Tag: freedom

WHY DO OUR LEADERS THINK DRAFTING WOMEN INTO COMBAT IS A GOOD THING?

On By Citizen TomIn 2016 Election, Delegate Bob Marshall, National Defense, unraveling14 Comments

I got the following from Delegate Bob Marshall today.

THE MARSHALL MESSAGEDear Friends,

Large majorities of Republicans in the US Congress support drafting women for combat based on their support of the House and Senate versions of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Acts.   There is still time to eliminate the provision to draft women from the final bill.

The Senate Committee NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) Report summary does not list the drafting of women for combat in the bill.  But, on page 11, it does acknowledge that:

”The NDAA includes a provision that amends the Military Selective Service Act to include women in the requirement to register for selective service, to the same extent men are currently required, beginning January 1, 2018. Because the Department of Defense has lifted the ban on women serving in ground combat units, the committee believes there is no further justification in limiting the duty to register under the Military Selective Service Act to men.”

The only Virginia Republican Congressman to vote against the NDAA was Morgan Griffith, while 237 House Republicans voted yes! Only four other Republicans voted no in the House, and only six of 54 Senate Republicans voted no.

Please ask Democrat Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, who supported NDAA passage, as well as your own Congressperson whether or not they publicly supported a position in favor of drafting women into military ground combat when they last ran for office.  

This is the first time in American history such a radical policy has been approved by Congress. Where was the groundswell for, or even the public debate for this misguided radical policy which mandates that men and women must register for the draft on identical terms?

The Senate bill (John McCain, R-AZ) provides that after January 1, 2018 female citizens or legal residents 18 and over “shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as are applicable under the provisions of this Act to similarly situated male registrants …[because of] … the continuing need for a mechanism to draft large numbers of replacement combat troops.”

How can pregnant women (married or not) or young mothers, aged 18-26 avoid being drafted for combat duty under such provisions?  This is not a matter of young women voluntarily enlisting in the military.  This would be a mandate upon every young woman aged 18-26 whether or not they had any intention of ever serving in combat.

The House and Senate must approve final versions of the 2017 NDAA bill.  Please contact Sen. Mark Warner, Sen. Tim Kaine and your own Congressperson today.  Firmly and with civility demand that they vote NO if provisions for drafting women are contained in the final NDAA bill, unless you are fine with having your daughters, granddaughters sisters and nieces conscripted into the military for front line ground combat!

I encourage you to contact Senators Kaine and Warner to voice your opinion on this issue.  You can contact each of them through their websites at the links or you can reach Senator Kaine at (202) 224-4024 and Senator Warner at (202)224-2023.    To find your Congressperson check out Who’s My Legislator.

Please let me know if you have any questions.  Thank you so much for your continuing support!

Sincerely,


Delegate Bob Marshall

I have seen how the all-volunteer military operates. Therefore, I wonder why we need a draft. Draftees are people put into service whether they want to be or not. To keep them in their service, their masters don’t have to treat them well. Hence, I think any serious effort to return to a draft military would reveal that drafted soldiers are treated more poorly than volunteers (Has everyone forgotten Vietnam?). On the other hand, our volunteer military forces have demonstrated the capacity to fight both bravely and effectively. It is a civilian leaders who have failed.

At the same time, we have seen that even in a volunteer military it is too easy for men to abuse women. So why would we want to draft women?

What this effort tell me is that too many of our leaders don’t know what they are doing. They just want to look good so they can stay in office. So they do what seems popular to the news media. Yet if we ever institute a draft, drafting women will just create problems that will blow up in our faces.  The people in the news media don’t know anything about fighting a war.

Look at WWII. When they felt America was threatened, the Americans of the 1940’s fought bravely and effectively. Because they were so eager to fight their nation’s enemies, young men eagerly volunteered. Were some drafted? I suppose many were, but those who could not get in to the military were ashamed.  Hence, we effectively had a volunteer force. Yet hardly anyone seriously considered drafting women. Somebody had to stay at home. What needed to be done at home was just as important as what needed to be done at the front. And that involved much more than just rivets.

(from here)
(from here)

Yet a pretty girl flexing her muscles certainly draws attention and makes good copy. Imagine how cute she would look in Hollywood designed body armor waving a sexy assault weapon.

IN HONOR OF MOTHER’S DAY: EXTRACTED FROM A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS BY JOHN BUNYAN

On By Citizen TomIn history, Philosophy, religion5 Comments

bibleAfter I read “Submission as the S Word” by insanitybytes22, I thought of something I had read by a good Christian man hundreds of years ago. Although we like to think of ourselves as modern and wiser than those who lived long before us, it is difficult to find evidence that such is true. Even today many say Christianity is prejudiced against women, but that is plain foolishness. Christianity merely recognizes the obvious, that men and women have separate but equally important roles. John Bunyan demonstrated that in his book, The Pilgrim’s Progress, published in 1678.

