Eliminate Hate and the Quest for Truth

A recent article from Reuters announced: “LGBTQ Advocates Seek to Label Conservative Opponents as Hate Groups.” A headline like that grabs my attention, so I read the article. In it we are told, “The campaign will pressure the media to use the hate-group designation for about 50 organizations in the United States.”

The list of targets is headlined by three legal groups that offer free legal representation to people who are being prosecuted under a spate of newly-minted sexual orientation and gender identity laws.

For instance: The Alliance Defending Freedom is defending Judge Ruth Neely of Pinedale; while Pacific Justice Institute is involved in Welch v. Brown, a California case where a licensed counselor is prohibited from helping his clients who wish to resist unwanted sexual feelings.

Included also are 10 organizations focused on either “truth” or “values,” 10 family organizations, and 20 different churches and ministries. These have all been black-listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as “hate-groups.”

An exhausting search of the SPLC web site found no documentation to substantiate these charges. In place of evidence and rational argument, were emotional words like “hate” and “extremism,” “junk science” and “lies.” Such epithets, unless carefully documented, function to bludgeon the reader, but not to inform.

The incessant repetition of such loaded words have a double effect. For those already inclined to believe them, they set prejudged opinions in stone. For those seeking engagement and objective facts, they turn off any further desire to dialog.

Both harm our national discourse. One side has no reason to listen, the other has no reason to talk. We should hasten to add that neither the left, nor the SPLC, has a corner on this way of speaking. Westboro Baptist Church is the same kind of irrational voice coming from the other corner of the ring.

But if we hope to be civilized people, all of us on both sides of the cultural issues should be eager to discuss the issues objectively, dispassionately, and with an honest willingness to learn the truth. Dismissing the words of either side before they have even been spoken does not advance the discussion.

But that, exactly, is the reason for labeling. Black-listing is intended to delegitimize someone so that they need not be taken seriously. Whether it be the black-lists of Hollywood, or those of the McCarthy era, you are guilty until proven innocent, and your actual merits and achievements are not worth considering.

“Eliminate Hate” calls it a media failure when anyone on this black-list is characterized as a “Christian law firm,” or “legal advocacy,” or “religious.” It is not even enough for the media to note that a group “has been labeled an anti-gay hate group.” They will settle for nothing less than that they be summarily dismissed as a “hate-group.”

If they are successful in their campaign, we will descend yet one more notch into the angry scrum that used to characterize our childhood arguments. Labeling, whatever the label, is never helpful.

So, what is behind this descent into irrationality? Is it purely a lack of good will and animus toward one another? Unfortunately, no. In fact, I would argue that the seething anger observable in our culture is only a symptom, not a cause. It is a symptom of a worldview which increasingly despairs of having any way of knowing the truth.

Truth as an absolute reality, outside of each one of us, is the basis for all civilization and rational discussion. It gives all of us a common focus, a common goal. An honest pursuit of the truth allows us, first of all, to be critical of ourselves. By it we admit that our own ideas must be obedient to something that is not our own.

This humility, in turn, allows us to be more forgiving and patient with one another. If we recognize that we can be, and have been, wrong, it is easier to tolerate those who may be making the same error that we once made.

Likewise, if we have once been humble enough to learn and be corrected by someone else, we can more readily approach a conversation with the possibility that we can be corrected again.

Where truth is seen as non-existent, relative, or simply unknowable, we have lost any basis for civil discourse. Such societies no longer seek to help one another find the transcendent truth. They instead seek to subjugate one another to raw power.

Observe the recent riots on college campuses. These are not staged to counter falsehoods with clear reason. They are designed to silence unwanted speech with power. This is the nature of “hate-group” labeling.

As Janice Harper wrote in the Huffington Post, “The use of any derogatory label to describe a person is dehumanizing and promotes stereotypes. When we dehumanize a person with a label, we make it easier to attack them… it is not necessary to establish that a person’s behavior or thinking is a problem; all that is necessary to eradicate them is to persuade others that the person belongs to the disfavored class. That is done most effectively by simply stating, and repeating, the disfavored label upon them, until others adopt it as well” (“The Bully Label Has Got to Go”, November 1, 2011).

