Did you hear in the mainstream media about the scores of attacks, including some firebombings, of the Planned Parenthood facilities by pro-life extremists?

Did you hear about the harassment of the pro-abortion politicians and judges for their pro-choice stance?

You didn’t? Neither did I, because none of those things happened. But the mainstream media has for the most part ignored the multiple churches and pro-life facilities that have been attacked in one way or another by pro-abortion forces in the last several weeks. Indeed, if they had been mosques or abortion providers, we would hear over and over about all this.

To add insult to injury, the loving services that the crisis pregnancy centers provide is being woefully distorted by many, including Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Senator Warren said last week: “In Massachusetts right now, those crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber true abortion clinics by three to one. We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that.”

Pregnancy centers “torture” women? How blind can these people be? The crisis pregnancy centers, now in the cross hairs of the left, provide loving alternatives to abortion.

Through no help of the government, they provide millions of dollars of services—at no charge to the mothers they serve.

Micaiah Bilger of lifenews.com reports that “$266 million of free medical services and resources” are provided per year by these pregnancy centers.

The attack against pro-life churches and facilities was highlighted in the Capitol recently by Congressman Jim Jordan who read a litany of the dozens of attacks since the May 2 leak of the draft of the Dobbs decision. Yet the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives just voted against a measure to condemn these attacks.

Recently I spoke on a radio segment with Jim Harden, the president of Compass Care, a ministry that helps women with crisis pregnancies. Their center in Buffalo (technically, Amherst), New York, was firebombed on June 7^th, and he told me that the perpetrators were “the pro-abortion terrorist group known as Jane’s Revenge. They’ve taken responsibility for scores of attacks on pro-life organizations since the leak of the Dobbs case.”

I asked Harden, isn’t it illegal to firebomb any building—say a candy factory, much less a charity providing loving services to those in need (although the left doesn’t view it as charity)? He answered, “An arson attack is just below murder in the criminal justice system because it carries too much potential damage and threat to life.”

He told our listeners that so far there have been no leads from the police or the FBI as to suspects. He said that friends in nearby offices were able to provide office space so that Compass Care could continue to serve the mothers in need. They did not miss a day serving, despite the firebombing.

In a follow-up call this week, he told me there have now been, all over the nation, “over 100 attacks where prolife people gather, with no arrests to date.”

His organization is dedicated to rebuilding the facility, which had to be gutted, costing $300,000-$400,000.

Crisis pregnancy centers are doing the Lord’s work, but today it is “open season” on them, thanks in part to the Marxist organization, “Jane’s Revenge.”

Meanwhile, there has been an on-going harassment against pro-life justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. These were illegal acts when the pro-death party was trying to intimidate them to change their opinion.

Now the left is even going after pro-life individuals at home.

Writer Alicia Powe notes, “An attorney who founded the Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic law firm, was attacked as abortion activists threw smoke bombs and firecrackers at his house following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. The insurgents surrounded the home of pro-life lawyer Thomas Brejcha, in Evanston, Illinois.”

I’ve interviewed Tom Brejcha through the years. He once said of the pro-life cause in general: “This is a spiritual battle. This is not just a legal battle. And prayer is the ultimate resource. We need divine intervention…This is God’s work to protect the dignity and value of every human being.”

Is this the America the left is bringing to us, where the full force of government is on the side of death? This is indeed a spiritual battle. Our founders said that our first right granted by the Creator is the “right to life.” But the left seems more committed to death than life.

---

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

You know you’re living in the dark, deceitful, and depraved Upside Down when a U.S. Senator—a woman no less—says what inveterate liar Elizabeth Warren recently said:

Crisis pregnancy centers … are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help. … We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that.

Nope, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) do not “exist to fool people who are looking for pregnancy termination help.” Crisis pregnancy centers exist to help women who believe the only one way to deal with a crisis pregnancy is to terminate the life of their child. Crisis pregnancy centers exist to shine light into the shadowy, deceptive “reproductive health services” propaganda leftists like Warren spew.

CPCs offer ultrasounds in order to provide women with objective, conclusive proof that a human is growing inside them—not a nothing as the left deceitfully suggests. Crisis pregnancy centers offer resources like diapers, maternity clothes, and parenting classes to help young mothers and fathers feel less overwhelmed.

It’s ironic that Warren—the fake Native American—would bring up fooling people. It’s doubly ironic that the fake Native American would bring up “fooling people” in the context of abortion.

The human slaughter lobby has made an art of trying to fool people. They used to call the human fetus “a blob of tissue” and a “clump of cells.” Well, to be fair, I suppose all humans at any stage of development, born or soon-to-be-born, could be deemed blobs of tissue or clumps of cells, but we human blobs and clumps are special kinds of blobs and clumps. And when each of us was in our mother’s wombs, we were blobs and clumps composed of rapidly dividing and differentiating cells with a complex design.

When the blobs and clumps tomfoolery was exposed and became unsustainable, the Warrens of the world began referring to human fetuses as tumor-analogues and parasites. Then leftists admitted that fetuses growing in women’s bodies are human, but they’re not—in the view of leftists—persons.

Deceivers like Warren are trying to fool people into believing that some people who become pregnant are not women, hence Warren’s deceitful term “pregnant person.” All pregnant persons are women. So committed to deception is Warren that she won’t admit that a human in a woman’s womb is a person but will pretend that some men are pregnant “persons.”

Warren tries to fool people when she refers to “pregnancy termination.” That, obviously, is a euphemism, for human termination—the leftist final solution to a crisis pregnancy.

Of Warren’s many grotesque deceptions, perhaps the worst is describing what takes place in a CPC as torturing pregnant persons. While Warren supports, celebrates, and promotes procedures that dismember the bodies and crush the skulls of tiny, innocent humans in their mothers’ wombs, she calls efforts to persuade mothers not to do this “torture.”

The social justice warrior and human rights activist Warren does what all cultural regressives do when faced with speech they hate: She has called for the cancellation of all CPCs in the entire country.

Not yet able to shut down all CPCs, ironist Warren and some U.S. Senate collaborators (Bob Menendez, Mazie Hirono, Brian Schatz, Cory Booker, Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Patty Murray, Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, Diane Feinstein, Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Ed Markey, and Mark Warner) have an interim plan. They have sponsored a bill to punish CPCs.