Bunyan presented his story in two parts. In the first part Bunyan wove a tale about Christian, a pilgrim who struggled against the temptations of this world to be at the side of our Lord in heaven, Jesus Christ. In the second part Bunyan wrote about Christiana, Christian’s wife. Belatedly, Christiana followed her husband’s example, doing what Christian had been unable to do on his own, leading her boys and one her neighbors to Christ.

Christiana, although devoted to her husband, had survived him. Thus, she  functioned as the head of the family, and she did so courageously. With his tale, Bunyan clearly displayed the strengths and weakness of both sexes, demonstrating how as men and women we complement each other.

As the following excerpt from Part 2, Chapter 7 explained, the Bible does not hold women in reproach. Bunyan put his words in the mouth of Gaius, a man who maintained an inn for travel weary pilgrims.

Gaius also proceeded, and said, “I will now speak on the behalf of women, to take away their reproach. For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, so also did life and health: ‘God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.’ I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in Him before either man or angel. I read not that man ever gave unto Christ so much as one penny; but the women followed Him, and ministered to Him of their substance. ‘Twas a woman that washed His feet with tears, and a woman that anointed His body to the burial. They were women that wept when He was going to the cross, and women that followed Him from the cross; and that sat over against the sepulchre when He was buried. They were women that were first with Him at His resurrection-morn, and women that brought tidings first to His disciples that He was risen from the dead. Women, therefore, are highly favored, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.” (from here)

Who exactly was Gaius? In Bunyan’s book, Gaius is an odd exception. Most of the characters have names that define their character. Bunyan, however, lets a passage from the Bible define Gaius.

3 John 1-8 Good News Translation (GNT)

1 From the Elder—

To my dear Gaius, whom I truly love.

2 My dear friend, I pray that everything may go well with you and that you may be in good health—as I know you are well in spirit. 3 I was so happy when some Christians arrived and told me how faithful you are to the truth—just as you always live in the truth. 4 Nothing makes me happier than to hear that my children live in the truth.

Gaius Is Praised

5 My dear friend, you are so faithful in the work you do for other Christians, even when they are strangers. 6 They have spoken to the church here about your love. Please help them to continue their trip in a way that will please God. 7 For they set out on their trip in the service of Christ without accepting any help from unbelievers. 8 We Christians, then, must help these people, so that we may share in their work for the truth.

We should all strive to be as Gaius was, a helper of Christians, part of a people who share the Gospel of Christ. Fortunately, many have tried to be like Gaius. Look at the world today. Then contemplate what Jesus Christ did for women and the men who love them. Before Jesus, might defined right. Because of their greater strength, men thus had the “right” to rule over women. After Jesus, His followers insisted that God commanded us to love each other, that we must strive to make our words and deeds worthy of the love of Christ. And Christ had taught what the Bible says, God loves all mankind, that He made both men and women in His image.

WHAT A MONSTROUS LIE!

On By Citizen TomIn Constitution, Culture War, Philosophy, unraveling15 Comments
During the Irish rebellion of 1641, lurid reports of atrocities, including of pregnant women who had been ripped open and had their babies pulled out, provided Oliver Cromwell with justification for his subsequent slaughter of defeated Irish rebels. (from here)
During the Irish rebellion of 1641, lurid reports of atrocities, including of pregnant women who had been ripped open and had their babies pulled out, provided Oliver Cromwell with justification for his subsequent slaughter of defeated Irish rebels. (from here)

Sometimes I engage in side debates with Liberal Democrats (via email) and these debates often inspire posts.

What inspired this post? My debating partner complained about the Republican led Senate’s refusal to consider any more of President Barack Hussein Obama’s judicial nominees.  He was outraged by the Republican’s unwillingness to compromise. Since the subject of our previous debate had been on the merits of limited government versus those of Socialism, I sent him this observation.

Can we have it both ways? If we had a limited government, there would be room for compromise. People would worry more about what they should do instead of making other people do what they want them to do.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a limited government. When government becomes ever more important, partisanship inevitably increases.  At a certain point, people start fighting because the government is not giving them what they want.

That’s why Socialism is not a good solution. We should not be demanding of government things we can do just as well or better through private endeavors.

What I got back should not have surprised me, but it did. In fact, it shocked me.