Words, if they are no longer capable of conveying truth, are only good for projecting power. Minds that are incapable of being changed have no recourse but to shun different ideas and seek out those exactly like themselves. This is a dangerous recipe. Because instead of fostering an open and generous society, it encourages a closed and self-interested tribalism.

The elimination of hate is most certainly a worthy goal. But the bullying tactics of this newest campaign only aggravate the problem and cannot accomplish the stated goal. It can, however, raise our awareness of the deeper and more pressing problem.

It is time to rededicate ourselves to the mutually beneficial quest for objective truth. We can do so, first, by an unwavering knowledge that truth exists outside of me. Admitting that truth is not simply the private domain of whatever I happen to believe, we are allowed to come shoulder-to-shoulder and turn our eyes toward a common goal.

Grounded in that reality, we can commit ourselves to an unflinching desire to be shaped by the truth with absolute certainty that the truth will set us free. Instead of stifling the speech of others, we will welcome it in the hope that my neighbor can sharpen my focus, while I sharpen hers. We will both be better for it.

Finally, this can position us as individuals, and as a nation, to love and not hate. We can bear with one another patiently knowing that the truth is not a bludgeon to control others, but a safe-haven into which we have all been invited, and by which we come to truly know ourselves and one another.

Environmentalism, Antihumanism and Gardens

I wonder how many people like me remember a television ad from four decades ago. It featured a native American crying at the pollution that he saw. It was part of the Keep America Beautiful ad campaign, and impacted me deeply.

The wanton and careless destruction of natural resources is a misuse of the great land that God has given us. I am extremely happy to see the tremendous progress that we have made in the past four decades. The clean-up of water, land and air has been remarkable.

I can remember my first hike into the Frontier Creek drainage above Dubois. Seven miles in we found a pile of Chef Boyardee cans under a juniper. I am happy to report that in hundreds of miles of hiking since, I don’t see that very often. And when I do, it is usually litter from the bad old days.

But while we were cleaning up America, something more sinister was happening. A network of religious zealots were organizing under a deadly philosophy called Antihumanism. Unlike the slogan of the 70s: “People start pollution. People can stop it.” Antihumanism rejects the second sentence and preaches simply: “People cause pollution.”

The Club of Rome is a group of such thinkers who have had an undue influence on the environmentalist movement. The environmentalism that all of us cheer has been so successful and popular that this group, and others like them, have used it as a Trojan Horse to bring in more sinister ideas.

In 1974 the Club of Rome published a book titled, Man at the Turning Point. In it, they claimed, “The World Has Cancer and the Cancer Is Man.”

Read that again, and let it sink in. Cancer serves no useful purpose. Cancer cannot be taught, reformed or redirected in a more positive direction. Cancer is to be exterminated. It is to be hated. The Club of Rome believes that Man is to be hated and exterminated from the earth.

As rhetoric, this is over the top. But it is more than rhetoric. It is the solemn belief of a growing number of elites who spend billions of dollars to limit and reduce the human population. I call them elites for the obvious reason that they do not consider themselves to be “Cancer” in need of extermination.

Some occasionally vow, on principle, never to “reproduce.” But they do not believe their own words about their own personal life. I thank God for that. I do not wish any of these people to take their own lives. I only wish they would see that their judgement about their own worth is equally true of you and every other human being on this planet.

Antihumanism, as expressed by the Club of Rome, is really nothing new. It is the resurgence of the ancient dualist religions. These religions looked at the evil in the world around them and concluded that the very people and things themselves were evil. They thought wrongdoers couldn’t be reformed, but only killed.

This is fundamentally different from the Christian notions which have shaped our culture and our laws for seventeen centuries. Christians believe that evil is a cancer that infects man. They do not believe that man himself is the cancer. Most Americans, whether they are Christians or not, think this way, but Antihumanism does not.

This great divide in thinking about human beings has a direct application to the way we think about environmental issues. Antihuman approaches to environmental issues treat human beings themselves as the problem. So, they talk incessantly about “reducing man’s footprint” on the earth.

