Render unto Obama even if it pays for abortion?

Albert Mohler responds to a question that is sure to come up with the passing of "Obamacare". Titled Render Unto Caesar? On Paying Taxes After Obamacare, Dr. Mohler asks a very vital question: Is it right for Christians to pay taxes into a system that will fund abortions? This is a very valid question because only a fool thinks that a meaningless executive order is going to stop the inevitable: tax-payer funded abortions. Dr. Mohler rightly answers this question “yes”. Trusting in a sovereign God means that we recognize His hand at work in the governments that rule over us. Whether that is what we would choose is not really the point.

Abortion is a moral catastrophe. The murder of the unborn is one of the greatest sins any society can tolerate, much less subsidize by taxation. The impact of the new “Obamacare” health care legislation is not yet fully clear, but the legislation lacks any adequate protection for the unborn. Immorality is added to immorality when the power of the government to tax and confiscate the funds of citizens is involved in such a catastrophe.

For this reason, Christian citizens should be involved at every level in the political process, seeking to use legitimate means to establish full protection for the unborn and for all other vulnerable persons. Elections have consequences, and this new legislation is a reminder of the power of government to do both good and evil.

But to refuse to pay taxes is to deny the legitimacy of the government itself, and to declare it beyond political remedy. Even to Christians suffering under the repressive, murderous, and dictatorial yoke of Rome, Jesus instructed the payment of taxes. Caesar, Christ knew, will one day face the judgment of Almighty God. Rome would one day be brought under his own feet and made subject to him.

We do not “render unto Caesar” because of our confidence in Caesar. We render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, because we are committed with our lives and confidence and consciences to render unto God that which is God’s.

The same question could be asked of paying taxes that support a military and thereby takes life. It was an issue for the Anabaptists back in the day when there were separate “war taxes” and the question of paying them caused all sort of trouble. It is a question that unfortunately doesn’t garner the same attention among Christians, many of whom seem perfectly fine with funding war while at the same time being vehemently opposed to funding abortion. Not the same thing? I beg to differ. I hold that an unborn child is every bit as much a human being as a full grown adult. The converse is also true, an adult is as much a human being created in the image of God as an unborn child. Both are sinners and as such both the unborn child and the adult are in need of Christ. It is disingenuous to say that it is OK to wage war but to oppose abortion and falls into the same trap as the pro-abortion left by devaluing a human life based on age and development. So as a Christian we should “render unto Caesar” whether those taxes fund abortion or war, confident that God is in full control.

Now when it comes to personal participation, that is a different issue. I would feel perfectly justified in not participating in abortion directly. I would likewise refuse to take up arms even under penalty of imprisonment or death. I recognize the government as ordained of God and that the government has a legitimate right to use the sword. I do not see the recognition of that right as a requirement on my behalf to kill or die for a secular nation. This is where pacifism and non-resistance part ways. War is tragic and often unnecessary squabbling over borders and resources but it is an unpleasant reality of the fall. Pacifism seeks to abolish war, an understandable but futile goal. Non-resistance recognizes that while war will exist and may even play a part of God’s grand plan, Christians are forbidden from taking up arms to kill another, preferring instead to live under persecution and even martyrdom for our faith as God wills it. I would rather die at the hands of an unbeliever than kill that unbeliever to save my own life. Human life is precious, whether in the womb or in a foreign city. The heathen and pagan will war with one another and lives will be lost but we who are redeemed from spiritual death by God have no business dealing physical death to others.

Never let a crisis go to waste!

That is something of a mantra for the Obama administration. In an incredibly bold admission, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both stated publicly that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. In other words, use the economic crisis and ensuing panic to push through your agenda that perhaps would be unpalatable during normal times. Rest assured that in these early days, President Obama and his puppet-masters in the Congress and liberal special interest groups will waste no time cramming as much socialism into place as possible. His poll numbers are waning fast, in spite of the rosy reports from the complicit media. Time is not on his side, so we find ourselves watching the spectacle of a two month overhaul of the relationship between the public and private sector that we have not seen in generations, perhaps ever.

