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Humanism vs. Christianity
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The Polarization of America
by Patrick Vosse
Chapter 13
Implementing the Humanist Agenda: Progressive Politics
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Humanism vs. Christianity
~
The Polarization of America
by Patrick Vosse
Part Three
Polarization of America |
Chapter 13 - Implementing the Humanist Agenda: Progressive Politics
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow
and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic
principles of the world rather than on Christ. Col 2:8
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Promises of immortal salvation or fear of
eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. They distract humans
from present concerns, from self-actualization, and from
rectifying social injustices. Modern science discredits
such historic concepts as the "ghost in the machine" and the "separable
soul." Rather, science affirms that the human species
is an emergence from natural evolutionary forces. As far
as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological
organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no
credible evidence that life survives the death of the
body. We continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our
lives have influenced others in our culture.
Humanist Manifesto, Article 2
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Having a practical philosophy such as Humanism
is not of much use unless there is a means of
implementing it. Ancient philosophies such as Platonism,
Epicureanism, or Sophism were discussed, sometimes with noisy
passion, but they were not imposed. Even through the 18th
century opposing philosophies were matters of intellectual combat,
not action. But the rise of Humanism changed all that. There are two
methods that Humanists have available to implement
their philosophy. They can enter into dialog and debate and, if
their argument is convincing, win the hearts and minds of the rest
of society. However, much of society initially rejected many
elements of the Humanist position and the Socialism
that it gave rise to. Failing to convince, the alternative method
has to be implemented…force, specifically, political force.
The tenets of Humanism implied social change and that
required a vehicle of change, progressive politics.
Progressivism, in it early
stages, was a political attitude advocating changes or reform aimed
at helping those facing harsh living and working conditions. The
focus in the late 19th century was on laws regulating
tenement housing, child labor and better working conditions for
women.
The term Progressivism emerged in the late 19th
century in reference to a more general response to the vast changes
brought by industrialization, particularly the poor urban
conditions. The concern of these early Progressives
was that power politics and
conservative economics were indifferent to those without economic or
political power. However, progressive politics was
initially more of a philosophy than a practical
political machine. Progressives needed a practical political vehicle
that shared their ideals and objectives. They found it in Socialism.
Or, more precisely, Socialism found the
Progressives. Before discussing the development and implications of
Progressivism, we need a clear definition of
Socialism. Socialism is:
Socialism is, first, the name given to that
form of society in which there is no such thing as a propertyless class,
but in which the whole community has
become a working community owning the means of production—the land,
factories, mills, mines, banks, transport and all the means whereby
wealth is created and distributed to the community. Socialism is
also the name given to a body of scientific and philosophic thought
which explains why the Socialist form of society is now a necessity,
the forces upon which its achievement depends, the conditions under
which and the methods whereby it can be achieved.
It will be obvious at once that the
basic principles of Socialist society are diametrically opposite to
those of Capitalist society in which we live. Socialism stands for social
or community property. Capitalism stands for private property.
Socialism is a society without classes. Capitalism is divided into
classes—the class owning property and the propertyless working class.[1]
Socialism is usually thought of as a form of government that advocates public
ownership and public control of wealth. A socialistic government
wants the wealth of the nation spread out in such a way that the
money is equally distributed among the country's citizens. Socialism
is in favor of tearing down the class structure and forming a
classless society. In this way, it was born out of Marxism.
This definition of Socialism implies "distribution
of wealth" and "social justice", two concepts
also implied in the Progressive agenda. However,
we should not consider Progressivism solely a
liberal phenomenon. Republicans,
normally thought of as the "poster children" for conservatism, have
their share of Progressives as well. In fact,
Theodore Roosevelt, the champion of many
conservative causes, was the most significant champion of
Progressivism in the first part of the 20th century. He
was the founder of the Progressive Party. We should keep in mind
that Socialism is, in the Marxist philosophy,
the transition step between Capitalism
and Communism. By definition, Socialism
is anti-Capitalism, anti-religion,
anti-individualism. Socialism is collectivism and
government control of the collective.
Before we begin the discussion regarding Progressivism,
it will be helpful to recall the main points of
Humanism as defined in the Humanist Manifesto. The references in parentheses
refer to the Humanist Manifesto, Appendix 3.
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Religion is an outdated concept. Morals are
defined by the collective society and
are relative to conditions. Religion and references to God
are "illusionary and harmful." The theory of evolution disproves the concept of divine creation. Ethics are situational and require no
religious sanction. The purpose of life is to pursue
a "good life here and now." The influence of religion must be eliminated. (Articles 1, 2, 3, 4 and Closing
Statement)
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Individuals should have complete freedom of choice, without
religious interference. Individuals should have complete freedom
of sexual preference and expression.
There should be no control of sexual activities between adults.
(Articles 5 and 6)
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The individual has the right to suicide,
euthanasia, and abortion.
(Articles 8)
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Society should develop alternative economies that provide for
all the basic requirements in order to eliminate poverty.
Societies should provide universal education, a
minimum guaranteed annual income, and basic health care.
(Articles 10 and 11)
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There must be a World Government without
nations or national borders, a World Legal System, a World
Economic System, a worldwide centrally controlled communication
and transportation system, and a World Environmental Control
System. (Articles 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17)
It will help to see the agenda of Progressives if
these Humanist tenets are kept in mind in the
following discussions.
A Brief History of Progressive Politics
By the end of the 19th century, the American economy was
thriving, but there was a dark side to the prosperity. Workers were
exploited. In a sense, the African slaves had been replaced by
women, children, and men who had no leverage in the workplace, many
of whom were immigrants. This was a time of convergence
of many new concepts. Marx and Engles
published the Communist Manifesto in 1848
and the ideas that formulated Socialism had swept
Europe. The humanist philosophies of Kant, Hegel,
and Nietzsche were popular positions among
the educated. Darwin's theory of evolution
had become an adjunct philosophy to
Humanism and Atheism in general. The
time was perfect for the "perfect storm" of
politics and social issues to converge. However, as
popular as these philosophies were among the elite, the common folk
remained skeptical. It became increasingly clear that Humanism, in
whatever form, would not be readily accepted by the populace in
general; pure Marxists knew that implementation of the
philosophy would come only by force.
However, there were those who saw an alternative to implementing
Humanism by force – the Fabian Socialists. Fabian Socialists took their name from the Roman
general, Quintus Fabius Maximus. He was famous for defeating
opposing armies by hit and run harassment that gradually wore the
opponent down to a point where Fabian could mount a final attack
that swiftly subdued his enemy. The Fabian Socialist proposed the
same technique for gradually manipulating society in slowly
accepting pieces of Socialism, little by little, until a critical
mass is reached and then, when sufficient progress is made, the
society will suddenly tip completely to a Socialist state. This is
the technique Progressives are using in Western Europe and North
America today. A cornerstone of Fabian Socialism is Social Justice,
a concept that permeates Humanism and
Progressivism (discussed in the following
section).
Those concerned with the exploited workers identified the problem as
uncontrolled Capitalism, corruption, and a population
disenfranchised from making crucial decisions. These
early Progressives saw government control as the
solution. Regulation of the capital systems and the
important elements of a humane society appeared to be necessary at
the central government level. Unbridled, corporations did not assume
any responsibility for the condition of workers or their families.
And, the urban environment was rapidly deteriorating. The message of
Socialism struck a harmonic chord. The clarion of
Communism - "workers of the world, unite" - was well
received by factory workers who, individually, had no voice. It
seemed that the answer to the Progressive's
concern was Socialism and the growing Humanism
movement.
However, some of the workers had already united. During the 1850’s,
German immigrants brought with them Socialism,
already well established in much of Europe, and the concept of
unions. They began Marxian Socialist
unions such as the National Typographic Union
in 1852, United Hatters of
1856, and Iron Molders' Union of North
America in 1859. During the 1880’s and 90’s the concept of worker’s
right as opposed to Andrew Carnegie's
philosophy, shared by most fiscal and social
conservatives, that individuals had an basic right to hold private
property, accumulate capital, and manage their wealth as they see
fit without external interference. These two concepts, the
corporation’s right to manage its affairs without external
interference and the workers’ rights to control working conditions,
were on a collision course.
By the early 20th century, the concept of unions
had taken root and integral with the concept was Socialism.
The Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) was formed in 1905 as a breakaway
element of the American Federation of Labor
(AFL). The founder of the AFL, Samuel Gompers,
was strongly opposed to Socialism and some of the member
wanted to expand the social agenda. They formed the IWW with a group
of radical Socialists with the goal of overthrowing
the employing class, i.e. the owners and managers of the
industries for which they worked. They saw the relationship between
the employer and the employed as a class struggle in the same way
that Marx expressed it in the Communist Manifesto.
Their activities extended beyond the direct
interests of the worker to include opposition to World War I,
expansion of social justice policies, opposition to, and elimination
of the capitalist system. However, these concepts were not limited
to liberal union leaders. There was also a
growing cultural movement that had a definite liberal flavor. This
is expressed by the Socialist League:
Trade Unionism and Socialism have thus a common origin and the aim of
Socialism is only possible of achievement by the working class
becoming victorious in the struggle against Capitalism.
This means that the Trade Unions should recognise
that all the efforts of the working class must be directed to the
goal of the conquest of political power. Their fight in the
industrial field must be linked with the fight to obtain a Socialist
Government which, backed by the might of the working class, would
transfer the ownership of the means of production and distribution
from private hands to social ownership.[2]
Those who joined unions
were merely looking for a way to secure a fair wage and decent
working conditions. Many were indifferent to politics
and philosophy. That is still true today, however,
many union members are now well versed in politics and
may not agree with the policies and politics of their union leaders.
For example, Andy Stern, previous president of the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is quoted as adapting the
Communist motto,
"What we're working toward is building a global organization. Because
workers of the world unite? It's not just a slogan any more; it's a
way we are going to have to do our work."[3]
Richard Trumka, president of
the AFL-CIO has met with European Socialist to
promote an international tax.[4]
He is endorsed by the Socialist Equity Party,[5]
Humanitarian Socialist Party,[6]
and the Freedom Socialist Party,[7]
among others. As recently as September 2010 he admitted that his
primary goal was not the improvement of union members’ wages but to
transform America to conform to the Progressive philosophy.[8]
Social Justice
The industrial revolution brought great prosperity to the United
States. But with that prosperity came greater gaps between the
classes. Industrial giants accumulated great wealth. The middle
class merchants and family businesses thrived. The immigrants,
unskilled laborers, and women did not do so well. Government
corruption was for sale, racial discrimination was alive and well,
health care was not available to the poor, and homelessness and
hunger were common. In 1870, there were more than 80,000 child
laborers and, by 1900, that number had risen to 1.7 million. The
percent of women in the workforce was less than 15 percent. All
these conditions were blamed on Capitalists’ abuse of power. The
message of Socialism rang true to many, particularly
the elite, the educated, and the activists. The educated were
exposed to the philosophies of Voltaire, Kant,
Hegel, and Nietzsche and their
message of Humanism and its fundamental premise,
Atheism. As Marx was persuaded by these
philosophies, so were many Americans. The growing call for reform
caused many to look for answers and they found them in Humanism and
Socialism. Humanism was a fundamental element common
to the philosophers mentioned above and it can be expressed in
several ways: Moderate liberalism, Socialism, and Communism
are the more popular positions. In the early 20th-century
America, it was expressed as Progressivism with
the goal of establishing social justice in America.
Social justice is concerned with groups or
classes of people as opposed to justice for the individual. Social
justice can be defined as: the application of the concept of justice
on a social scale implemented through the equal distribution of
advantages, assets, and benefits among all members of a society. It
is essentially "Socialism light." It is concerned
with correcting "historical injustices", redistribution of wealth,
and giving the central government sufficient power to assure all
citizens have an equal social and economic condition.
So far in this discussion, see significant polarization
between liberals and conservative in areas of
politics and economics, but nothing to alienate
Christians or their moral principles. However,
there is something lurking in the shadow over there to the "left."
The Progressive Party
Dissatisfied with the GOP and President Taft’s strong conservative
position, Theodore Roosevelt led progressive
elements out of the Republican Party to form the
Progressive Party in 1912.
Roosevelt was named the presidential candidate for the Progressive
Party. He finished well ahead of the GOP candidate, but lost to
Woodrow Wilson. In 1916, Roosevelt returned to
the GOP and the Progressive Party and the Progressive Party
dissolved for a time. The party reemerged in 1924 with a platform
that included: government ownership of public utilities, a
progressive tax that would tax the wealthy at a
higher rate than the poor, establish collective bargaining (unions)
as a requirement, and subsidies to certain elements of
the economy. The party did not do well, possibly because of the
progressive extremes of Woodrow Wilson, and
again dissolved.
In 1948, dissatisfied with Harry Truman, New Deal
Democrats formed a new iteration of
the Progressive Party. The
new Progressive Party was strongly supported by the Communist Party
and opponents successfully used this against
them. By the early 1950’s the Progressive Party, as a national
entity, had disappeared. However, local elements continue today,
particularly in Washington State and Vermont. Throughout its
history, the Progressive Party
openly supported Socialism. Progressives
were responsible for prohibition, amendments to the
Constitution that changed the selection of
senators from appointment by state legislators to direct election,
and women’s suffrage.
1900 to 1930: Laying the Foundation
The American Socialist Party was
formed in 1901 by Victor L. Berger, Job
Harriman, and Morris Hillquit
of the Socialist Labor Party
and Eugene V. Debs of the American Railway
Union. In the early 1900’s it was the
only serious opposition to Capitalism in the United States. It
reached its peak in 1912. In 1910, one thousand Socialists were
elected to state and local offices. Eugene Debs
ran for president against Woodrow Wilson in
1912, but got only 6 percent of the vote. In 1924, plagued by
internal divisions, the party joined with the Progressive
Party. By the end of the
1920’s, the Russian revolution had caused many to be wary of
Socialism and those who maintained their
philosophical agreement with Marxism, mostly the
well-educated elite, found it more acceptable to refer to themselves
as "Progressive." In 1905, author Upton Sinclair
founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society,
which soon had chapters in the leading
universities. Lively young men and women discussed the "New Gospel
according to St. Marx." Universities were considered to
be favorable ground for Progressive thought.
Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat,
but might as well have been a member of the Progressive Party. He was elected
President in 1912 and began a decade of social reform that laid the
foundation for the Humanism in American politics
that we see today. His administration was marked by the
expansion of a large and powerful federal government. With a
Democratic congress, he was able to accomplish the following:
-
The Federal Reserve Act that
established a central federal bank to control monetary policy.
-
The Federal Trade Commission.
-
The Clayton Anti-Trust Act that
was considered to be very favorable to union growth
and influence.
-
The Federal Farm Loan Act
established the government as the primary source of financing
for the agricultural sector.
-
Imposed union demands on railroad management
(Adamson Act).
-
The first progressive income tax was
established by the 16th Amendment.
Despite his campaign promises to support African-American issues (a
promise that drew large numbers from the Republican Party) he was
responsible for the expansion of segregation throughout the federal
government and the military. He considered the United States
Constitution outdated and had an agenda to change
it through amendments. He particularly opposed the system of checks
and balances. His policies were considered pro-socialist,
pro-union, and anti-Capitalist. During his
second term, he:
-
He entered WWI, breaking his campaign promise to stay out of the
conflict.
-
Initiated the military draft.
-
Promoted labor unions. Union Leaders were frequent
visitors to the White House.
-
Established federal control of the railroads.
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Was the major force behind the establishment of the League of
Nations.
During the war, Wilson’s administration expanded its support for
unions and established a commission for pro-Wilson
propaganda and censorship. Although Wilson’s actions were extremely
polarizing politically, they did not result in a Humanist-Christian polarization.
In fact, many Church leaders, particularly Catholics
whose congregations consisted of a significant number of union
members, were supportive of Wilson’s policies. Wilson,
however, laid the foundation for a Socialist
government. He planted the seeds that would eventually grow into a
Humanistic emphasis in government. His policies created a climate of
acceptance of Humanism and this did eventually
polarize Humanists and Christians.
An example of Humanist activism is Margaret Sanger.
Sanger was an Atheist, Socialist, Humanist,
and a strong proponent of birth control, a
position that was in direct opposition to the teaching of the
Catholic Church. Her stated
reason was that women in the slums were merely breeding
machines and that the large families resulted in poverty and
anguish. The Humanist must help these people to rise above this
condition and birth control was an essential part of the effort. As
second reason for her activism was to elevate women and free them
from family responsibilities so they could pursue their full
potential. In 1916, she opened the first family planning and birth
control clinic and in 1921, she founded the American Birth Control
League. Although opposed to
abortion herself, the family planning clinics that
grew out of her efforts eventually resulted in millions of
abortions. On the surface, except for the opposition of the Catholic
Church and a few other Church leaders, Sanger’s family
planning philosophy was not polarizing and many
church leaders approved of it. But that something lurking in the
shadows to the "left" began to emerge. It turns out Margaret Sanger’s motives were not entirely altruistic. As a
Humanist, she was a strong proponent of eugenics and
euthanasia. Her reasons for promoting birth control
for the poor, uneducated, and "racially inferior" included
"improving the human race." Here are a few of her quotes:[9]
We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever
increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never
should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of
state is being diverted from the development and the progress of
human expression and civilization.
Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every
congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of
infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely
less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who
must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial
mistakes.
... Degeneration has already begun. Eugenists demonstrate that
two-thirds of our manhood of military age are physically too unfit
to shoulder a rifle; that the feeble-minded, the syphilitic, the
irresponsible and the defective breed unhindered; ... that the
vicious circle of mental and physical defect, delinquency and
beggary is encouraged, by the unseeing and unthinking sentimentality
of our age, to populate asylum, hospital and prison. All these
things the Eugenists sees and points out with a courage entirely
admirable.
Sterilization of the insane and feebleminded and the
encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited
or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the
individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him
incapable of producing children.
Birth control is thus the entering wedge for the
educator. In answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands
of submerged mothers, it is possible to use their interest as the
foundation for education in prophylaxis, hygiene and infant
welfare. The potential mother can then be shown that maternity need
not be slavery but may be the most effective avenue to
self-development and self-realization. Upon this basis only may we
improve the quality of the race.
Even if we accept organized charity at its own valuation, and grant
that it does the best it can, it is exposed to a more profound
criticism. It reveals a fundamental and irremediable defect. Its
very success, its very efficiency, its very necessity to the social
order, are themselves the most unanswerable indictment. Organized
charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those
vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to
diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing
evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the
surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is
perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives,
delinquents and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed
at the "failure" of philanthropy, but rather at its success.
Margaret Sanger was not the only progressive
voice for eugenics. Oliver Wendell
Holmes said;
It is better for all the world, if instead of
waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them
starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are
manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. ... Three generations
of imbeciles are enough.
Bertrand Russell said:
It must be admitted, however, that
there are certain dangers. Before long the population may actually
diminish. This is already happening in the most intelligent sections
of the most intelligent nations; government opposition to
birth-control propaganda gives a biological advantage to stupidity,
since it is chiefly stupid people who governments succeed in keeping
in ignorance. Before long, birth-control may become nearly universal
among the white races; it will then not deteriorate their quality,
but only diminish their numbers, at a time when uncivilized races
are still prolific and are preserved from a high death-rate by white
science. This situation will lead to a tendency --- already shown by
the French --- to employ more prolific races as mercenaries.
Governments will oppose the teaching of birth-control among
Africans, for fear of losing recruits. The result will be an immense
numerical inferiority of the white races, leading probably to their
extermination in a mutiny of mercenaries.[11]
George Bernard Shaw said:
We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people
whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people
whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas
about capital punishment …
A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A
great many people would have to be put out of existence simply
because it wastes other people's time to look after them.[12]
The moment we face it frankly we are driven to the
conclusion that the community has a right to put a price on the right to live in it … If people
are fit to live, let them live under decent human conditions. If
they are not fit to live, kill them in a decent human way. Is it any
wonder that some of us are driven to prescribe the lethal chamber as
the solution for the hard cases which are at present made the excuse
for dragging all the other cases down to their level, and the only
solution that will create a sense of full social responsibility in
modern populations?[13]
H. G. Wells said:
I believe that if a canvass of the entire
civilized world were put to the vote in this matter, the proposition
that it is desirable that the better sort of people should
intermarry and have plentiful children, and that the inferior sort
of people should abstain from multiplication, would be carried by an
overwhelming majority. They might disagree with Plato's methods, but they would certainly agree to his principle. And
that this is not a popular error Mr. Francis Galton has shown. He
has devoted a very large amount of energy and capacity to the vivid
and convincing presentation of this idea, and to its courageous
propagation. ... Indeed, Mr. Galton has drawn up certain definite
proposals. He has suggested that "noble families" should collect
"fine specimens of humanity" around them, employing these fine
specimens in menial occupations of a light and comfortable sort,
that will leave a sufficient portion of their energies free for the
multiplication of their superior type.[14]
It is apparent that, with Humanism as implemented
through the Progressive movement, there are
agendas within agendas and not all good work results in altruistic
deeds. For many of the leaders of Progressivism
during this period, elimination of poverty meant elimination of the
poor. However, there is a more important observation that explains
the Progressive hypocrisy. The Progressives began
to use Darwin's evolution as expressed
through Francis Galton’s application, eugenics,
as a philosophy to justify their
agenda. It becomes clear why evolution is so important to the
Humanist agenda. Other elements of progressivism
that laid the foundation for the Humanism-Christianity conflict were in the areas of law
and education. We will discuss these in detail
later, but here we will cite three examples that proved to be
significant many years later.
On December 8, 1902, Oliver Wendell Holmes
was appointed to the Supreme Court. He
was noted for many important contribution to American jurisprudence
during his term of 30 years, however, there are two elements of his
legal philosophy that became embedded in American
law and, ultimately, American society that have supported the
Humanist agenda and the resulting polarization
against Christianity. Holmes
believed there are few restraints on the power of government to
enact laws that furthered its interest. This, of course, was a
fundamental tenant of Socialism and a strong central
government as opposed to emphasis on individual rights. His
philosophy was termed moral relativism and this is an important
tenant of Humanism (see Appendix 3). Another legal
philosophy Holmes was instrumental in establishing was "legal
realism." Legal realism states that statutes and
case law is only a component of legal decisions and
judges must consider social implications as well. Legal realists
believed that the law should be used to achieve social purposes and
balance social interests. This eventually led to the establishment
of judicial activism. Judicial activism is defined as a "philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby
judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other
factors, to guide their decisions."[15]
The second example of significant Humanism milestones during this period is the
formation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Roger Nash Baldwin formed the National Civil
Liberties Bureau (NCLB) in 1917 to defend conscientious objectors
during WWI. The name was changed to the ACLU in 1920 and assumed a
broader interest. The ACLU will be discussed in detail later in this
chapter, however, the Scopes evolution-creation trial in 1925 set
the tone for how the ACLU would oppose Christianity and its principles in education
and all areas of society to the
present. This is the first major court action made by the ACLU and it is
interesting to note that it was not about conscientious objectors,
for which the organization was purportedly founded, but to establish
the teaching of evolution in schools.
The third example is the formation of the American
Federation of Teachers (ATF) in 1916. This
group was "
a militant, Marxist organization,
using force, politics, pressure, and propaganda to
gain control over teachers and thus build power for itself."[16]
Although the ATF never
attained significant membership, it was in direct competition with
the National Education Association
(NEA). This resulted in the NEA adapting
many of the socialist/leftist policies that were
increasingly popular with the teachers of the period.
By 1930, the government had extended federal power and control
significantly, the framework for abortion was
established, unions had extended their influence and
control, the legal system had formed the roots of judicial activism,
and Progressivism had
entered the classroom. Some polarization
between Humanism and Christianity
was emerging, particularly in the areas of family
planning and evolution, however, society in general
was still essentially Christian in spirit. Then the
financial crisis of the Great Depression hit and the
next phase of Progressivism was launched.
1930 to 1950: The New Deal
During a campaign speech in 1932, presidential candidate Franklin
Roosevelt coined the phase the New Deal.
"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the
American people," he said. He then summarized the New Deal as a "use
of the authority of government as an organized form of self-help for
all classes and groups and sections of our country." Essentially,
Roosevelt intended to implement Socialism as a
solution for the Great Depression. During the Roosevelt
administration, the Progressive agenda advanced
significantly. Among the programs initiated were:
-
The American labor movement advanced through the National
Recovery Act (1933), the Wagner Act
(1935), and the National Labor Relations Act
(1935), and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). All of these
increased the influence of unions and the Socialist
policy of federal government controlling business affairs.
-
The Social Security Act of 1935.
-
Control of the nation’s financial system and certain businesses
advanced through the Emergency Banking Act (1933), Federal
Emergency Relief Act (1933), Agriculture Adjustment Act (1933),
Abandoning the gold standard (1935), National Employment System
Act (1935), Glass-Steagall Banking Act (1935), and the Emergency
Railroad Transportation Act (1935).
All of these measures polarized the country politically. The
conservatives opposed the socialistic agenda of the administration
and the liberals criticized Roosevelt for not taking
the opportunity to advance socialism even more.
Marxist influenced unions held
demonstrations and strikes to pressed for more liberal
actions. However, in spite of the liberal criticism federal control
and power advanced considerably during Roosevelt’s first term.
During his administration, Roosevelt appointed eight justices to the
Supreme Court:
-
Hugo Black: Black voted against
court opinions that would require union members to
foreswear membership in the Communist party and the Smith Act
which made it a crime to "advocate, abet,
advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety
of overthrowing the Government of the United States." His
opinions also included: separation of church and state, prayer
in public schools was unconstitutional, and
opposition to the right to privacy.
-
Stanley Forman Reed: Generally
considered a moderate, Justice Reed was also closely tied to the
more liberal elements of the Supreme Court,
particularly Justice Frankfurter.
-
Felix Frankfurter: Justice Frankfurter
was a close friend of Roosevelt. His legal
philosophy was considered moderate, however, he
tended to interpret the law in such a way as to give federal
government the most power. He was strongly influenced by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, a close friend. He
rejected the first Amendment right to free speech in the case of
Jehovah Witnesses’ refusal to salute the flag in public schools.
Frankfurter believed that the Supreme
Court should make its decisions
with "due reference to public opinion" thus
affirming Holmes "judicial activism"
philosophy.
-
William O. Douglas: He was prone to
express his opinions based on philosophy,
current affairs, and literature rather than judicial sources,
i.e., he was a judicial activist. He often voted with
Justice Black on issue involving liberal policies.
-
Frank Murphy: Justice Murphy was often
criticized for making decisions based on emotion
rather than reason. He usually sided with the
liberal elements of the court: Black, Douglas, and
Rutledge.
-
James F. Byrnes: Justice Byrnes was
another close friend of Roosevelt and is well
known for supporting Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Federal and
Supreme courts with liberals who were judicial activists that
would support the New Deal.
-
Robert H. Jackson: Justice Jackson was
considered a moderate not noted for any significant achievements
during his tenure.
-
Wiley Bount Rutledge: Rutledge was a
politically active supporter of Roosevelt's New
Deal and carried his politics to
the Supreme Court. He was considered a
member of the "liberal axis" of the court along
with Justices Black, Murphy, and Douglas.
By the end of the 1940’s, judicial activism
had become apparent throughout the federal courts and the Supreme
Court. The effect would be felt with increasing
impact until the present and have a significant role in the
polarizing of America.
The Wagner Act of 1935 was particularly important
for unions and the Marxist elements that
used unions as a tool to further Socialism and
impede Capitalism. The act conferred legal status on the unions,
provided for the right to strike, and establish the National Labor
Relations Board to conduct elections among workers desiring to
establish unions. This was important in furthering the influence of
unions and the Socialist agents that were using unions to further
the Humanist philosophy.
Humanism had been a growing element in philosophies
for over 100 years. During the first three decades of the 20th
century, there had been a growing concern for the welfare of the
poor and an awareness of corruption and class differences brought
about by unrestricted Capitalism. With the politics
changing toward a more Socialistic climate, Humanism became more
integrated within the population. In 1933, the Humanist
Manifesto was published
(Appendix 3) and with it Humanism moved from esoteric philosophy
to a popular movement.
