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Category: Politics

  • How the Left Ruined Dilbert

    © Scott Adams, Inc.

    A few months ago, a friend of mine at a different company, knowing I was a manager, asked my advice on how to advance. I suggested they meet with their manager to discuss the issue, and so my friend met with their manager and the department head to discuss their future. My friend was pleased when about a month later the department head scheduled a second meeting.

    But when I asked how the second meeting went, my friend immediately became fearful.  The second meeting had not been to discuss opportunities for advancement. Instead, my friend was charged with harassment.  The horrible crime:  my friend had shared a cartoon from this year’s Dilbert Desk Calendar.

    Like so many people, particularly those who work in IT, my friend enjoys, or at least used to enjoy, Dilbert and found the lampooning of IT culture often amusing.  I, myself, have a Dilbert desk calendar, and I’m not the only one in my office who share these cartoons, either informally, or even formally in company power points.  My friend was no different.

    The problem is that my friend’s manager took offense to a cartoon and, instead of talking to my friend, reported that they were offended to the Department Head and that landed my friend in jeopardy. The expectation of discussing advancement evaporated and was replaced by an interrogation about underlying meanings and the deeper intentions of a cartoon, a cartoon my friend had not thought much about, other than it is was amusing and he had a desire to share that amusement. Hope for advancement became fear for his job.

    Despite this being a first (and only) “offense,” much less any warning, my friend was charged with a level 3 (out of 5) harassment because the cartoon covered a “protected group” and like so many organizations, this other company has a “zero tolerance” policy to show their commitment to the cause.

    This was followed up later by a meeting with HR, and further training on harassment. At no point was my friend given anything that amounted to an investigation or a chance for a defense. In fact, my friend felt that any attempt at a defense would be seen in a negative light. Resistance was not only futile but would be counterproductive.  My friend was doomed the instant the boss felt offended and reported it.

    Now every work day is spent walking on egg shells, fearing that some innocent remark might not only be taken as harassment, but it might be misconstrued as retaliation as well. Talk about a hostile work environment!  As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

    And there is the problem. We have little control over how others react to anything.  Even our best intentions can be misunderstood. I once gave a person a complement, but they thought I was being sarcastic and it took quite a bit of effort to work though the misunderstanding and convince them that my complement had really been just that, a complement. Anything we say, at any time, can be misunderstood. As a teacher, I have learned that I need to repeat things often because despite how clear I try to be, in a large class there will be some who misunderstand the first time.

    Normally this is fine.  Most people work through such things, as they should. But into this normal human interaction, the Left has injected its agenda, backed by a strict code of Political Correctness. The very people who preach kindness and tolerance, teach people to take offense and demand zero tolerance.

    Often this brings hand-to-face moments, to those who hear of the latest example of absurdity, such as the little boy expelled from school for nibbling at his Pop Tart until it was in the shape of a gun, or the little girl who was forbidden to tell a fellow classmate at school they were her best friend, because that excludes all the other children. Or like my friend charged with harassment for sharing a Dilbert cartoon.

    It isn’t funny if you are the one involved, and this is something I really do not think the Left understands,  because offense is largely defined in terms of the Left’s agenda. Whereas the Right tends to disagree, the Left tends to get offended, so the effects of such policies are to be lop-sided.

    For all its talk about standing up to the powerful for the powerless, in the world of PC (Political Correctness), the Left is the power, and they will allow no challenge. Once charged, you are guilty.  For all its talk of individuals, the Left is ultimately dehumanizing, seeing not individuals but member of groups, and it is the group, not the individual that really matters.  In place of normal human interaction, the Left imposes its agenda which dictates what one is allowed to think.

    To enforce PC, it replaces rational thought by zero-tolerance, a mindless following of the Left’s agenda.   It does not seem to consider that this might just be two people with a misunderstanding which needs to be worked through. Instead it sees members of groups, pitted against each other. Which group the Left will support in any given situation has little to do with the actual situation or circumstances, as that would require an analysis and thought that is precluded by the zero-tolerance rules set by the agenda.

    Ultimately what really matters is not the people, but the agenda. A few on the Left have learned this the hard way when they stood up for the principles they thought the Left supported, only to find that they were out of step with the agenda. As a result, and to their surprise, the forces of destruction normally focused on the Right suddenly turned on them.

    It is tempting say that this is just an aberration, and the people at my friend’s company are just overzealous. But I have been through enough training to known that once my friend’s boss chose to report to the Department Head, hands were tied as the zero tolerance rules and other mechanisms of PC culture kicked in leaving little room for thought.  It is very possible that the Department Head and the HR Representative also saw this as an absurd over-reaction.  But they had to play their roles, less their career be crushed by PC machine the Left has created.

    On my desk I still have a Dilbert calendar, which was given to me by my daughter.  I still look at it daily when I can, but it’s no longer the innocent source of humor it once was.  I no longer share them as I once did, fearing someone might take offence.  Now I look at each one with the question, could this cost me my job?

    Postscript:  The Friday after the meeting with HR, my friend was looking though the latest department wide email with the normal information about refrigeration cleaning and upcoming events when they came to the end and found a Dilbert cartoon, in which the female administrative assistant is plotting to take over the world and speaks of “Subjugation, Humiliation and Misery! HA HA HA!”  Yup, no deeper underlying meaning or intent possible there. Let’s hope nobody took offense.

    by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, Christianity: The Basics, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.

  • Equal Justice For All?

    Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

    You are not to be unjust in deciding a case. You are not to show partiality to the poor or honor the great. Instead, decide the case of your neighbor with righteousness. (Leviticus 19:15)

    When the investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia began, while I was bothered about the double standard applied to Trump vs Clinton. I believed that Trump was being treated normally and Clinton was effectively given a get out of jail free card. While I did not believe the charges and thought he would be cleared, I am not really a Trump fan and if the investigation did find evidence of collusion, that was fine as frankly I would much prefer a President Pence.

    As the investigation has dragged on, my main concern is that it is distracting us from more important issues. If, after nearly 18 months, you look past the daily hype and speculation, something has become clear: there is no evidence of collusion. Now, admittedly much of what would be evidence is classified, everyone who has seen the evidence and who has commented on what they have seen, including Democrats, have said they have seen no evidence of collusion. So why is there still an investigation?

