A Selfish Perspective
Because we are each unique, each of us perceives the world in our own way, and reach our own conclusions, even on the most basic questions. What questions matter the most? Ravi Zacharias (an expert in Christian apologetics) says there are Four Questions To Answer In Life.
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Why am I here?
- What is right and wrong?
- What brings me meaning?
- What happens to a human being when I die?
Are these the questions that matter the most to you? Some of you no doubt have your own list. Yet these questions provide a place to start. What if you had difficulty empathizing with another’s point-of-view. What if you see the world as revolving around you?
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Why am I here? Answer: It is about me.
- What is right and wrong? Answer: What I want is right; what I don’t want is wrong.
- What brings me meaning? Answer: I exist to make the world serve my lusts and to acquire fame, fortune, and power.
- What happens to a human being when I die? Answer: What matters is what I want NOW!
Loving The World
That Apostle John condemned such selfishness. He called it loving the world.
1 John 2:15-17 New King James Version (NKJV)
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
When we become obsessed with the world, we lack empathy. We may be quite capable of manipulating others, but those others are merely objects, a means to an end. How does this self-centered perspective affect a selfish person’s attitude towards government? Consider a quote from President John F. Kennedy.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. (from here)
How would a self-centered person have reacted to Kennedy’s call for service? Would they take it to heart, or would they just expect the sappy politician giving them that advice to do them a big favor?
Examples Of The Big Favors Provided Big Government
When politicians make promises they have no intention of keeping, they lie.
Proverbs 26:24-28 English Standard Version (ESV)
24 Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips
and harbors deceit in his heart;
25 when he speaks graciously, believe him not,
for there are seven abominations in his heart;
26 though his hatred be covered with deception,
his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.
27 Whoever digs a pit will fall into it,
and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling.
28 A lying tongue hates its victims,
and a flattering mouth works ruin.
Politicians use to the power we give them to buy our votes. The worst of them promise to buy our votes with other people’s money. They make promises they know they cannot keep. Because the vast bulk of our nation’s wealth passes through the hands of ordinary Americans, to pay for Big Government, politicians must tax any ordinary Americans with a job. Then to finance their campaigns and spread their lies through the corporate mass media, politicians must cater to special interests. Thus, when politicians promise to tax the rich they lie.
Free Education: Parents, not government, have the responsibility for ensuring their children receive a good education. What happens when government takes over the education of children? Don’t politicians sell special interests access to our children? Thus:
- Government buys the products of various corporate interests for the “benefit” of school children.
- Labor unions leaders acquire control over numerous secure jobs with great benefits.
- Without the approval of parents, groups with some really strange ideologies use the public school system to indoctrinate school children.
Social Security: The Social Security tax is a highly regressive tax aimed squarely at every American with a job. The rich don’t pay payroll taxes. Everybody with a job does, but because those taxes go into a secure “trust fund” Social Security is suppose to be a great deal. In fact, Congress just spends the money. If a private company tried such a scam, the CEO would be accused of fraud and put in jail.
Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare: Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare represent a government takeover of our healthcare system. What advocates hope to do is what they have already done to our education system. Just as our education system has eliminated school choice for ordinary Americans, the government takeover our healthcare system will eliminate our ability to make our own healthcare choices.
Tax Credits, Deductions, and Various Other “Incentives”: Ever wonder how our tax system got so horribly complex? Various special interests have purchased innumerable special tax favors from the people we elect.
Minimum Wage: To anyone but the ignorant, the minimum wage is a fraud. What happens when government demands that an employer pay a worker more than that worker’s labor is worth? Doesn’t that question answer itself?
Making It Easy To Vote: We give our elected officials enormous powers. Consider just the money our elected officials control. The combined spending of local, state and the federal government is over six trillion a year, and various corporations and individuals compete for access to that money. Therefore, these corporations and individuals lobby our elected officials, offering any temptation they can get away with.
Because the powers that elected officials possess (control over huge budgets, for example) represent a valuable commodity for dishonest people, we have no choice except to assume the possibility of electoral fraud. Traditionally, we have protected the vote by insisting that everyone who can vote vote in person on election day. That includes providing identification.
If you search the Internet, you will find huge numbers of articles claiming that voter fraud is a myth. Yet we all know Democrats want illegal aliens to vote, think the mere requirement for a photo ID is voter suppression, and fight any effort to clean up voter registration lists. If that is not suspicious, what is it? Consider these reports.
- How Widespread is Voter Fraud? | 2012 Facts & Figures from True the Vote
- Non-citizens caught voting in 2012 presidential election in key swing state from FoxNews
- Is Voter Fraud a Real Problem? at US News offers a debate
- Voter Fraud: We’ve Got Proof It’s Easy at National Review
- Study confirms every bad thing you suspected about voter ID laws at Salon
The basic argument? Conservatives say it only makes sense to verify that those who vote have the right to vote. Socialists whine that voter verification reduces the turnout of their supporters. They complain about the result and call that voter suppression, but they cannot show that requiring a photo ID, for example, wrongly suppresses the vote.