1960 to 1990: The Great Society
You may wonder why I have devoted so much space to unions.
What is their link to the Humanism-Christianity polarization?
The link is power. In the first part of this chapter, I mentioned
that Progressives had either to win the hearts
and minds of the people or force their agenda through political
power. Unions are a significant political advantage if their leaders
are on your side. The Socialist influence over the unions could
provide money to political campaign funds from the union
dues and by influencing members to donate to a particular
candidate. The members also represented a significant number of
votes. With this political power, the union leaders exerted, and
still exert, a significant influence over political decisions.
The Socialist Party, USA, in 1956, chose to stop
running candidates of its own, except on rare occasion. During the
1960's, we began to work in the Democratic Party. This is where our allies in the civil
rights and trade union movement worked and continue to work politically. We are proud of
what we helped accomplish within the Democratic Party, particularly
the civil rights legislation and anti-poverty programs of the
1960's. The struggle continues.[17]
After WWII, it was not popular to be "Red". The Russian Communists
were the enemy in a cold war that would last three decades. Anything
Marxist was considered anti-American and, for some,
its Atheism made it anti-Christian.
However, even if the Progressive could not boldly
proclaim their philosophy, they continued to
advance their agenda.
Winston Churchill's quote, mentioned
earlier, "If a man is not a liberal when he is young,
he has no heart. If a man is not a conservative when he is older, he
has no head," was well heeded by the Marxists. The
majority of Americans were opposed to Marxism and
would not be a productive target for Progressive propaganda. The
youth, on the other hand, were ripe for the message. The 1960’s was
a time of social change among the youth. Experimentation with drugs
and sexual promiscuity was growing and gradually
becoming accepted by an ever widening circle of young people.
Experimentation has always been a part of growing up and exploring
new ideas. The youth of the 60’s were the perfect target for the
Socialists. Two organizations are worth mentioning: Students for a
Democratic Society and the
Weather Underground.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) focused on peaceful demonstrations to
protest the Vietnam War, racial inequality, corrupt government,
Capitalism, and the need for implementing the Humanist
agenda. They were also Libertarian on matters
such as drugs and free sex. Their immediate objectives
were admirable, but the means for achieving them hinted at
significant Marxist influence. They sought the
restructuring of the American government and were openly
pro-Communist and pro-Soviet. SDS spread throughout university
campuses, recruiting both students and professors, and was a
significant player in the development of liberal politics for that
generation. Using the "crisis" of the Vietnam War as
the stimulus, they sought to stir up anger over race, sexual
inequality, rights for homosexuals, class distinction, and other
social issued. It was a long-term plan to change the minds of the
young and impressionable. During the 1960s, more than 50 percent of
the nation’s population was under 18 years of age. If these youth
could be turned into Progressives, 30 years later they would be the
leaders in business and government and the Progressive agenda would
be the official policy of America.
A significant characteristic of the Socialist youth movement was
rebellion against authority. You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know
Which Way the Wind Blows was the title of a position paper they
distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18,
1969. This founding document called for a "white fighting force" to
be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" as well as other radical movements to achieve the
destruction of US imperialism, i.e. Capitalism, and achieve a
classless world, i.e. world Communism. This, of course, was one of
the major goals of the Humanist Manifesto. They attempted to advance
the Progressive agenda through violence, believing that the years of
non-violent protests had achieved little. They advocated the violent
overthrow of the government and were involved in several significant
bombings and other crimes. Like the SDS, their target membership was
largely university students and liberal professors.
The plan to indoctrinate future leaders was successful. Today the
Progressive Movement has made significant inroads into the
Democratic Party and the judicial system. It
is this influence that has caused much of the conflict between
Humanism and Christianity today. But where did this
radicalism come from? It seemed to come suddenly on the scene, but
actually it was decades in the making..
In 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock published Baby
and Child Care. The book revolutionized the common approach to
raising children. Prior to the book, typical child care involved
discipline, respect toward elders and authority, and a structured
life. Spock threw that all out the window. He proposed
letting the child grow up freely, without strong discipline or
structure. The result was a generation of unruly children who had
little or no respect for authority. Three decades later child
psychologists generally agreed that Spock was wrong, but it was too
late. The BBC New reported on Spock’s life shortly after his death
and quoted several prominent child psychologists:
-
In a society confused about how properly to discipline children
- if at all - teachers still argue for the right to smack unruly
pupils.
-
Some parents, confused about where discipline ends and abuse
begins, find their children running free rein over bedtime, food
fads and temper tantrums.
-
UK child psychiatrist, Professor John Pearce, is on record as
thinking that childcare over the years has gone astray. "I would
warn against free expression," he says. "Children need to
develop self-control or they become overactive. It's sad when
parents are too frightened to set boundaries."
However, a generation of children raised in the 50’s and 60’s were
conditioned to getting their own way and receiving instant
gratification. This was the generation of "do your own thing." All
authority was rejected because it imposed discipline. The National
Education Association is still
influenced by Dr. Spock and his recommendation to avoid the
discipline of competition and authentic achievement:
"... Also,
within the limits of a particular society, individualistic and
competitive impulses must be subordinated increasingly to social and
cooperative tendencies."[18]
It was a generation ready for the message of radical Socialism and
the moral philosophy of Humanism. It
should be noted that the good doctor Spock was one of the leaders of
the anti-establishment movement, a radical who almost went to prison
for conspiracy to overthrow the government.
An indulged generation without discipline grew to expect
entitlements. They considered it to be a "right" to _______ (fill in
the indulgence of your choice). Society, they thought, could bestow
rights to individuals or groups on demand. Initially it was the
right to practice hedonism, as one might expect of the 60s youth.
The right to free sex and open drug use topped the list. As the
generation matured, the rights demands increased. Women’s rights and
minority rights expanded right in a positive way, however, by the
time these youth were dancing to Saturday Night Fever at the disco,
the rights demands ventured into new and less positive areas. Gay
rights, the right to free education, animal rights, the right to
free health care, the right to abortion, and the right to euthanasia
and suicide burst upon the political scene and caused a cultural
shock wave. However, no one should have been surprised, a quick scan
of the Humanist Manifesto will reveal that all these "rights" are
expressed a core beliefs of Humanism. We will revisit this
generation in some of the sections that follow.
The Supreme Court has played a significant role
in advancing Progressive agendas and Humanism.
Judicial activists supported the concept of society-created rights
on demand. Prior to the Great Society there was
a period in which the Court made decidedly liberal and judicially
activist decisions. This was the Warren Court
administered by Chief Justice Earl Warren from
1953 to 1969. Warren was appointed by President Eisenhower, but all
of the Associate Justices were appointed by Roosevelt or Truman and
were committed New Deal liberals. Warren soon fell in
step with their Progressive agenda. Among the Warren Court’s
decisions that furthered the polarization in
America were the following.
-
Prohibition of the Bible in schools. Abington Township School
District v. Schempp, (1963). At the time, four states
required reading from the Bible in public schools
before starting classes for the day and twenty-five states provided for optional
Bible reading. Edwin Schempp, a Unitarian Universalist, brought
suit against the Abington Township School District in
Pennsylvania to prohibit the enforcement of the state law. The
judge ruled in Schempp’s favor. During the court proceedings,
the state law was amended to allow that children could be
excused from the Bible reading if they had a written note from a
parent. However, Schempp was not satisfied and the case went
before the Supreme Court and the prohibition
of Bible reading in public schools became law. Although there
was a clear history of both prayer and Bible reading in public
schools, the Supreme Court’s ruling had the clear aroma of
judicial activism. In his concurrence opinion he wrote although
aware of the "ambiguities in the historical record" and felt a modern-day
interpretation of the First Amendment was warranted." He continued, "Our
interpretation of the First Amendment must necessarily be
responsive to the much more highly charged nature of religious questions in contemporary
society. A too literal quest for the advice of the Founding
Fathers upon the issues of these cases seems to me futile and
misdirected…nothing in the text of the Establishment Clause supports the view
that the prevention of the setting up of an official church was
meant to be the full extent of the prohibitions against official
involvements in religion". This decision accomplished two Humanist agenda items: it furthered opposition to
religious expression in public schools and weakened the
constitutional protection of religion from state interference.
Justice Stewart’s dissenting opinion included the
following comment:
If religious exercises are held to be an
impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed in an artificial and state-created
disadvantage.... And a refusal to permit religious exercises thus is
seen, not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the
establishment of a religion of secularism, or at least, as governmental support of the
beliefs of those who think that religious exercises should be
conducted only in private.
-
Prohibition of prayer in schools. In addition to Abington Township School District v. Schempp,
there were two other pivotal cases that furthered the anti-prayer agenda of Progressives in the 1960’s.
"The Regent's School Prayer" (Engel v. Vitale, 1962) was concerned with the prayer the New York
school system had established to be said at the beginning of each day. The prayer is as follows:
Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee,
and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our
Country.
The recitation
of the prayer was challenged and the case eventually was heard by
the Supreme Court. The Court ruled against the
recitation of the prayer. In the majority opinion, Justice Black
stated, "It is no part of the business of government to compose
official prayers … the Regent's prayer are inconsistent both with the
purposes of the Establishment Clause and
the Establishment Clause itself." The reaction from Senator Sam
Ervin of North Carolina was shared by many Christians, "I should
like to ask whether we would be far wrong in saying that in this
decision the Supreme Court has held that God is
unconstitutional and for that reason the public school
must be segregated against Him?"
-
"School Prayer" (Murray v. Curlett, 1963) was a lawsuit
initially brought against the school board of Baltimore because of
its establishment of a prayer in the schools at the start of the
day. The suit was brought by Madelyn Murray O’Hare, a militant left
wing Atheist with close ties to the American Communist Party,
and the local court judge
dismissed the petition stating, "It is abundantly clear that
petitioners' real objective is to drive every concept of religion
out of the public school system." The case went to the
Maryland Court of Appeals, and the court ruled, "Neither the First
nor the Fourteenth Amendment was intended
to stifle all rapport between religion and government." The Supreme
Court, however, found in favor of the plaintiff
thereby prohibiting prayer in schools. It was in this case that the
phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" was coined.
In fact, the phrase does not appear in the Constitution.
-
Reduction of pornography restrictions. Roth v. United States, (1957).
Samuel Roth ran a literary business and
was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing the sending
of "obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy" materials through the
mail for advertising and selling a publication called American
Aphrodite, containing literary erotica and nude photography.
David Alberts, who ran a mail-order business from Los Angeles,
was convicted under a California statute for publishing pictures
of "nude and scantily-clad women." Although the majority opinion
upheld the convictions, it redefined obscenity more strictly and
required that the offending material be taken in context with
the whole. This opened the door for more liberal interpretations
of pornography that resulted in an increased
judicial activism regarding pornographic material throughout the
1960’ and 70’.
-
Removal of restrictions on the teaching of evolution in schools.
The prohibition against teaching evolution had
been established as law in many states for decades. It was
during the Warren Court that the promotion of evolution and
prohibition of creation began. The case was
Epperson v. Arkansas, (1968). United States Supreme court
invalidated an Arkansas statute that prohibited the teaching of
evolution. The Court held the statute unconstitutional on
grounds that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
does not permit a state to require that teaching and learning
must be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any
particular religious sect or doctrine.
By the time Lyndon Johnson became president
all the pieces were in place for a major advancement of applied
Humanism. The Supreme Court
during, the period from 1969 to 1986, is the Burger Court
administered by Chief Justice Warren Burger.
The Burger Court was responsible for many decisions
that advanced Progressivism and
cause polarization between Humanism and
Christianity that remain today. Chief Justice Berger was readily
confirmed because of the consensus that he was a conservative
and would move the Supreme Court back to a more neutral
position. However, he was merely one moderate in a court with a
majority of liberals. Several of the more prominent decisions of
the Berger Court are summarized below.
-
Legalization of abortion. Roe v. Wade, (1973). The
Court held that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a
woman's decision to have an abortion. The decision set up the test for determining
the state’s right in regulating abortion as follows:
-
In the first trimester, the state's two interests in regulating
abortions are at their weakest, and so the state cannot restrict
a woman's right to an abortion
in any way.
-
In the second trimester, there is an increase in
the risks that an abortion poses to maternal health, and so the state may
regulate the abortion procedure only "in ways that are
reasonably related to maternal health."
-
In the third trimester, there is an increase in viability rates
and a corresponding greater state interest in prenatal life,
and so the state can choose to restrict or proscribe
abortion as it sees fit
("except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment,
for the preservation of the life or health of the mother").
This case set
the tone for an increasing legal tolerance for abortion.
The majority opinion included the following:
The judges recognize the
"sensitive and emotional" nature of the controversy; asserts that the
difficulty is further complicated by "population growth, pollution,
poverty, and racial overtones"; and describes how the court should
approach a problem of this character: "by constitutional
measurement, free of emotion and of predilection", but also (because
"[w]e seek earnestly to do this") by "medical and medical-legal
history and what that history reveals about man's attitudes toward
the abortion procedure over the centuries."
In other words,
judicial activism that considered politics,
the environment, and the changing attitude toward abortion
was a factor in the Court’s decision. The dissent included the
following comments:
· “The Constitution is made for people of
fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding
certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking
ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether
statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United
States.”
· “I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to
support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and
announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with
scarcely any reason or authority for its action,
invests that right with sufficient substance to override most
existing state abortion
statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the
50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative
importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the
one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on
the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court
perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its
judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of
judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.”
SOMETHING TO CONSIDER
It is legal, and Progressives claim responsible, to kill a human
fetus. However, if you break an eagle’s egg, you will go to prison.
Humanists place more value on the eagle than the human.
|
Essentially, the dissenting opinion pointed out that the
decision was not based on the Constitution
but was largely a mater of yielding to a popular trend. Another
reason given in the majority opinion was that the
Court could not find any historical precedent for making
abortion a crime. However,
by 1900, every state had laws that made abortion a crime. This
may be the finest hour for judicial activism
and the advancement of Humanism.