    To be clear, this is not to claim that Russia did not try to disrupt the election – of course they did. They want to cause problems for our government, and did not care which side won. This is why they have been caught funding the rallies of both sides. They are not interested in one side or the other of our internal domestic politics. They are interested in generating plenty of heat such that we are divided internally and ignoring what they do internationally. As we have learned more, the origin of the special council is now at best dubious. Former FBI director Comey admitted that he leaked government documents to a friend, so he could give them to the press, hoping the ensuing controversy would spawn a special council, which it did. Then, out of all the people in the country who could have been appointed, Muller, a close friend of Comey, was chosen. So the special council started off with a serious conflict of interest, and that is before one even begins to considers Muller’s hiring of staff whose objectivity is likewise in doubt.

    True, Muller has made some indictments, Paul Manafort and General Kelly, but even here there is cause for question. The idea of a pre-dawn, guns dawn raid, where Manafort’s wife is not allowed to leave her bed until she had been searched, is treatment normally reserved for gang members and drug lords, rather than white collar criminals, and thus it is hard not to see this as little more than harassment. As for General Kelly, his interview has been described by those who know, as a classic perjury trap, particularly given that what Kelly is supposed to have lied about to the FBI was not illegal.

    Long ago, I became trouble by these perjury traps, particularly when there is no underlying crime. The simple fact is that human memory is not good enough to remember everything perfectly. In fact, it is not uncommon for people to think they remember something and yet find out they were wrong. So it is not difficult to question someone enough and have some sort of inconsistency to occur. Talk to an FBI agent, and you could end up in jail if they want to get you.

    And that is the point. With the Clintons and their allies, there were numerous blatant “inconsistencies” that the Justice Department simply ignored. No harm, no foul. That is because they wanted to let her off. They want to get Trump so they use every means possible. Add to this, the report that if Kelly had not agreed to plead guilty, they threatened to go after Kelly’s son, and again one has reason for concern. What would you do to protect your child from a Special Prosecutor with an unlimited budget, and a proven record of using his tools to punish his targets?

    So why are we doing all of this? Collusion with the Russians? To date the only actual evidence of one side working with the Russians, has been the Clinton campaign paying for Russian “information” to include as part of a dossier on Trump ,that was then given to the FBI and used to get wire taps on members of the Trump campaign. The results of these wire taps were then sent to the Obama White house where the names were unmasked and leaked to the press.

    We are told by Democrats that there was nothing wrong with all this. Really? Is this really the new norm? So in 2020, the Trump campaign can pay for dirt and gossip about the democratic nominee and then use that to get a warrant to wiretap the Democratic campaign? Then Trump’s White House can request the names be unmasked so they can leak them to the press? Is that really the new norm? I sincerely hope not. But it does show the level of hatred toward Trump that would excuse such actions directed against him. A hatred that blinds people to the long term ramifications of what they are doing.

    You can also see this in the arguments that it was illegal to fire Comey and would be to fire Muller. Again really? According to the Constitution, all executive authority is vested in the President and as such all officers in the executive branch serve at the pleasure of the President. If Trump cannot fire them, no one can, and they would be accountable to no one. Is that really what we want? That would effectively be a police state, and as benign as it may be now, there would be no guarantee that it would remain so in the future.

    Now that Russian collusion appears to have been a dry hole, the investigation seems to be expanding in its effort to find something – anything – on Trump. This week we saw the seizing of the President’s attorney’s papers, something that has never happened before in history. This would have been met with an outcry had it happened to any previous President. But this is Trump, so most, but not all, of the civil libertarians have remained uncomfortably quiet. And if they can do it to Trump, they can do it to anyone.

    Yet again the double standard, with the Clintons,is astounding. Ignoring standard practices, guidelines and even ethical standards, the Justice Department allowed Cheryl Mills, an actor in the very things being investigated, to claim attorney-client privilege, a claim they then respected, even though she was not Clinton’s attorney at the time of the investigation.

    We are told that the raid was justified because of Cohen’s involvement in a campaign law violation. Yet the campaign laws are so complex and difficult that many politicians run a foul of them in every election and simply pay the fines as a part of doing business.

    Following Obama’s election, his campaign was found with millions of dollars in questionable donations and paid a fine of over $300,000 as a result. This is not an indictment of Obama. Because of the number and complexity of the campaign laws, many, if not most campaigns Republican and Democrat, have had to pay such fines. They are often seen as just a cost of doing business and no one pays much attention to them. Given this, and the fact that the fine to the Obama campaign was larger than the payment here, was Cohen’s payment a real concern or just a convenient pretext to seize the President’s papers? If this was anyone other than Trump, the answer would be clear.

    So while I began, 18 months ago, thinking that the problem was that the Justice Department had simply gone easy on Clinton to let her off, now I believe that many of our protections and safeguards are being broken down in the attempt to get Trump. I have no doubt that they can get him. Not only have “all sinned and fallen short,” the current laws are so numerous and complex, even contradictory at times, that a determined prosecutor who free forms the normal constraints, should be able to find something on anyone.

    What is clear to anyone willing to look, is that we have a highly politicized Justice Department and how you are treated depends on whether they like you or not. If allowed to succeed, they will be left with the tools and precedents which will allow the administrative state to remove any President that they do not like. While many would undoubtedly celebrate Trumps removal regardless, such power and privilege, once granted, is hard to remove but easy to expand and even easier to abuse.

    Elgin Hushbeck, Jr.

  • Response to "Prayer is Not Enough"

