Last week many news story headlines made it sound as if the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. In reality, this moderate court again avoided taking a strong stand on a politically charged issue, and simply ruled that the Plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case. You could call this a dodge on a technicality, and it was, but even Justice Clarence Thomas, a critic of Obamacare, who criticized the court for not following through logically with past decisions, particularly on the individual mandate, agreed with the lack of standing.

President Joe Biden used the opportunity to mischaracterize the ruling as a sweeping affirmation of the terrible program and called for its expansion. “Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision is a major victory for all Americans benefitting from this groundbreaking and life-changing law,” Biden’s handlers wrote in a statement for him.

Are Americans really benefiting from the Affordable Care Act? Not according to a new state-by-state study. Many Americans are paying a lot more, with fewer choices, than they were before the politicians “fixed” health care for us.  (Democrat leaders, specifically own this failure, as no Republican voted for the ACA – 34 Democrats also voted against it.)

The horrifically misnamed “Affordable Care Act” is one of the biggest frauds ever committed against the American people. In Indiana, Hoosiers, are now paying twice the amount for individual health insurance than they paid before Obamacare was passed.  As the Heritage Foundation notes, “Hoosiers paid an average $484 a month for coverage in 2019. That is $243 more than what they paid in 2013, the last year before Obamacare took effect. Additionally, Indiana has 8 fewer health insurers offering Obamacare exchange plans in 2021 than offered individual market plans in 2013.”

Hoosiers have fewer choices and higher costs, (and probably less coverage with higher deductibles) but in a weird way, it could be even worse.  Nationally, the average monthly premium paid by consumers in 2019 was 129 percent higher than before Obamacare took effect. Indiana has seen only a 101 percent increase in insurance costs.

Citizens in five states (Alabama, Nebraska, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wyoming) have seen their average monthly premiums triple in price. Only one state, Massachusetts, saw insurance premiums decline since Obamacare became law. Nationally, there are now 142 fewer insurance providers than there were before Obamacare. Less competition means higher prices and fewer choices.

On at least 15 different occasions, President Barak Obama claimed that premiums would go down. He specifically said that the average savings would be $2500 a year for a family. Rather than decreasing $200 a month as promised, Hoosiers have paid that much more each month.

This reminds me of what economist Milton Friedman who once said, “The government’s solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”

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This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Why Socialism is bad for Christians, bad for America

We keep saying that socialism is bad, but our message isn’t being believed. Maybe we don’t fully believe it ourselves. So let’s dig deeper and understand just how bad, and how anti-Christian, socialism really is.

This article examines how American society changes when socialists get to run things. You’ll see, quoting the socialists themselves, how:

• Everyone is made paupers, on purpose.

• Society is reorganized, where children become wards of the state and families, even marriages, are discouraged.

• Christian worship and behavior get driven out of society. Those who persist can even be sent to sanitariums.

Once you’re alert to what socialism does to a society, you can begin to protect your community, your family, and yourself from the designs of these politicians and activists.

Dial it up to 11: look at fully-implemented socialist programs. Don’t think that socialist-leaning politicians are satisfied with the few initiatives they promote in their political campaigns. Once they get into power they tend to hire radical bureaucrats and aides, people who do the real work of implementing both announced and hidden socialist schemes. Think of the politician as the nose of the camel, poking into the tent.

This is why it is both fair and reasonable to associate any socialist-leaning politician or activist with the full socialist agenda. And this is why this article looks at the full effects of socialist policies on America.

As far as communist activists versus socialist ones, there is no practical difference between them. Both sides get their theories from Karl Marx. The communists are just emphasizing the supposed socialist endgame, evoking some future utopia.

Socialism in three minutes

To frame a discussion of socialism we need a definition. According to one dictionary, socialism is:

1.) a theory or system of social organization in which the means of production and distribution of goods are owned and controlled collectively or by the government.

2.) (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.[i]

This definition has these implications.

Individuals may not own any productive property. A socialist society will take over (that is, “steal”) farms, mines, factories, warehouses, and other things in the name of “the people.” But what about personal property? Will your house, or your jewelry, remain yours? That’s hard to say. Considering that socialist activists can’t even agree if you are allowed to own a bicycle, expect chaos to occur.[ii]

The government is the de-facto owner of practically everything. We all can’t visit that nice beach getaway at the same time. Nor can more than 100 million adults be bothered with the details of thousands of factories. This means that “the people” really means “the government.” It alone will own and manage all of these properties. You can already guess how well that will go.

Under socialism, the State puts itself in the place of God and says, “The earth is the State’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.”[iii]

The intent is to transform human character. Socialists don’t want control because of a mere power trip. They think that this actually improves the human condition, that individuals owning things is the root of all evils. Removing property ownership from us will somehow automatically transform us into a freely giving, naturally sharing, people.[iv] Society will be free from crime and strife, and there will be no need for police, army, legislators or bureaucrats.[v]

This goal of transforming humanity exposes the religious nature of socialism.[vi] It also helps explain why these activists are so devoted to their cause.