One of the ironic reasons they offer for the bill is that “CPCs target under-resourced neighborhoods and communities of color, including Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and immigrant communities.” The bill doesn’t, however, mention the reason CPCs are located in those neighborhoods. They are located there because Planned Parenthood clinics—founded by racist, eugenicist Margaret Sanger—has long targeted impoverished communities of color.

The bill, titled the “Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act” (SAD Act) would “direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting disinformation in the advertising of abortion services.”

The bill accuses CPCs of “routinely … disseminating inaccurate, misleading, and stigmatizing information about the risks of abortion and contraception, and using illegitimate or false citations to imply that deceptive claims are supported by legitimate medical sources.”

Maybe while they’re at it, the FTC could require abortion clinics to advertise that they routinely kill humans.

Elsewhere in the bill, Warren and her fellow abortion cheerleaders refer to the purported use of “misleading statements” by CPCs. Non-profit CPCs that are found to include “misleading” information—as defined by leftists—will be fined up to $100,000 or “50 percent of the revenues earned by the ultimate parent entity” of the non-profit charity.

Warren and her collaborators are trying to transform the FTC into their much longed-for Ministry of Truth/Disinformation Board.

While Warren blathers on about “reproductive rights,” she says nothing about the right of humans in the womb merely to exist. After all, no woman has to raise a child she finds inconvenient or burdensome, or a child who interferes with a mother’s plans for living an authentic life, or a child whose life the mother believes is unworthy of life.

In the conflict between a woman’s “reproductive rights” and a living human’s right to continued existence, it should be obvious that the right to exist is a right of a higher moral order. In fact, it’s the right upon which all other rights depend.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative and Illinois’ U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to vote against S. 4469, the SAD Act. Pro-life crisis pregnancy centers help women through stressful, emotional trials. They not only provide free spiritual/emotional/health care for women, but food, clothes and whatever help is needed. Some CPCs help women find jobs, child care, provide living arrangements and vehicles. They do that so that women don’t feel forced by circumstances or abortion cheerleaders to abort a baby.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SEN-Warren-Wants-to-Ban-All-Crisis-Pregnancy-Centers.mp3

---

It is an unfortunate fact that very few Americans today are familiar with the principles of common law. If they are familiar with it at all, many assume it to be something akin to the fact that if you live together unmarried for 7 years, you are considered to be legally married. In other words, the idea of law that is unwritten yet practiced.  In truth, there is much more to it than that.  Central to common law is the idea that law can be discovered but not made. This is grounded in the principle of “higher law – the concept that there is a law higher than any government’s law.

Richard Maybury is widely regarded as one of the top free-market writers in America and is the author of the “Uncle Eric” series of books which introduces young people to the principles on which our country’s legal and economic system was founded. His book Whatever Happened to Justice has some profound things to say about common law and its connection to the abortion issue.  Quoted in Mayberry’s book is Terry Eastland who reiterates the concept: “Up until the 1930’s the idea was understood that a judge is merely an interpreter of established law.” Law is found by judges, not made.

And the criteria for “finding” this law are the two common law principles of “do all you have agreed to do” and “do not encroach on other persons or their property.” Common law principles were at the heart of what corrected the atrocity of slavery where human beings were being regarded as property. Through the process of “discovering, not making” law, the truth was found “all are created equal,” “all are persons,” and “all should have equal protection under the law.”

Likewise, at the heart of the abortion debate is the definition of the word “person.” What is a person? Is it connected to– intelligence? A beating heart? Two cells that have fused and begun to be “formed in a woman’s inward parts?” These questions deserve discussion and answers within the context of higher law. And while higher law has a connection with religion and truth, those answers aren’t religious issues; they are human issues. I can be an atheist and understand the truth of personhood–the reality that  “humans are not property,” that “persons” have a right to life.

The beauty of common law is it allows for the debate for finding truth, for finding higher law and ensuring it forms the basis of actual law. But now we are in danger of political law, or made-up law, taking over when so much is at stake. For central to the abortion debate, and erroneously so, is the idea that mere men and women can make up law.

It explains why legislators such as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren are ranting and raving and losing their minds screaming “the majority of Americans don’t want Roe Vs. Wade overturned,” revealing their view that the decision should be made by what most people want rather than by what is right. The essential question is not, “Do the majority of Americans want Roe Vs. Wade to stand; the essential question is   “What says Higher Law?”

This is where the Nuremberg Trials come in. While the German people originally recognized the killing of any innocent life as murder, political law–made-up law–crept in. Political leaders, with the cooperation of judges, slowly changed the law. Legalizing the killing of the mentally incompetent and making their way to the killing of millions of Jews and those trying to rescue them.

They were killed by those following “the law.” Were the perpetrators right? Were they excused? Was “political law” vindicated? The Nuremberg Trials  answered with a resounding “NO!” Nazi defendants arguing they were “just following the law” were held accountable not to political law, but to higher law. Judges in the trial declared, “The fact that the defendant acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility.”

The impact of that decision was three-fold: 1) there is a higher law than any government’s law; 2) we are all obliged to obey it; 3) and courts must seek out and enforce higher law. The “seeking out’ is what common law is all about. Rather than make up laws, law must be discovered through religious and philosophical principles.

In the current political realm, we are at a crossroads. Will the right to life for the unborn  be settled through a constitutional amendment? Will it be decided by majority rule?

The potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe Vs. Wade and send it back to the states where it belongs is a hopeful first step. But, it mustn’t end there. Once back in the states, the issue must be searched out, questioned, and explored. The definition of personhood must be determined. The principles of higher law must be applied. It MUST not be left in the hands of “majority rule.”

In the words of Richard Maybury, if majority rule decides the abortion issue:

“The right to life, yours, mine, and everybody else’s will be regarded not as a given, not as a gift from the Creator, but as a gift from the voters. And the voters can change their minds. The victory of political law will be complete. Nuremberg will be gone, and no one’s life will be safe. Our legal system will be sitting squarely on the same foundation as Nazi Germany.”

---

For those who have been enjoying the waning days of summer away from news and social media, basking maskless by a refreshing body of water or hiking in a cool forest with a face as naked as a newborn babe’s, here’s what set ablaze the perpetually burning neurons of leftists: Texas banned all abortions performed on small humans whose hearts are beating and made anyone who facilitates the illegal killing of humans with beating hearts open to litigation. Sounds reasonable to me, but then again, I’ve never been a fan of killing defenseless humans who have committed no crime.