‘Big Government’ Looks Great When There Is None (http://mobile.nytimes.com)

March 17, 2016

UNITY STATE, South Sudan — After hearing Republican presidential candidates denounce big government and burdensome regulation, I’d like to invite them to spend the night here in the midst of the civil war in South Sudan.

You hear gunfire, competing with yowls of hyenas, and you don’t curse taxes. Rather, you yearn for a government that might install telephones, hire a 911 operator and dispatch the police.

From afar, one sees the United States differently. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz seem to think that America’s Achilles heels are immigration and an activist government. But from the perspective of a war zone, these look more like national strengths.

Indeed, take what Trump is clamoring for: weaker government, less regulation, a more homogeneous society. In some sense, you find the ultimate extension of all that right here. (continued here)

Apparently, suggesting any reduction of the Liberal Democrat’s Utopian dreams is equivalent to turning the United States into an abysmal Third World nation. No Republican has even come close to proposing such anarchy, but that doesn’t stop The New York Times from demonizing the opposition. What is absurd about this is that views of The New York Times are so extreme they can lump Donald Trump and Ted Cruz together without missing a beat.

We are piling up debt. Our public schools are becoming indoctrination centers. The pressures of taxation and regulation have stagnated economic growth and forced companies to move overseas.  We risk losing religious freedom. Foreign enemies abound and our military is growing relatively weaker. We cannot even enforce our borders.  Our infrastructure needs repair. The cost of medical care continues to surge. Problem after problem after problem.

What do Liberal Democrats propose to fix problem after problem after problem? More and more of the same. More government.

Our Constitution says what the Federal Government is suppose to do, and the Tenth Amendment explicitly states that the Federal Government isn’t suppose to do anything that is not in the Constitution. No sane, honest soul can read the Constitution and use it to justify how Federal Government now spends most of the money it spends. Yet such observations apparently have nothing to do with how Liberal Democrats view the world. They just make up their own facts.

Two political scientists, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, argue that America’s achievements rest on a foundation of government services but that we Americans suffer from “American Amnesia” (that’s also the title of their book coming out this month) and don’t appreciate this.

“We are told that the United States got rich in spite of government, when the truth is closer to the opposite,” they write. Every country that journeyed from mass illiteracy and poverty to modernity and wealth did so, they note, because of government instruments that are now often scorned. (excerpt from ‘Big Government’ Looks Great When There Is None)

Given the context, that assertion is absurd. Did the United States become prosperous because of the type of government we once had? Yes, but the author of that New York Times op-ed would like us to believe that Americans have always had bunches of busybodies trying to run their lives. Not true. Read the Declaration of Independence. That document explains why the American colonists fought the American Revolution. The American colonists fought to preserve their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They did not want King George III, a would-be tyrant in distant land, trying to make tax slaves out of them.

Are you a tax slave? Have you ever added up all the money you pay in taxes? Have you ever looked at how much our government spends? Who benefits? How much of your money are our political leaders spending to buy things our country actually needs them to buy? When do taxes, regulations, laws — when does the iron hand of government — become so extreme we have an obligation to replace the rascals and send them home?

No Republican candidate has proposed to cut Federal spending to the bone his first day in office and starve people. However, that is obviously what The New York Times would like us to believe

What do Conservatives want? Conservatives today share goals similar to the Americans of 1776. We accept the fact that power corrupts, and we don’t want scheming, power-hungry politicians trying sell us out to whatever political donors give them the most money. Instead, we would like to make use of that blueprint for government we call the Constitution. We would like to reduce our government to a point where we have some control over it. That too extreme? Well, apparently some would like to frighten us and make us believe it is.

Is the author of that New York Times op-ed, Big Government’ Looks Great When There Is None, just demonizing anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him. Is enforcing the Constitution a wild idea? Not sure? Well, I can remember a time when my education (“free” from the public school system) was lacking too. Then I read documents like the following.

There are more such documents here => Citizen Library.

If we want to understand our history, what is the best way? Often it is best to read what people who lived at the time we want to understand wrote. Unfortunately, that is not what many of us did in school. But, we can change that.

 

WHEN LOVE BECOMES AN EXCUSE FOR TYRANNY

On By Citizen TomIn Culture War, Philosophy, religion47 Comments
Marie Antoinette's execution on October 16, 1793 (from here)
Marie Antoinette‘s execution on October 16, 1793 (from here)

There is a saying that is unwise.

Love rules without rules. — Anonymous (from here)

Not even for the sake of love should we set aside all the rules. Yet many use that excuse when they vote. Instead of voting for the most competent and honorable candidate, the one who promises to support and defend the Constitution and keep our country safe and secure, they vote for the most charming and charismatic fellow.