A part of the court’s decision in Wade vs. Roe that
caused much "head scratching" is Section IX,
In Section IX, the Court adds that there was no legal grounds for
factoring into this balancing test any right to life of the unborn fetus.
The fetus would have such a right if it were
defined as a legal person for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment,
but the original intent of the Constitution
(up to the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment in
1868) did not include protection of the unborn, according to the
Court. The Court emphasized that its determination of whether a
fetus can enjoy constitutional protection neither meant to
reference, nor intervene in, the question of when life begins:
We need not resolve the difficult question of when
life begins. When those
trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy,
and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the
judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is
not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
While the Court was struggling with whether a fetus
was "alive" or whether is was a person, courts in the majority of
states held that violence to a woman that cause her fetus to abort
was murder because the fetus was a person. A doctor that
aborts a baby in a clinic is just doing his legal right, should he
hit the same woman and cause her to abort the fetus, he is a
murderer. Indeed, this judicial inconsistency was a win for the
Progressives and this thinking would mark much of the Progressive
jurisprudence that followed.
-
Prohibition of teaching creation
in schools. McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education,
(1982). The Arkansas statute required public schools
to give balanced treatment to "creation-science" and "evolution-science". A
federal court held that a "balanced treatment" statute violated
the Establishment Clause[19]
of the U.S. Constitution. In a decision that
gave a detailed definition of the term "science," the court
declared that "creation science" is not in fact a science. The
court also found that the statute did not have a secular
purpose, noting that the statute used language peculiar to
creationist literature in emphasizing origins of life
as an aspect of the theory of evolution. While the subject of
life's origins is within the province of biology, the scientific
community does not consider the subject as part
of evolutionary theory, which assumes the existence of life and
is directed to an explanation of how life evolved after it
originated. The theory of evolution does not presuppose either
the absence or the presence of a creator. This last comment by
the Court is, in fact, not true. The very heart of the issue is
that evolution by natural selection precludes a divine
influence. To even hint at a Creator causes activist
judges heartburn. In addition, evolution
through solely natural means must include, as discussed in
Chapter 6, how the process began, i.e. how life began.
In 1987, in Edwards v. Aguillard, the
U.S. Supreme Court continued the reasoning of
McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education and held unconstitutional
Louisiana's "Creationism Act" that prohibited the
teaching of evolution in public schools,
except when it was accompanied by instruction in
"creation science." The Court found that, by
advancing the religious belief that a supernatural
being created humankind, which is embraced by the term creation
science, the act impermissibly endorses religion. In
addition, the Court found that the provision of a comprehensive
science education is undermined when it is forbidden
to teach evolution except when creation science is also taught. It
is interesting to note that the Establishment Clause does not
prohibit endorsement of religion, just the establishment of
religion. One of the most important federal holidays is
Christmas.
It has been argued that the application of the Establishment Clause
to prohibit teaching creation
in schools is an example of judicial activism
in that 1) there is no law establishing a
religion, 2) the Establishment Clause prohibits
Congress from establishing a religion but that
prohibition does not extend to states and 3) may violate the Free
Exercise Clause.
Although the examples above indicate the alarming trend of Humanism
gradually being applied to the American society, the real danger in
these examples is that judicial activists can quietly make legal
changes that would never pass in Congress. Faced with an agenda with
issues that would not be acceptable to the majority of Americans,
all you need is a Progressive president and a sufficient number of
like minded (or easily corrupted) members of Congress to appoint
activist Federal and Supreme Court
judges. Activist judges can do what the politicians do not have the
votes to accomplish. If necessary, they can even overturn laws
passed by the citizens.
1990 to 2010: The Polarization of America
By 1990, the leaders of the ‘60s and 70’s revolutionary groups had
matured, but still maintained their ideologies. Their goal remained
the same, but their methods were less overt and more acceptable to
the conservative majority of Americans. We again quote Winston
Churchill, "If a man is not a liberal
when he is young, he has no heart. If a man is not a
conservative when he is older, he has no head," unfortunately some
of the rebels of the 60’s did not make the transition. Marxism,
although now decriminalized, was not a good platform for
political activism. Environmentalism and Progressivism
were the new "in" labels. However, the principles
of Humanism, Socialism, and Marxism remained intact.
The liberal training recommended by Dr. Spock was well entrenched in
this generation’s psyche.
The period from 1900 to 1990 saw many changes, legal and social,
that advanced Humanism in the United States. Abortion
went from socially unacceptable and illegal to become legal and,
except for Christians and many who hold those principles, an
acceptable means of birth control. Homosexuality went from socially
disgusting and illegal to an acceptable sexual alternative and
legal. Publicly honoring God became illegal. Public
schools went from teaching biology without evolution,
to being required to teach evolution, to being prohibited from
teaching creation. Pornography, once relegated to the
darker elements of society had become open, readily available and a
"normal" part of human sexuality. Assisted suicides and euthanasia,
once considered murder, began to be accepted and legal in a few
states. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations
had morphed into the United Nations with
increasing power.
However, even though the past century had seen the advancement of
Humanism beyond anything anticipated, Progressives
considered their work incomplete. Their objective is to implement
the Humanist Manifesto
completely and to integrate Humanism into society legally and
culturally. Let us consider some of the more important legal
decisions that advanced Humanism since 1990.
-
Teenage abortion without parental notification.
Hodgson v. Minnesota, (1990). This case was a challenge to
a state law that required a minor to notify both biological
parents before having an abortion. The ACLU secured for teenagers the option
of going to court to obtain authorization for an abortion, when
they could not or would not comply with a parental notification
law.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional.
State v. Morales, (1992). Texas statute that criminalizes private sexual relations
between consenting adults of the same sex is unconstitutional.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional
Commonwealth v. Wasson, (1992). A Kentucky law against consensual sodomy
is unconstitutional.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional
City of Dallas v. England, (1993) Citing State v. Morales, Texas state appellate
court affirms lower court decision finding prohibition on hiring
gays and lesbians as police officers unconstitutional.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional
Campbell v. Sundquist, (1996). A Tennessee law against consensual sodomy
is held unconstitutional.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional
Powell v. Georgia, (1998). The Georgia
State Supreme Court finds the law making consensual sodomy a crime which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme
Court in Bowers to be unconstitutional as violating the
state Constitution's privacy protections.
-
Partial-birth abortion made constitutional.
Stenberg v. Carhart, (2000). The ACLU filed a
friend-of-the-court brief calling on the Court to invalidate
Nebraska's "partial-birth abortion"
ban. The Court decided for the plaintiff resulting in the
continuance of partial-birth abortion. This
allowed the killing of the baby as the crown of the head was
exposed.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional
Lawrence v. Texas, (2003). A Texas law making sodomy with
same-sex partners illegal, but not with opposite sex, is
unconstitutional. This case expressly overturns Bowers v. Hardwick.
[20]
The case was brought before the Court by the ACLU.
-
State laws prohibiting homosexual practice made unconstitutional State v. Limon.
The first case to rely on Lawrence v. Texas, as precedent,
Kansas law allowing for mixed-sex statutory rape to be punished
less severely than same-sex statutory rape is unconstitutional.
The radicals of the 60’s and 70’s were now entering
positions of power: in education, law, and politics.
The election of 2008 was a turning point in the implementation of
the Humanist philosophy through the
power of Progressive politics. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton
said she was a Progressive in the model of the
classical Progressives of the early 20th century and that
Margaret Sanger was one of her most admired
example. Recall that Margaret Sanger was the one who opened the door
that eventually led to legal abortion
and was eugenicist that proposed limiting births among the "less
desirable" components of society as well as more drastic actions to
limit the undesirables. However, Clinton’s loss in 2008 was not a
blow to Progressivism, the White House is now
full of the radicals raised on Spock’s philosophy, some admitted
Marxist, some who have associated with the President
were members of the SDS and Weather Underground.
However, the infiltration is in Congress as well. In
October 2009, the American Socialist Party (ASP)
released the names of 70 members of 111th
Congress who belong to their caucus,[21]
the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA). At the time the ASP released the list, there are 23
members of the Judiciary Committee, eleven of which are members of
the DSA.
As mentioned before, Progressivism is about
power, the power to implement Humanism in our
society. With control of our government by liberal Democrats,
the polarization of America is
becoming more apparent with every presidential speech, new law, and
each judicial decision. With so many Socialists on the Judicial
Committee, Progressives are in an excellent position to veer the
judicial climate toward the Humanist agenda.
Legal Agendas ~ Judicial Activism
The fundamental principle upon which the United States is built is a
"government of the people, for the people, and by the people." The
drafters of the Constitution were concerned that
the new government should not have unlimited power and that it
should be accountable to the people. The result was a government
divided into three branches that would provide checks and balances.
In theory, if one branch began to exert too much power the other two
could provide a check. However, what happens when one political
party or ideology controls all three branches? What happens if that
party is influenced by an ideology antagonistic to Christianity?
Federal judges are appointed for life and, in a perfect
world, are above and separate from politics. But this is not a
perfect world. When politicians with an agenda are in power for a
significant amount of time, they will be in a position to appoint
numerous judges with a philosophy sympathetic to
their agenda. In 1937, the New Deal Democrats
tried to pass a bill that would allow for the
appointment of more Justices to the Supreme Court
as well as the lower Federal Courts. This would allow the President
Roosevelt to pack the Judiciary with sympathetic judges in
sufficient number that his controversial policies would be upheld in
court. The bill failed but legislation is not necessary to achieve
the same goal. If ideologies such as Humanism become
a force in the government for a sufficiently long period, the
Judiciary will be stacked in favor of that ideology.
However, a biased Judiciary in itself is not sufficient to implement
Humanism. Cases that advance the Humanists agenda
must be brought before the courts. If the society in general does
not agree with the Humanist agenda, no one will
challenge issues such as illegal abortion,
prayer in schools, or pornography. There must be
an agent that will bring these issues before a liberal, activist
Judiciary so legal decisions can be rendered in
support of the Humanistic philosophy. Enter the
ACLU.
American Civil Liberties Union
Do steer away from making it look
like a Socialist enterprise ... We want also to look like patriots in
everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good
deal about the Constitution and what
our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we
are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our
institutions.
Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the ACLU
At its inception, the American Civil Liberties Bureau was organized
to help consciences objectors and those charged under the Espionage
Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Roger Nash Baldwin
became head of the organization in 1917. In 1920, the
name was changed to the American Civil Liberties Union,
with Baldwin continuing as president. Other
founders of the ACLU were Walter Nelles as chief counsel, Norman Thomas, William
Foster, Jeannette Rankin, Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, Albert DeSilver, Helen
Keller and Felix Frankfurter, who later became an Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. This group was strongly and
admittedly Humanist and Marxist. Here is a sampling of their ideologies.
-
Roger Baldwin: He is quoted as saying
"I joined. I
don’t regret being a part of the Communist tactic, which
increased the effectiveness of a good cause. I knew what I was
doing. I was not an innocent liberal. I wanted what the
Communists wanted."
He supported the Soviet Union, Communism
and Socialism in all its forms. After refusing to comply with a
draft notice, Baldwin deliberately violated the Selective
Service Act, which resulted in a celebrated trial and a jail
term of one year. Baldwin was raise as a Unitarian and credited
that to the formation of his philosophy. Another of his quotes that
define the objective of the ACLU is,
"I am for Socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing
the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the
abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those
who produce wealth. Communism is the goal."
-
William Foster: Foster was National Chairman of the Communist Party USA and a ACLU
co-founder. This Communist was famous for his 1932 quote:
"The establishment of an American Soviet government will involve the
confiscation of large landed estates in town and country, and
also, the whole body to forests, mineral deposits, lakes, rivers
and so on."
He was the author of Toward Soviet America.
-
Norman Thomas: Thomas was a Presbyterian minister and radical Socialist who
advocated the total abolition of Capitalism. He was also a
eugenicist, wanting to stop reproduction of "undesirables". He
ran as a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party a
total of 6 times.
-
Justice Felix Frankfurter: Frankfurter believed that
the authority of the Supreme Court would be reduced if it went too strongly
against public opinion and was an early advocate of judicial
activism.
The ACLU has numerous policies
that oppose the moral principles of Christianity and Christianity
itself. We will begin with the express goals of the ACLU regarding
religion, they are:[22]
-
Halt the singing of Christmas carols like "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger" in public
facilities;
-
Deny the tax-exempt status of all churches--yet maintaining it
for themselves as well as for various occult
groups;
-
Disallow prayer--not just in the public school classrooms, but
in locker rooms, sports arenas, graduation exercises, and
legislative assemblies;
-
Terminate all military and prison chaplains;
-
Deny Christian school children access to
publicly funded services;
-
Eliminate nativity scenes, crosses, and other Christian
symbols from public property;
-
Repeal all blue law statutes;
-
Prohibit voluntary Bible reading in public schools--even during free
time or after classes;
-
Remove the words "In God We Trust" from our coins;
-
Deny accreditation to science departments at Bible-believing Christian Universities;
-
Prevent the posting of the Ten Commandments
in classrooms;
-
Terminate all voucher programs and tuition tax credits for
private, i.e. parochial, schools;
-
Purge the words under God from the Pledge of
Allegiance
The ACLU was essentially on the fringe of Progressive activism,
defending anti-establishment activists and Marxists who went too
far, until 1925 when the Scopes
trial gained national attention. As mentioned previously in Chapter
8, the ACLU worked out a plan with John Scopes,
a high school teacher, in which Scopes would teach
evolution from a textbook that included a chapter
discussing Darwinian evolution. No one had objected to the lack of
evolution in the school. In fact, the community was
predominantly Christian and the verdict that found
Scopes guilty reflected the community’s position. No one’s civil
rights had been trampled upon. The case was contrived to test the
waters regarding the teaching of evolution in schools. Although the
ACLU lost the case, the notoriety they received was a significant
factor in their expansion beyond defending anti-establishment
activists. It should be noted that the ACLU won on appeal to a
liberal court. The tactic of conjuring up a problem where none
existed in order to press a Humanist agenda was
established and is still used today.
Below is a summary of some of the cases in which the ACLU
either initiated (as in the case of the Scopes
trial) or supported as a "Friend of the Court".