Following Texas’ prohibition of human slaughter after the first six weeks of life, the left lost what’s left of their minds.

With their feticidal minds unhinged at the prospect of mothers not being free to hire hitmen who identify as “physicians” to off their offspring, leftists proved again why they’re not known for skill in the use of evidence, sound analogical thinking, respect for science, respect for human rights, coherence, consistency, or morality.

Let’s take a cursory look at the darn things cultural regressives are muttering, sputtering, and tweeting:

Joe Biden, the self-identifying Catholic who claims his “avocation” is theology, recently said,

I respect people who … don’t support Roe v. Wade. I respect their views. I respect … those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that. Don’t agree, but I respect that.

But wait, in 2015 Biden said,

I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other God-fearing, non-God-fearing people that have a different view.

So, which is it? Does he believe that at the moment of conception a new human life comes into existence or does he not? If not, what new science convinced him between age 72 and 78 that the union of human egg and sperm no longer marks the beginning of the life of a new human being?

(As an aside, why can’t leftists who claim to believe that women can be born in men’s bodies and that men can menstruate and give birth be like Biden and respect the views of God-fearing and non-God-fearing people who disagree?)

Disgraceful CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, brother of disgraced former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, tried to suggest that 6-week-old human fetuses don’t have heartbeats because they don’t have hearts. The Mayo Clinic dares to dissent:

Growth is rapid this week [sixth week]. Just four weeks after conception, the neural tube along your baby’s back is closing. The baby’s brain and spinal cord will develop from the neural tube. The heart and other organs also are starting to form and the heart begins to beat.

Please note, the Mayo Clinic refers to the baby as a “baby.”

CNN’s Joy Reid fretted that the Texas law signals the Handmaid’s Tale is coming to America—you know, the story of fertile breeding women being forced to have sex with ruling elite men while their wives watch. Reid’s guest, failed presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, nodding in agreement, fretted about the law’s impact on the “most vulnerable among us”:

This law is about bearing down on the most vulnerable among us. It’s bearing down on the woman, or the transperson, or the nonbinary who’s workin’ three jobs.

Warren views pregnant “transpersons” who are workin’ three jobs as more vulnerable than the babies whom they seek to kill.

Bette Midler tweeted,

I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress.

Midler forgot to specify the direct object of the transitive verb “choose.” To be clear, she means the right to choose to have incipient human life killed.

I completely agree with Midler that if a woman plans to chemically starve her baby fetus or have her fetus dismembered as her back-up contraception plan, it’s best she not have sex.

Millionaire leftist co-founders of the ridesharing company Lyft, Logan Green and John Zimmer, have gone all out in support of killing tiny humans:

Lyft is donating $1 million to Planned Parenthood to help ensure that transportation is never a barrier to healthcare access.

Killing humans is not “healthcare” no matter how many times leftists use this Newspeakian euphemism. Anyone who cares about the health of womb-dwellers ought not use Lyft.

And any leftist who believes that practices that have a “disparate impact” on persons of color are racist practices should know that black babies are killed in utero at much higher rates than are white babies:

Black women have been experiencing induced abortions at a rate nearly 4 times that of White women for at least 3 decades, and likely much longer. … In the current unfolding environment, there may be no better metric for the value of Black lives.

The millions of dollars donated by racists Green and Zimmer are going to facilitate the racist practices of Planned Parenthood.

The ever-snippy White House spokesperson Jen Psaki scolded a reporter for asking about how Biden reconciles his Catholic faith with his support for human slaughter. Psaki’s retort was revelatory in that it demonstrated how un-woke she is.

Without even asking for the reporter’s pronouns, Psaki just assumed the reporter was a man, presumably because he looks like a man and sounds like a man. Psaki asserted presumptuously that the reporter has never been pregnant. How does she know? Doesn’t Psaki know that in the woke playbook, some women have men’s bodies, and some men have women’s bodies and can get pregnant? I guess Psaki is an intolerant, hateful, ignorant bigot.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin claimed that the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Texas law constitutes “a real blow against the U.S. Supreme Court’s institutional reputation.”  It’s strange to hear Toobin, who pleasured himself on a work Zoom call, express concern over “reputation.” But then again, Toobin has a vested interest in keeping abortion legal: He pressured a former paramour with whom he had had an extramarital affair to abort their now 12-year-old son. Toobin may be planning for his future “needs.”

Toobin also described Roe v. Wade as the “second most famous opinion of the last 100 years.” He should have said “most infamous opinion of the last 150 years.” Here’s what liberal legal scholars and pundits have said about the infamous Roe v. Wade opinion:

• “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law School professor)

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible.” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun)

• “Blackmun’s [U.S. Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” (William Saletan, Slate magazine writer)

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” (John Hart Ely, former law professor at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford universities)

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous.” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist)

• “[T]he finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor)

• “Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor)

• “Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor)

One law professor who has no need of constitutional grounding for abortion is UC Irvine law professor and cheerleader for legalized human slaughter, Michele Goodwin. Goodwin is a long-time and influential advocate of the legal right to kill the preborn. She and co-author Erwin Chemerinsky set forth their goals in a 2017 paper titled, “Abortion: a Woman’s Private Choice”:

We begin by justifying the protection of rights not found in the text of the Constitution. … Foremost among these rights is control over one’s body and over one’s reproduction. … Finally in Part III we discuss what it would mean for abortion to be regarded as a private choice. In this Part, we identify three implications: a) restoring strict scrutiny to examining laws regulating abortions, which would mean that the government must be neutral between childbirth and abortion; b) preventing the government from denying funding for abortions when it pays for childbirth; and c) invalidating the countless types of restrictions on abortion. (emphasis added)

Goodwin rightly condemns the “notorious eugenics period in the United States,” in which allegedly defective preborn babies were forcibly killed by the government. Goodwin fails, however, to acknowledge the difference between the government mandating that a doctor perform a surgical procedure on the body of a woman without her consent and the government prohibiting a doctor from dismembering or in other ways destroying the body of a human fetus without his or her consent.

Goodwin also believes the Texas bill to preserve human life is analogous to the Fugitive Slave Act. She believes that the grotesque law that incentivized citizens to help send humans into bondage is analogous to a law that incentivizes citizens to help prevent the slaughter of humans. Some might counter that the Texas law is more akin to laws that offer rewards for the capture of killers than it is to the Fugitive Slave Act.