    Steve Kindle’s article on the recent school shooting in Florida raised some interesting questions and in the process demonstrated some problems that makes this issue so divisive. One of the issues that divides people is the very nature of the problem itself. Steve is clear in how he sees the problem when he writes, “The answer to our present difficulty—too many guns available for harm—lies in the Herod story,” which is a common view for those on the left, at least the too many guns part.
    This is not just an issue with this problem, it is a division between how those on the Left and Right generally look at the world. Are problems to be found in people or in things. This might even explain why the left hates corporations, which they insist are not people, but love government which they see as the embodiment of people.
    Those on the right, on the other hand, tend to see problems not with things, but in people. As one commentator put it, imagine three 19-year-old men with guns. One is hunting, one is on patrol in Afghanistan, one is entering a school with evil intent. There is only one problem here and it is the last 19-year-old with the gun, not the guns themselves.
    Steve’s analogy equating Herod to guns does not really work. If you’re going to make an analogy, the 1st century parallel would not be Herod, but swords. Herod would then be the school shooter. Just as the problem in the first century was not the lack of sword control, but Herod, the problem with school shooting is not guns, but those with evil intent.
    In the case of the most recent school shooting, it is increasingly becoming clear that the main problem, beyond the murderer, was not the gun, but the virtually complete and systematic failure of multiple levels of government to react to the numerous red flags. Why so many levels of government failed is still unknown.
    Yet rather than focus on that failing Kindle writes “The students and faculty of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School show us the way.” But which students? Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is a very large school with a diverse range of opinions. But the left has picked out those that agree with their agenda and presents them as if they were the only students.
    To make matters worse, they demonize those who disagree, particularly focusing on the NRA. I do believe there are things we could do to make schools safer, but to do so will take laws, and laws take persuasion and compromise, and that takes trust. This is something both sides seem to have forgotten. Currently, neither side has much trust of the other. Demonizing your opponent is hardly a way to build trust.
    Nor is some the rhetoric from the right. Not everyone who wants to tighten up gun laws wants to confiscate all guns. On the other hand, putting words like “common sense” in front of “gun laws” does not make it so. Take for example the often-heard call to ban “assault rifles.” However reasonable that may sound, the problem is that “assault rifle” is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, term to define and ultimately means little more than “a gun I do not like.”
    Nothing shows the split between the two sides more than the proposal to allow some trained personnel to carry concealed weapons at school. To many on the right it is a completely reasonable proposal to consider as they do not see the problem as an inanimate object, i.e., the gun, but the person with evil intent, i.e., the murderer.
    Mass shootings end when someone else with a gun shows up to stop the murderer. In a few instances, there have been people already on site with a concealed weapon who were able to stop the murderer quickly, vastly reducing the death toll, but in places were guns are banned, such as schools, you have to wait for the police to arrive and that can take critical minutes, during which many lives are lost.
    Thus, why not have a few trained personnel already on site? In fact, many on the right suspect that one of the reasons these murderers choose gun free zones is that they are confident there will be no one there to stop them. Having even the possibility that there may be someone with a concealed weapon on site may have a deterrent effect. Yet for many on the left who see guns as the problem, having guns in schools is horrifying.
    Steve’s third “unanswered question” (I will deal with the other two in my next article) was, “Why does ‘the right to bear arms’ trump the right to live without fear of being murdered by one?” While there are several ways this could be answered, the most obvious reason is that we are a nation of laws and the former is in the Constitution and the latter is not. One could of course propose an amendment to change or repeal that right, but it is highly unlikely it would pass.
    Going forward, I take it as a given that we will not confiscate all guns. Even if the 2nd amendment were legitimately changed through the amendment process, or illegitimately changed by a court ruling, there are simply too many people who own guns to allow this to happen in the foreseeable future. But again, the desire to get rid of guns shows the focus on things.
    If a person desires to do evil they will find a way. After all, the deadliest school massacre in the United States was not one of the recent school shootings, but the bombing of a school in 1927. 2014’s attack in Kunming China using knifes left 31 dead and 140 others injured. Removing guns, even if it was a realistic option, would only shift the problem, not remove it. Given the information available on the internet, those seeking to do evil may be led to even deadlier options.
    In terms of the overall debate, there is nothing really new about our current situation, other than the percentages. There have always been those on both sides who will seek to build trust and work together, and those who seek to demonize and defeat. This is nothing new. What has changed is that the percentages have changed such that those who demonize are currently dominant, and here again there is fault to be had on both sides. The solution is not to be found in focusing on those that can easily be condemn. Rather it will be found in the more difficult task of seeking out those who are willing to discuss the differences so as to begin building some trust.
    For there to be “common sense” gun laws, there must first be common ground upon which to build a consensus. That will take open and honest discussion and debate. It does not mean ignoring our differences but discussing them seeking a common ground upon which a consensus can be built. It means learning to understand the other side, rather than just characterizing them into a convenient strawman to be attacked or rejected. Doing this over time will build a level of trust that could lead to a consensus that might lead to actually doing something constructive.
    by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, Christianity: The Basics, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.
     
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  • Prayer is Not Enough

    Prayer is Not Enough

    After the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, the political class issued its now familiar response, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.” Interestingly, the very people it was supposed to mollify were outraged, prompting the response of voice and sign, “Prayer is not enough.” And it surely is not enough.
    The well-known story of the Magi’s visit to Herod is illuminating. It resulted in the deaths of all the male children aged two and under in Bethlehem and environs, because Herod’s position as king was threatened by the news they brought about a “King of the Jews” being born there. Were it not for an angel warning Joseph in a dream to get out of town, Jesus would surely have been in that number.
    There are several issues that arise from this story that have implications for Parkland (and all the other mass shootings of innocents of late). Among these are that Herod feigned piety all the while he was plotting to save his throne; the politicians who offered prayers are often noted to be anything but pious (especially our president). The motivation for Herod was potential loss of political power; our political class today has the same motivation. While Jesus was spared, an unknown number of innocents were not; surely the pious families prayed for the protection of their children. Jesus was unable to return safely to Judea as long as Herod was alive; as long as the potential exists for mass extermination, no child will be safe in our schools.
    Prayer did not help the children of Bethlehem, nor the seventeen who died in Parkland. It will likely not help you or me in any threatening situation. No person is relieved of the vagaries or vicissitudes of life. As Ecclesiastes put it, “Time and chance happen to all.” When I hear, “Why me?” (or my child, or my friend…), I am tempted to ask, “Why not you? Why are you to be relieved of misfortune that befall others? What makes you so special?” Even Jesus did not escape the inevitability of tragedy—an unjustified death on the cross.
    The answer to our present difficulty—too many guns available for harm—lies in the Herod story. As long a Herod was alive, Jesus was not safe and innocent people died. As long as we make guns readily available, no one is safe in America. Prayer will not change this unless you agree with this sentiment: “Pray as though everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on you.”
    Unanswered questions:
    1. If an angel could warn Joseph so Jesus could escape, why not have an angel kill Herod and let all escape? After all, an angel killed all the first-born sons of the pharaoh. Why not send an angel to kill all mass murderers? (Yes, I know, God works in mysterious ways.)
    2. Why do so many of our urgent prayers go ignored? Pastors, think of all the times you prayed over spouses whose marriage was falling apart, to no avail; think of all the parents you prayed with whose child needed relief from drugs, crime, etc., to no avail; think of all the times you prayed for God to heal only to learn of continued chronic illness or death? Just to mention a few. (I know, God says, “No.”)
    3. Why does “the right to bear arms” trump the right to live without fear of being murdered by one?
    The doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, which refers to God being in complete control as he directs all things, has to go. Sure, you may tell me that God allows humans their free will and therefore accepts, consequently, innocent deaths. If, then, the survival or not of the people at Stoneman Douglas is finally left to chance, then prayer is not a factor at all. Surely the solution is found somewhere between “It’s God’s will,” and Chance.
    Perhaps a rabbi offers us a suitable explanation. How does God make a difference in our lives if he neither kills nor cures?