On the other hand, Socialists say that voter fraud is rare, but Conservatives point to the obvious. When little effort is made to detect and prevent it, voter fraud is easy.
Succumbing To Decadence
Because even a small society involves a complex interaction between many different souls, we cannot easily predict our future. We can only observe current trends and guess what might happen.
Currents trends do not look good. The dictionary definition of “decadence” is value-free. Without mentioning what is being lost, it points to a decay in moral qualities. Thus, to say America is becoming decadent, we must first clearly state what is being lost.
What is being lost in our society? Because we have given over the responsibility to educate our children to politicians, each succeeding generation of Americans has less knowledge of the wisdom contained in the Bible. Why is that important? Consider how the Bible defines wisdom. When King Solomon asked God for wisdom, what did he ask for?
1 Kings 3:7-9 Good News Translation (GNT)
7 O Lord God, you have let me succeed my father as king, even though I am very young and don’t know how to rule. 8 Here I am among the people you have chosen to be your own, a people who are so many that they cannot be counted. 9 So give me the wisdom I need to rule your people with justice and to know the difference between good and evil. Otherwise, how would I ever be able to rule this great people of yours?”
Solomon wanted to know how to discern good from evil. When men are fools, they call evil good and good evil. Then they become decadent (Isaiah 5:8-30), and they are doomed.
Like Solomon, we too need God’s wisdom. As it is, we do not know enough to vote for leaders who understand and appreciate the Bible’s wisdom. We have innumerable Bibles, but we remain spiritually immature. We have a baby’s wisdom. Because we have not studied the Bible, we cannot chew solid food. We still need milk.
Hebrews 5:13-14 New King James Version (NKJV)
13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
Ending Captivity By Big Government
When Jesus began his ministry, he started by quoting Isaiah.
Luke 4:17-19 New King James Version (NKJV)
17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
19 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
When we sin, we oppress each other and make each other prisoners. We impoverish each other. We break each others hearts, and we are blind to our own sinfulness.
How did Jesus proclaim liberty and set us free? Check out WHEN DO THE PEOPLE STEAL THEIR OWN FREEDOM?
Citizen Tom,
Your referenced source about the extent of voter fraud is not the same as most newscasters lead us to believe being minimal..
We also seem to be on the same page today on the source of King Solomon’s wisdom..
Regards and good will blogging
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Great minds think alike. 😀
How much fraud is significant? When elections are close, how much fraud does it take to win?
How much fraud is reported? When people are unprincipled, can we trust them to report fraud that favors them?
When I think voter fraud, I remember what happened in Florida when George W. Bush beat Al Gore. To manufacture more votes, the Democrat-run counties started complaining their own vote count was “unfair,” and the news media took them seriously. Such is the madness of people obsessed with this world. If they were willing to do that out in the open, what will they do when they think no one is watching?
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Citiaen Tom,
Keep in mind that some people will do anything to keep their jobs or positions of power. Power corrupts.Need term limits to return the original concepts of our countries founders, duty to God and country.
Regards and good will blogging.
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It is sad how far we have fallen.
It is as you say, and we would do well to implement term limits. Since action generally follows belief, I suspect that before we see term limits we will have to see a return to the belief that we each have a duty to God and to country.
Thank you for taking the time to comment and offer your thoughts.
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Ideally I don’t want term limits, mainly out of the hope that America will wake up to the ponzi scheme that we’re all being subjugated to; however, pragmatically unless there is a push for government term limits is there really any other way through peaceful means to enact positive change but through implementing term limits? The ideal is is that we need to take any incentive other than the service to ones nation out of politics.
Also minium wage is a complete ruse, the state controls how much a business is to pay its employees taking that control out of their arsenal, so what do they have control over? price of products, and that’s the simplified version not taking in account that they’re also forcing payment with a fiat currency through direct deposit with consumers paying for goods with electronic cards, literally no money changes hands… … bit of rant but as a Hamiltonian I get fired up about minimum wage and currency issues that were forced to live with in our nation.
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I think we have similar feelings about term limits and the minimum wage. However, I don’t see term limits as a fundamental fix. I see it a more of a protection — a way to avoid getting into the fix again.
You mentioned.
Term limits would assist us towards that end, but term limits will not solve the problem. There are two reasons.
1. Congress and our state legislatures are filled with career politicians. To force these people to term limit themselves will require an electorate with adamantine determination.
2. What attract career politicians? Power. Even if we were somehow able to term limit our elected leaders, the powers we give our leaders would still attract ambitious men and women.
Until we realize we are the problem, our expectations, we will bring our government under control. That is, to bring our government under control, we must first bring ourselves under control.
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