Now that leftists have lost control of the U.S. Supreme Court, they’re stomping their angry feet and demanding the Court be jampacked with leftists, something conservatives have not called for to repair the grievous harm done by seven Justices in 1973. Neither the Constitution nor the will of the people matters to “progressives.”

There is no constitutional or moral right to have humans killed because of their dependency status, location, absence of self-consciousness, lack of full development, disabilities, anticipated future, maternal inconvenience, insufficient maternal finances, or crimes of their fathers. A civilized, compassionate, moral, and just society does not find the final solution to poverty, disease, disability, or any other form of human suffering in the killing of others. And in the Constitution, there is no free-floating absolute right to privacy in which humans can do anything they feel like doing to other human beings. Leftist U.S. Supreme Court Justices invented such a “right” out of whole blood-stained cloth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Progressives-Say-the-Darndest-Things-About-Killing-Tiny-Humans.mp3

---

The 2020 post-election plot thickened on Sunday when Trump legal team attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis announced that Sidney Powell was not a member of the Trump legal team. Naturally, questions and theories about the reason for the separation flooded social media full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

It is hoped that within a few weeks, we will learn much more about the nature and degree of voter “irregularities” and electronic malfeasance, which in an ideal political world would be a bipartisan issue.

In the past Democrat U.S. Senators Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Duckworth, Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennett, and Patty Murray were deeply concerned about the danger posed to election integrity via computer hacking. Ron Wyden sponsored a bill that was co-sponsored by those Democrats that would require,

election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

Can’t we all agree that our voting systems must be fixed before the 2022 midterm elections?

Wyden’s words echo the words of a mysterious Dominion Voting Systems security expert who seems to be missing. Just days before representatives from Dominion Voting Systems abruptly cancelled last Friday’s scheduled appearance before a Pennsylvania House Government Oversight Committee hearing, the name of their Director of Product Strategy and Security, Eric Coomer, began popping up on the Internet. Before being hired by Dominion, Coomer was the Chief Software Architect at Sequoia Voting Systems, he has his Ph.D. in nuclear physics, he loves Antifa, and he detests President Trump (just wondering, are Antifa ruffians Antiffians)?

Since he is an expert in cyber security who works at Dominion and has a dozen patents and pending patent applications pertaining to voting systems, Coomer may be someone lawmakers and reporters should talk to about voting integrity in this recent and future elections. Dominion Voting Systems website and social media, however, seem to have been scrubbed of a lot of information by and about Coomer, so finding him may prove challenging. Maybe Mando the Mandalorian can find him.

As I’ve said before, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of a conspiracy theory group. For that reason, I’ve ricocheted between wondering if Trump’s legal team and/or Sidney Powell has the goods to prove the diverse about election integrity that have been alleged and the sense that there are sufficient reasons for concern to justify the pursuit of all legal challenges.

Watergate was unthinkable until it wasn’t.

The decades-long secret government UFO program, now called the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was unthinkable until it wasn’t. Gaslighting by the government about that was intense and sustained.

Corrupt collusion between the Democrat Party, the FBI, the CIA, and mainstream press outlets to manufacture and propagate a hoax in order to impeach a duly-elected president would have once been deemed the fever dream of tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorists. And now we know that not only did it happen but also that the colluders then engaged in a widespread, massive campaign to gaslight all of America into believing this widespread massive coup attempt didn’t happen.

The powerful and the uber-cool that strut among us are trying to prevent a full investigation into possible vote-tampering by mocking and intimidating those who say, “Wait just a doggone minute, bub. Let’s take a peek behind the papered-over windows and inside all those Bozoputers.”

Coomer may be a familiar name to some Illinoisans. On September 1, 2016, Sharon Meroni writing for Defend the Vote summarized the now-underground Eric Coomer’s appearance before an Illinois State Board of Elections (ISBE) meeting:

On Friday, August 26^th, during a meeting at the Illinois State Board of Elections, the Vice President of Engineering for Dominion Voting, Dr. Eric Coomer, was asked if it was possible to bypass election systems software and go directly to the data tables that manage systems running elections in Illinois. His response was, “Yes, if they have access.”

Bypassing the election systems software means whoever has access can potentially manipulate the vote without many risks of detection. 

When asked who might have such access, Coomer responded, “‘Vendors, election officials, and others who need to be granted access.’”

Meroni explained what such access means:

Dr. Coomer’s statement is an admission that various vendors, election officials, and others have access to the back end data tables that permit bypassing the operating system’s configuration. It is notable that when someone accesses these systems from a data table, their actions are not logged by the system; thereby making detection much more problematic.

Coomer also shared this troubling information with the ISBE:

We are constantly assessing different threat models against all of our systems we have fielded across the US and internationally as well. Due to the certification environment … we are not allowed to do routine updates without having to go through re-certification efforts, but we do … give guidance on how to best secure systems and … the final mitigation against all of this is a robust auditing canvasing process which all of our jurisdictions have implemented.

According to Meroni,

Dr. Coomer’s statement brings to light a very serious issue all voters should understand. Voting systems must be re-certified each time they make changes to the hardware or software. Recertification is … expensive and time consuming. … What Dr. Coomer told the Board is that Dominion Voting does not go back for recertification of software when threats to their code are discovered. Rather, they rely on post-election audits and providing advice to election jurisdictions about security. …

This is the reality of the security of your vote. Software systems that count and record the vote across Illinois and throughout the USA are not updated to address security problems, and even if they were, the software can be completely bypassed by going to the data tables that drive the systems.

In light of Coomer’s statements, those with the ability to thrash their way through the weeds on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s voluntary voting system certification process, may find these website pages illuminating: Click HERE and HERE.

As Darryl Cooper wrote about the dubious and mysterious Eric Coomer for The American Conservative,

[I]f it was Joe Biden contesting the election results, and the Director for Strategy & Security at a major voting machine provider turned out to be a Proud Boy with decades of involvement in extremist, even violent, right wing political groups. … [Democrats] would ask how such a person ended up in such an important position of public trust.

If everything is on the up and up, why the massive freak-out by leftists (and some Never-Trumpers) over millions of Americans wanting all available legal and constitutional means pursued to ensure the election was fair and honest? Surely, tolerant, inclusive, fair-minded leftists don’t care about cost or inconvenience; they were willing to spend $38 million of taxpayer money on their elaborate ruse to get rid of a man they detest with unhinged intensity.