Socialism: Give me this day my daily bread

We already know that having private property is good with God.[vii] But socialists don’t care what God says. They aim to have everyone utterly dependent on the government, with all devoted to the common good. This is much like being utterly defeated by an invading army, except that we will voluntarily open the fortress gates and let them in.

Socialism must take away everything. The socialist state’s signature belief is simple, courtesy of Karl Marx:

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

A socialist government will certainly dispossess, that is “steal,” factories, farms, transportation systems, distribution networks, mines, warehouses, and much more from their current owners. These would theoretically be owned by “the people,” but everybody knows that the government becomes the true owner and manager.

They say that you can keep your personal property, but why believe them? It isn’t like they have morals against theft. If your house looks useful for a group home, or somebody else happens to need a bike at this moment,[ix] then why not take them away?

You will live from hand to mouth. Karl Marx describes the goal of socialist economic planning:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”[x]

Each of us must apply ourselves for the common good. The children won’t be exempt from this work, according to modern activists:

“Furthermore, in communist society children will be given the freedom to work from a young age.” [xi]

In return we’re promised that the benevolent government will meet our needs. Understand, though, that they are the ones that decide what we need and get.

God help you if the government thinks your region needs to be taught a lesson. Stalin taught a lesson to the Ukrainians in 1933 and starved about 7,000,000 people.[xii] China is spying on its own people, creating a computerized “social ranking” that determines if individuals can acquire needed things.[xiii] History has a habit of repeating itself.

Welcome to slavery. If the government owns and controls everything, and you have nothing, then you’re completely dependent on its good will. Socialists would merely say that you’re a good citizen, a diligent supporter of the new socialist state. However, there are other words for this condition. From Herbert Spencer, a 19^th century “jack of all trades” intellectual:

Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before?

The essential question is—How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.[xiv]

Socialism wastes away the spirit. When taken to its logical conclusion, the socialist state develops what amounts to a royal caste, which gets to run and enjoy the material largesse. The rest of us are working drones, without property or means of escape from our slavery. Some interesting, perhaps unexpected, things develop from this.

• The raison d’être of a socialist state is to overproduce everything for the people to luxuriate in. But that bounty will be hard to come by. First, socialists will never be as competent about running an economy as all of us are now collectively doing. Second, people will be a lot less productive when they can’t see the reward of hard work. Why work harder when there isn’t a commensurate reward for it?

• This listless work force will be paired with less innovation. Without a spur for being creative, technology will stagnate.

• Because it took away everything, the government becomes the only charity and relief-giver. Nobody else has anything to share. The futility of caring, but not being able to help, will result in callous, uncompassionate nation.

Socialism: The family is obsolete

According to socialists, taking our property isn’t enough. We must become an entirely different country, with new values and ideals. This is revealed in the words of Alexandra Kollontai, a champion of Marxist feminism and leader in family issues for Lenin’s Russia.

There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has had its day. The family is withering away not because it is being forcibly destroyed by the state, but because the family is ceasing to be a necessity. The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers.[xv]

Why worry about what a Soviet functionary said a century ago? Because with socialism there is really nothing new. Neither does anything become obsolete. What has been tried before will come around again. Think of it as a warning from history. Her words summarize these intentions.

Break the bonds between parent and child. According to Kollontai,

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.[xvi]

Defying our natural attachment to our children (Isaiah 49:15), parents are to be aloof towards them. A mother must birth the child, but must also then be willing to turn it over to state care. According to modern American socialists,

From a young age children will be given the choice to leave the family home and live in social homes, or on their own, with their food and home being guaranteed for free. In communism, children will be allowed to do anything which does not harm themselves or others; and they will be free to do more risky things from a much younger age than they are now, as soon as they demonstrate they have the rational capacity to take decisions. No arbitrary restrictions, indoctrination nor censorship would take place.[xvii]

In short, the parents will be robbed of the affection, and even of contact with, their own children. Their children will hardly know them.

Those aren’t your children any more. Revisiting what Kollontai wrote,

The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.[xviii]

The state doesn’t want the parents to be in the child raising process. The parents procreate, but the government provides the food, the clothes, the shelter, and the child’s education. The state will accommodate those “those parents who desire to participate in the education of their children,”[xix] but can you guess who will win out if the parents and state differ on what the child is learning.

The family must go because it resists the state. According to Kollontai, once the parents no longer provide for the child, nor teach the child, why is there a family at all?

What responsibilities are left to the parents, when they no longer have to take charge of upbringing and education?… The state does not need the family, because the domestic economy is no longer profitable: the family distracts the worker from more useful and productive labour.[xx]

The state’s problem with families is how they are loyal to themselves. Their youth learn to question the world around them according to their parents’ shaping. According to socialist activists, this is a major crime against humanity.

Today, the main backwards role the family plays is the oppression of children, who are subjected to a tyranny of the parents and denied the basic rights which should belong to every human, most importantly the right of free development of the personality.[xxi]

In the parents’ place, the state will impose a uniform shaping of personality. It prefers clones raised in a values factory.