    “God inspires people to help other people who have been hurt by life, and by
    helping them, they protect them from the danger of feeling alone, abandoned, or judged. …
    God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help.”
    (Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People)

    God, we are told, began the creation of the world by bringing order out of chaos. This is the continuing reality of daily life in the cosmos. Ultimately, I believe that chaos will finally be fully ordered into Shalom—perfect wholeness. In the meantime, we are caught in the squeeze between the two. The “God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies,” has not abandoned us to our fate, but calls us to assist in defeating the chaos of our world.
    The students and faculty of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School show us the way. We are to come together as a family, protect one another, expose the Herods of our world, and use nonviolent means (the ballot box and organized resistance) to overcome. But, please, if you think “prayer is the answer,” put your actions solidly behind your petitions.
    Rev. Steve Kindle, a retired minister, conducts a variety of seminars in churches across the country. He is the author of Stewardship: God’s Way of Re-creating the World, If Your Child is Gay, Marriage Equality: Why Same-sex Marriage is Good for the Church and the Nation, and I’m Right and You’re Wrong.

  • Response to Allan Bevere's "The President as Pastor-in-Chief?"

    Response to Allan Bevere's "The President as Pastor-in-Chief?"

    Allan Bevere’s recent article made good points that I generally agreed with, but I do not think the situation is quite as black and white as he presents it.
    Concerning refusing to support either Clinton or Trump, while I understand that such thinking makes sense in the primary, when it comes to the general election, either Clinton or Trump was going to be president. My stated view before the election was that neither was electable, but one would be. Thus, I do not believe people can be faulted for making a choice instead of sitting it out and letting others make the decision for them (and yes, voting third party is still sitting it out).
    My biggest disagreement was with the statement, “When it comes to lack of moral character, Donald Trump is Bill Clinton on steroids.” I see a big difference between Bill (and Hillary) Clinton, and Trump. Trump has a massive ego, is brash, insensitive, boastful, crude, vulgar, argumentative and is clearly willing to sacrifice the truth to put himself in a good light or to attack a foe. Strange as it may sound, this was a positive for some of his supporters. Not the behavior itself, but because there is the sense that like him or not, this is Trump, and he is being honest about who he is.
    The simple fact is that most people do not trust politicians of either party, and this is especially true of many in Trump’s base. A big factor in understanding Trump’s election is to realize that there are a lot of people, including many evangelicals, who right or wrong, believe that the government no longer works for them but is more concerned about itself.
    In my review of Trump’s first year, while I gave the President a D on performance as President, i.e., much of which falls under the heading of character, I gave him a B on policy. While I would like to think that the other Republicans running in the primary would have done at least as good on policy, I am not sure, and in any event they lost to Trump.
    A large reason for this was the sense he is being himself and not just being a politician. For Republicans, the recent norm has been to talk a good game during the election, but once in office they are full of excuses on why they could not do what they said they would. His supporters believed that Trump would do what he said, and so far, he has generally lived up to his promises.
    As for many of the other charges against Trump, i.e., that he is a fascist, racist, etc., perhaps the Left has cried wolf too often, but I see little actual evidence for them, as such labels are routinely applied to anyone the Left disagrees with. Given his ego and insensitivity, Trump is more susceptible to such charges as he is virtually tone deaf to the restrictions of Political Correctness, which again gives him a sense of freshness and honesty when compared to the tightly scripted, poll tested statements you normally get from politicians. Who is more trustworthy, a person who is politically incorrect, or a person who holds the similar views but lies about it?
    The Clintons, on the other hand, were known to poll test everything. They were also, I believe, very corrupt, driven by a desire for power and money, a dangerous combination. Now, with the me-too movement, Democrats have finally begun to question their shielding of Bill Clinton’s well-known tendencies with women, yet the Clinton’s problems were far broader than just Bill and the women he victimized. While many still reject any charge against the Clinton’s as a conspiracy theory, and true, some of the wilder charges do fall into this category, I believe the evidence is clear that the Clintons abused their positions to benefit themselves and expand their power. This is far more dangerous than Trump’s personal, but very visible, flaws.
    Frankly, I believe that one of the biggest problems with the modern Democratic party is that, in their efforts to shield and defend the Clintons, they have allowed corruption to be more acceptable. This is not to say that all Democrats are corrupt. I believe Obama for example, unlike the Clintons, to be an honest man. Still there was a problem. Acceptance of the Clinton’s bending the rules for their own personal gain, led to a tolerance for bending the rules, i.e., a weakening of the rule of law in general.
    For many Democrats now, what the law said, or what is right or wrong, is not as important as whether it benefits the agenda. This can be seen for example in the Obama’s administration use of the IRS for political purposes, and then the use of the Justices Department to shield the IRS. Andrew C. McCarthy, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has written about the different ways the Justice Department handled the Trump and Clinton investigations and it is both striking and disturbing.
    In my review of Trump’s first year I gave Trump an A in only two areas, the economy and the Rule of Law, the latter being a clear improvement over the previous administration and certainly better than Clinton would have been. For me, that a President follow and respect the Rule of Law is more important than any of Trump character flaws. Sure, I would like good character and the Rule of Law, but if I have to choose, I will choose the Rule of Law.
    So were evangelicals wrong to support Trump, despite his personal failings? I don’t know. We cannot replay the primaries to see what would have happened if things had been different. God does use broken vessels, after all, look at King David. Perhaps Trump is what is needed to break up the business as usual that has plagued Washington. Either way he did win and is the President.
    Frankly, I think the current fishing expedition to try and find something, anything, on Trump, is in and of itself troubling as everyone, Republican and Democrat, who has had access to the classified materials, has reviewed it and has commented on what they have seen and said they have seen no evidence of collusion. Even Peter Strzok, the lead investigator who was removed because of his bias against Trump said he did not believe any collusion occurred. So why is there an investigation, except to try and overturn the election? In fact, given the recent revelations, the whole investigation itself may, I repeat may, be yet another example of the politicization of the Justice Department and possibly even some elements in the FBI.
    If Mueller’s investigations do end up finding actual evidence of real wrong doing, i.e., collusion with the Russians, then those guilty should be prosecuted, and if Trump is guilty, he should resign or be impeached. Frankly, in a perfect world, I would prefer a President Pence, or a President Ryan, the next two in line. But I do worry about the country should that happen, for many of Trumps supporters would see this, with justification, as the Washington Establishment taking down an outsider. It would correctly be seen as Washington vs the people, with Washington defeating the people’s efforts to be in control, and this would only further alienate them from government. Because of this I hope Mueller finds nothing, and Trump serves out his term. But the examples of the highly questionable prosecution of Scooter Libby and wrongful prosecution Ted Stevens do cause me concern.
    Still, I would like to end on a note of agreement. I think it is important not to accept the behavior, even if you accept the person or the policy. While I think Trump has done a fairly good job as President in terms of policy, I remain troubled by his behavior as President and I think that is an important distinction to make, lest acceptance of the policy becomes acceptance of the behavior.
    by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.
     