Maybe, just maybe the deplorables and ugly folks would believe the words of presumed-but-not-elected Joe Biden’s calls for “unity” if his string-pullers would calm down and let all investigations and court proceedings proceed—oh, and maybe get rid of their blacklists.

If you see this man, have your camera at the ready. Ask him some hard-edged questions, like “What kind of milkshakes do you like,” and then run for your life. He may be an Antiffian armed with a black satchel full of Molotov cocktails.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/The-2020-Post-Election-Plot-Thickens.mp3

---

We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift.
We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.

One of the more grotesque demonstrations of leftist non-sense and hypocrisy was demonstrated a week ago following an episode of the wildly popular Disney show The Mandalorian when “Baby Yoda” eats the unfertilized eggs of a Frog Woman who is transporting her eggs to her husband so he can fertilize them thereby preventing their species’ imminent extinction. Fans of Baby Yoda freaked out, incensed at the lighthearted treatment of what they deemed genocide by the beloved Baby Yoda.

The moral incoherence and hypocrisy should be obvious. In the Upside Down where leftists live, when a human mother hires someone to dismember her own fertilized human egg—aka human fetus/embryo/baby—they demand that society affirm, celebrate, and shout the execution of those tiny humans. In fact, the voluntary dismemberment of fertilized human eggs at any gestational age is so morally innocuous and such an unmitigated public good that leftists think all Americans should pay for the executions of humans in utero.

In the Upside Down, the genocidal killing of all fertilized human eggs with Down Syndrome is at best morally neutral if not morally good, but the fictional devouring of unfertilized Frog Critters’ eggs is morally repugnant. Just wondering, if fertilized human eggs are parasites so devoid of personhood as to render them morally legitimate objects to kill, if it’s okay to dismember them because they’re imperfect non-persons, would there be anything wrong with eating their remains?

Leftists views on the slaughter of fertilized human eggs is just the most grotesque of their many morally incoherent views. Here are a few more:

• According to leftists, concerns of conservatives about possible 2020 election “irregularities”—including via computer malfeasance and malfunction—are evidence of paranoid conspiracy theories, but when leftists express such concerns, they’re sound, reasonable, and legitimate. In 2019, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden proposed an amendment titled “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act” to the “Help America Vote Act of 2002.” His proposed amendment was signed by 14 co-sponsors—all Democrats—including a who’s who of presidential wannabes: Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth, Brian Schatz, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Baldwin, Bernie Sanders, Maria Cantwell, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, and Patty Murray. Wyden provided a summary of his amendment that includes the following:

Votes cast with paperless voting machines cannot be subjected to a manual recount, and so there is no way to determine the real election results if they are hacked. H.R. 1 …  mandates paper ballots.

In order to detect hacks, this bill requires election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

• Leftists heartily endorse bodily damage and disfigurement as sound “treatment” protocols for those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their sexual embodiment as male or female, but bodily damage and disfigurement of those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their whole or healthy bodies (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who identify as amputees or paraplegics) are considered barbaric and ethically prohibited.

• Leftists condemn conservatives as “science-deniers” for disagreeing with them on the degree to which climate change is caused by human action or on how to respond to climate change. At the same time, the purported science-worshippers claim that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chestfeed,” and they claim that the product of conception between two persons is not a person. Anyone who refuses to concede to such nonsense is mocked, reviled, de-platformed, and fired. Just ask Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling or Wall Street Journal writer and author of Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier.

• Leftists claim that marriage has no connection to either sexual differentiation or reproductive potential. They vociferously claim that marriage is solely constituted by love, and that “love is love.” And yet most leftists don’t think two brothers in a consensual loving relationship should be able to legally marry.

• Leftists claim there’s no story behind or within Hunter Biden’s emails and texts that prove Joe Biden straight up lied to the American public, and yet they claimed there was a story of such magnitude and enormity within Christopher Steele’s imaginative “dossier,” that it necessitated 24-hour coverage for years.

• Leftists claim that eliminating the Electoral College and filibuster and packing the U.S. Supreme Court constitute necessary changes to enhance “democracy,” but implementing legal processes to ensure an election was fair undermines democracy.

• Every gathering of leftists, including mostly violent protests, a takeover of six city blocks, trips to hair salons (Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), a post-election street celebration (Lori Lightfoot), a holiday boating excursion (attempted by husband of Michigan Governor Christine Whitmer), restaurant dining (California Governor Gavin Newsom, CNN narcissist Chris Cuomo), a funeral/Democrat campaign event (i.e., John Lewis’ faux-funeral) are COVID-immune and justifiable. But an Orthodox Jewish funeral, an entirely peaceful protest of draconian COVID restrictions, and a march in support of a transparent and fair election are denounced as super-spreader events.

• Serial killer of senior citizens, Andrew “Quietus” Cuomo, commands citizens to “admit” their “mistakes” and “shortcomings” with regard to how they responded to the Chinese Communist virus even as he refuses to apologize for his policies that killed scores of elderly.

• To leftists, social science is the god that determines all moral truth, and yet despite social science demonstrating repeatedly that children—especially boys—need fathers, the left refuses to discuss how fatherless families may be contributing to the anti-social behavior that is destroying our cities.

• Leftists claim to value free speech, religious liberty, inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and unity while condemning not just the beliefs of those with whom they disagree, but also the persons themselves. Many leftists share an uncharitable, presumptuous, ugly, tyrannical, oppressive, and scary desire that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral, who believe marriage has an ontology, who believe biological sex is immutable and meaningful, and who believe bodily damage and disfigurement are improper treatment protocols for gender dysphoria should be unable to work anywhere in America.

To create the illusion that they’re not hypocrites and to defend their intolerance, exclusion, divisiveness, hatred of persons, book banning, speech suppression, demand for ideological uniformity, and efforts to circumscribe the  exercise of religion—which for Christians extends far outside the church walls—leftists resort to fallacious reasoning. The fallacies they employ are too numerous to list, but two of their faves are the ad hominem fallacy and the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Ad hominem is an informal fallacy in which an irrelevant personal attack replaces a logical argument. It proves nothing about the soundness, truth, or falsity of a claim. Instead it appeals to emotion and silences debate through intimidation.

The fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion presumes the premise (i.e., the initial claim) is true without proving it true. So, for example, leftists–ignoring their purported commitment to the First Amendment–argue that homosexual acts are moral acts and, therefore, there is no need to tolerate the expression of dissenting views. But the intolerance they are trying to defend is based on the truth of their premise that homosexual acts are moral—a premise they simply assume without proving is true.