A committed marital relationship isn’t needed. According to Kollontai, the bond between husband and wife must also change. Repeating her earlier quote:

The members of the family do not need the family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands of the collective. In place of the old relationship between men and women, a new one is developing: a union of affection and comradeship, a union of two equal members of communist society, both of them free, both of them independent and both of them workers.[xxii]

Relationships are encouraged, but committed ones are not.

Instead of the conjugal slavery of the past, communist society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions of labour have been transformed and the material security of the working women has increased, and once marriage such as the church used to perform it – this so-called indissoluble marriage which was at bottom merely a fraud – has given place to the free and honest union of men and women who are lovers and comrades, prostitution will disappear. This evil, which is a stain on humanity and the scourge of hungry working women, has its roots in commodity production and the institution of private property. Once these economic forms are superseded, the trade in women will automatically disappear. The women of the working class, therefore, need not worry over the fact that the family is doomed to disappear. They should, on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which will liberate women from domestic servitude, lighten the burden of motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.[xxiii]

To clarify, the man and woman are to be free to create, and dissolve, relationships as their emotions and desires take them. Don’t let the possibility of children slow you down, for the state is there to cover for you. From Frederick Engels, one of Marx’s buddies:

In any case, therefore, the position of men will be very much altered. But the position of women, of all women, also undergoes significant change. With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the “consequences,” which today is the most essential social – moral as well as economic – factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves. Will not that suffice to bring about the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honor and a woman’s shame? And, finally, have we not seen that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed contradictions, but inseparable contradictions, poles of the same state of society? Can prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it into the abyss?

Here a new element comes into play, an element which, at the time when monogamy was developing, existed at most in germ: individual sex-love.[xxiv]

In short, sex without consequences, the so-called “free love.” Soviet Russia had a bout with that.

As soon as the communists took power in 1917 in Russia, they began to systematically enact policies that followed the doctrines of Karl Marx. Their dream of a materialistic utopia could be attained “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” as Marx had written in the “Communist Manifesto.” That included not only confiscating “means of production,” like factories and land, but also disintegrating the institution of the family. Communists saw commitment to family as an obstacle to people’s devotion to the pursuit of their utopia. Instead, people were to live in “free unions,” mating at will. [xxv]

The idea caught on too well, and the Soviets rapidly backtracked.

To reverse a society-wide disaster, by 1936 the Soviet Union abandoned the “free love” ideology and returned to pro-family policies, outlawing abortion, requiring substantial fees for a divorce, imposing higher penalties for abandoning a family, and encouraging women to have more children.

“The idea that the state would assume the functions of the family was abandoned,” Goldman wrote.[xxvi]

Socialism creates a selfish, shallow, mean-spirited society. People don’t raise children to get rich. With love they pour youth and fortune into their children, in hopes of them becoming wise, diligent, and compassionate adults.

However, the new socialist world will have none of that. As is their want, the state knows best, and how can mere untrained people be trusted to raise a baby? For example, the state of Oregon wants to come between the parents and the child:

If Oregon Governor Kate Brown has her way, the Beaver State will become the first to require universal home visits for newborn children in the care of their own parents…. While it’s not clear whether either of these programs would be mandatory, the use of the term “universal” suggests that they would. It’s frightening to think about what would happen to parents who refuse such visits.[xxvii]

If the socialists get to fulfill their plans, what are some consequences?

• Parents are taught to not have children, or not care about them if they “make a mistake.” The state orphanage will raise them. This option, and encouraging this option, reinforces selfishness.

• Young adults will stay lazy and careless. Many people don’t learn of diligence and hard work until they find themselves responsible to provide for those in a household.

• There isn’t a place to learn love, intimacy, compassion or commitment. If you’re having relationship difficulties, it is easy to run away. There isn’t a venue for character building. There also isn’t a way to build loyalty, a giving love. There is no need for honesty, and certainly no reason to be a hero.

• There will be even fewer children than now. If it is hard to birth children, and care for them through their infancy, and then soon enough the state grabs them, then what is the payoff? Why bother with the pain in the first place?

• The few children that there are will grow up hard-boiled. There will be nobody to comfort them about hurts or the unexpected. They’ll learn society’s rules from the gangs. They will be aloof. From what wellspring will come love or compassion?

Socialism: God can’t be dead, because He never existed at all

Socialists have the chutzpah to insist that the America you know, its institutions and values, must be completely overturned. They’ve reassured themselves that this a good thing because there is no God to tell them otherwise. They believe in Materialism, which is “…the belief that nothing exists apart from the material world (i.e. physical matter like the brain).”[xxviii] This claim, that there is nothing spiritual, and nothing intelligent, that could have created things, denies that any God exists.

A socialist government will have to deal with Christians as enemies, because we’d be condemning their policies from God’s word. It will want to shut us down. Early in his activist career, Vladimir Lenin lectured his fellow socialists on how socialists should treat religion.

So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideological and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.[xxix]

That is, while the government can claim be religiously neutral, socialist activists will care about you, your religious practices and attitudes, and make your life difficult until you get with the socialist program.