Practically speaking, that means the promotion of birth control, abortion, and suicide. This is exactly what we are seeing when the Prime Minister of Canada pledges millions of dollars to provide abortions in developing countries. Here, again, the humans targeted for thinning, are not ourselves, or our own, but someone else entirely.

Robert Zubrin, a scientist retired from NASA, wrote a compelling and well-documented book which traces the influence of antihumanism through two centuries. In, Merchants of Despair, he documents the deadly ideas behind the Irish potato blight and the Indian famine of the 1870s right on through to the modern policies of USAID and the UN.

But if antihumanism is bankrupt. What is the answer to environmental issues? If I may make a pun: Fix the sin, not the sinner. We don’t need to keep humans from reproducing. We need to help each other be truly human. Human beings are unlike every other animal. We serve vital role in the welfare of the earth.

This is not only a Christian teaching, the very existence of the Club of Rome proves the point. Why else would a bunch of thinkers from all over the world spend copious amounts of money, energy and time to make the world a better place? I checked their website. There is not a single animal listed in their entire organizational directory.

Christian doctrine speaks of this phenomenon with the words, “Let them (male and female) have dominion over…the earth” (Genesis 1:26). But common sense teaches this as well. In 1879, Henry George wrote, “Here is the difference between the animal and the man. Both the jay-hawk and the man eat chickens, but the more jay-hawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men the more chickens” (Progress and Poverty).

Contrary to much of the hijacked environmental movement, human beings are more than just mouths to feed. They are persons who think and solve problems and make their world a better place. America’s response to the “Keep America Beautiful” ad campaign was to clean up our environment like never before.

But in third-world countries, where they can barely scrape by, the pollution is worse than you have ever seen. The answer is not to thin them out, but to help them grow. All over the world, the cleanest, safest, and most environmentally responsible countries are also the most developed countries.

According to the Bible, God created the world with all its wild beauty, but he also did something else. He planted a garden. It was not in the wilderness, but in the garden, where God put Adam and Eve. Then, He gave them a calling: cultivate the garden.

The implication of this teaching is that humankind exists to extend the borders of the garden out into the wilderness. Once again, here we find common ground. Whether you are a Sierra Club environmentalist, or a country club industrialist, we all like gardens. Let’s make this world one.

So, this Saturday, on the 47th annual Earth Day, let’s keep this in mind. Pick up some trash and plant a tree. But don’t trash your fellow humans, and don’t let the deathly ideas of antihumanism get planted in your mind.

While sin and evil exist, we will need to fight pollution and waste. But the problem is not human beings, it is the sin and evil that infects us. That’s why, last Sunday, the world commemorated another day. On that day, a human being who was planted in a garden tomb rose to grow through the entire world. The footprint of this Man does not kill the earth, but renews it.

Did Jesus Exist, and Was He Crucified?

Christians throughout the world mark today as Tuesday of Holy Week. It is a more-or-less real time observance of the activities of Jesus of Nazareth during the final week before his tomb was found empty on a Sunday morning.

Even our secular culture observes this time in a variety of ways. Grocery stores are stocked with Peeps, chocolate bunnies, and candy eggs. Wall Street will shut down trading on Good Friday. Media outlets from Time Magazine to the History Channel will be running various Jesus features.

In the past decade or two, Easter has been a favorite time for pop media to run sensational stories questioning the historical roots of Christianity. A decade ago, it was the Da Vinci Code. Three years ago, “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.” These get played up for as long as chocolate bunnies are in the stores, but forgotten soon after. That’s too bad.

When the wild claims of these stories are later debunked, the debunking is never covered as fully as the sensational story was. As a result, many are left with an enduring impressing that the history of Jesus is shrouded in myth.

I have met people who doubted whether Jesus ever really existed! Recently, a professor from Rollins College in Florida denied that Jesus was, in fact, crucified. When a student challenged this assertion, it was the student who was suspended. While the suspension was lifted a week later, the professor has not been corrected.

No serious historian would ever entertain such doubts. But if you have never seen the historical documents, you could easily get that impression from our popular culture. So, let’s spend a few minutes reviewing the history.

