Quotes
So on the one hand we are constantly confronted with obnoxious,
self-righteous reporters and newscasters clamoring for the outlawing of civilian
possession of guns, ostensibly to prevent crime, and on the other hand we have
constant media attention to the latest Hollywood films glorifying unbelievable
levels of gun violence, which is just fine, as far as these media hypocrites are
concerned.
-Jim Benson, "Shootouts, Sensationalism, Hysteria
and Hypocrisy," American Survival Guide, June 1997: p.
69.
I would add that we could say exactly the same thing about problems like sexual license and public civility. The entertainment and "news" media operate together in a push-pull relationship. The function of the entertainment media is to continually drag down and trash the moral scruples of its' target audience. The goal is to weaken and dehumanize the viewer until they are functionally unsafe and incapable of serving as a responsible moral citizen. At the same time, the news media suggests and promotes patently ineffective "solutions" designed primarily to increase Government command-and-control mechanisms in the lives of the chattel, errh, citizens.
When it comes to cutting the estate tax, there is no case for it
other than selfishness.
-U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence
Summers, April 1997.
The article accompanying this quote reported that Summers believed "families who want to pass their small business and farms on to their children are selfish."
I don't want to be accused of reading too much into this statement (assuming it is accurate) and what Summers personally believes. I am quoting it as an example because it really does show in a nutshell the difference between the secular humanist and Christian views of government.
C.S. Lewis once made an interesting point. An individual human exists for all eternity and has infinite worth. But an empire, no matter how huge, only exists for a finite period of time and affects a finite number of people. In the eyes of God, therefore, a human life is of infinitely greater worth and worthy of greater attention than the lifespan of a mighty empire. The humanist conception is the opposite. If humans only live briefly and then rot, then things which have greater longetivity and involve great numbers of people are far more important than the meaningless life of an individual human.
This nation was founded on the first viewpoint, and is now ruled by the second. When it is the individual human who is seen as supremely important, government is understand as a mere servant. The function of government is to preserve and protect the interests of individual humans. Government is to be a beggar, carefully justifying every request for resources. Ownership belongs to the common man as steward of God's property on earth. Humans have rights and have the right to engage in anything they wish to do until such time as society reaches a consensus that an activity should be prohibited and enacts laws to reflect this view.
In the second viewpoint, under which we are now coming to be ruled, individual lives are secondary and without unique meaning. They only achieve (the illusion of) meaning within a larger social context. Government is held to be the source of all power (not God), and we no longer have rights (though we pretend we still do) - only privileges. The privileges may be granted or removed by government at its' pleasure using convenient rationalizations. Because government has all power it ultimately owns all land, property, resources. The only final restriction on the actions of a humanist government are the threat of force, either internal (rebellion) or external (invasion).
Summers' comments make perfect sense in the humanist government model. Why should children inherit the fruits of their parents' labors? What did they do to deserve them? Of course, we could ask exactly the same question about government. But the answer is that government doesn't need to "deserve" the property. It has default property ownership power. Rather than begging resources from the people to serve them, people must now beg for resources from the government, and are tolerated only so long as they do not deviate too seriously from the agenda of the humanist government. A free Christian, because they do not share the goals and aims of the humanist government, is of little use to a humanist government and is merely a waste of resources. Only enslaved and bent to the will of the Government is a Christian of any use in their schemes.
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