Believers to be called mentally ill. If there can be no God, then people who persist with religious beliefs are obviously mentally ill, living in a fantasy world. The technique of “psychiatric incarceration” was frequently used against dissidents by Soviet Russia, because you must be literally crazy to oppose the state.[xxx] Already people in America assert that religion is an illness,[xxxi] so how long before Christians are spirited away for “treatment?”

Public scorn and persecution for believers. People who demonstrate religious behavior will be noticed and punished for it. It’s even happening today, before your very eyes.

• Karen Pence, wife of the Vice President, is supposed to not support a Christian school because it offends someone.[xxxii] She should lose her Secret Service protection.[xxxiii] More to the point, religious people should stay out of politics.[xxxiv]

• Jack Phillips, cake designer, must give up his religious rights in order to make a living.[xxxv]

• A Ford employee gets fired for not toeing the line with the transgender movement.[xxxvi]

• A pizza parlor closes because of internet outrage over how they might handle catering to a “gay wedding.”[xxxvii]

The government doesn’t have to directly come for you. Rather, it can pretend to be officially neutral, all the while letting the “Party” do the dirty work (see Lenin’s quote, above).[xxxviii]

No soup for naughty people. Remember that Chinese social rating plan?[xxxix] It comes for you, too. Not attending enough socialist classes? Praying at meals? Being turned in by your children for talking about Jesus at home? Soon you’re known in the computers as a malcontent and can’t buy food, or transportation, as you might need.

Socialists are the generation that knew not God (Judges 2:10). The socialist leaders know of the Bible, but they won’t read it or obey it. They won’t let others know of it. They are condemned just as Jesus condemned the Pharisees (Matthew 23:13). They lead the land into great difficulties.

• As in the time of Josiah (2 Kings 22:8-13), the people won’t know what the word is, nor what the Bible is. Nobody will know the revealed concepts of right and wrong.

• Society will know no restraints on lust, self-centeredness selfishness and hard-heartedness. Without God there aren’t internal checks on behavior, and no character-building virtues. Everybody just looks out for Number One.

• No regard for life, other than as a resource to be used and disposed of.[xl] Likewise, no concept worth sweating for, crying over, even being a hero for.

One can only hope that such a society is so self-destructive that it quickly does so, that something better can rise in its place.

Your freedom: defend it now, before you lose it

We’ve seen some of what socialists intend to do to us:

• Society reduced to pauperism.

• Everyone on the government dole for food, clothing, housing.

• Family life broken, and the government directly interacting with children.

• Destruction of religious life, and religious rights.

• Creating a uncompassionate, sullen, ignorant generation.

The columnist Stella Morabito aptly sums this up this dismal condition.

So it goes: Socialism, when left to its own devices, irresistibly moves towards authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

As with all bait-and-switch scams, socialism promises you the world. That’s the only way it can get any traction before it delivers you to a virtual prison. It forces compliance and dependency in every aspect of life—housing, employment, medicine, mobility, education, even your creativity.

Oh, sure lots of clueless Che T-shirt-wearing kids will talk real savvy about it while they’re free. But once it’s got them for real, it will permeate their daily life both in body and mind. In this very respect, slavery is a very fitting description of socialism. All of socialism’s promises— equality, social justice, blah, blah, blah—amount to nothing but bait.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this: What could be more oppressive than living under a system run by a tiny clique of power-mongers who exert control over you through a morbidly obese machinery of bureaucrats? What could be more claustrophobic than having some apparatchik from that bloated bureaucracy telling you where you may live, what you are allowed to study, where you can travel, what you can express in art or writing, whether you may receive medicine for your illness, what you may eat, what you can say, and even to whom you may speak?[xli]

The bright spot here is that the socialists aren’t now in control. Not yet. There is still opportunity to set things right. Samuel Adams, from 1771, spoke encouragement to a different conflict. Yet, his words are timely today.

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.

We have receiv’d them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas’d them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.

It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath’d to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.[xlii]

— Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.

Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

What is this defense we must take up? To preserve the republic, because a fully-developed socialism replaces our republic with a dictatorship. It’s true – ask anyone who lived through the years of Soviet Russia. And how do you, Mr. & Mrs. Average, accomplish such a feat? If we each do a few simple tasks, socialism has no place to run, and no way to keep a foothold in America.

First: Stop asking the government to give you something for free. Ronald Reagan said:

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.[xliii]

Government services are never free. Taxpayers pay a lot for them, usually more than if they were done by private contractors. And as for the “free” part, when government becomes the purveyor you pay plenty.

• You lose freedom of choice. When the government gets involved it muscles private providers out of the business. Obamacare, with its “you can keep your doctor” is a prominent example.[xliv]

• You get a planned social change. Government policies always favor the political and philosophical plans of its promoters. For example, Obamacare is intentionally a first step to a government single-payer health plan. You know, the rationed health care system that England and Canada are cursed with.[xlv]

You spent your childhood looking to grow up and start your own household, your own family. Are you to now accept socialism and become a child again, this time to an uncompassionate government father? No, plan on supporting yourself, and supporting your family. The “free” government services just plain cost too much.