For starters, you should know that there are numerous ancient Christians whose writings are not included in the Bible. Beginning within a few decades of the crucifixion, people like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and the author of the Didache spoke in great detail about Jesus of Nazareth. They all tell the same story about Jesus that the Bible does.

These authors, taken collectively, demonstrate two things: First, that the basic teachings of the Bible did not evolve over time, but were already widely taught before the close of the first century. Second, that the evidence of Jesus’ claims was strong enough to persuade many serious-minded thinkers. They were even willing to die rather than deny them.

Since these authors are Christian, some automatically dismiss them as biased. That’s wrong-headed. After all, we don’t dismiss a scientist as biased about some truth just because he has been convinced of it by the evidence. Rather than belaboring the point, though, let’s just give a brief catalog of what non-Christian authors have to say about Jesus.

The most famous of these is a man named Josephus. Born a Jew, around 37 AD, he later became aligned with the Romans and was a well-respected historian. In a book that he published in Rome about 93 AD he writes:

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day” (Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3).

The details given by this secular historian are so close to Christian claims that scholars over the past couple centuries have been looking for ways to prove that it is not authentic. But recent computer analysis is overturning those theories and tending to reaffirm its authenticity.

Be that as it may, this same Josephus later tells us that Jesus’ had a brother named James who was stoned to death in Jerusalem. “So, he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned” (Jewish Antiquities, 20.9.1).

Josephus wrote all of this information about Jesus as an objective recorder of history while most of the eyewitnesses were still alive. Not only objective historians spoke of Jesus, but also people who were passionate opponents of Christianity. Celsus, a Greek philosopher, writes:

“Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god” (Origen, Contra Celsum, 1.28).

While clearly intended as an attack on Jesus, still Celsus confirms two of the Bible’s claims. First, that Jesus did was known to do miracles. Second, that Jesus spent time in Egypt.

Other Roman historians also reported many of the same details surrounding Jesus’ death that Josephus had. One of the most celebrated historians of the ancient world was Tacitus. Born in 56 AD, he was a respected senator and proconsul. In his history of the Roman Empire, He wrote:

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus” (Tacitus, Annals, 15.44).

Thallus, a Samaritan historian who was alive at the same time Jesus was (5-60 AD), also wrote about Jesus crucifixion. Although we no longer have the entire work, this portion was copied by Julius Africanus into his history which has survived. This account of what happened during Jesus’ crucifixion is nearly identical to what the Bible records:

“On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down” (Ante-Nicene Fathers, 9.188).

Africanus also cites another historian who was a contemporary of Jesus, saying much the same: “Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth” (Ibid.).

Pliny the Younger who was born less than 30 years after the crucifixion, was a proconsul from a powerful family in Rome. In a letter addressed to the Roman emperor, he gives important details of Christian worship and morals in the first century.

“They [Christians] were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up” (Pliny the Younger, Book 10, Letter 96).

There are plenty of other references to the historical Jesus from non-biblical sources. I have limited this listing to those found in the first century. All of them attest to the basic history that will be read in churches around the world this week.

The historical existence of Jesus, His crucifixion at the hands of Pontius Pilate, reports of a resurrection on the third day, and even the belief that He is God, are all recorded in the annals of ancient Roman history. Jesus is, most definitely, a historical person who made remarkable claims.

Whatever else you may say about Jesus one thing cannot be said. It cannot be said that He is a myth. The only option left is to look into the empty tomb and make up your own mind about what these wide-spread reports mean for you.

Abortion Pill Reversal: The Science of Hope

Like millions of women before her, Ashley's hopes and dreams were shattered. The boyfriend who promised her the moon and pressured her into sexual intimacy, now was back-peddling big-time, and wearing her down with hopelessness trying to talk her into an abortion.

Afraid to go to her parents, and without support from the child's father, she felt more force than choice. She reluctantly kept her appointment at the abortion clinic. They confirmed that the pregnancy was seven weeks, but they wouldn't let her see it. They sold her an abortion pill and watched while she swallowed it.

The regret set in even before she even left the clinic. Desperate, she asked the abortionist what she could do if she changed her mind. More hopelessness. She was told that the baby was sure to die even if she didn't take the second pill, and if it didn't it would be horribly deformed.