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  • Allan Bevere: The President as Pastor-in-Chief?


    Words, sentences, and paragraphs have context and content. Often what we say reveals deeper things about our convictions than we realize when we utter them; and if we reflect upon what they actually reveal about us, we might wish we had not opened our mouths.
    It has been common for Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters to justify their support of a man of extremely questionable character by uttering the now familiar shibboleth that the POTUS is not the “pastor-in-chief” (a phrase first uttered in reference to President Obama). I think if we drill down beneath that phrase we will find something unacknowledged by those who have used it and also something quite unsavory. Let’s get underneath the topsoil, shall we?
    Read more …
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  • Trump’s First Year

    Trump is wrapping up his first year as President, and perhaps the only thing that most would agree on is that the Trump Presidency, like his election, has been a most unusual one. His core supporters still love him and see the real problem as a Washington establishment more concerned with its own problems than those of everyday people like themselves. Trump’s main goal is to clean out “the swamp.”
    His opposition hates him, and yes, it is hate, often to the point of fixation as they see him destroying the country and setting up a fascist regime. While such hatred occurred to some extent with all recent Presidents, Obama, Bush, and Clinton certainly had those who hated them, there are two differences with Trump and Trump hatred.
    First, with Trump it is much more mainstream. Those who hated Obama, Bush and Clinton tended to be on the fringes, but given how Trump’s election was such a surprise, many Democrats simply cannot accept that he actually won, and is the legitimate President. In addition, his detractors are not just on the left or even limited to Democrats as many Republicans, the so-called Never-Trumpers, were so opposed to Trump before the election that they are essentially in the same camp as their Democratic counterparts.
    Making matter even worse, many in the media are among the haters and as a result the daily news cycle is dominated by stories on how bad Trump is and the damage he is supposedly doing. A report by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that in the first 100 days Trump had 3 times the coverage of earlier presidents, “without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.”
    Not only does such slanted coverage feed the hatred, it reinforces Trump’s base concerning how entrenched “the establishment” forces are, strengthening their support for Trump. As a result, the hatred is far more main stream than with previous Presidents.
    The second factor is Trump himself. Trump is a fighter at heart. It is one of the reasons his base likes him. But often he is his own worst enemy, particularly when it comes to his tweets. Many a time I have been disgusted at the anti-Trump focus of the media overtaking what I believe to be more important stories, such as the looming danger of North Korea, or the recent protests in Iran. It would be easy to blame the Trump haters in the media, but often it is Trump himself causing the focus. Like two children locked in a battle of retaliation, Trump and those who hate him are locked in battle. Whenever it seems to have finally passed, one side will poke the other and it flairs up again.
    While Trump and those who hate him may both be at fault, ultimately this come down as a negative mark against Trump, as he is responsible for his own actions and cannot blame other for what he does. Frankly, as President, one of his jobs is to be above all this. Before Trump can legitimately point to those who hate him as an excuse, he needs to take care of the beam in his own eye. This does not absolve those who hate him, but this is an evaluation of the Trump Presidency not those who oppose him.
    Earlier in his first year I would have given Trump a failing grade, but it seems to me there has been at least some improvement, though I admit perhaps I have just become better at tuning this noise out. But whatever improvement there has been, there remain a lot of room for improvement, and so I would give him a D.
    Another problematic area would be the general running of the White House. While all new presidents have their struggles, such as nominations that run into trouble, and the like, Trump is the first President where the Presidency was his first political office, and thus has had more problems than normal. One of the more positive aspects is that there does seem to be some ability to learn from mistakes and the While House seems to be running better as we come to the end of the first year, though again there is still room for improvement. Grade C.
    As for the rest of his Presidency, while he got off to a very rocky start, he finished his first year reasonably well, and in terms of accomplishments better than most presidents. The tax cut was passed, including even a repeal of the Obama Care Mandate. Also passed was the National Defense Authorization Act and increasing defense spending, along with VA reform. ISIS was defeated in Iraq, he withdrew from the Paris Accords and TPP, and recognized the obvious: that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Net-Neutrality was repealed and there were new rules for Power Plants and Waters of the United States. Probably his most long-term legacy will be the courts with the appointment of Gorsuch to the Supreme court and 12 Appeals courts judges.
    Many more accomplishments could be listed, and I am sure his detractors see many of these as negatives. But while Republicans did not like that Obama was able to pass ObamaCare, their dislike for the bill did not remove it as an accomplishment. Trump did fail on his promise to completely repeal ObamaCare, and has yet to fulfill his promise for plan to reach a 350 ship Navy and the Wall, so here he gets a Grade of B.
    Then there are the more general things like an improved economy and the return to the rule of law. A good example of the latter would be the announcement that DACA was ending. While soundly condemned on the left, DACA was being challenged in court and it was generally expected to be found unconstitutional, leaving the Dreamer worse off than before DACA, as they had registered with the government under the program. While Trump could have just ended DACA, he instead suspended it, instantly stopping the legal challenge and giving time for Congress to pass a bill that would legalize their status, which is what should have happened in the first place.
    This will be a test for the Democrats as Republicans have been clear that there is a compromise to be made here. However, it is unclear whether Democrats (or their base) will be willing to work with Trump on anything, including even allowing the Dreamer to stay in the country. Trump’s recent public meeting to negotiate a compromise was master stroke and seems to have made such a compromise much more likely. So the rule of Law, Trump gets an A.
    As for the economy, it is clearly doing better. Whether you look at the Stock Market reaching new highs, GDP growth, low unemployment, or companies moving into the country, the economy is doing much better than it has in a long time, and probably since the turn of the century.
    A good indicator of how well thing are generally going came from a liberal friend of mine, who commenting on a change in leadership for a local organization, mentioned the “Obama effect” which she defined as the previous leader got everything in place and the new leader gets to take all the credit for the positive results.
    While this certainly can and does happen in life, I do not think it applies here. Such arguments are valid, only when the new leadership generally continues the existing polices. For example, this is a valid argument to the success in Iraq during the first year of the Obama administration as Obama initially continued the basic plan put in place during the surge. After his first year in office things were going so well, the Obama administration was taking credit for it and Vice President Biden said Iraq would be one of the major success stories of administration. It was only after the Obama substantially changed the plan by pulling out all troops that the more recent problems arose, not the least of which was ISIS.
    Now at the end of Trump’s first year ISIS has been largely defeated in Iraq, and Obama supporters are saying this was just Trump finishing out the Obama plan. Perhaps. A key difference with 2009, is that Trump did make some significant changes, primarily transferring much of the tactical decision making away from the administration and to the military commanders in the field, in short, getting out of their way and letting them do their job. But regardless, either way this still counts as a success for Trump’s first year, just as the initial success in Iraq counted as a success for Obama.
    A more reasonable case for the Obama effect might be made for the economy because, at least in theory, the first year of a President is run under the last budget form the previous President, and economic forces are such that things do not change very quickly. Ultimately, we will not really be able to judge the effects of the Trump presidency on the economy for several more years. But the early indications are positive and unlikely due to any Obama effect.
    Looking back, Obama years show very consistent, but very small, growth. Having inherited a very bad economy the Obama administration was able to get the economy back on track and was able to avoid any more additional upheavals. The arguments against the Obama economy were not that it was bad, per se, but that it could have been much better.
    Two successes of the Trump administration directly relate to the economy. The first has been the massive shift in the focus of regulation. This has been accomplished in three ways. The first has been through the appointment of new heads of the agencies. The second the reduction in regulations, and the third, has been through the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which has allowed recent regulations to be stopped.
    The CRA is key, for while a future President could in theory simply appoint new agency heads who could then restore the regulations back to where they were prior to the Trump administration, any regulation stopped by the CRA, can not be reimpose, nor any similar regulation, without a bill being passed in Congress. While little used in the pass, the CRA was used extensively in Trump’s first year blocking many regulations of the Obama administration until a future Congress acts.
    To detractors this deregulation is reckless, putting the public at risk. To supporters this is reducing the needless burden on business that kills jobs and harms the economy. But independent of this controversy, this deregulation has spurred economic growth.
    The other major change has been the passage of the tax cut, clearly a success story for the administration, and one that would have a positive effect on the economy. Thus, the marked increase in economic growth is far more likely to be the result of these changes in policy than the ideal that after 8 years of very consistent slow growth, for some reason, the economy would suddenly take off in the 9th year. For the economy Trump gets an A.
    In summary, Trump’s first year is very mixed. I guess it is not surprising that his presidency is one of extremes. One moment is success, the next is a face palm. At times it is tempting to separate Trump from his administration, but Trump appointed the administration, and does set the general direction. Part of the real problem is that given the overwhelming negative coverage, it is often difficult to tell what happening. Even when positive things do happen either the coverage will be so baised in its attempt to find a negative slant, or Trump will divert the news cycle with one of his inflammatory tweets. Thus, at the end of year one I will give the President two grades. On policy I will give him a B, if not a B+. Generally, pretty good, but some room for improvement. The other I will call performance, the job of being president. There I give him a D, as he often is his own worst enemy and I hope for continued improvement in year two.
    by Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.
     