Second: Learn to recognize the socialist lie. Learning all about socialism is a tedious task. Their writers are long-winded, and they repeat each other. Fortunately, you don’t need to immerse yourself in their sins. At a minimum, just remember this easy phrase: there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is key to discerning all sorts of socialist enticements. Let’s try it out.

• Everyone is entitled to health care.[xlvi] At some point, everyone needs health care services. And it is true that many people sometimes need care they can’t pay for, at least not right away. But inability to pay can be handled, and was handled, through built-in charity and existing health care insurance programs. Yet the government insists that they can provide all health care, to everyone, at no cost to you.Looking at this from the “no free lunch” viewpoint, when the government gets involved private parties must bow out. Health care gets more expensive, and yet less available. And without the spur of competition, and profits, health care research also dries up. The end result is rationed, low quality, medical care, with very few medical advances.

• Free college education.[xlvii] If a young person could attend college for free then they could get into life without having a shadow of tuition debt hanging over them. This is supposed to be a good thing for society.Let’s apply the “no free lunch” test to this. If the students don’t have to pay, then why should they pay attention to coursework? We’d get a lot of youth celebrating a taxpayer-funded Spring Break celebration for four years. Public colleges would get fat on guaranteed money. Private colleges would suffer from government-funded competition. And we’d still be sending our youth to guaranteed indoctrination. Finally, college diplomas will be as common as participation trophies, and be worth as much.

• Guaranteed minimum income.[xlviii] If someone knew that they’d have a certain minimum income per year, no matter what they did, then their lives would have stability. Paid for by the taxpayers, of course.The “no free lunch” analysis says that this is merely a giant welfare program, an expansion of the dole. People will be paid even more and need do nothing to get it. It is also the starting point for implementing a “guaranteed maximum income,” otherwise known as “to each according to his needs.”[xlix]

• Socialism means plenty for all.[l] The cry is “let’s put the socialists in charge and show those capitalists how production is really done!” The “no free lunch” test notes that this claim is strictly advertising, never proven. We’re asked to accept “a pig in a poke,” promises of never-realized government efficiency, while surrendering our property and our liberty. This is a very high cost for obtaining a few “free” goods.

Once you “learn the lingo,” you hear phrases like “community organizing,” “responsible corporations,”[li] and “social justice” and become alert to activists nearby, even if they happen to be wearing three-piece suits.

Third: Discover those politicians or activists that would take away your freedom, and shun them. Many politicians, like Senator Bernie Sanders, are openly socialist. Others hide their socialism, or are unaware their support for it, but still are willing to support an expanded government at the right opportunity. The problem is to discover these bad guys before they get into high-level positions.

It is important to identify these bad guys early. Once they’re in power, they attract aides who think like them, or worse, and install bureaucrats that share their goals. They get to begin implementing their socialist ways before you become aware of their real politics.

• Get personal. Research their social media, their degrees, their school yearbooks, their friends. If they boast of their Marxist creds, or “like” socialist celebrities and organizations, then you know their thinking and what they’ll favor in the future.

• Get in their faces. Haunt their town halls and campaign meetings. Repeat their words back to them, that the attendees learn the candidate’s true leanings. Make the other attendees feel uncomfortable to be associated with the candidate and his, or her, views. Why shouldn’t they be shamed for promoting our eventual enslaving? Who knows? Maybe they’re unaware of what socialism really means, and are willing to change.

The fight you’re in – the socialists have always been fighting it, generally unopposed – is known for a long time. Yet they win only when we don’t defend ourselves. Margaret Thatcher, who led Great Britain out of a great deal of socialist bondage, has this to say about liberty.

“Perhaps I can summarise it best by saying this—Nations that have pursued equality, like the Iron Curtain countries, I think have finished up with neither equality, nor liberty. Nations, which like us, in the past have pursued liberty, as a fundamental objective, extending it to all, have finished up with liberty, human dignity, and far fewer inequalities than other people.”

“[L]iberty is fundamental. Liberty, human dignity, a higher standard of living is fundamental. And, steadily, I think, people are beginning to realise that you don’t have those things unless you have a pretty large private enterprise sector. Any Iron Curtain country has neither liberty, nor a very high standard of living. The two things go, economic and political freedom, go together. I’ve been right in the forefront of saying that, here, in the States, and it’s very interesting to me now, to see a number of articles from people who are taking up the same theme. They are disturbed that Socialism is reducing liberty and freedom for ordinary people, and that’s really what matters.”[lii]

Footnotes

[i] socialism (n.d.), Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, 2010, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/socialism

[ii] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/there-any-private-property-under-socialismcommunism-22022012

[iii] McDurmon, Joel, God versus Socialism, The American Vision, April 24, 2015, https://americanvision.org/6459/god-versus-socialism/

A concise arraignment and judgment of socialism from God’s point of view.

