Sunday, April 01, 2007

Is the American experiment dead?

King George III would be so proud. He and his aristocratic friends laughed at America’s quaint “experiment” with self-government. To them it was unthinkable that common people were enlightened enough to rule themselves. Today that experiment is the envy of a world where people in fewer than 100 countries live under democratic governments. Yet here in the United States, old King George may yet be right.

Astonishingly, today’s Americans expect government to care for us from cradle to grave, the way commoners once expected a benevolent king to care for his subjects. We treat people as members of groups rather than as individuals, insidiously devolving into the very class system against which the founders rebelled. In a deeply disturbing sense, Americans are voluntarily surrendering the very freedoms that millions fought and died to establish and protect. James Garfield once said the most common form of death in politics is suicide. After a noble 225 year history, is the American experiment dying at the hands of its own people?

Many of the “long train of abuses” that led to our rebellion from the British Crown in 1776 are eerily similar to our own government’s excesses. The Declaration of Independence listed a host of grievances against the King that are all too familiar today. The authors accused the King of refusing “his assent to laws… necessary for the public good,” of forbidding locals to pass laws “of immediate and pressing importance,” even of dissolving local representative bodies. How different is that from today’s “supreme” federal system that routinely over-rides local and state laws, especially by federal court orders and “constitutional” rulings based on premises not in the Constitution? The Crown had “obstructed the administration of justice” by controlling judges’ tenure and salaries; today’s government does so by empowering judges to usurp legislative powers -- to make up new laws rather than interpret laws passed by the people’s representatives. It is a more modern technique, but with the same anti-democratic result

King George had “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” In 2007 the federal government has more than 4 million employees and costs taxpayers almost 3 trillion dollars a year. The King “combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution,” much as modern leaders compromise our sovereignty to institutions like the UN, international courts, and foreign trade commissions.

The founders said government should protect private property, but today’s Supreme Court lets government take private property and sell to developers, take away the value of land by denying the right to use it, and force landowners to give their land for endangered species habitat, parks, trails, and “open space.” The first “inalienable right” in our Declaration was the right to life, but today’s courts prohibit states from protecting it. If we still believe “all men are created equal,” how can we justify racial preferences in school admission, government contracts and congressional re-apportionment? Freedom of speech is central to the Bill of Rights, but Congressmen now deny that right to those who want to speak about them, or other candidates, like politically correct thought police.

“The policy of the federal government,” wrote President Jefferson, “is to leave her citizens free -- neither aiding nor restraining them in their pursuits.” Today, we are not allowed to plan our own retirement, design our own health insurance, or even devise our own children’s education. The endless intrusion reaches every facet of our lives from where we can hike in the woods to how our hamburgers must be cooked. Both parties instinctively look to government as the first answer to all problems. Even Republicans propose solving issues like illegal immigration by hiring 30,000 new federal employees.

There is one crucial difference: unlike our colonial ancestors, contemporary Americans voluntarily agreed to all these usurpations with their votes. We have been warned frequently to be alert. In 1835 Tocqueville wrote, “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” Sadly, that day has long since come.

We are left with an unresponsive government millions of Americans do not recognize as theirs, or feel moral obligation to support. That trend could be the death knell of the founders’ ideas. It is not too late to rediscover our “experiment” in self-government, but Americans must first decide whether they care.

Source



"Is Your Baby Gay?" article sparks furor

The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has incurred sharp attacks from both the left and right by suggesting that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified. The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., one of the country's pre-eminent evangelical leaders, acknowledged that he irked many fellow conservatives with an article earlier this month saying scientific research "points to some level of biological causation" for homosexuality.

Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality, which they view as sinful, is a matter of choice that can be overcome through prayer and counseling.

However, Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was assailed even more harshly by gay rights supporters. They were upset by his assertion that homosexuality would remain a sin even if it were biologically based and by his support for possible medical treatment that could switch an unborn gay baby's sexual orientation to heterosexual. "He's willing to play God," said Harry Knox, a spokesman on religious issues for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group. "He's more than willing to let homophobia take over and be the determinant of how he responds to this issue, in spite of everything else he believes about not tinkering with the unborn."

Mohler said he was aware of the invective being directed at him on gay rights blogs, where some participants have likened him to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor notorious for death-camp experimentation. "I wonder if people actually read what I wrote," he said in a phone interview. "But I wrote the article intending to start a conversation, and I think I've been successful at that."

The article, published March 2 on Mohler's personal Web site, carried a long but intriguing title: "Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?" Mohler began by summarizing some recent research into sexual orientation and advising his Christian readership that they should brace for the possibility that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven. Mohler wrote that such proof would not alter the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality but said the discovery would be "of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations."

Mohler said he would strongly oppose any move to encourage abortion or genetic manipulation of fetuses on grounds of sexual orientation, but he would endorse prenatal hormonal treatment, if such a technology were developed, to reverse homosexuality. He said this would no different, in moral terms, to using technology that would restore vision to a blind fetus. "I realize this sounds very offensive to homosexuals, but it's the only way a Christian can look at it," Mohler said. "We should have no more problem with that than treating any medical problem."

Mohler's argument was endorsed by a prominent Roman Catholic thinker, the Rev. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., and editor of Ignatius Press, Pope Benedict XVI's U.S. publisher. "Same-sex activity is considered disordered," Fessio said. "If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science."

Source



Australia: Parents told kids' homosexual talk should start at age three

PARENTS should teach their children about gay relationships from the age of three or four, an expert says. But one family group says any attempt to normalise homosexuality is little more than a recruitment drive. Pop idol Anthony Callea, 24, this week announced he was gay, prompting a flood of support - and some shock - from fans.

Deakin University health and education lecturer Dr Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli said children as young as 13 were coming out. The author of When Our Children Come Out: How to support gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered young people, said parents should tell their children there was nothing wrong with same-sex relationships. That way, if they were gay, children would feel comfortable coming out to friends and family. She said that by contrast, families in which parents condemned homosexuality often struggled to cope.

Dr Pallotta-Chiarolli advises parents to raise the issue when children are three or four. She did not advocate raising the sexual aspect, just a simple explanation of male-male and female-female relationships.

Family Council of Victoria secretary Bill Muehlenberg said young children didn't need to know about homosexuality. He said just as you wouldn't tell children an adult was a heroin addict, you wouldn't tell them someone was gay. Mr Muehlenberg said attempts to educate children about homosexuality were little more than a recruitment drive.

Family First leader Senator Steve Fielding said it was inappropriate for parents to discuss such issues with three or four-year-olds. Focus on the Family CEO Andrew Boutros said children aged three to four were too young to hear about homosexuality. "We have concerns about whether a child aged three or four would be able to understand the concept of a gay relationship, let alone the moral issues associated," he said.

Melbourne-raised Nigel Giles, 41, who came out when he was about 20, agrees with Dr Pallotta-Chiarolli. Homosexuality wasn't discussed when he was a child, but his family was supportive. "If I'd grown up in a society where homosexuality wasn't demonised and marginalised, I wouldn't have had any problems. It's as simple as that," Mr Giles said.

Source

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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