Here’s another: Leftists assert that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings, and, therefore, the government has no reason not to recognize unions between two people of the same sex as marriages, because such couples can experience love and erotic desire. But the premise—i.e., that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings—hasn’t been proved.

And here’s yet another claim about marriage based on circular reasoning: Leftists argue that the reason government is involved in marriage is to grant public legitimacy or provide “dignity” to erotic/romantic unions and, therefore, the government has an obligation to recognize homoerotic unions as marriages. The problem is that those who make this argument fail to prove their claim that the reason government is involved in marriage is to recognize, provide, or impart “dignity” to unions. Those who make this argument just assume their premise is true.

After employing fallacious circular reasoning and hurling ad hominem epithets at their opponents, leftists sanctimoniously wipe the dust off their dirty hands and assert that their hypocrisy isn’t really hypocrisy after all.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Ideological-Non-Sense-and-Hypocrisy-of-Leftists.mp3

---

We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift.
We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to become President. If elected, one of her plans is to implement a wealth tax. She said:

We need structural change to get our economy and our democracy back on track – and no billionaire is going to get in my way of fighting for it.[i]

While a wealth tax would bring in revenue, its most important effect might be fast-tracking a complete government takeover of the economy. Merely change some tax rates, some thresholds, and the government taxes everything into its own hands. Behold! The socialist dream of “the people” owning everything.

If we sleep while others work, then this scenario will become our reality. This article will teach you what the stakes are. You’ll learn these things:

• What a wealth tax is, and how it eats away at your wealth and financial security.

• How a wealth tax can be used to rapidly institute an actual socialist economy.

• What is blocking this tax, and the attempts to overcome the block.

• Steps to stop this “structural change” before it is implemented.

What is a wealth tax?

A wealth tax is a tax on what you already own, not on new income. An annual wealth tax means you get to pay it over and over again. Keep this going long enough and all of your wealth is taxed away – the government, bite-by-bite, dispossesses you.

Warren’s plan would create an annual wealth tax of 2% to 3% of everything that rich people own.

All I’m asking for is a little slice from the tippy, tippy top. A slice that would raise — and this is the shocking part, Jim — about $2.75 trillion over the next 10 years.[ii]

What would a wealth tax cover?

• To start, tax your bank accounts, stocks, bonds, and other sorts of financial instruments.

• Then comes taxes on real estate, starting with your house. If you’ve a farm then tax its land and improvements. Even the vacation retreat, or time share, gets taxed. Even though there could be constitutional concerns, wealth tax proposals generally include taxing real estate.

• Certainly, businesses and corporations are going to get taxed. This includes buildings, machine tools, inventory, and even the value of inventions, copyrights, and other intellectual property.

• And finally, tax personal property. Artwork, cars, even your wedding band have taxable value.

Of course, the government doesn’t like people who try to evade the tax man. Senator Warren says so.

So the way that this is written is to say is to say first all of going to tax all your assets wherever located around the globe. So if you were planning to move them to Switzerland or some island, doesn’t make any difference. They are all going to be taxed.[iii]

Why have a wealth tax?

Why a wealth tax? Its proponents don’t fully reveal their hand. Senator Warren touts a national day-care system, saying:

That’s money we need so that every kid in this country has a decent child care opportunity, has an opportunity for pre-K, has an opportunity for a decent school.[iv]

But national child care is merely political cover. Her progressive friends have more ambitious plans for wealth tax money, implementing a “universal basic income.” At his campaign site, presidential candidate Andrew Yang provides a decent definition of the term.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement.[v]

Every U.S. citizen over the age of 18 would receive $1,000 a month, regardless of income or employment status, free and clear. No jumping through hoops. Yes, this means you and everyone you know would receive a check for $1,000 a month every month starting in January 2021.[vi]

That is, the government becomes everybody’s parent, providing each of us enough to get by. It pays if you work and if you don’t work. This is underscored by Kelsey Piper, writing for Vox:

“That is, instead of people working poorly paid jobs they hate, they’d feel able to work jobs that might be similarly poorly paid but which they love — founding a company, opening a restaurant, managing a community theater, making art, running kids’ programs. That’s a way UBI could avoid affecting the labor supply at all, while making the world a better place.”[vii]

That $12,000 per year figure is merely a starting point. Soon someone will notice that this is less than a “living wage,”[viii] and the cry will be for its equivalency, $30,000 per year or more.

Note that this money isn’t poverty relief. Everyone is supposed to get it, because it is meant to be the fulfillment of the second part of the socialist pledge,

“… to each according to his needs.”[ix]

Soon enough, this becomes your only income as what you have, and what you can get, is taxed away. That will fulfill the first part of the pledge,

“from each according to his ability.”[x]

When a wealth tax is combined with a universal basic income you easily get a socialist economy. The government takes all of the fruit of your labors. All you have left is the government-supplied, but guaranteed, income.

The power to tax is the power to destroy

Through a wealth tax, Senator Warren only wants “a little slice from the tippy, tippy top.” That little slice will surely, and rapidly, drain its victim dry. Do some simple math, where you are the target.

• 2% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 30 years.

• 3% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 22 years.

• 7% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 10 years.

• 12% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 5 years.

Although U.S. Senator Warren is thinking 2%, others hope for more. Thomas Piketty is the progressives’ favorite economist, because he has schemes for pauperizing the wealthy. He has an opinion about how stiff a wealth tax should be:

We are not going to wait until Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg reach the age of 90 before they begin to pay taxes. With the 3 percent annual rate proposed by Warren, a static estate worth $100 billion would return to the community in 30 years. This is a good beginning but, given the average rate of progression of the highest financial assets, the aim should undoubtedly be higher (5 to 10 percent or more).[xi]

That is, the government should eat these estates, these holdings (“return to the community”) in maybe a decade. This would be a vigorous implementation of the old socialist cry.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.[xii]

Before your children have grown up their college fund, your retirement money, and your bank accounts will have been devoured by the government. It gets still worse, for at some point you’ll find that you no longer have ready cash to pay these taxes. You’ll have to sell things, even your home, to pay up.[xiii]

Don’t think that only the very rich will be targeted by a wealth tax. All the money obtained from them will be consumed by expanded social programs. Once the rich are fully drained more victims will be needed. The wealth tax rules will get changed to include the “merely wealthy,” and then the “middle class.” This wealth tax is coming for all of us. It will tax away all of your wealth, not merely that of some wealthy person you never knew.