The first two waves have been passed, the pork and social engineering filled “stimulus package” and the massive deficit expanding Federal budget. Next up for Obama is socialized medicine, accomplished through a vastly expanded Federal health insurance mandate along with the whispering of “The Return of Porkulus”. Already, before a nickel of the first “stimulus” bill has been spent, some loyal Democrats in safe seats (i.e. David Obey of Wisconsin) are hinting around at the need for a second stimulus package, likely as large if not larger, than the first one. This is a clever bit of old school politics as usual (weren’t we promised “change”?). Rather than the President coming right out and saying he wants another stimulus bill, he has his loyalist troops raise the issue, sort of easing you into it. Once the initial outrage starts to settle down, Obama can roll out his panic mode speeches, assuring us of calamities unimaginable if we don’t pass yet another stimulus bill. The threat of calamity worked well once, why not a second time?

One major piece of legislation that is a crown jewel in the Obama crown is the so-called card check legislation. It also is getting very little attention because the details would strike most Americans as being, for lack of a better word, un-American. In a nutshell, this legislation will change the way unions organize by allowing a workplace to be collectively bargained if they get more than 50% of employees to sign a card. This is not a secret ballot. It is Joe the local union organizer walking up to you and asking you to sign a card. If you don’t, that amounts to a vote against the union and you can be assured that your public vote of “no” will be remembered. Certainly there has never been even a whiff of intimidation tactics being employed by labor unions toward recalcitrant workers who didn’t sign on to the union agenda! Ask anyone trying to cross a picket line. The reason we have a secret ballot in this country for virtually ever election, including voting for class president and dog catcher, is to allow people to vote their conscience without fear of intimidation or reprisal. Now in a bold effort to take that basic American protection away from American workers, we see what amounts to a green light for intimidation of workers by union organizers. Funny, I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the party watching out for the working man? I guess that only applies if you are a union working man.

Ominously, the economy is showing early signs of recovery as the credit markets start to stabilize. That has nothing to do with anything done by the Obama administration (which has done nothing to address the credit crisis even though virtually every expert agrees that the credit market collapse was the impetus of the general economic malaise), but be sure that as the economy naturally rebounds as it always does and does so in spite of Obama’s policies, Obama and his media cronies will spin the recovery as a vindication of his big government policies, and give him the cover he needs to further march us down the road of European style socialism and economic ruin.

It is bad and our “leader” is making it worse

We are in the midst of an economic collapse that is rapidly changing the financial landscape of America. Every day it seems we get more bad news. Today, we get the grim news that unemployment is at 8.1%, the economy lost 651,000 jobs last month and the total for the recession tips the scale at 4 million jobs lost. With the looming prospect of General Motors seeking bankruptcy protection and a number of banks in real danger of collapsing, the economy is really on the precipice of a serious turn for the worse (believe it or not). Americans, especially older Americans, are faced with a retirement date that is moving further away each day. These are scary times for a lot of people. America needs clear, positive leadership. That is not what we are getting.

As Peggy Noonan pointed out in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, President Obama sees this crisis as an opportunity to push through sweeping changes to our nation. Changes in how we do business, health care, taxes, banking, defense. Seismic changes to the relationship between the government and the people, with the government taking on a much larger and vastly more expensive role in American life. All under the guise of fixing what ails our nation. The recession is providing political camouflage for new policies of tax increases, socialized medicine, massive income redistributionist policies and an exploding national debt.