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  • Boston Declaration

    With the 500 year anniversary of the reformation having just passed and the beginning of the Christmas season upon us, my Sunday School class was discussing what evangelicals had gained (or recovered) and what we have lost with the reformation. A woman in the class asked about a recent article she had read and whether it was the sort of thing we were discussing. I had not seen the article, so I asked her to email a link, and said I would read it and get back to her.
    The article was about the Boston Declaration and the simple answer to her question is no, it was not what we are talking about, although Susan Thistlethwaite, the author of the article and a participant in the event, describes it as,

    In a dramatic press conference at Boston’s famous Old South Church, where many dressed in sackcloth and ashes to call for repentance and change in Christianity in the United States, the presenters were clear that white American Evangelicalism is in a crisis, a crisis of its own making. It has abandoned the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

    Pretty strong words, even more so since I consider myself an evangelical. Yet, as I read on, I very quickly discovered that they were not really talking about me, nor even Evangelicalism in general. In the end the article was much more instructive about the people making the declaration and their mindset than anything in evangelicalism.
    I have a lot of problems with the Boston Declaration, but they can generally be summed up into two main objections. The first is that it is not really a religious declaration, but a political statement dressed up in religious language. When you break it all down, it is not an abandoning of the Gospel, but a rejection of their political agenda, that they find objectionable.
    For example, the Boston Declaration has an entire section on what they condemn, and it is basically a pretty standard left wing agenda. The very first item they list is, “We reject the false ideology of empire building and the myth of racial laziness and substance abuse that harms the people of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the US territories.” Really? I have been a Christian for nearly 40 years, and have heard a lot of evangelical sermons on a lot of Sunday mornings and I have never heard a sermon that even addressed “the people of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the US territories,” much less supported any sort of oppression there, except possibly to support relief efforts following a natural disaster. Yet this is the first item in their list.
    Now, as many of my past articles have made clear, I am very politically active and write on politics frequently. I do not object to theologians making political statements. I object to theologians claiming you either accept their view of politics or you are abandoning the Gospel. To me this violates the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain. I believe the command is an injunction not to use God to justify your own opinions. To say that God demands we care for the poor, is fine. To say, therefore, I believe we should support a particular government programs or policy, is fine. To say that God demands we support a particular government program or policy, and to do otherwise is to abandon the Gospel, crosses the line.
    As a conservative evangelical, I do not look at my brothers and sisters on the political left as somehow less Christian, or not following the teachings of Christ. I see them as politically wrong. If I were to do a detailed refutation of the Boston Declaration, however, it would be almost completely political in nature. Thus, while they are supposedly calling me to return to “the Gospel of Jesus Christ” the areas where I am supposedly deficient are political not theological. I have the right concerns and beliefs, I am just not doing things politically the way they think I should.
    The second major problem I have is the lack of truth in the statement. Let me be clear here, I am not accusing the signers of lying. What I am saying is that the situation described in the document bears very little relation to the truth. I am sure they believe what they write, which is why I do not believe they are lying, but much of what they attribute to evangelicalism simply is not true.
    Their condemnations are painted with a very board brush. For example, they take individual actions of some, which I believe they are very correct to condemn, and then attribute those to all evangelicals. This is, at its core, bigotry. In addition, like most prejudices, things tend to be very simple and black and white, with little room for contributing factors that do not fit the stereotypes. Thus, as Thistlethwaite writes,

    When we have torch carrying right-wing radicals marching around in Charlottesville, Virginia yelling ‘blood and soil!’ and ‘Jews will not replace us!’ it is time to confront this kind of Nazism with the historical courage of those who confronted the Nazis in the 1930s in Germany.