A wealth tax is a legal implementation of envy. Our envy will give us socialism, and in turn that will consume us. Quoting the great economist Ludwig von Mises:

More and more the policy of taxation evolves into a policy of confiscation. The aim on which it concentrates is to tax out of existence every kind of fortune and income from property, in which process property invested in trade and industry, in shares and in bonds, is generally treated more ruthlessly than property in land. . .

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxation on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them. . .

The destructionist policy of taxation culminates in capital levies. Property is expropriated and then consumed. Capital is transformed into goods for use and consumption. The effect of all this should be plain to see. Yet the whole popular theory of taxation today leads to the same result.[xiv]

What does Bible say?

A wealth tax would have the government take money from our richest people, all in the name of “income inequality.” The Bible has a word for that: envy.[xv] We want the government to act on our behalf, steal money from the rich in the name of “the people,” and give it to others. Each of us who supports a wealth tax are guilty of a mix of envy, covetousness, and encouraging lawbreakers (i.e., the government’s tax agents).

But isn’t income inequality itself a sin, and something that the government should address? According to the Bible, no and no. The Bible expects that some people will be rich, even wildly so, and that others will be poor. God rewarded Abraham with so much wealth that Abraham needed what amounts to an army to take care of it (Genesis 14:14). And Jesus used income inequality approvingly in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). To read more on capitalism and monetary rewards, see the article Is Capitalism Immoral?[xvi]

The government is Gods’ minister of righteousness (Romans 13:1-4). This commission shows that it is answerable to God for its actions (Luke 12:42-48; 1 Corinthians 4:2). Stealing through a wealth tax isn’t right, and even if instructed to do so by popular vote.

The money obtained from a wealth tax is meant to implement a socialist economy. Socialism changes how society works. It breaks our morals, our families, and what we’re allowed to say or do. A socialist government not only moves the boundary stones (Deuteronomy 19:14; Proverbs 22:28), it throws them far into the sea. It is like the sin of Jeroboam, where he changed the peoples’ worship (1 Kings 12:26-33).

By every Biblical measure, a wealth tax is a license to steal, pressed into being by envious voters, so that the government may destroy our traditions, our freedoms, and our right to worship. A triple threat.

Wealth tax is currently blocked

A federal wealth tax would be a boon for starting a socialist economy. But it can’t become law because the Constitution forbids it. Or does it? The answer depends on whether we have an “originalist” or “activist” U.S. Supreme Court.

The fate of a wealth tax depends on what the U.S. Constitution means by “direct tax.” This phrase appears only twice in the U.S. Constitution, in Article I:

• Within Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.[xvii]

• Within Section 9: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.[xviii]

Over time, the Court has come up with definitions for “direct tax.” Its first meaning was supplied through the 1796 case Hylton v United States. In it the Court had to decide if a federal tax on carriages was constitutional. Having no established meaning for “direct tax,” the Court invented one.

“The boundary, [between direct and indirect taxes] then,” he argued, “must be fixed by a species of arbitration, and ought to be such as will involve neither absurdity nor inconvenience.” Then followed HAMILTON’S distinction: “The following are presumed to be the only direct taxes: capitation or poll taxes; taxes on lands and buildings; general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals, or on their whole real or personal estate. All else must of necessity be considered as indirect taxes.”

The court accepted HAMILTON’S reasoning and the three judges who delivered opinions took the stand that only taxes which could be apportioned should be considered direct.[xix]

The Court ruled that the carriage tax was constitutional, and that it was an indirect tax. Property couldn’t be taxed, but some income could.

Then came the 1895 case Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. In it the Court had to decide if a federal tax on state and municipal bonds was constitutional. In its ruling the Court knocked down the tax, while redefining “direct tax” as follows:

[Chief Justice Fuller] then says that a tax upon the income derived from real estate is a tax upon real estate, because as Lord Coke says, “What is the land but the profits thereof ?” And therefore that the tax upon income derived from rents and real estate is a tax upon land, and that a tax upon land is a “direct tax ” within the meaning of the Constitution, and unconstitutional because not apportioned.[xx]

Property still couldn’t be taxed, and income derived from it also couldn’t be taxed. Subsequent events, like the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax), have diluted the effects of the Pollock decision. However, its version of “direct tax” still holds in the legal community. The Pollock interpretation of direct taxes would likely prevent a wealth tax that targets stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Many scholars would like the Court to return to the Hylton version of “direct tax.” Other scholars, like Walter Dellinger, want the Court to go even further.

Devising a progressive tax system that effectively taxes the wealthy is notoriously difficult, but whether a wealth tax is part of that system should depend upon the policy choices of democratically elected representatives, not faulty constitutional understandings.[xxi]

That is, he wants the Court to rubber-stamp whatever Congress devises. That is effectively a “living Constitution,”[xxii] one that accepts whatever tyranny Congress may devise. Such a U.S. Constitution is worthless, as is the Court that implements it.

Senator Warren has many advisors intent on assuring her that this wealth tax is constitutional.[xxiii] Yet many of these scholars, such as Dellinger and Bruce Ackerman,[xxiv] also campaign for expensive social programs like a universal basic income. Does their opinion come from their social advocacy, or is it the other way around? They are conflicted witnesses, and their judgment on constitutional matters can’t be trusted. We really don’t know how good their advice is on this matter.

How would the U.S. Supreme Court rule on a wealth tax, and on the critical phrase “direct tax?” Since its precedents are disputed, there will be pressure to decide based on political goals. Pray for judges to resist political pressures to be activist, and instead to rule impartially (Leviticus 19:15).

What can we do?

Everybody can do something. Some have more time, or skills, and can contribute more keeping this wealth tax evil far from us.

Repent of envy. There are no grounds to take money from the rich simply because they have a lot of stuff. We understand that rich people are responsible to God for how they use their wealth. For example, they ought to be generous and wise. But that is a problem between them and their Maker, and doesn’t include Uncle Sam.

Everybody has time for prayer. We need God to have mercy on us, and his Church. We need peace from government persecution and from harassment by libertines and progressives (Genesis 19:4-11). We must be the righteousness that is a model for society (Matthew 5:14-16), the yeast of change that permeates society (Luke 13:20-21), so we bring the nations into obedience to Him.