Heartbroken and despairing, she decided to turn to her family. She told her mother the whole story. Instead of rejection, she received love and support, for the first time. Together they called a pregnancy resource center who, in turn, called Dr. Matthew Harrison of Charlotte, NC.

She walked into the doctor’s office a full 36 hours after taking the Abortion Pill. It was late 2006. The FDA had fast-tracked it 6 years earlier, but no one had ever tried to reverse it. After the initial consultation, Dr. Harrison excused himself to think and pray.

All his training and experience told him that problems in the first trimester were untreatable. However, he realized, those were all natural problems. This wasn't nature. So, he began to think it through.

"Abortion Pill" is actually a misnomer. It is not just one pill, not even just one drug. It is a combination of two different drugs administered about 24 hours apart. The first is RU-486, an antiprogestin. The second drug is misoprostol, a labor inducer. The first causes nutrients to be cut off from the baby. The second is given to expel it from the womb. Since this second pill had not yet been taken, the entire concern was to reverse the effects of the first.

RU-486 (also known as mifepristone) works by tricking the body's natural progesterone receptors into receiving the RU-486 instead. This effectively blocks the real progesterone from having its natural effect of creating a nutrient-rich environment for the baby. Without enough progesterone, the uterine blood vessels constrict and eventually sloughs off the lining, taking the placenta and the baby with it.

But the blocking action on each progesterone receptor is only temporary. Soon it detaches from the receptor and seeks another. In between times, there is still a chance for the body's real progesterone to get in and do its work. Dr. Harrison had an idea. What if we could flood the body with extra progesterone and overwhelm the antiprogestin, beating it at its own game?

He had no guarantee that it would work. For Ashley, there were risks of bleeding. Nobody had ever tested progesterone and RU-486 together. But after carefully considering the risks and the uncertainties, Ashley jumped at the opportunity to save her baby. Even if the baby died, she could at least know that she tried.

On that good Friday, Ashley was given a 200mg injection of progesterone. Over the weekend, she began bleeding and made a panicked trip to the ER. There, instead of treating her for a miscarriage, they found a baby's heartbeat, and she saw her on an ultrasound.

She continued receiving progesterone shots as her optimism grew for the next nine weeks. At her 17-week ultrasound, there were no signs of the horrific deformities that the abortionist had warned her about. Then, after an otherwise normal pregnancy she gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby girl.

That was almost ten years ago. Since then, Dr. Harrison met Dr. George Delgado from Escondido, CA, who had been presented with a nearly identical situation. Independently, he made this very same discovery. Together they have built a network of hundreds of physicians across the country to help women just like Ashley. AbortionPillReversal.com (APR) operates a 24/7 hotline (877-558-0333) to help women who have changed their minds.

In 2012 Delgado published the first paper on this method following seven of the early cases. Four out of six had healthy pregnancies and reported no birth defects. With such a small sample, there are still plenty of questions. However, the first results were encouraging.

Five years later, APR success stories are over 300 and counting. Now, Delgado is working on a follow up paper which documents results for a much larger number of patients. They are still seeing a success rate between 60-70%. It stands to reason that the earlier a woman starts the progesterone, the better are the baby’s chances of survival. Even so, babies have been saved even in cases where they did not administer the first progesterone until 72 hours after taking the pill.

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) have endorsed APR, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) criticize it. This is predictable. ACOG claims that the supplemental progesterone given for APR is not necessary, and that RU-486 is only effective 50-70% of the time. Not only is that a far cry different from what Ashley’s abortionist told her, it is not supported by research. Dr. Delgado calculates RU-486 effectiveness closer to 87%.

The dire warnings about birth defects have not materialized either. Progesterone has been used for decades to help women with at-risk pregnancies and there is no known correlation with birth defects. It turns out that any possibility of birth defects associated with the Abortion Pill are not associated with the first pill, RU-486, but with the second pill, misoprostol.

To ferret out these facts online you have to wade through a lot of static. The abortion lobby is not happy about APR. So, predictably, their allies in the media spew alarmist talking points against it. Among these, the small scope of the first published study is criticized as as inconclusive. Fair enough. But when that morphs into charges of “junk science,” they have grossly overstated the case.