    I agree, and do condemn such things. What I am puzzled about is how Thistlethwaite gets from those “radicals” to evangelicals as a whole?
    Rev. Dr. Reggie Williams, another participant at the event, said,

    These are sinister times, but they are not new. As a black person educated in Evangelical Christian institutions, I am familiar with a Christianity that has a history of ignoring my being, and providing theological justification for my non-being.

    True, to their great shame, many southern churches and institutions did fit his description, but the abolitionist movement did not, so his description again attributes to all, something that was only true of some.
    Yet, then he added that it was, “new in my lifetime to have such an over embrace of it.” Really? Where in modern evangelicalism is there even a renewal of the despicable teachings of southern churches on race, much less it being now worse than ever. One will probably find such vile teachings in some sections of fundamentalism, but I believe it would be wrong to paint fundamentalism with such a broad brush, much less evangelicalism.
    In summary, I find the Boston Declaration fails in its goal, described in article as a “call for repentance and change in Christianity.” After all, as they put it, “We are outraged by the current trends in Evangelicalism and other expressions of Christianity driven by white supremacy, often enacted through white privilege and the normalizing of oppression.” Such language is hardly likely to encourage much dialogue with evangelicals who see no resemblance between their actual beliefs and the false characterizations of them in the Boston Declaration and among its supporters.
    Ultimately, the Boston Declaration is more virtue signaling than anything else. In the end they are proclaiming how good they are by what they denounce. In the process they viciously malign many of their brothers and sisters. Frankly, in many respects, the Boston Declaration is just another form of the bigotry, prejudice and oppressing they decry. Perhaps they should read Matthew 7:5.
    Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.
     
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  • History, the Confederacy, and Monuments

    Recently here on EDN, Robert Cornwall had an excellent article on the need to study history. On that point I completely agree. That said, I thought the view of history in the article he recommended was a bit binary and one sided. To be sure, there is a lot of truth in the description of Confederate monuments being linked to the “the Lost Cause” and when I was younger (i.e., the 1960s and 70s) it was still not all that uncommon to hear at least some of the older southerners refer to “the war of northern aggression.”
    While there have been some attempts to remove the issue of slavery from the Civil War, instead trying to find some sort of economic justification, ultimately those attempts have failed. Whatever other factors may have been involved, they were clearly secondary. If one could somehow erase the issue of slavery from the early history of the United States, there would have been no Civil War.
    Granted, in the early part of the war, many in the North were focused mainly on preserving the Union. Any such pretext was removed with the Emancipation Proclamation, and in the latter half of the war both sides fought over slavery, the South to preserve it and the North to end it.
    Slavery, the original sin of the country, ran deep, dividing the it from its earliest days. It stained the Constitution, dragging it away of the goals of the Declaration of Independence where “all men are created equal” into a 3/5 compromise. It repeatedly plagued the early years of the country as a cancer eating away at its victim. Periodically, it would bubble to the surface, resulting in yet more compromises.
    While the Democratic Party was mostly pro-slavery, the Whig party was split between those who wanted to restrict or even end slavery, and those who were willing to accommodate it or did not care. As the abolitionist movement grew, this split among the Whigs eventually destroyed the party and out of its destruction emerged the clearly anti-slavery Republican Party. With the election of the first Republican President, Lincoln, the South, fearing what the anti-slavery Republicans would do, started the Civil War.
    The war ended, but the stain remained. While Republicans moved more towards the idea of the Declaration, Democrats continued to view issues through the lens of race. As Republicans began to lose political control of the South, the Democrats began to impose another form of racism: Segregation, which sadly would last until the 100th anniversary of the Civil war. While there are some notable Democratic exceptions, as there were for Republicans as well, for the most part the Democrats were the party of race, first supporting slavery, then of segregation, and the KKK was the base of many Democratic politicians who were often members themselves.
    I was recently asked by a young software developer how is it that this was turned on its head? I answered that in many respects it really hasn’t. Democrats still tend to see everything through the eyes of race while Republicans are still the party where the color of one’s skin just is not that important; what matters is what one does and believes.
    For many Democrats the focus on races and dividing people into groups is so strong that they have a hard time accepting that Republicans really do not care about skin pigmentation. Instead they take the resistance to dividing people into groups as itself a form of racism, and then create myths such as the southern strategy to project their former evils unto their political opponents.
    Yet a Republican can, as many did, oppose Obama and yet enthusiastically support Ben Carson because of their policies and positions not their skin color. For Democrats, Republican opposition to Obama is frequently portrayed as racism, and the explanations for Carson, when offered, range from the incoherent to the disgusting (i.e., portraying Carson as an Uncle Tom).
    So where do I come down on Confederate monuments? While, my mother was from North Carolina, my Dad was from Wyoming and I grew up as an Air Force brat, an Air Force that had been desegregated by Harry Truman, a Democrat, seven years before I was born. Most of my memories as a child come from Pennsylvania and California. I now live in Wisconsin. So I am basically a northern Republican and do not view the Civil War as a lost cause or a war of Northern aggression. After all, the South started it by firing on Fort Sumter. I view the Civil War as two things: A Victory, and Over.
    Something common among the military, but not always understood by civilians, is the way that true warriors can fight so hard during a war, but then see those on “the other side” as fellow warriors after the war is over, even getting together to commemorate those fallen in battle. Thus, I can read a book like Rod Gragg’s “Covered with Glory: the 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg” and not be rooting for my side to win and them to lose, but instead seeking an understanding of what they went through and suffered.
    Towards the end of the first day of fighting, a federal solder, Corporal Charles H McConnell of the 24th Michigan was falling back. He took his last bullet, and aiming at a large man in gray 30 yards away, pulled the trigger. The large man was Colonel John R Lane, of the 26th North Carolina. The bullet hit Lane in the back of the neck exiting out through his teeth. It was a horrendous wound that nearly killed him. Yet 40 years later, at the anniversary of battle, Lane and McConnell met again and became friends. How is this possible?
    Ultimately, it is because warriors realize, better than most, that in war those on both sides are caught up in something larger than themselves. Once the conflict is settled, it is time to move on and turn swords into plowshares. I can admire as tragic figures “those on the other side” like Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I can get a glimpse of the internal struggle that some faced as they came up against good friends in battle like Armistead and Harrison at Gettysburg. In short, I see them as people who suffered, and not part of an issue to be fought over.
    In this light, when it comes to monuments in cemeteries or places like Gettysburg, I would be very strongly opposed to their removal. As for the others, I see them as much more problematic. I do believe that some of these celebrate the military tradition of the South, something that is much stronger than it is in the North, and it is a part of who they are, or at least were. Note that what is often called the Confederate flag was not actually the flag of the confederacy but a battle flag. Like it or not it is their history. But I can also understand the difficulty in separating this from the reason for which the war was fought, the preservation of the evil of slavery.
    The love of history in me would hate to see their blanket removal as something akin to how Islamic radicals seek to purge the areas they conquer of any vestige of the things they oppose. Ultimately, I wish those involved would learn to be more like Lane and McConnell and I wish we could look back on the Civil War as a tragedy which engulfed the nation, caused by our compromise with the evil of slavery.
    Frankly it should be much easier for us than it was for Lane and McConnell, after all no one alive today actually fought in the Civil War. Maybe a solution is that, rather than remove the Civil War monuments, we should focus on the positive endeavor of building more monuments to those who fought so hard to end the legacy of segregation in the Civil Rights movement.
    Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.
     