[iv] Fairman, Glenn, Socialism as Religion, American Thinker, November 22, 2012, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/11/socialism_as_religion.html

[v] “Criminal activity will be almost nonexistent since the catalysts for anti-social activity—injustice and inequality—will no longer exist.”, from https://www.allaboutworldview.org/marxist-law.htm

[vi] Perry, Oliver, Socialism is Also a Religion, Illinois Family Institute, September 21, 2018, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/uncategorized/socialism-is-also-a-religion/

[vii] Perry, Oliver, Patriarchy, Gender Roles and Marxism: An Educational Campaign to Destroy the Family, Illinois Family Institute, December 12, 2017, https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/marriage/patriarchy-gender-roles-marxism-educational-campaign-destroy-family/

[viii] 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

[ix] https://libcom.org/forums/theory/there-any-private-property-under-socialismcommunism-22022012

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

[xi] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!, March 26, 2017, https://destroycapitalismnow.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/abolish-the-family/

[xii] Genocide in the 20th Century: Stalin’s Forced Famine 1932-1933, The History Place, 2000, http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm

[xiii] Information Warfare: 1984 Becomes Real In 2024, Strategy Page, January 20, 2019, https://strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20190120.aspx

[xiv] Spencer, Herbert, The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.) [1884], found at Online Library of Liberty, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-the-man-versus-the-state-with-six-essays-on-government-society-and-freedom-lf-ed

[xv] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family, published in The Worker, 1920, collected in Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!

[xviii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] Meghany, The communist abolition of the family, Destroy Capitalism Now!

[xxii] Kollontai, Alexandra, Communism and the Family

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, II. The Family, 4. The Monogamous Family, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume Three, October 1884, found at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch02d.htm

[xxv] Svab, Petr, The Failed Soviet Experiment With ‘Free Love’, https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-failed-communist-experiment-with-free-love_2242535.html

[xxvi] Ibid.

[xxvii] Bolyard, Paula, Oregon Could Become the First State to Require In-Home Surveillance of Newborn Babies, PJ Media, January 15, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/oregon-could-be-the-first-state-to-require-in-home-surveillance-of-newborn-babies/

[xxviii] McLeod, Saul, Mind Body Debate, 2007, found online at https://www.simplypsychology.org/mindbodydebate.html

[xxix] Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Religion, given December 3, 1905, from Lenin Collected Works, Volume 10, pp 83-87, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, found online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm

[xxx] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

[xxxi] Cooper-White, Religion & Mental Health: New Study Links Belief In ‘Punitive God’ To Emotional Problems, Huffington Post, August 15, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/religion-mental-health-angry-god-brain_n_3097025.html

[xxxii] Haag, Matthew, Karen Pence Is Teaching at Christian School That Bars L.G.B.T. Students and Teachers, New York Times, January 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/us/politics/karen-pence-school-lgbt-ban.html

[xxxiii] Brest, Mike, CNN’S JOHN KING QUESTIONS IF KAREN PENCE DESERVES SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION, Daily Caller, January 18, 2019, https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/18/cnn-john-king-karen-pence-christian/

[xxxiv] Beeson, Katie, The Preacher’s Role, U.S. News and World Report, August 25, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-25/religious-leaders-should-stay-out-of-politics

[xxxv] Farris, Michael, Colorado’s continued campaign against Jack Phillips, Denver Post, August 19, 2018, https://www.denverpost.com/2018/08/19/colorados-against-masterpiece-cakeshop-jack-phillips/

[xxxvi] O’Neil, Tyler, Employee at Ford Office Fired After Disagreeing With Transgender Post, PJ Media, January 8, 2019, https://pjmedia.com/trending/engineer-at-ford-plant-fired-after-disagreeing-with-transgender-post/

[xxxvii] Buckley, Madeline, Threat tied to RFRA prompt Indiana pizzeria to close its doors, Indy Star, April 2, 2015, https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/04/02/threats-tied-rfra-prompt-indiana-pizzeria-close-doors/70847230/

[xxxviii] Lenin, V.I., Socialism and Religion

[xxxix] Information Warfare: 1984 Becomes Real In 2024, Strategy Page

[xl] Shaw, Adam, Virginia Gov. Northam faces backlash for comments on 3rd-trimester abortion bill: ‘Morally repugnant’, Fox News, January 30, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/va-gov-faces-backlash-for-comments-on-controversial-third-trimester-abortion-bill

[xli] Morabito, Stella, A Vote for Socialism Is A Vote For State Run Slavery, The Federalist, October 29, 2018, http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/29/vote-socialism-vote-state-run-slavery/

[xlii] Straub, Steve, Samuel Adams, The Liberties of Our Country Are Worth Defending, The Federalist Papers, July 3, 2012, https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/samuel-adams/samuel-adams-the-liberties-of-our-country-are-worth-defending

[xliii] Reagan, Ronald, quote found online at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ronald_reagan_128358

[xliv] Bier, Jeryl, Obamacare Website No Longer Addresses ‘You Can Keep Your Doctor’, Weekly Standard, August 24, 2016, https://www.weeklystandard.com/jeryl-bier/obamacare-website-no-longer-addresses-you-can-keep-your-doctor

[xlv] Malcolm, Candace, The Pitfalls of Single-Payer Health Care: Canada’s Cautionary Tale, National Review, April 13, 2017, https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/canada-single-payer-health-care-system-failures-cautionary-tale/

[xlvi] Sanders, Senator Bernie, Health Care Is a Right, Not a Privilege, Huffington Post, July 9, 2009, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/health-care-is-a-right-no_b_212770.html