Cases Supporting Marxism
1925 Gitlow v. New York. The first ACLU
Supreme Court landmark. Though upholding the
defendant's conviction for distributing his call to overthrow the
government, the Court held, for the first time, that the Fourteenth
Amendment "incorporates" the free speech
clause of the First Amendment
and is, therefore, applicable to the states. That is, it is legal
to make statement calling for the overthrow of the government.
1927 Whitney v. California. Though the Court upheld a
conviction for membership in a group that advocated the overthrow of
the state, Justice Brandeis explained, in a separate opinion, that
under the "clear and present danger test" the strong presumption
must be in favor of "more speech, not enforced silence." That view,
which ultimately prevailed, laid the groundwork for modern First
Amendment law.
1937 DeJonge v. Oregon. A landmark First Amendment
case, in which the Court held that the
defendant's conviction under a state criminal syndication statute
merely for attending a peaceful Communist Party
rally violated his free speech rights.
1957 Watkins v. United States. Under the First Amendment,
the Court imposed limits on the investigative
powers of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which had
found a labor leader in contempt for refusing to answer questions
about his associates' membership in the Communist Party.
1958 Kent v. Dulles. The Court ruled that the State
Department had exceeded its authority in denying artist Rockwell
Kent a passport because he refused to sign a "non-Communist
affidavit." The right to travel, said the Court, is protected by the
Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
1967 Keyishian v. Board of Regents. A law, requiring New York
public school teachers to sign a loyalty oath, fell as a violation
of the First Amendment.
The decision, capped a series of unsuccessful challenges to both
federal and state loyalty and security programs. It rejected the
doctrine that public employment is a "privilege" to which government
can attach whatever conditions it pleased. This opened the door for
Marxists in the US government.
1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio. After the ACLU's 50-year struggle against laws punishing radical political
advocacy, the Court adopted the ACLU view of the First Amendment
-- which the government
could only penalize direct incitement to imminent lawless action and
invalidated the Smith Act and all state sedition laws restricting
radical political groups.
Cases Supporting Pornography
1946 Hannegan v. Esquire. A major case that opened the door
to pornography distribution. The Court severely
limited the Postmaster General's power to withhold mailing
privileges for allegedly "offensive" material.
1964 Jacobellis v. Ohio. Justice Potter Stewart's famous
statement, that although he could not define "obscenity," he "knew
it when he saw it," crowned the Court's overturning of a cinema
owner's conviction for showing "The Lovers".
Anti-religion cases and cases that oppose Christian principles
1947 Everson v. Board of Education. The Court found school
boards' reimbursement of the public transportation costs incurred by
parents whose children attended parochial schools constitutional,
but Justice Black's statement -- "In the words of Jefferson, the
clause...was intended to erect a 'wall of separation between church
and State'..." -- was the Court's first major utterance on the
meaning of Establishment Clause.
1962 Engel v. Vitale. In an 8-1 decision, the Court struck
down the New York State Regent's "nondenominational" school prayer,
holding that "It is no part of the business of government to compose
official prayers."
1963 Abingdon School District v. Schempp. Building on Engel
in another 8- 1 decision, the Court struck down Pennsylvania's
in-school Bible-reading law as a violation of the First
Amendment.
1965 U.S. v. Seeger. In one of the first anti-Vietnam War
decisions, the Court extended conscientious objector
status to those who do not necessarily believe in a supreme being,
but who oppose war based on sincere beliefs that are equivalent to
religious faith.
1968 Epperson v. Arkansas. The Court ruled that Arkansas had
violated the First Amendment,
which forbids official religion, with its ban on
teaching "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of
animals."
1971 U.S. v. Vuitch. The Court's first abortion
rights case, involving a doctor's appeal of his conviction for
performing an illegal abortion. The Court upheld the
constitutionality of the statute used to convict, but expanded the
"life and health of the woman" concept to include
psychological well-being, and ruled that the prosecution must prove
the abortion was not necessary for a woman's physical or mental
health.
1973 Roe v. Wade / Doe v. Bolton. One of the Court's most significant
decisions, Roe erased all existing criminal abortion
laws and recognized a woman's
constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. In Doe, the companion
case, the Court ruled that whether an abortion is "necessary" is the
attending physician's call, to be made in light of all factors
relevant to a woman's well-being.
1985 Wallace v. Jaffree. An important church-state separation
decision that found Alabama's "moment of silence" law, which
required public school children to take a moment "for meditation or
voluntary prayer," in violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.
1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey. A critical, though less
than total, victory for reproductive freedom. While upholding parts
of Pennsylvania's abortion
restriction, the Court also reaffirmed the "central holding" of Roe
v. Wade: that
abortions performed prior to viability cannot be criminalized.
1992 Lee v. Weisman. The Court ruled that any
officially-sanctioned prayer at public school graduation ceremonies
violates the Establishment Clause.
The ACLU
is well funded by Progressives who want to implement the Humanist
agenda and this financing enables the ACLU to employ
a tactic that furthers Humanism without litigation – extortion. An
example of this tactic is the ACLU agenda to eliminate any element
of Christianity from the public schools. If a school has a holiday program and plans to
include a Christmas song, the ACLU will approach the school board and threaten to sue
to prevent the song. The school board may be supportive of the
Christmas song, but faced with the expense of litigation against the
well-funded ACLU, they yield to the demand and take the song off the
program. This type of extortion occurs all the time.
However, Progressive lawyers, by themselves, are not sufficient to
change the laws established by the Constitution,
the American society, and Congress. To change the
laws that would uproot the moral fabric of America requires the
cooperation of like-mined activist judges.
Judicial Activism
As Progressive politics grew in power, the Humanist
philosophy grew within the judicial system.
Politicians select the judges who serve in the Federal Courts. When
conservatives are in power, they appoint conservative judges and,
when liberals are in power they appoint liberal judges. This is not
merely a party designation within the political system because
conservatives and liberals can be found in both parties. However,
Democrats have a much higher percentage of liberals,
Progressives, Humanist, and far left liberals than the Republicans
do.
Beginning with Oliver Wendell Holmes,
the Supreme Court, and eventually the entire
Federal Court system, began the adoption of legal realism.
The legal realists advanced two general claims: 1) Law is
indeterminate and judges, accordingly, must and do often draw on
extralegal considerations to resolve the disputes before them, 2)
The best answer to the question "What is (the) law?" is "Whatever
judges or other relevant officials do". This philosophy
opened the door to judicial activism
in which a judge can bring his or her
personal philosophies into the decision making process.
A complete discussion of judicial activism
must include judicial precedent. Judicial
precedent originated with English common law as a means of
maintaining consistency in areas where there is no codified law
(statutes) and the judge makes a decision based solely
on the conditions and facts of the case. The judge essentially makes
the law. When a similar case comes before another judge, that judge
relies heavily on the previous decision when deciding the case
before him. This assures consistency and uniformity within the
judicial system when there is no written law. It is referred to as
"case law." Where there are laws established by a legislative body,
the need for precedent should be limited since the primary guide to
the decision is the written law. However, with the rise of
Progressive politics and the appointment of activist judges,
judicial precedent has been increasingly applied
to decisions involving statutory law. A comparison
of the effects of decisions made by judicial conservatives and
judicial activists is given in Figure 7.
Figure 7A, describes judicial conservatism that consistently uses
the written law as the primary guide in every case. If precedent is
used in a previous case, the judge may or may not rely
on that precedent in the case before him. For instance, if the judge
considers the precedent in a previous case inconsistent with the
written law, he would ignore the findings in the previous case when
considering the case before him. Figure 7B, describes judicial
activism that consistently uses precedent in
making decisions regarding written law. If the
precedent is well established but results in inconsistency with the
written law, the judicial activist will rule based more on the
precedent than the written law.
In the case of a Federal Court, for example, Figure 7 shows the
results of each judicial philosophy. In the case of
judicial conservatism (A), decisions are made
within the confines of the written Constitution.
Decision "B" veered slightly from the constitutional limits and the
judge did not give great weight to decision "B" when
making decision "C". Decision "C" remains well within the
constitutional boundaries as do following decisions.
In Figure 7B, decisions are made with judicial
activism that relies on precedent as much or
more than written law. Decision "A" veered slightly from
constitutional intent and, when case "B" was being considered,
decision "A" was relied upon as much as the written law. Since the
judge in case "B" was an activist, decision "B" veered a
little more in the direction of the judge’s philosophy.
These errors are accumulative and process continues
until decision "D" is far outside the intent of the written law.
This is how it is possible for the Constitution
to make the restriction that Congress shall make no
law restricting the free exercise of religion to
Federal Court decision prohibiting private prayer in schools.
|
Figure 7. Graphical comparison between the effects of judicial
conservatism with limited precedent application and judicial
activism with excessive precedent application.
|
When liberal Progressives are in power in the executive and
legislative branches of government, irregardless of party
affiliation, the Humanist ideology inevitably becomes
the driving force in judicial activism.
Progressives will appoint like-minded liberals to the bench. If
possible, the tie to the ACLU will
be strengthened and in the case of
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a current Justice of the Supreme Court, who was the first director of the
ACLU's Women's Rights Project. Another example is Stephen Reinhardt,
Ninth Circuit Judge, appointed by Jimmy Carter, considered to be one of the most
liberal judges in the Federal Court system. His decisions have been
the most overturned by the Supreme Court of all Circuit Court
judges. His connection to the ACLU is rather intimate, His wife,
Ramona Ripston, is the Executive Director of the Southern
California chapter of the ACLU. That chapter of the ACLU brings most
of their appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court. Bedroom side bars?
There are many examples of judicial activism (and unfortunately the
number is increasing) but we will consider three significant areas
here. Both abortion and Christian activities in public have been challenged by the activist with a
logic that can only be explained by judicial activism with extreme bias. In addition, the concept of
eugenics, popular during the 1920’s, was supported by the "father of judicial activism", Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes in a remarkably biased decision.
Abortion: Within minutes of conception, the genetic material of the sperm and egg
combine to produce a unique DNA. That DNA defines the individual and is the same throughout the
fetal development and throughout that person’s life. There is no specific point when you can define an
organic change in the individual in which before that point the fetus is not a
person and after that point the fetus is a person because the
fetus is a human throughout its existence. The fact that there is
biological change in the womb makes no difference; our bodies are
continually changing before birth, after birth, and for the rest of
our lives after birth. The DNA in the fetus is human, that is a
confirmed scientific fact universally acknowledged. The fetus is
human from conception.
Courts throughout the nation recognize this fact and
if an act of violence is committed upon a pregnant woman resulting
in the death of the fetus, at any stage of development, the
assailant is arrested for murder of the fetus. However, the judicial
activist want to support abortion because they buy into the
Humanist philosophy and want to further its inclusion in society. The
Supreme Court decided that, in the case of abortion, the woman has the right to the
privacy of her body and, the fetus is part of her body (even though
it has unique DNA different from hers). Further, the court does not
know when a fetus become a "legal person" so they cannot confer a
constitutional right to life on the fetus, even though a murdered
fetus is granted that right. The abortion decisions are more that just bias and activism on
steroids, they border on incompetence. Let us examine the logic of
these illustrious justices.
First, it must be acknowledged that the fetus is
human and, for the justice using normal logic, that should end the
argument—do not kill other humans. However, a justice with an agenda
must resort to a type of convoluted reasoning some call legalese.
The Supreme Court activists resort to legal definitions. While it
must be accepted that the fetus is a human being, they claim that in
order to confer protection on the human fetus, the fetus must be a
legal person according to the Fourteenth Amendment. What does the
Fourteenth Amendment say about this?
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any
person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of the laws.
The Court’s opinion included some creative reasoning. In
Section IX, the Court adds that there was no legal grounds for
factoring into this balancing test any right to life of the unborn
fetus. The fetus would have such a right if it were defined as a
legal person for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, but the
original intent of the Constitution (up to the enactment of the
Fourteenth Amendment in 1868) did not include protection of the
unborn, according to the Court. The Court emphasized that its
determination of whether a fetus can enjoy constitutional protection
neither meant to reference, nor intervene in, the question of when
life begins:
We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.
When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine,
philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the
judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is
not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
Recall that scientist agree that the fetus is human and the question
before the court is whether to kill it or not. You cannot kill
something if it is not alive in the first place. The Supreme Court
Justices are considering
whether it is legal to kill a human fetus and cannot get their minds
around the issue of whether it is alive or not. Instead of
struggling with that issue, which can only lead to the conclusion
that it is illegal to kill a fetus, they perform a legal slight of
hand that would impress Houdini. They claim that, in order to
prevent killing the fetus, it must be proven that the fetus is a
person According to the Fourteen Amendment, only then could it be
given due process protection. If first you don’t succeed …
The dictionary definition of a person is simple and straightforward:
A human being. Science determined that the fetus is a living human
being so one would think the illustrious justices in all their
wisdom could get their minds around that fact, but that would no
yield the conclusion their Humanist agenda requires. The justices
claim that in order to receive the constitutional protection of
life, the fetus must meet the definition of a legal person.
This is an interesting approach to a difficult problem. Common
usage, and common sense, says that a human being is a person. If the
activist justices use that approach, they have to rule abortion
illegal. They do not want to do that, so they redefine
person.
Biology requires the fetus be considered a living human person as
defined by common use in the dictionary. In law, it is the common
use of a term that is used unless expanded or modified for specific
reason in a statute. Up to this point, the term legal person
had never been applied to a human being. It was used to give a
particular legal status to non-human entities such as corporations,
labor organizations, partnerships, associations, trustees and so
forth. Always the status of legal person was conferred by statue;
the legislature not the judiciary conferred the status, and only to
an organization. The judicial activist had to step over the
constitutional separation of powers and redefine person in
the case of a fetus. For the first time, the term legal person was
applied to a human being. Are you still with us? And they wonder why
lawyers have such a bad reputation.
The Fourteen Amendment was passed in 1868 as a means of conferring
full constitutional rights to African- Americans whose right had
been denied. The wording does not expand the meaning of person it
merely extends its inclusion to those whose rights had been denied.