That’s why, despite the static, states around the country are considering bills to inform women of the hope of Abortion Pill Reversal. Last week Governor Gary Herbert of Utah signed such a bill into law. Arkansas and South Dakota already have such laws, while Colorado, North Carolina, and Indiana are considering them as I write.

Nobody should be so pressured into an abortion that they act against their own deepest desires and best judgment. But it does happen every day in America. For times like these, we should all be thankful for the pioneering work of Drs. Harrison and Delgado.

I met Dr. Delgado two months ago. At the time, he told me that there were not yet any physicians in Wyoming that were part of the APR network. Let’s do something about that. Ask your local hospital, or pregnancy resource center about Abortion Pill Reversal. You may be the difference between hope and despair for someone you love.

Further Reading:
This ground-breaking abortion reversal kit has snatched 137 babies from the jaws of death, Lifesite News

The Federalist: Wyoming Censures Judge For Marriage Beliefs Even Though No Law Requires Her to Perform Marriages

 If the Wyoming Supreme Court is permitted to insert an unstated requirement upon judges, what prevents some future court from reading pastors, priests, and bishops into the same decision?

Earlier this month, the Wyoming Supreme Court handed down a 3-2 decision in the case of Judge Ruth Neely from Pinedale. Writing for the majority, Justice Kate Fox said, “Judge Neely violated Rules 1.2, 2.2, and 2.3 of the Wyoming Code of Judicial Conduct. However, we do not accept the Commission’s recommendation for removal, and instead order public censure, with specific conditions.”

In contrast, Justice Keith Kautz wrote for the minority, “There is no clear and convincing evidence that Judge Neely violated any of the rules of the Wyoming Code of Judicial Conduct. Wyoming law does not require any judge or magistrate to perform any, particular marriage… There is no cause for discipline in this case… There is room enough in Wyoming for both sides to live according to their respective views of sex, marriage and religion.”

Continue Reading on the Federalist.

 

Liberty Is for Human Thriving, not Just Convenience

This past week the United States Senate held confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch. Hours of questions and answers provided a great opportunity to learn about how our government works.

One standout moment was when Senator Sasse (R-Nebraska) asked Gorsuch to teach a civics lesson on why we have the Bill of Rights. Gorsuch’s answer was brilliant -- what every American should know and always remember.

He first said, “The Constitution is a negative document.” We did not write a constitution to make sure the federal government had enough power, we wrote it to make sure that it never got too much power.

The theory behind the Constitution is to divide power. That protects liberty. America’s founders had learned the hard way that when “you put all power in one set of hands, you’re going to get tyranny.”

Let this sink in, deeply. The opposite of liberty is not inconvenience. The opposite of freedom is not a citizen who opposes your will, or who won’t do what you want them to. The opposite of liberty is government tyranny.

To stand up for liberty is not to argue for the right to have my way. It is to fight against the accumulation of power that can bankrupt your businesses, tear apart your families, and force your silence.

To protect this vital liberty America’s founders divided power in three ways. First, they divided the power of the federal government itself into three branches; Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. This is not just a convenient way of splitting up the work, as though there’s just too much for any one branch to do. This is a separation of powers.

It’s not merely that the legislature usually writes the laws, but sometimes it’s O.K. to have the other branches write laws too. Rather, if the judicial branch writes a law from the bench, they are not only taking freedom away from the person who is ruled against. They are taking a step toward putting both parties, and all the rest of us, under tyranny.

If legislators pass a law giving bureaucrats from the Executive branch authority to write the rules they will enforce, they are not merely speeding up the law-making process. They are selling their constituents out to tyranny.

So why do they do it? Because legislating is hard. It’s hard to get that many people to agree on something. That’s the point! Gorsuch reminded us, “It’s supposed to be tough, to protect liberty. We don’t’ just have one house. We have two houses.”

For something to become a law, it has to pass through both the 435 member House of Representatives, and the 100 member Senate. Then, it has to be signed by the president too! If you think this is too frustratingly slow of a process, and you want to speed it up by assigning the work to some committee, think again.