Try a little light reading. There are summary articles to help you navigate through this issue.

• Learn about the disaster called socialism. The article To Know Socialism is to Hate It[xxv] will teach you what socialist leaders want to do to our economy, or families, and our right to worship. You may not want socialism, but socialism wants you. The less we all like socialism, the less we all want a wealth tax to empower it.

• Learn why capitalism is OK by God. The article Is Capitalism Immoral?[xxvi] will show you that God accepts capitalism, and that being even extremely wealthy isn’t a sin. Having money isn’t the issue, but rather being righteous and merciful in our dealings.

Get politically involved. If you have free time to affect the campaign season, here are activist things to do.

• Research the legislators and candidates. Does your legislator support, even advocate, a wealth tax? Do they agree with those who do? What you want is someone who is virulently opposed to a wealth tax. We don’t need more lukewarm, pleasing everybody legislators. Our opponents treat this tax like war, as the most important of issues. There is no room for compromise.

After you have done your research, spread it around. Get your friends, even your church, equally alarmed about this tax. Tell them who the good guys, and bad guys, really are.

• Keep after the legislators and candidates. Lobby your legislators to support you on this. Show them this article, and others, so they are informed and can’t say they never knew. Be a squeaky wheel, until they acknowledge with you that a wealth tax is a really bad idea, a non-negotiable issue.

• Go after the fellow travelers. A campaign has accompanying PR flacks, and maybe even scholars who wrote letters of support. These people also need to be pestered, so that their support of “the evil wealth tax” is considered a detriment, not a benefit. This creates the perception that a wealth tax isn’t an advantage, but rather a millstone about their candidate’s neck.

• Always label a wealth tax with pejoratives. It isn’t just a “wealth tax.” It is “legalized envy,” “license to steal,” “enabling socialism.” Where possible, use phrases like “socialist wealth tax,” or “envy tax,” or “socialist takeover tax.” After all, those who really want the tax are either misinformed and envious, or malicious and socialist. What they would do isn’t nice, so why play nice with words?

In our day, going before the U.S. Supreme Court has become a gamble. Because the Court is political, we don’t know if it will rule by law or by politics. It is best if a wealth tax law were never passed, and the Court not tempted to do the wrong thing. If it ever were ruled constitutional then we’d never really be rid of it. Things will go much better for us if a wealth tax is never tried.

Footnotes

[i] DeCosta-Klipa, Nik, Elizabeth Warren is clashing with billionaires over her wealth tax plan. But would it be constitutional?, Boston Magazine, January 29, 2019, https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2019/01/29/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax-constitution

[ii] Axelrod, Tal, Warren: Billionaires should ‘stop being freeloaders’, The Hill, January 31, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/427967-warren-billionaires-should-stop-being-freeloaders

[iii] Schwartz, Ian, Warren on Wealth Tax: Assets Worldwide Will Be Taxed With A “Very High Rate of Monitoring, Auditing”, Real Clear Politics, January 25, 2019, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/25/warren_on_wealth_tax_assets_worldwide_will_be_taxed_with_a_very_high_rate_of_monitoring_auditing.html

[iv] Axelrod, Tal, Warren: Billionaires should ‘stop being freeloaders’, The Hill, January 31, 2019

[v] What is Universal Basic Income, Andrew Yang Campaign web site, https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-ubi/

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Piper, Kelsey, The important questions about universal basic income haven’t been answered yet, Vox, February 13, 2019, https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/13/18220838/universal-basic-income-ubi-nber-study

[viii] Amadeo, Kimberly, Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage, The Balance, March 12, 2019, https://www.thebalance.com/living-wage-3305771

[ix] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875, found online at  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Piketty, Thomas, A tax on wealth is long overdue, Boston Globe, February 11, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/02/11/tax-wealth-long-overdue/AULwxlT7ZGu4uuB7dkpXTJ/story.html

[xii] Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, pp. 98-137, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

[xiii] In one scenario an owner sells stocks to satisfy a 3% wealth tax on them. Because of income taxes, and capital gains taxes, due on the stock sale a total of 20% of the stock must be sold to satisfy that 3% tax.

See the article by Adler, Hank, 70 Percent Income Tax, 3 Percent Wealth Tax, Townhall, January 28, 2019, https://townhall.com/columnists/hankadler/2019/01/28/70-percent-income-tax-3-percent-wealth-tax-n2540324.

[xiv] Hayward, Steven, Taxation, or Confiscation?, Power Line Blog, March 12, 2019, https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/03/taxation-or-confiscation.php

The link quoted Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, Part V, Chapter II (The Methods of Destructionism), Section 7 (Taxation), 1951.

[xv] What does the Bible say about envy?, Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-envy.html

[xvi] Perry, Oliver, Is Capitalism Immoral?, Illinois Family Institute, November 30, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/is-capitalism-immoral/

[xvii] https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/articles/article-i

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Riddle, J. H., The Supreme Court’s Theory of a Direct Tax, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 15, No. 7 (May, 1917), pp. 566-578, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1275429.pdf

[xx] Jones, Francis, Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct. 25, 1895), pp. 198-211, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1321669.pdf

[xxi] Johnsen, Dawn, and Dellinger, Walter, The Constitutionality of a National Wealth Tax, Indiana Law Journal, Volume 93, Issue 1, Article 8, Page 111, https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11279&context=ilj

For an opposing view see:

Jensen, Erik, Taxation and the Constitution: How to Read the Direct-Tax Clauses, Scholarly Commons Faculty Publications School of Law Case-Western Reserve University 2006, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1526&context=faculty_publications

[xxii] Leef, George, How The Ruinous “Living Constitution” Idea Took Root, Forbes, July 15, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2014/07/15/how-the-ruinous-living-constitution-idea-took-root/#10804cb46784

[xxiii] https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Constitutionality%20Letters.pdf

[xxiv] Sunstein, Cass, Cash and Citizenship (a review of The Stakeholder Society by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott), The New Republic, May 23, 1999, https://newrepublic.com/article/62855/cash-and-citizenship

[xxv] Perry, Oliver, To Know Socialism is to Hate It, Illinois Family Institute, February 13, 2019, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/uncategorized/to-know-socialism-is-to-hate-it/

[xxvi] Perry, Oliver, Is Capitalism Immoral?, Illinois Family Institute, November 30, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/faith/is-capitalism-immoral/