The justices on the Supreme Court
knew this. However, this gave them the opening they needed. Now
came an example of judicial gymnastics that would win a gold medal
in the Olympics. The Court said that, since the original
constitution did not expressly confer rights to the fetus as a legal
person and the Fourteenth Amendment did not expressly confer right
to the fetus, the fetus did not have a right to constitutional
protection! According to this thinking, the only rights YOU have are
those expressly stated in the constitution. That is exactly the
opposite of the reality. The purpose of the constitution was to
establish a federal government and restrict its power. The
government only has the right expressly stated in the constitution,
the individual’s right come from God. If the Supreme Court cannot
find a reason to reject abortion in the constitution or the
amendments, it is a matter of state jurisdiction or congress to make
a law. But the states did make laws making abortion illegal and
congress never pressed for a federal law on the matter because it
was too sensitive an issue and political suicide. However, the
judicial activists usurp the authority established by the
constitution and made their own law. One might understand this if it
occurred in a lower court, but the Supreme Court is the nations last
resort to protect the constitution.
The majority opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun. He wrote
that the judges recognize the "sensitive and emotional" nature of
the controversy and that the difficulty is further complicated by
"population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones". He
then described how the court should approach a problem of this
character: "by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of
predilection", but also (because "[w]e seek earnestly to do this")
by "medical and medical-legal history and what that history reveals
about man's attitudes toward the abortion procedure over the
centuries." In other words, the decision was based on population
growth, pollution, poverty, race, and society’s attitude toward
abortion, not the law. This is the definition of legal activism.
Anti-Christianity: The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Supreme Court
breaks this phrase into two clauses. The
Establishment Clause refers to "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The Free
Exercise Clause refers to the remainder
of the sentence, "…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The
activist interpretations made by the Court broaden the Establishment
Clause to go far beyond its stated intention.
-
The restriction prohibiting Congress from
making a law establishing a religion was expanded
to include states, cities, school districts, and most public
venues. This violates state sovereignty.
-
The Establishment Clause refers to
the passing of legislation but the Court broadened this to
include any religious activity as a part of a public function
even if it is not regulated, nondenominational, and voluntary.
-
The courts have prohibited the display of Christian
symbols in public venues but allowed the display of
Jewish and Islam symbols, stating that the later are
not religious.
At the same time, the Supreme Court has
virtually ignored the Free Exercise Clause.
-
Christians are not allowed to hold a Bible study on
school grounds.
-
Prayer, in any form now is prohibited in most
public functions.
-
University professors may not discuss their faith.
-
Pastors may not mention the political aspect of social issues
from the pulpit.
Eugenics: Earlier in the chapter we discussed the effort by elitist
Humanist to promote eugenics in an effort to
"improve" the human race by eliminating the "undesirables" in our
society. Margaret Sanger championed birth
control in the areas populated by the poor and undesirable element
of society. even today family planning clinics are predominantly in
neighborhoods populated by African-Americans, Hispanics, and others
the elite deem undesirable. This mind-set reached its peak in the
1920’s and by that time several states had enacted laws the required
forced sterilization of the "feebleminded",
epileptic, handicapped, and those deemed to be inferior and likely
to contaminate the gene pool.
Carrie Buck was a 17-year old woman who was poor, ignorant and had
given birth to a child that resulted from her rape by a member of
her foster family. Carrie’s Mother had been committed to a state
institution for being promiscuous. At the time promiscuity could be
interpreted as a symptom of mental deficiency. Be cause Carrie had a
child out of wedlock, authorities made the same "diagnosis" for
Carrie and proposed that Carrie’s child, Vivien, would turn out to
be an "imbecile" like her mother and grandmother. The proposed to
sterilize Carrie to prevent further contamination of the human gene
pool. The case went as far as the U. S. supreme Court.
The prosecution presented several experts in eugenics
and they gave evidence that people like Carrie Buck caused the
human gene pool to degrade and could eventually cause humanity to
"devolve" because natural selection would normally eliminate these
undesirable individuals but in a civilized society they can survive
and continue to breed. Even then eugenics was considered
pseudo-science by the reputable scientific community, but it was an
important element of the Humanist philosophy espoused by the social
elite.
In his opinion written for the majority of the Supreme Court
in the case, Justice Holmes stated, "three
generations of imbeciles is enough." No one had investigated the
mental competency of either Carrie Buck or her mother, however, it
was a convenient means of eliminating those considered "less than
optimum for the improvement of the human race." On October 19,
1927, Carrie was sterilized. Judicial activists in America
implemented racial purification long before Adolph Hitler and his
Nazi "super race" put these ideas into practice.
Earlier In the book, I mentioned Aristotle’s quote,
"Law is mind without reason." What would he say about
judicial activism?
Progressive Education
We've been unwilling to work continuously with high school kids as
we did in building up college chapters. We will only reach the high
school kids who are in motion by being in the schoolyards, hangouts
and on the streets on an everyday basis. From a neighborhood base,
high school kids could be effectively tied in to struggles around
other institutions and issues, and to the anti-imperialist movement
as a whole.[23]
Children who know how to think for themselves
spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming
where everyone is interdependent.[24]
Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will
adopt to further the cultural revolution are...[a] National
Department of Education...the studies will be revolutionized, being
cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the
bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian
dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of
the new Socialist society.[25]
To some extent, liberal thinking has always been associated with
universities ever since the Renaissance. However,
liberalism became the predominant position among university
professors and administrators in the 60’s.The target of these
Progressives is the young mind. Not all professors are liberal,
however the number is significant and appears to be growing. The
vast majority of university professors identify themselves as
liberal and vote Democrat. A study conducted by Neil Gross of
Harvard University and Solon Simmons of George Mason University
gives a profile of university professors in America.[26]
The results are given in the tables below.
Table 4. Political orientation of American university professors.
|
Extremely liberal
|
9.4%
|
Liberal
|
37.7%
|
Slightly liberal
|
18.1%
|
Middle of the road
|
18.0%
|
Slightly conservative
|
10.5%
|
Conservative
|
8.0%
|
Very conservative
|
1.2%
|
Table 5. Political orientation of faculty members by sector.
|
Sector |
Liberal |
Moderate |
Conservative |
Community colleges |
37.1% |
43.9% |
19.0% |
Bachelor's, non-liberal arts |
38.8% |
48.5% |
12.7% |
Liberal arts colleges |
61.0% |
35.1% |
3.9% |
Ph.D.-granting, non-elite |
44.3% |
51.9% |
3.8% |
Ph.D.-granting, elite |
56.6% |
33.1% |
10.2% |
Table 6. Political of orientation of faculty members by age.
|
Age |
Liberal |
Moderate |
Conservative |
26-35 |
32.5% |
60.0% |
7.5% |
36-49 |
41.5% |
49.9% |
8.6% |
50-64 |
49.4% |
42.7% |
7.9% |
65+ |
36.9% |
52.3% |
10.8% |
Table 7. Percentage of Faculty
Members, by Age, Identifying as Left Radicals or Activists
|
Age |
Left Radicals |
Left Activists |
26-35 |
3.8% |
1.3% |
36-49 |
9.9% |
11.5% |
50-64 |
14.3% |
17.2% |
The survey also identified the professors very liberal on issues
that affect Christians. For example, the study
showed that 74.7 percent believe it should be possible for a
pregnant woman to obtain an abortion
for any reason and 68.7 percent think there is nothing
wrong with homosexual relationships.
There is an interesting observation regarding Table 7. Notice that
the percentage of liberal activists and radicals
increases with age. In most cases, people become more conservative
with age but apparently, with Progressives the opposite is true.
However, these are not Progressives found in the general population,
they are academics. Recall the radical of the 60’s and 70’s, the SDS
and Weather Underground. As in
the case of politics, they are now resident in our universities.
And, because of typical advancement policies in universities, many
are in positions where they can influence curricula and tenure
approvals.
Author Lovejoy and John Dewey, the same John Dewey who established
Progressivism in public education,
founded the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) in 1915. Among the association’s goals is to
establish academic freedom and tenure.
These were not always part of a professor’s benefits
package. Prior to AAUP, the universities had control over curricula
and could fire a professor for teaching against the policies of the
university. Academic freedom means that a professor can teach
whatever he or she wants and tenure means there is nothing the
university can do about it – at least they cannot dismiss the
professor. In 1967, the Supreme Court case, Keyishian v. The Board of Regents,
the Court established the constitutionality of academic freedom and that
such freedom can be interpreted differently as social conditions
change. This was judicial activism without apology.
Other goals of the AAUP are[27]
greater faculty control of university curriculum, greater faculty
control over awarding tenure, removal
of accreditation of religious institutes of higher education,
more say in university budgets, just to name a few.
Faculty control over curricula and tenure means no accountability. A
majority of liberal professors on a faculty (the norm) can block
legitimate professors from research grants, tenure, and publishing.
This is the reason evolutionary scientists who
challenge Evolutionism are never heard. It is
also the reason issues such as global warming
are biased to the left and can be used as a tool to promote
Humanism agendas. The AAUP has been criticized for censuring religious universities,
such as Brigham Young University and Catholic University of America, because many do not
adhere to the academic freedom defined by the AAUP. The AAUP website publishes a list of censured
universities and colleges.
How successful has liberal bias been in our universities and
colleges? Jill Laster in her article College Makes Students More Liberal,
but Not Smarter About Civics[28]
cites Richard Brake’s report from the Institute of Civil Literacy,
The Shaping of the American Mind.
The institute found that people who had attained at least a
bachelor's degree were more likely than Americans whose formal
education ended with a high-school diploma to take a
liberal stance on certain controversial social issues. For example,
39 percent of people whose highest level of education was a
bachelor's degree supported same-sex marriage, compared with 25
percent with a high-school diploma. The trend continues with
advanced degrees: About 46 percent of people with master's degrees
supported same-sex marriage, as did 43 percent of people with
Ph.D.s.
The survey found that, in general, a college education does not
bring students up to a high level of civics knowledge. According to
the institute's 2008 report, based on a survey of 2,500, people
whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor's
degree correctly answered 57 percent of the questions, on average.
That is three percentage points lower than a passing grade,
according to the survey's authors. An earlier survey showed that
years in college were only slightly correlated to civics expertise.
For a 2006 report, the institute surveyed 14,000 college freshmen
and seniors on basic civics questions. It found seniors answered an
average of 53 percent of the questions correctly, just 1.5 percent
higher than freshmen.
And your education! Is
not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under
which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of
society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented
the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the
influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the
family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and
child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of
Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn
asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of
commerce and instruments of labor.
Communist Manifesto
|
This raises the question: If our teachers are being processed
through these Progressivism factories with
questionable results, how good is public school education
today? Laster’s article quotes Brake, "College
graduates, whether it be current or graduated in the past, seem to
have difficulty knowing basic things about our government and our
history," Mr. Brake said. "Does college share all the blame? Of
course not — this is a systemic problem, from K through 12 and all
the way up. But universities train our teachers and train our
leaders, so they play a role."
In her book, The Deliberate Dumbing of America, Charlotte
Thomson Iserbyt, former Senior
Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, blew the whistle
on the Progressive agenda, directed by the
government to purposely crash our education system.
Her observations are particularly shocking when compared to the
Humanist agenda (Appendix 3). Her most disturbing
claim is that the public school curriculum is designed to prepare
our children to work in a world economy,
directed by a world government. And this has been growing on for
decades. The question is, why?
A dumb population that does not use critical thought and is
discouraged from challenging and questioning the established
consensus is much easier for the "puppet masters" to manipulate. All
dictators know this. Whenever there is a revolution and the
established society is overthrown, the first to be eliminated are
the academics, writers, philosophers, and theologians. These are the
strength of a democracy, but they are a threat to a socialistic
society and the social engineering that implements the liberal
Progressive program. This is why the
children are being indoctrinated in the public schools.
Evolution, secularism, sexual promiscuity and deviation, drugs,
atheism–and that is just in elementary schools. Things really get
interesting in high school. We often get upset over the possibility
of socialized medicine. However, our public school system has been
socialized from the beginning. There is more to the education
problem than Atheism and morals. Brian
Arner[29] cites the following statistics.
-
United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York
Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
-
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in
mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
-
One-third of our science teachers and one-half of our math
teachers did not major in those subjects.
-
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth.
Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once
a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
-
"The International Adult Literacy Survey ... found that
Americans with less than nine years of education
'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'"
(Jeremy Rifkin's, The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of
the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78.)
-
Our workers are so ignorant, and lack so many basic skills, that
American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial
training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
No discussion regarding American education and its
influence on the Humanism-Christianity conflict would
be complete without mentioning the National Education Association
(NEA). The NEA is the largest
union in America and is one of the key players in implementing
Humanism and the Progressive agenda. Appendix 4 list several
statements from the Tenth Yearbook of the Nation Education
Association (1932) that describes the founding principles of the
organization. Two examples are given here,
...Emotional conditioning does determine a great deal of one's
attitudes toward persons, things, and ideas, and is responsible for
a large part of one's outlook on life.
Conditioning is therefore a process which may be employed by the
teacher or parent to build up attitudes in the child and predispose
him to the actions by which these attitudes are expressed.
Presumably, the person, which has specialized in child psychology
and other sciences, is better prepared to engineer a group of boys
and girls in certain socialized activities than is the lay
parent ...
And your education! Is
not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under
which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of
society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented
the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the
influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the
family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and
child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of
Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn
asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of
commerce and instruments of labor.
Communist Manifesto
|
More examples are given in Appendix 4 and they present an alarming
representation of what philosophy is guiding
teachers in our public school. The problem is not merely poor
academic performance; the real problem is that our children are
being indoctrinated with the Humanist Manifesto.
Sex education in public schools has gone a long
way past the birds and the bees. In some school districts, children
are taught how to perform sex acts – graphically. And those classes
are not limited to how to perform heterosexual acts; the children
are taught how to perform homosexual acts and there
have been report of some teachers encouraging student to try them
out. Practice makes perfect?
The Wellesley, Massachusetts middle school on May
25, 2010, took a class to a large mosque where the
students prostrated themselves, prayed to Allah, then heard a sermon
from the Imam. Where was the ACLU?