This is a time for leadership, a time for stabilization. Americans need to turn on the TV and see our President being frank and honest about the challenges we face, but also providing the leadership and vision we need to get out of the economic morass we are in. What we are getting instead is a man who is trying to build a legacy, making a name for himself at the expense of the economy and the long term future of America. Most Presidents, especially two term presidents late in their second term, start to worry about what their “legacy” will be. How will history and future generations of Americans view their Presidency? President Obama seems to be preoccupied with trying to forge his legacy RIGHT NOW, in March of 2009, a scant two months into his administration. Instead of being a leader, taking charge and leading this country forward, when Obama acts or speaks he seems to make things worse. The stock market should have stabilized by now, but it continues to drop because the policies being put forth by this administration are hurting America’s hopes for long term growth and economic vitality. We need solutions that will stabilize the economy and address the fundamental problems, painful though that will be. Instead we get massive pork spending under the guise of “stimulus”. The same institution that brings you the DMV is about to seize an enormous parcel of the economic system of this country and turn it into an inefficient, wealth destroying shell of itself that looks more like the weak economies of once great nations in Europe and a lot less like the economy that had been the envy of the rest of the world throughout my lifetime.

Millions of older Americans have seen their invested wealth evaporate. That is not a big deal for me. At 37, I am entering my peak earning years and this is a great time to sock money away. But for those who are approaching retirement age or are already retired, the stock market downturn has turned into a free for all. Where is the leadership? We cannot count on future generations making up the shortfall because the ranks of the elderly continue to grow and the replacement rate of new workers continues to fall, thanks to the new American worldview that children are a burden, an economic line item and a threat to the environment.

I am pretty sure that the Obama team, like most of America, has little idea what has gotten us into this situation and even less idea of how to get us out. I also don’t think that they care. This is an opportunity the likes of which the American Left has not had since before Nixon to radically reshape this nation and they are not wasting a minute in enacting it. One hopes that the enduring legacy of the Obama administration is not that they used the current recession as cover for a Leftward lurch because in normal times the American people would reject neo-socialism. This is a time for us to be getting the truth from our leaders, but unfortunately the truth is a scarce commodity that is becoming increasingly rare.

A fighting retreat

Conservatism, which as recently as the early 1990’s was ascendant, is clearly in full scale retreat. We are mere weeks away from a Barack Obama landslide victory and very likely a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Reliably conservative Kentucky has polls showing that Mitch McConnell is tied in his race for re-election, something unthinkable a few years ago. The older liberal Supreme Court justices will likely retire shortly after Obama takes office confident that he will replace them with other far left, pro-abortion justices who are younger, packing the court for decades to come and eliminating the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade. Given a sufficient majority in the Senate, Obama will be able to breeze through sweeping new legislation that will reorient the private-public spheres in a way we haven’t seen since FDR and Lyndon Johnson. Once people get a taste of “free” government health insurance and unlimited access to doctors for every sniffle, it will be nigh impossible to wean them back off. Future Republican candidates will have to cede the huge new government programs lest they be accused of trying to take away health care from kiddies. Once the camel gets it’s nose under that tent, it is all over but the triumphal Rose Garden signing by Obama.

Conservatism has by and large, at least to the masses, hitched its star to President George W. Bush, for good or ill. In the weeks following September 11th and even early in the liberation of Iraq, it seemed as if we had backed a winner and thus many conservatives, especially more populist and Christian conservatives, were willing to overlook chinks in the armor: the one-sided coverage of the Iraq war that universally portrayed it as a disaster with daily body counts that gradually turned public opinion sharply against the war; general ineptitude in events like Katrina and now the financial debacle that made Bush look disinterested or incompetent; an abandonment wholesale of conservative small government principles that led to enormous increases in spending and the national debt. Now Reagan is no longer the face of the Republican party, Bush is. Fair or not, that face is one that the media has convinced people (in fairness with some justification) as one of uncertainty, incompetence and general stupidity. John McCain has done little to change that perception. With the exception of the GOP convention introduction of Governor Palin, McCain has been on the defensive and has allowed Obama and his media surrogates to dictate the tone and the topic of the campaign. Right after the convention with interest in Governor Palin at a fever pitch, they hid her away (Put her away privily in King James lingo!) and we didn’t hear from her again until she revealed her daughter was pregnant. This has been a grossly incompetent campaign since McCain sewed up the nomination, with no central message and a seeming defensive posture throughout. Obama is grossly underqualified to be President, and yet the conversations have all focused on whether Governor Palin is qualified to be President in the unlikely event of McCain’s death. She gets grilled on her qualifications while Obama gets a free pass on the same standard, and we hear nary a word from the McCain camp. If they had any honor, the McCain campaign staff would all ceremonially fall on their swords. So in general, as conservatives, we are hosed in November 2008 and we can only hope that the bloodbath isn’t as bad as we fear.