[xlvii] Norton, Vince, Why Free College is a Bad Idea, Norton|Norris Inc., March 16, 2018, https://nortonnorris.com/free-college-bad-idea/

[xlviii] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-income/california-city-fights-poverty-with-guaranteed-income-idUSKCN1J015D?mod=article_inline

[xlix] Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1, 1875

[l] Pankhurst, Sylvia, Socialism, Workers’ Dreadnought, July 28, 1923, found online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/1923/socialism.htm

[li] Teivainen, Teivo, Milton Friedman’s Argument about Socialist Implications of Corporate Social Responsibility, March 9, 2013, https://teivo.net/2013/03/09/friedman/

[lii] Thatcher, Margaret, TV Interview for Thames TV This Week, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, February 5, 1976, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102953

As we stand on the threshold of a new year, a phrase from Simon and Garfunkel’s song “The Boxer” sums up why America’s division into two warring worldviews seems to be widening.

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”  That’s true for most folks, thanks to human nature.

However, we’re not on an equal playing field.  The whole thing is tilted to the left.  Progressive news and entertainment are everywhere, including airport lounges where thousands of travelers each day are afflicted with CNN’s non-stop propaganda.

If you don’t go out of your way to get some balance, you might think, for instance, that the tax cut bill signed by President Donald Trump does one thing only:  It kicks the middle class and the poor into the gutter, where they’re splashed with dirty, icy water as rich people guzzling Dom Perignon speed by in limos to celebrate at four-star restaurants.

Every day, led by the Washington Post and the New York Times, the media relentlessly portray the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a sop to the rich and an attack on the poor and middle class, even though the poor pay no federal taxes and an estimated 80 percent of taxpayers will see immediate cuts in 2018.

The long overdue reform to reduce one of the world’s highest corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 21 percent will free up capital to expand industries, create more jobs and to compete internationally.   And eliminating the Obamacare penalty tax as of January 1, 2019, is a major step toward repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act in piecemeal fashion.

Here are some other highlights of the new law from the Tax Foundation:

—Although it eliminates the personal exemption, it increases the standard deduction to $12,000 for single filers, $18,000 for heads of household, and $24,000 for joint filers in 2018 (compared to $6,500, $9,550, and $13,000 respectively under current law).

—Retains the charitable contribution deduction, and limits the mortgage interest deduction to the first $750,000 in principal value.

—Limits the state and local tax deduction to a combined $10,000 for income, sales, and property taxes. (This will affect people the most in high-tax states run by Democrats.  More on that later).  Taxes paid or accrued in carrying on a trade or business are not limited.

—Expands the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, while increasing the phase-out from $110,000 in current law to $400,000 for married couples. The first $1,400 would be refundable.

—Raises the exemption on the alternative minimum tax from $86,200 to $109,400 for married filers, and increases the phase-out threshold to $1 million.

You don’t hear much about these provisions because they don’t fit the media narrative.  Instead, we get a steady diet of class warfare.

USA Today, for instance, analyzed “5 household situations” as to how the tax bill would affect them. One of them, as related by the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel, “included a childless single renter earning $1 million a year, paying $50,000 in state and local taxes, and claiming $40,000 in charitable deductions.” As Ms. Strassel notes, “this downtrodden soul would pay $1,887 more in taxes.” Oh, the horror.

Some media outlets are floating the theory that the new tax law is so unfair that Democrats now have a good chance to take back the U.S House and perhaps even the U.S. Senate this November despite the roaring economy.

Before they book too many dance floors, though, Democrats might be reminded that Alabama’s recent election of a Democratic senator was a unique case, and that they’re defending 25 U.S. Senate seats, including several in “red” states — Indiana, North Dakota, West Virginia, Missouri and Montana – that Mr. Trump carried by 19 percent or more. Republicans have to defend only eight U.S. Senate seats.

Perhaps the Dems’ hope lies in a mass migration from high-tax, “blue” states whose residents will no longer be able to deduct all state and local taxes on their federal returns. Formerly rock-solid conservative New Hampshire recently went purple, as thousands of liberals from Massachusetts moved north to escape the consequences of their own party’s policies.  One would have hoped that they would think twice about fouling their new nest, but, no.  They’re trying their darndest to turn the Granite State into a replica of their former state or socialist Vermont.

Up in that neck of the woods, the Boston Globe and its former owner, the New York Times, are liberals’ version of the Bible.  Plus National Public Radio and PBS.  So it’s not surprising that even the many folks there who will benefit from the new tax law consider themselves victims.

A little retooling of the first referenced phrase might be in order:  “The media tell you what they want you to hear, and disregard the rest.”

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This article was originally published at Townhall.com

As Washington D.C. lawmakers wrangle about the details of the so-called “ObamaCare repeal,” “progressive” politicians and activists are ramping up their rhetoric. Setting aside the fact that the repeal effort has turned into an effort merely to reform government healthcare and the fact that Congressional leaders are seemingly unwilling to undo the legislation that mandated socialized medicine, I think it is important to once again address the Left’s dogmatic narrative that asserts that health care is a human right.