The people who wrote the Constitution had lost loved ones, and bled themselves. They learned the hard way that when it’s too easy to pass laws, too many laws are passed. And that’s very bad for human freedom. All of this is designed to be hard. Part of protecting liberty is making it difficult to legislate.

We, the people of America, are interviewing Gorsuch for a perpetual position on the highest court in the land. I can think of nothing that qualifies him better, than for him to answer, “The president’s powers are to execute the laws, not make them, not adjudicate disputes. Our role is to decide cases and controversies between people under law as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

Not only does he understand the purpose of three branches in the federal government. He knows that our Constitution divides power in another way as well. He said, “The federal government has certain enumerated powers and authorities. And what the Federal government doesn’t enjoy, the states do as sovereigns.”

The fact that state laws differ from state to state is not a problem. We do not need the federal government to impose lock-step uniformity from on high. The United States of America are states, first of all. They are united by a limited, federal government. The Constitution does not put limits on state powers, it put’s limits on federal powers.

It does this by enumerating what powers belong to the federal government. Then the Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This is plain and simple language which means, if the Constitution doesn’t specifically say that Washington has the right to pass some law, they don’t.

This too is not just for convenience, but to protect us from tyranny. It allows the states individually to wrestle and experiment with all the difficult problems of forming a just society. This unleashes the ingenuity of the citizens in fifty different states to learn from each other and improve on each other.

More than that, it treats every citizen as a human being created to rise to the challenges of life by their own creativity, and not be hampered by the mistakes of others, far away. Federal overreach – whether it be a judiciary that throws out state’s marriage laws, or an executive agency that won’t let a man dig a stock tank on his own land – is an attack on our common humanity.

For this reason, America’s founders were still not through protecting our liberties. While many fine people thought that the Constitution was enough to prevent these tyrannies, others insisted that we needed still more protection. So, they added the Bill of Rights.

These ten amendments to the constitution picked out a few of the most basic rights and explicitly denied the Federal Government any power at all in these matters. Freedom of speech, press, and religion are among the first listed. So also gun rights, freedom from military or law-enforcement oppression, and the list goes on.

Those founders who were opposed to the Bill of Rights, were not opposed to any of the rights themselves. Everyone understood that these things should be protected without question. But there were those who feared that if we singled out any rights for protection, some federal bureaucrat would assume that they could mess with the ones we didn’t name.

So, perhaps the most important amendment of all in the Bill of Rights, is the Ninth Amendment. It says, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

This amendment takes us back to the main limiting function of the Constitution. All rights are granted, not by our government, but by our Creator. They are granted by the One who makes us human and gives us the responsibility to live as the human beings we are.

Tyranny, which does not recognize these rights, is not just an infringement against doing whatever we want. It is an attempt to replace our Creator, and, by extension, an attack on who we are, as His creatures.

Now, more than ever, we need to relearn the genius of the Constitution. Now, more than ever, we need to defend its original meaning. Now, more than ever, we need to elect those who will uphold it, and impeach those who do not. It shouldn’t matter whether that person agrees with our favorite policies or not. Because freedom lost, even for a good cause, is a loss for all humanity.

I’m glad that Judge Gorsuch gave us such an eloquent civics lesson. I hope that he is our next Supreme Court justice. But more than that, I hope that each and every reader of this column will dig deeply into the Constitution and stand with him in defending it.

Gun Rights Rooted in Responsibility to Defend

Last Wednesday (March 15, 2017) Governor Mead signed HB 194 “School Safety and Security” into law. That same day, he vetoed HB 137 “Repeal Gun Free Zones.” I applaud the first, but decry the veto.

This may come as a surprise to some. This pro-life, conservative, Christian is in favor of people carrying firearms into schools and into government meetings.

I have even encountered some cynics who attack my integrity. They claim that no one can honestly be pro-life while also defending the right to keep and carry weapons meant to kill a man.

Such inflammatory assertions usually pop up in Facebook memes. They are not invitations for rational dialog. But this challenge deserves a solid answer. So today let me outline a few points in reply.