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  • On Patriotism and Revolution

    On Patriotism and Revolution

    U. S. FlagIn a recent post here, Dr. David Alan Black wrote, “The humility of Christ doesn’t grant us permission on this Fourth to call out our fellow Christians for feeling patriotic or to harp about a revolution in 1776 that was probably at odds with Paul’s teaching about submission to civil authority in Romans 13.” In a post that I otherwise agreed with, I found myself wondering if my patriotism and attitude toward the American Revolution were wrong?
    When I read Dr. Black’s article, I was editing an article in which I had written about why “I believe that humility, dialogue, and a tolerance for those who disagree, working in a framework that stresses unity rather than division are so important,” and it is in this spirit that I offer up what admittedly may be a rationalization on my part, but is a defense of my views on these two questions.
    The question of patriotism is for me the easiest. We all are many things. I am a husband, father, manager, engineer, and author, just to name a few, and in the last few years have been blessed to add grandfather to that list. I do not see any reason patriot cannot also be on this list. For me the issue is not so much a matter of being, or not being, a patriot, but where in your list of labels patriot exists, if it exists at all. In my list of identifying labels the first and most important is Christian. In fact, for me, patriot, while it is there, comes much further down the list.
    This is important because if patriot comes at the top of the list, then nothing can challenge it, and it becomes my country right or wrong-type of patriotism, a patriotism that, historically, has been so problematic.
    My patriotism is also not a matter of reflex, habit, or just because I grew up in America. In fact, today, the cultural norm is the opposite. Today it is much cooler to be a “citizen of the world.” To be a patriot is frequently difficult as the cultural messages are far more likely to stress the flaws and short comings of the country than the good that it has done. Even one of the leading historians read in schools said in an interview that it would have been better if the country had never existed. Not surprisingly then, one of the key political questions, is whether the country will even remain as it was founded, or should it change to be something significantly different. In many respects, it is the same question faced in the revolution.
    Was the revolution wrong? Did it violate “Paul’s teaching about submission to civil authority in Romans 13?” This is nowhere near as easy a question as that of patriotism. On the one hand, if Paul could say what he said in the context of Caesar and Rome, wouldn’t it apply even more so against King George and England? Is Paul’s teaching a universal one that applies in all cases and every situation? Was Bonhoeffer wrong not to submit to Hitler’s government?
    These are not easy questions, and in one sense I am tempted to be comforted by the fact that I do need to directly answer them. If the revolution was wrong, the fault lies with those responsible. Today the civil authority I am under is the United States, independent of how it came to be. But, in another sense I do need to answer these questions, and while I do not see this as in any means clear cut, there are several factors that cause me to question how Paul’s teaching really applies in this situation.
    The first is that the American revolution was truly unique in many ways, and not just in its success. In fact, I believe it is these differences that led to its success and kept it from falling into the disasters of so many other revolutions most notably the French Revolution and the reign of terror that followed.
    While truly out of vogue today, one of these distinctive aspects was the Christian underpinnings of the revolution. While the revolution itself was far from a religious movement, as I detail in my book, Preserving Democracy, the intellectual roots come out of the Great Awakening. While downplayed by the now prevailing secularism, those in the revolution saw God’s hand behind many of the “coincidences” that allowed the revolution to succeed and that even some modern historians have labeled miraculous, though not accepting the theistic implications of the term. (For some examples from a theistic perspective, see The American Miracle, by Michael Medved).
    But none of this goes to the heart of Paul’s teaching. Still, even here, there is a unique difference and this difference can be seen in the question faced by those alive at the time: to which civil authority should they submit? When the colonies were settled, they were, for the most part, left to themselves. The thirteen colonies set up governments to rule themselves and these governments were the civil authority under which the colonist lived.
    This only started to change following the Seven Years War, as the King began to try and impose his will on the colonies. The civil authorities of the colonies attempted to seek accommodation with the King and it was only when that failed did they declare independence. Independence was not declared by a group of individuals seeking to overthrow the government. It was an act of “the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, [done], in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies.”
    This was a situation that did not, and could not, exist in Paul’s Rome. The key question was, must a people who had until then governed themselves, submit to King who had up to that point ignored them. Does the fundamental authority of government exist with the people, or does it reside with whomever happens to be the current King? This was not even a question in Paul’s time, where rulership was based, not on the authority of the people, but on raw power and who had it.
    For the colonists, the fundamental authority rested with the people and those who voted to declare Independence were acting as duly empowered representatives of that civil authority, a civil authority that had existed long before the then current dispute with King. Thus, in a very real sense, the “revolutionary” in this situation, i.e., the one who was trying to overthrow the status quo, was not the colonists, but the King.
    Ultimately the question of the American Revolution is: does political power derive from the people, or does might make right, and whoever has the power gets to do whatever they want. This is not just an abstract and merely historical question. It is a question that is still with us now more than ever and I do not think Paul’s teaching precludes me from taking a stance on this question.
    Elgin Hushbeck, Jr., Engineer, teacher, Christian apologist, and author of Preserving Democracy, What is Wrong with Social Justice?, A Short Critique of Climate Change, Christianity and Secularism, and Evidence for the Bible.

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