state-issued license.  Patrick Henry  became involved in the case, and they were released. That incident, and incidents like it, caused great discussion among the  founding generation as the colonies moved closer and closer to independence. Local statues were  enacted and drafted by what would become some of the most famous men in history. These statues were put in place to protect the  consciences of free men from coercion by the state.  They presented, in writing, a philosophical thread that grew and grew until it became the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  One of the most prominent was one drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and adopted in 1786  entitled "An Act for establishing Religious Freedom". In  three simple paragraphs, Thomas Jefferson laid out  not only  what  powers the state did not have, but why.  It's worth reading in its entirety, but I am going to cite a couple of prominent lines and then opine (probably in a separate post) on where I hope things are going in America today.  It is an axiom in my mind that all natural rights are interconnected, and the principles behind one can be applied to the others, as you will see.

Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness....

  This includes the Infernal Revenue Service  dangling threats of revocation of tax exempt status over the head of ecclesiastical bodies and using that as a lever to  force entry into their  internal affairs.  If there ever was an organization committed to 'hypocrisy and  meanness', it is these  modern day publicans who are after all a political organ as they have so recently demonstrated.

...that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;

  An everday occurrence in America. I  believe it is  wrong to  steal, so I am stolen from. I believe it's wrong to mooch, so my stolen money is used to support the moochers.  Abortions are funded out of my own pocket after its been pilfered. In a thousand ways I am made by compulsion to support things I  hold to be wrong.

Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate,..

  As a minister of the gospel I  hold that  a society in which  there is no  state religion  offers me the greatest opportunity to persuade men from the Scriptures by earnest and heartfelt discussion and it offers me the greatest opportunity to hear their rebuttals. In fact, on a personal note,to do so is one of the great joys of my life.

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever,

   In a perfect world this would include the  peculiar  doctrines taught by the compulsory government schools.  Compulsory  government education has been one  of the greatest and most successful tools in  robbing people not only of truth, but of the ability to recognize the truth when it is presented to them.
  Jefferson proved himself by this resolution to be not only overtly brilliant, but a man who understood the issue and was able to get to the heart of it.  His arguments, his logic, his  very words, later became the heart of  the 1st Amendment, an amendment that  was an absolute condition for  Virginia's  ratification of the Constitution.
  Would to God we had a few more Jeffersons!