Does this sound silly? What is the point of associating romance with politics? We expect lovers to be a bit nutty, right? Yet there is very little these days that is rational about our politics. That is a subjectinsanitybytes22 amusingly explores in this post, Running the Gauntlet.

When we love without rules, what is the problem? Do we let our passions dominate our reason? No. What we set aside is wisdom, not reason. We still know what is going on. We still know what we are doing. What we do not do is care about whether our choices are right our wrong.

The ability to reason simply allows us to logically work our way through cause and effect relationships.  Consider.

  • If a woman gives in to the ardor of a passionate suitor, don’t both of them know what is going to happen?
  • If we vote for a politician who makes extravagant promises to care for the poor, the old, the children, the sick and so forth, don’t we know he is not serious about balancing the budget?

When we consider the rules, which alternatives are right and which are wrong,  wisdom takes us a step or two further than reason.

  • Before a woman gives into a passionate suitor, she wisely considers the character of her suitor. Out of self-respect and for the sake of any children she might have, she demands a good marriage before sex.
  • Before a voter chooses a candidate, he considers that candidate’s record. Does that candidate have a good record? Will he honor the Constitution? Will he try to balance the budget?

Thus, reason often fails to look beyond the desires of the moment, whereas wisdom — because the wise strive to discern good from evil — carefully evaluates the consequences.

Logic and science provide the basis for reason. From where do we derive wisdom? In our society, we have traditionally used the Bible. Yet many in our day insist we cannot mix religion with politics. Instead, they say we must keep church and state separate, that politics is just about keeping the peace. Out of “respect” for religion, secularists may even say that only God can judge another person’s sins, that what defines sin is too personal for politics.

Doesn’t the Constitution say we have a secular state? No. Those who demand the separation of church and state often argue that the word “God” is not in the Constitution, but they neglect to mention the word “secular” is also not in the Constitution. The word “religion,” however, is in the Constitution. It is in the First Amendment.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Note that the First Amendment protects our religious rights. It prohibits the government from interfering with the people’s religious rights, not the other way around. Therefore, the Constitution does not discourage us from trying to make certain our government upholds our moral and religious beliefs.

In fact, as Christians we should expect our government to uphold our moral and religious values. Consider what the Apostle Paul wrote. Remember that the Roman Empire executed Jesus and persecuted Christians, that Roman authorities also executed Paul by cutting off his head with a sword.

Romans 13:1-7 New King James Version (NKJV)

13 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

There are worse things than a bad government. That is no government at all. Since those who lived around the Mediterranean Sea recognized the rule of the Roman Empire, Paul did not advocate its overthrow. Instead, he preached the Gospel to Roman officials, and he urged Christians to pray for them.

When the founders of this nation spoke of a secular government, what were they getting at? We know they believed God blessed their efforts, but they did not claim divine guidance. In so far as they knew, the American government functioned purely as a man-made organization with three tiers (federal, state, and local). Hence, they did not believe Federal Government could rightfully impose or establish a national religion. Nevertheless, We the People must work to make certain that what our government  conforms to our moral and religious beliefs. Good government depends upon a moral people, not moral leaders.

Consider the gravity of our task. Government exists to exercise force. When our leaders make laws, spend our money, and tax us, they use military and police forces to enforce their will. Therefore, when any of us attempt to thwart the will of our leaders, we risk arrest, trial, conviction, and punishment. While it is true that judges and juries render a secular judgement (They do not judge people’s souls.), if we do not believe someone has committed a sin against another person, what is point in arresting them, trying them, convicting them, and punishing them? If We the People do not view what one of our fellow citizens is doing as evil, why would we want our government to punish them?

Consider the alternative. When we allow our government to punish our fellow citizens for arbitrary reasons, we empower difficult people (especially harmful sinners) with the ability to severely trouble both ourselves and our neighbors and for no good reason.

Given then that we have a Christian duty to influence our government for the better, what should we to do? What kind of government does the Bible encourage? To that question there is no simple answer.

The Bible speaks a great deal about government. The Old Testament provides the Mosaic Code. The Jews referred to this as the Law. The New Testament does not ignore government or the Law.  For example, the New Testament tells us when we should obey the legitimate governing authorities. We render to God what belongs to God and to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Nevertheless, Jesus never told us what kind of government we should have.

What we can guess, however, is our government should allow each of us to answer to our own conscience. We each should allow our neighbors to live as they think proper.

Romans 14:4 New King James Version (NKJV)

4 Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.

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