Imagine what an outcry we would hear if that class went to a
Catholic Church to hear Mass or
an Evangelical revival. The bias is obvious and
connection between Humanism and Islam is
discussed in the section below and in Chapter 14. It would appear
that John Dewey’s vision of Progressive Education needs some
revision; perhaps back the basics would be a good start.
However, Humanism is
not limited to American schools. The United Nations
education program was approved in 1946 at
the first United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) General Conference. One of the
first items on its agenda was the creation of "A
Study Of Education For International Understanding in the primary
and secondary schools and in institutions of higher learning of
Member States, to be conducted by the Member States with the
assistance of the UNESCO Secretariat." Each nation was required to
conduct a study of how textbooks treated the subject of
international agencies and world government. The National Education
Association in 1954 published a
book (in compliance with UNESCO) to instruct educators in the proper
methods of teaching children about the benefits of world government.
It had specific chapters dealing with each benefit and one chapter
on how to develop world-minded teachers. The issue of altering world
history through educational textbooks was so important that two
chapters were dedicated entirely to that subject. We will discuss
the issue of world government and the role it plays in the
Humanism-Christianity conflict in the next chapter.
A Religion Without God
In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer,
the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened
sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort
to promote social well-being.
Humanist Manifesto 1
|
Humanism in its purest form is atheistic. Humanists
have no use for a religion that teaches there is a
God, there is sin, and all men need salvation.
If you want to send a Humanist into
orbit, just mention Jesus! Marx said
that religion was the opiate of the masses and that could be the
slogan of Humanism. In fact, Marx got the concept from Humanist
philosophers. However, as in the case of politics and education,
Progressives know that religion cannot be eliminated
directly and a gradual process of social engineering must be used.
Unitarianism
You may have noticed that many of the persons named in our previous
discussions have something in common – Unitarianism.
The Humanist Manifestos were written
by Unitarians and most of the signatories were
Unitarian. Charles Darwin and his family were
Unitarians as was John Dewey, Roger Nash Baldwin and
Supreme Court Justice Harold Hitz Burton
to name a few. In fact, all the major players
in the implementation of the Humanist-Marxist-Progressive agenda are Unitarians.
Unitarianism first
emerged in Europe in the 17th century in Transylvania.
The philosophies of the Enlightenment were developing an Atheism
that was opposed to Christianity and Unitarianism filled the gap
between these spiritual poles. It became a formalized religion
in England in 1774. However, the underlying philosophy
of Unitarianism was not new, in fact, it is the
millennia-old heresy of Arianism that plagued the Early Church.
Unitarianism
appeared in the congregational churches in Massachusetts as a
reaction against the revivalism of the Great Awakening (1740-43). By
the late-18th century, Unitarianism was popular among the Harvard
elite, and emerged full bloom in the early-19th century as a
rational, liberal religion that rejected the divinity
of Christ as well as the Calvinist view
of Man as spiritually degenerate. Unitarianism was the predominant
religion in Boston during the 19th century. The
Unitarians believed that man was not only morally
perfectible, but that education was the only true
way to salvation. Since they believed that evil was
caused by ignorance, poverty, and social injustice, they were
convinced that only a good liberal education, provided by the
government at no charge, would solve society's problems. As one
might expect, Unitarianism is in direct contradiction to
Christianity. Below is a summary of the major area of difference
between Unitarianism and Christianity.
Source of Authority: The Unitarians deny the divine
inspiration and absolute authority of the Scriptures.
They claim the Bible was merely the creation
of men, and therefore, the Bible contains many
"inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and errors." They substitute human
reason for revelation as their source of authority, and
believe there are no absolute or infallible guides, including
reason. In fact, Unitarians desire a world religion
that "draws from and honors the teachings of all of the great
religious traditions.
Trinity: Unitarians deny that one God
exists in three Persons. Instead, they claim that
Trinitarian doctrine was added by the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325.
God: The Unitarians hold a variety of
liberal views about God: Some do not believe that he is a person,
but instead claim he is an impersonal spirit, a natural force, or a
principle. Some even claim that he is a created being, not
supernatural. Others even deny his existence
completely.
Jesus Christ: Unitarians deny the deity of
Christ--that he is not God and Savior, but only a good man and
teacher. They claim that the apostles and other
Christian writers added to the Scriptures the
teachings concerning Christ's atonement for sin.
Salvation: Unitarians teach that the essence of
salvation is character development ("deeds not
creeds"), rather than faith in Jesus Christ.
It is a social gospel that reigns supreme and allows
every person to do whatever is right in his own eyes as long as he
is sincere about it.
Hell: Unitarians hold the belief that no one will
be eternally condemned. They, therefore, deny the existence of hell,
claiming it is unreasonable for a loving God to send
people to a place of eternal torment. They believe that we suffer
the consequences of sin in this life only.
The Unitarian rejection of the Trinity, divinity of
Jesus, and salvation gave them a certain
amount of common ground with Islam. Unitarianism
and Islam have, in fact, a long history of
commonality--opposition to Christianity.
Unitarians and Muslims both believe that the New Testament is an uncertain guide to the
actual events of this early period. Muslims regard the books of the
New Testament as mainly the product of the followers of Paul
of Tarsus, who did not know Jesus, but whose followers became dominant.
The Unitarian agreement with Islam
regarding Christianity is clearly stated:
"Islam is a corrective to, not an aberration from,
Christianity." Islam and Unitarian – The Quest for Truth and
Justice is An excellent article showing the bond between Islam
and Unitarianism.[31] It should be noted here that
Unitarianism accepts all religious pursuits except Christianity. We
will discuss the impact this union has on the polarization
of American in Chapter 14.
Collective Salvation
"And recognizing that my fate remains tied up with their fates, that my
individual salvation is not going to come about without a
collective salvation for the country."
President Barak Obama [32]
"It’s because you have an obligation to
yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation."
President Barak Obama [33]
Wherever you find a Progressive, there is a good chance you will find a
person who believes in collective salvation. Not all
Progressive have that philosophy, but an increasing number do. If a Humanist has any "religion", it will be collective salvation. Humanism is Atheism. However, Atheism is poor
politics; at least it used to be. For the Progressive politician,
collective salvation is a convenient way to appear religious and not
deny his Atheism.
Collective salvation began with the teachings of
Liberation Theology, a movement that began in Latin America in some
segments of the Roman Catholic Church.
It developed into several related philosophies,
such as Black Liberation Theology, Social Justice
Theology, Eco-Theology. However, the underlying philosophy
is much the same in each case. Essentially,
Liberation Theology requires three fundamental elements:
-
an oppressed group
-
a group identified as the oppressor
-
a set of philosophical/theological principles to glue a
different worldview and the teachings of Jesus into
one convenient package of social action to correct the gap
between the "oppressed" and the "oppressor," a social gospel.
The common thread through these
philosophies and collective salvation is Marxism.
The key ingredient of this social gospel is social
justice as is human rights. The salvation of
Liberation Theology consists of three requirements:
-
Historical inequities insofar as they affect current injustices
should be corrected until the actual inequities no longer exist
or have been perceptively "negated". For example, the injustices
inflicted on the Blacks in the past (slavery, segregation, and
social and economic inequalities) must be corrected by
compensations to the current generation of Blacks.
-
The redistribution of wealth, power and status for the
individual, community and societal good.
-
Those in power are responsible to ensure a basic quality of life
for all its citizens. This may be the Church
or it may be government.
This concept, like so many concepts found in Humanism,
sounds good on the surface, but has a rotten core. Like the words
of one of the more famous Social Justice
advocates:
In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and
shall choose the path of social justice…, the path of faith,
the path of hope, and the path of love toward our
fellow man.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Whereas Christianity is interested in the individual, Social Justice
is concerned with the group, a collective. An
"oppressed" group is identified with a corresponding "oppressor"
group. Members of the oppressor group can only find salvation
by correcting the injustices inflicted on the oppressed
group. As long as there are poor in our society, we must work out
our salvation through programs that eliminate poverty. For the
Progressive (and Marxist), Capitalism
is an oppressor and the only way to individual "salvation" is
through the collectivism of Socialism. The concept of collective
salvation can only recognize a good in Christianity in as much as
there is a social gospel of works, the Social
Church mentioned in Chapter 4. Faith has no meaningful part in
salvation – particularly faith in Jesus as a
Savior rather than merely a teacher.
Collective salvation is a religion of
secularism. Religion raises the question: Whom do
you believe in? The Christian believes in God
and is begotten son, Jesus. Collective salvation
puts faith in humans and is a quasi-religious
manifestation of Humanism.
The Two Faces of Environmentalism
The environmental movement mirrors the evolution
movement. In both cases, there is a rigorous
scientific component and a philosophical component with a Humanist
agenda. The methods used to promote Evolutionism,
discussed in Part 1, are remarkably similar to
those being used to promote a philosophical Environmentalism. The
objectives of Evolutionism and Environmentalism are strikingly
similar as well.
Very few will honestly disagree with the need to protect our
environment, prevent pollution, clean up areas that present a danger
to our health, and assure that we all enjoy a healthy environment.
These are the goals of the environmental
scientists. However, there are elements that use the label
"environment" as a political tool as in the case of "evolution" as
discussed previously. Whereas Evolutionism was used as a tool to
challenge creation being taught in public schools, and eventually anything at
all associated with Christianity, Environmentalism is being used to
establish a world government (HM2, Articles 12 through 17). Steven
Bernstein has written an excellent summary of
how liberal Environmentalism is transforming into a global
governance program.[34]
During the 60’s, many of the young "rebels" looked to alternative
religions for spiritual satisfaction. Hinduism, Buddhism, and the
emerging New Age Movement grew in popularity,
as well as European paganism. Atheism and the concept
of humans evolving from the earth and only a more advanced animal
merged with the growing Environmentalism movements. Today there is a
movement to make ecology a religion. This is a predominant premise
of the "deep ecologists." A few quotes will define this new religion
that attempts to merge Christianity with pagan earth worship.
Theologians in this area (of ecological concern) are contributing
new understandings of incarnation as the Logos of the entire
universe, of sacraments as containing sacred elements of nature, of
ritual as reflecting the great seasonal cycles, and of ethics as
embracing eco-justice. The theological formulation of this is
expanding the traditions and grounding religious practice in a
larger sense of significance.
Where does this leave us? I believe, with a sense of hope
regarding the alliance of religion and ecology. That is
because it is both a field and a force: a field growing within
academia, which is trying to break down its "silo disciplines" and
enter into an interdisciplinary conversation for a sustainable
future; and a force of empowerment on the ground and in religious
institutions, for religious leaders and laity alike.
(Mary Evelyn Tucker, in Love God Heal Earth)
Rev. Canon Sally G.
Bingham, p.199-200.
When Jesus of Nazareth arose from his grave, the first person to
see him was Mary of Magdala. It is no accident that at first
she mistook him for the gardener. Jesus is the gardener,
arisen to redeem all of creation. Christ the gardener has returned.
This is the good news. God's plan for the redemption is no
less bold or powerful that his original, creative one. The
difference is that, although we were not part of his original
creative team, we are invited to be on the redemptive one.
Caring for creation is not a new theology, rather, it has simply
been forgotten.
J. Matthew Sleeth, M.D., The Green Bible, p.I-22.
Out of these movements came a new philosophy of
the order of nature. The scriptural order of nature has
earth and inanimate objects at the bottom and humans on top. The
secular order of nature is just the opposite, with humans on the
bottom, as shown in Figure 8. The secular sees humanity as a disease
that is infecting the living earth, Gaia.
We became the Earth’s infection a long and uncertain time ago
when we first used fire and tools purposefully. But it was not
until about 200 years ago that the long incubation period ended and
the Industrial Revolution began; then the infection of the Earth
became irreversible. Ironically this was the time when Malthus first
warned of the danger, and James Hutton and Erasmus Darwin first
glimpsed the nature of a living Earth.
Individuals occasionally suffer a disease called polycythaemia,
on overpopulation of red blood cells. By analogy, Gaia’s illness
could be called polyanthroponemia, where humans overpopulate until
they do more harm than good.
James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, p.233.
|
Figure 8. A comparison between the scriptural order of nature and
the secular order of nature.
|
It is the secular order of nature that forms the basic
philosophy of the Environmentalists. It is this
philosophical order of nature that allows an environmental
regulation that stops farming on thousands of acres
in California in order to protect a small minnow. It is his
philosophy that places more value on an eagle’s embryo than a human
embryo as mentioned above. It is this philosophy that exposes the
hypocrisy of Humanism that claims to promote the
advance of humanity while at the same time devolving the human
condition. The young rebels were naïve and the Progressives saw the
opportunity to use their secular Environmentalism as they did
Evolutionism to promote their movement.
Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no
difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of
difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.
Sri Aurobindo
|
During the decades from 1970 to 1990, the Eco-socialism
movement gained considerable influence and
organization. Eco-socialism is based on the principle that
Capitalism and private ownership allows environmental
degradation whereas Socialism would allow for the
control of the environment in a more responsible way. This is ironic
considering the rape of the environment by Communist countries.
However, in the liberal camp facts are a nuisance that one must not
allow to interfere with policies and decisions.
Economic globalization by Capitalist was seen as the cause of much
of the environmental degradation in developing countries and the
creation of poverty and exploitation of the people.
In this way, ecology was linked to social justice. The goal of the
Eco-socialist is to establish a worldwide Socialist approach to the
control and financing of environmental protection. They share that
goal with the United Nations and the
International Monetary Fund to name just two international
organizations.
Already in the process of being implemented is the
effort to establish a World Government (Humanist Manifesto 2,
Articles 12 through 15). The method is surprisingly similar to that
used for manipulating evolution to further Atheism
and oppose Christianity. In this case, it is
climate change.
The warnings of a global warming crisis
are based on computer models. Under the best of
conditions, computer models predicting tomorrow’s weather are less
than perfect; but predicting climate change over 50 or 100 years is
just speculation. The earth’s weather systems are too complex. There
are too many variables. Any computer model is only as good as the
program and the data used in the calculations. If the programming
makes inaccurate assumptions (and, in this case there are many
assumptions) or data is incomplete or erroneous, then the computer’s
answer will be wrong. The classic computer programmer’s motto:
garbage in, garbage out. However, if one wanted to show that the
world is headed for a climate crisis, it is a
simple matter to do so. Merely adjust the program and make
assumptions that move the answer to show a looming crisis. And, of
course, the data used must be accurate and honest.