First, we should dial back the rhetoric, just a tad. While I appreciate fine poetry as much as the next guy, a line from Lynerd Skynerd’s Saturday Night Special is hardly adequate to frame the debate about the Second Amendment.

“Ain’t good for nothin’ but to a put a man six feet in a hole,” does not adequately describe a concealable firearm. Hand guns are not built to kill people, but to defend them from being killed.

Designed so that their size and weight makes them easier to carry, they are more likely to be close at hand should the need arise. What kind of need? Let’s be clear. Law abiding carriers know that the only need for a firearm is when there is an imminent threat of grave bodily injury.

It is a tool of last resort to prevent grave bodily injury to yourself and others. Anybody who brandishes a weapon for any other reason is breaking the law and may be fined, jailed, or both. So, if that’s what you are worried about, relax. We already have strict laws on the books to prevent people from waving around pistols in public.

The problem is that someone who is intent on doing you grave bodily injury already is in contempt of the law and, so, is not likely to keep his own gun holstered until you threaten him. Nor is he likely to obey a state law which prohibits him from taking it into a public meeting. For those rare but real situations, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Once we have dialed back the rhetoric, we are in a better position to consider this right. First, let’s consider the Constitution. Then, look at the principle behind it.

The first reason to advocate for the right to keep and bear arms is simply that this is the law of the land. We teach our children to follow the rules at school. As adults, we also follow city, state and federal laws. In the same way, we should expect and encourage our elected officials to follow the Constitution. This legal document sets boundaries on the kind of laws our elected officials can legally write, and legally enforce.

This is the rule of law, and it sure beats the chaos of tyranny. We are a constitutional government because we have seen the evils that arise when rulers have the power to say and do anything they think is right. If any elected official, or group of officials, is willing to ignore Constitutional boundaries in order to accomplish what they think is good, what principle will check their power?

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

At this point, someone might object and say that the 2nd Amendment was a bad idea. They may think it should be abolished, and that law-makers should have the ability to infringe upon the rights for persons to keep and carry arms.

Anybody is certainly free to think that. We even have a constitutional way to act on this thought and to amend the Constitution. But amending is lawful correction. Disregarding is lawless tyranny.

Imagine the chaos if the temperance movement had started fining and jailing people who made beer, without bothering to pass the 18th Amendment. Again, witness the corruption and murder that happened when lawmen who disagreed with the 18th Amendment disregarded it and illegally protected the mobs.

But while anybody is free to work at repealing the 2nd Amendment, I counsel caution. To do so would work against our basic humanity in a profound way.

All human beings are endowed by their creator with a deeply human impulse to help and protect those in danger. This impulse is not typically found among the higher animals. Soldiers, lawmen, EMTs, and firefighters will regularly run into harm’s way to aid the fallen. But, herds of deer and elk regularly run away from them.

When we, personally, see someone being bullied, we want to help them. We want to raise our own child to be the one that pushes through the crowd and stops the tormenter. As policy-makers, we want to find ways to provide effective tools that teachers and students can use to stop bullying whenever they see it.

We shame people who see one person abuse another and do nothing to stop it. In fact, we have laws which punish people who can do something about it, but don’t. That’s not only because it helps the person who is being abused. We can also see how dehumanizing it is to stand idly by without trying to help.

That’s the same principle involved in the 2nd Amendment. Rights are merely expressions of pre-existing responsibilities. The right to keep and bear arms was written into the Constitution because we each have a fundamental responsibility to help and protect our neighbor.

If I expect all my fellow citizens to stand up for a neighbor in danger of direct bodily harm, it becomes my own moral responsibility to equip him or her for the task. How dare I push somebody else into performing a dangerous and potentially deadly task while withholding the tools to do that task?

We all know how reprehensible it is for a government to send troops into the fight who are ill-equipped and at a disadvantage. The same goes when we want to cultivate a civilization where people help each other, no matter what the danger.

Much of the debate surrounding the 2nd Amendment is misdirected. We talk as though it were about personal rights and power. Things come into better focus when we consider our personal responsibilities to help and protect. Once we acknowledge these, our love and care for the protectors will make us desire to give them the tools they need.