The question becomes what kind of retreat we are in. Is it a drop your rifle and run rout? Or is it a fighting retreat where we shed blood over every inch we give up? Do we flee to the hills, do we start a scorched earth guerrilla war or do we back up fighting until we get to favorable ground from which to launch a counter-offensive? William F. Buckley Jr., to paraphrase, described conservatism as standing in front of progress and shouting “Stop!”. But for conservatism to gain the high ground and go back on the offensive, merely being against progress is inadequate. The movement needs leadership. Not people in leadership positions, but actual leadership. Leadership like Ronald Reagan, someone who articulated clear conservative principles that average voters understood (government is not the solution, strong national defense, etc.). Leadership like Newt Gingrich, who for all of his personal failings and faults was the catalyst behind the Republican party taking control of the House in the 90’s. Just calling Obama a “liberal” isn’t going to cut it unless there is a clear declaration of what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a conservative. If liberals spin the debate as being about them wanting you to have health insurance and those mean Republicans wanting kids to get sick and die for lack of insurance, conservatives lose that debate. If we can frame it in such a way that we show that the enormous inefficiencies of a government single-payer systems means enormous tax increases and worse health for everyone, and that with no cost to consumers every sniffle will lead to the doctor’s office means long waits for health care, that is a debate we can have and we can win. But without leadership to make that clear, it will never happen and without leadership to reign in “conservatives” in Congress who rail against wasteful spending except when it benefits their district, we will look like hypocrites.

There is plenty of high ground to retreat to and make our stand. Liberalism is intellectually bankrupt, the equivalent of policy cotton candy that tastes yummy but gives you a stomach ache. But without a new generation of leaders who can articulate the high ground, in an environment where they will have to cut through the static of a hostile media that still controls the access of many Americans to information, the message will never get out. Now is not the time to drop our rifles and run, nor is it the time to start a scorched earth policy. Now is the time, in the face of almost certain catastrophic defeat, to start planning for the future and finding the hills on which to make our stand.

Do we want a President who cries all the time?

Hillary, on the eve of a big day on Super Tuesday, broke out her New Hampshire secret weapon and cried on stage today....

For the second time just before a big election, Clinton choked up before the cameras, this time being triggered by a former law professor at Yale University who introduced at an event in New Haven, Conn.

“I said I would not tear up,” she told a boisterous crowd. “Already we’re not exactly on that path. ”

This isn't a gender issue (ever seen Margaret Thatcher cry?). It is an issue of someone who shamelessly uses emotional displays to get votes. I don't much care for Obama, but at least he isn't sobbing at his campaign stops. How can even die-hard liberals stomach her? If you want to really see something that should make you cry, Hillary revealed a feature of her swell health insurance plan....

WASHINGTON — Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC’s “This Week,” she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.”

Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it, which puts undue pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms. With her proposals for subsidies, she said, “it will be affordable for everyone.”

That is Hillary-care, a huge government program that can lead to your wages being garnished if you choose not to enroll in a socialized "insurance" program. Perhaps they will send the police after you and drag you to the doctor, for your own good. That is the key to Hillary-care, and everything her administration would stand for: we know better than you what is good for you, so shut up and do as I say, or else. Go to the doctor now, because if Hillary gets in the White House you will be standing in line to see a doctor before you know it. At least you know Ann Coulter will be in line with you since she is such a big fan of Hillary all of a sudden.