The New York Times reported[35]
that email messages between prominent American and British climate
researchers were obtained that indicated a rather unscientific bias
among some of the global warming advocates in the scientific
community. The messages revealed the use of
statistical tricks to indicate climate warming when no such warming
was supported by the data. Other data that contradicts climate
change was withheld. These scientists were puzzled by the lack of
warming and presented incorrect information to support their bias
toward global warming. Recall the scientific method (Chapter 3).
Here the "scientists" changed the observations to fit their
hypothesis. Real scientists change their hypothesis
to fit the observations. There may be a crisis or not.
As in the case of evolution, we just do not know.
However, whether or not there is evidence of global warming
is not the issue. The crisis is just a tool to
justify a Humanist agenda. The important issue for
the Humanist is that there is a perceived crisis.
Liberal scientists funded by liberal
Progressive political elements press
the issue. Many established scientists have published articles that
challenge the global warming position. For
example, Michael Crichton, in his book
State of Fear, cites over 50 publications in scientific and
profession journals by reputable scientists that challenge the
science behind the "climate change crisis." However, as
in the case of evolution, the politically motivated
"establishment consensus" dismisses these objections outright. In
the meantime, our children are taught that we must do whatever is
possible to correct this "crisis". They assure us that the existence
of the crisis is supported by statistics and computer models. Who
can argue with that? But remember Einstein's
comment,
"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable."
As every scientist knows, statistics are pliable enough to agree
with the research grant objectives.
The United Nations is in the forefront of this
movement. The climate change initiatives sponsored by the UN have
the two elements aimed at furthering the establishment of a world
government.
-
Tax developed nations that emit excessive amount of CO2 and
disburse the funds to less developed countries.
-
Establish a world government administrative agency to enforce
the regulations, collect the taxes, and disburse the funds.
United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon,
in a New York Times op-ed published 25 October 2009, stated that
climate change initiatives "must include an equitable global
governance structure." It does not matter whether there is global
warming or not. Just as the real purpose of
Evolutionism is to establish an Atheistic
society, the purpose of the climate change "emergency" is to
establish a world government. Or, at least begin the slide down that
slippery slope.
The Intimidation of Political Correctness
We have devoted this chapter so far
to the political implementation of the Humanist agenda through the
power of Progressive politics, judicial activism, and other
influences that force Humanism onto the American populace. However,
there is another influence at work that is much more subtle,
political correctness. Politically correct is a term which denotes
language, ideas, policies, or behavior that seeks to minimize social and
institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural,
sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, and age-related
contexts. Politically incorrect connotes
language, ideas, and behavior unconstrained by a perceived orthodoxy or
by concerns about offending or expressing bias regarding various
groups of people.
The question is: who defines what is politically correct and what is politically incorrect? One man’s
political incorrectness is another man’s truth. There is no question
that, in a civilized society, all must be sensitive to each other’s
feelings. A civilized society is civil. However, acceptance and
sensitivity to another person’s activities or beliefs has limits. In
our society, one is not politically correct if he accepts a
neo-Nazi’s advocacy of killing Jews. However, in Nazi Germany in the
‘40’s such opposition was indeed politically correct. Political
correctness is determined by those in society who have the influence
to set such standards, usually the media, academia, and the government.
During the ‘70’s, political correctness emerged with the concept of gender
neutrality. It was politically incorrect to refer to a fireman or a
policeman—they are a fireperson or a policeperson. The concept was
expanded to include race, Black was out African-American was in. Is
a person of Egyptian or an Algerian decent an African
American? Drugs have become recreational. Eventually
political correctness expanded to the point that late-night talk
show comedians found great material for their monologues with
examples of PC.
However, the Progressives have used political correctness as a tool for their agenda in support of the
political judicial, and educational activism. It is politically
incorrect to deny global climate change. It is politically incorrect
to say abortion is murder, that is insensitive to the poor girl. The
derogatory terms that referred to homosexuals are replaced by "gay"
and "alternative sexuality". It is politically incorrect to refer to
Jehadist terrorists as Muslim. Although a public holiday, it is
politically incorrect to wish someone "merry Christmas". That
might offend a non-Christian. It is politically incorrect to mention
Jesus. That might offend everyone! It is politically correct to refer to, often with a smirk, Evangelical
Christians as far right extremists. Who cares about their
sensitivities? It is politically correct to refer to Creationists as
ignorant and superstitious. The bias is obvious and there is no
question who is setting the political correctness standards. Such political correctness has
saturated the media and is taught in the schools. It
intimidates and prepares the public mind-set to accept the
Progressive agenda. It is subtle, but it is extremely effective.
As mentioned earlier, Humanism defines sin only as an infraction
against society. In that case, society defines sin. How does society
define sin? Society defines political incorrectness as a social sin
and political correctness is imposed on the society. Is that
dogmatic? If a teacher mentions Jesus in the classroom, activist
judges say she has committed an illegal act. But the word police say
she has sinned. Social sins are replacing sins against God. The
impact is subtle but profound.
Our thoughts are formed in words. Restrictions on words can restrict
our thinking. Children are taught the politically correct rhetoric
that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle and those who voice
the opinion that homosexuality is a perversion of nature are
chastised for committing a social sin. Children cannot mention Jesus
in school, wear a crucifix, or include anything Christian in
Christmas because it is politically incorrect, a social sin. What
effect will years of this indoctrination have on the child?
~
Writing this chapter has been something of an adventure. There is an
old saying that states, "If you want to really learn a subject,
teach it." I can attest to the truth of that having taught science
and engineering. I would like to expand on that saying, "If you want
to really know a subject, write a book about it." When I began
writing, I thought I had a good grasp of the subject. And I did, as
far as it went. However, as I continued my research, I found myself
being drawn in deeper and into new areas. This was particularly true
of this chapter. I was already aware of the fundamental conflict
between Evolutionists and Christians and how Humanism
was at the root of the dispute. I was already aware of the Humanist
rejection of Christianity and most of the moral
principles held by Christians. I had a good understanding of the
philosophical development of Humanism and its increasing
pervasiveness in our society. I thought I had enough to write this
book. I was wrong. I had just scratched the surface. The subject is
much more complicated and convoluted than I originally thought; in
writing this book, I learned a lot.
For instance, I now know that, while evolution in
itself is a major point of conflict between Humanists and
Christians, it has a greater role to play in developing the Humanist
agenda. It is a tool that opens usually locked doors
and allow the slide down several slippery slopes in the
implementation of the Humanist philosophy. It is a
thread woven throughout the fabric of Humanism and
Humanism’s agents of implementation, Marxism and
Progressivism.
I also came to realize that the Progressives are patient and
perseverant. It has taken a century for the Humanist
agenda to grow from something Americans rejected to a predominant
force in politics and society. There have been several setbacks to
their agenda, however, in each case, they regroup and move forward.
The Progressives are organized and clever. I learned that Humanists
are united by a common philosophy; an ideology, a
purpose that tends to coordinate itself. It is not a conspiracy in
which some people got together and devised a master plan. Yes there
were groups that devised the Humanist Manifesto,
Progressives, the Socialist and Communist
Parties, and, perhaps many other like-minded groups such as SDS
and the Weather Underground.
However, the glue that binds them into a common cause is their
commitment to Humanism. This allows liberal political
agendas to be supported by activist judges. It
allows scientists to ignore rigor and the scientific method
in their research in order to support
questionable dogmas of Humanism. It allows the teachers to readily
buy into the propaganda and include the Humanist philosophy in
classroom curriculum. It allows the Church
to be contaminated with a social gospel that supports
Humanism but cannot be found anywhere n the Bible. As an
example of how these groups work together, consciously or
unconsciously, is given in Table 8, below. The table compare the
Communist implementation schedule, taken from the Communist
Manifesto, and how it is being implemented
by Humanist groups.
Table 8. A comparison between the
implementation agenda given in the Communist Manifesto
and the actions of Progressives over the past century.
COMMUNIST AGENDA* |
PROGRESSIVE IMPLEMENTATION |
Abolition of
property in land and application of all rents of land to
public purposes. |
See Figure 13, below. Federal land ownership is currently
approximately 25% of total of all land in the U.S. Those
states with the greatest federal ownership are: AK-60%,
NV-81%, UT-63%, ID-61%, and WY-43%[36]
|
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. |
Woodrow Wilson
16th Amendment established a progressive income
tax that is now more aggressive than progressive.
|
Abolition of all rights of inheritance. |
Woodrow Wilson
16th Amendment (1913) included provision for
inheritance taxes. Currently, the federal tax on estates is
varies around 40% and states take their share on top of
that.
|
Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means
of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive
monopoly.
|
Woodrow Wilson
The Federal Reserve Act that
established a central federal bank to control monetary
policy.
F. Roosevelt
Emergency Banking Act (1933) Gave the President the ability
to declare a national emergency and have absolute control
over the national finances and foreign exchange of the
United States in the event of an emergency.
|
Centralization of the means of communication and transport
in the hands of the State.
|
F. Roosevelt
Federal, Emergency Railroad Transportation Act (1935)
Federal Communications Commission (1934)
D. Eisenhower
1958, a law was passed that
removed of control state governments over petitions
railroads might file to abandon various local passenger
services.a
Lyndon Johnson
Urban Mass Transportation Act (1964) This began the process
of federal control over mass transportation.
|
Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial
armies, especially for agriculture.
|
Socialist unions leadership guides the "armies
of workers" to support the Progressive agenda. |
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries;
gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and
country by a more equable distribution of the populace over
the country.
|
F. Roosevelt
Agriculture Adjustment Act (1933) Reduced crop surplus,
effectively raising the value of crops, thereby a portion of
their fields lie fallow. The money for these subsidies was generated through an
exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products.
|
Free education for
all children in public schools. Combination of education
with industrial production.
|
J. Carter
Dept. of Education Organization Act (1979)
|
*Note: All statements taken directly from the Communist Manifesto.
a) This immediately resulted in the closing down of several
important commuter rail services, and many others were perceived as
under serious threat. Many historians cite this law as the
single-most important factor in the emergence of a new program of
federal financial assistance for mass transportation.
|
|
Figure 13. Percent of federally owned land in each state. As the
amount of federally owned land continues to increase, state sovereignty
proportionally decreases.
|
The Progressives learned that the direct approach is not successful
in their effort to fundamentally change the American society and
politics against the people’s will. A gradual process is called for;
one that nudges us along the path so slowly that we do not realize
what has happened until it is too late.
The most disturbing thing I learned is that Humanism is not humane.
Humanism is for the selected few with social and educational
achievement. Through selective birth control and abortion, the less
successful elements of our society are discouraged from reproducing.
The moral standards of Christianity that place man above the animals
is mocked.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned is that both Humanist
and Christians are fixed in place. Their beliefs are
diametrically opposed. Their positions are different at the basic
and fundamental level. The differences are organic; no compromise is
possible on either side. The polarization is
intense and immutable. If one advances, the other retreats. It is a
zero-sum game and both sides believe it is the only game in town.
[1] Marxists Internet Archive: J. T. Murphy, Trade Unions and Socialism
[2] Marxists Internet Archive: J. T. Murphy, Trade Unions and Socialism
[3] Source: Interview on the Glenn Beck program, Fox News, November 3, 2009.
[4] Source: The Blaze,
https://www.theblaze.com/stories/key-obama-ally-works-with-socialists-for-global-tax/
[5] https://socialequality.com/node/603
[6] https://nopolicestatecoalition.blogspot.com/2010/09/afl-cio-president-richard-trumka-and.html
[7] https://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/?q=node/1011
[8] The Blaze, 6 January 2011
[9] The following quotes are from Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (1922).
[10] Decision of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Buck vs. Bell
[11] Bertrand Russell, "ICARUS or the Future of Science" (1924)
[12] George Bernard Shaw, Lecture to the Eugenics Education Society, Reported in The Daily Express, March 4, 1910.
[13] George Bernard Shaw, Prefaces (London: Constable and Co., 1934), p. 296.
[14] H.G. Wells, Mankind in the Making, Chapter II, (1903)
[15] Black’s Law Dictionary
[16] America's Teacher Unions, https://www.knology.net/~bilrum/neaaft.htm
[17] Social Democrats, USA website, https://www.socialdemocratsusa.org/
[18] The National Education Association’s Tenth Yearbook
[19] The First Amendment's reference to religious freedom: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" is broken into two clauses. The Establishment Clause refers to "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The Free Exercise Clause refers to the remainder of the
sentence.
[20] The Supreme Court had accepted Bowers v. Hardwick, a challenge to the sodomy law of Georgia. The Court upheld Georgia's sodomy law on June 30, 1986, ruling that there was no privacy right to engage in homosexual sodomy.
[21] Source: Tysk News, https://www.tysknews.com/depts/gov_philosophy/dsa_members.htm
[22] ACLU Policy Guide, 159-190.
[23] You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows, 1969, Karin Asbley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Home Machtinger, Jim Mellen, Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd and Steve Tappis. This is considered to be the "Manifesto" of the Weather Underground Movement.
[24] ohn Dewey, 1899
[25] Toward Soviet America, William Z. Foster, National Chairman of the American Communists, 1932
[26] The Social and Political Views of American Professor, presented at a Harvard University Symposium. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/08/politics
[27] AAUP website https://www.aaup.org
[28] The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2010
[29] https://www.brianarner.com/weblog/archives/001527.html
[30] An address to the congregation of the Unitarian Peace Memorial Church, Melbourne, Australia, April 13, 2003
[31] https://www.islamfortoday.com/cleland05.htm
[32] Xavier University Commencement Address, August 11, 2006
[33] Wesleyan Commencement Address, May 25, 2008:
[34] Liberal Environmentalism and Global Environmental Governance, EBSCO Publishing, 2008
[35] Andrew C. Revkin, November 20, 2009
[36] Natural resource Council of Maine (https://www.nrcm.org/documents/publiclandownership.pdf)
Copyright © 2011 by Patrick Vosse
All Rights Reserved
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