In 2010, I described the idea that health care is a human right as socialistic propaganda:

The implicit claim in the assertion that health care is a “right” is that it is a constitutionally protected right. All experts agree that health care is neither a constitutional nor a legal right. In America we understand that our rights to the free exercise of religion, to speak freely, to bear arms and to be secure from unwarranted search and seizure come from God.

To see the difference in government-mandated health care and real rights, look at how they are exercised. Historically, American citizens have been free to exercise their real, constitutionally protected rights or not as they see fit. The government does not compel citizens to attend church in the name of religious freedom. The government does not compel citizens to own a gun in the name of the Second Amendment. And the government does not force citizens to engage in the political process in the name of free speech. In contrast, our radically “progressive” friends are eager to compel every American using the heavy hand of government to exercise their so-called right to health care. Should we celebrate the passage of a bill that in the service of non-existent rights actually diminishes our liberty?

What is really at issue is not whether health care is a “right” but whether citizens have a right to taxpayer-funded health care. What other cherished American “right” has ever required that we diminish another’s liberty? Does the right to free speech require newspaper owners to print every op-ed and editorial? Does the right to bear arms require the government to arm its citizenry? Does the freedom of religion require government-funding of churches, mosques and synagogues? Why then, does this “right” to healthcare require the government to take from some to give to others? When in the history of our country have we had to secure a right by trampling on the liberties of others?

Make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening with this government takeover of the healthcare industry. This new health care “right” will be forced on every American, and it will be made possible by taking from citizens “according to their ability” and giving to others “according to their needs” (Karl Marx, 1875).

We only have to look to the U.K. and the sad case of Charlie Gard to see what government-controlled health care looks like. If the bureaucratic “experts” deem you unworthy of medical treatment, they can slam the door on any options you may want to pursue. We might as well put a fork  in any semblance of liberty when it comes to parental rights, conscience rights and free will. The tyrannical government decides.

ObamaCare forced many American citizens into a socialized health care system and forced states into an enormous expansion of Medicaid. According to the Chicago Tribune, approximately 650,000 Illinoisans were added to the Medicaid rolls over the past few years. Crain’s Chicago Business claims that this “expansion has caused skyrocketing enrollment, massive cost overruns and siphoned away incredibly limited resources from those who truly have no way to help themselves.” The article points out that this expansion has cost Illinois taxpayers “more than $9.2 billion—more than double what was projected.” It is part of the reason state lawmakers voted for massive tax hikes earlier this month.

Sadly, the costs of ObamaCare have been much higher than the so-called “experts” projected, and the Republican version of socialized medicine may not prove to be much better. More important, while the financial costs to taxpayers is considerable, the damage to personal liberty is incalculable.

Take ACTION:   Send an email or a fax to your U.S. Representative now by clicking HERE. Urge your U.S. Representative to follow through on the promises to repeal Obamacare and the individual federal mandate.  While you are at it, remind them to permanently defund Planned Parenthood.

Read more:

Fearmongering Over Medicaid Ignores Just How Bad the Program Is

Ted Cruz wrestling with ObamaCare … Is he winning?

Obamacare Is Causing Insurers To Delay Surgeries Patients Need

The Uninspiring Medicaid Debate

The GOP’s Health-Care Messaging Needs Serious Work

Why is Healthcare So Expensive?

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This picture (above) is hard for me to look at. I’ve got a one-year-old girl – and I cannot imagine what I would do if she had a life threatening illness, and the government told me I couldn’t do everything possible to save her.

If you haven’t seen this story, the picture above is of Charlie Gard. Charlie and his parents live in the UK, and he has a form of mitochondrial disease, a genetic condition that causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.

Charlie’s chances of surviving this disease are slim. However there is a treatment option available for him in the United States. It’s expensive, but his parents raised the money for it. The only problem is the hospital and the British government decided that because the odds of success are low, they will not allow the family to bring him to the U.S. for treatment.

This story could not be more relevant for America as we debate healthcare policy. We can discuss Medicaid expansion and abortion funding under Obamacare – both crucially important topics.

But as this story shows, more government control of healthcare means less freedom for you and me. The state replaces the rights of parents. And sick people are treated like numbers on paper, instead of patients with God-given rights.

So yes it’s true, the stats and experts say Charlie’s odds of survival are so low that it’s not practical to give him any more chance at life. But if that were my little girl or yours, would you want the government making that decision for you?

A proposed rule – a copy of which was leaked on Wednesday – would protect groups like Little Sisters of the Poor from being forced to provide contraception and abortion-causing drugs. The interim rule would honor constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, not protected by Health and Human Services under ObamaCare.

Attorney Mark Rienzi of The Becket, which represented Little Sisters of the Poor, says the rule is fine – as far as it goes.

“Congress did not impose this requirement in the first place, the agency [HHS] did,” he explains. “And there’s nothing unreasonable or wrong about the government saying … We’ve got a requirement that we’ve already chosen not to impose on big corporations and we’ve also decided we’re not going to crush Little Sisters of the Poor for their unwillingness to comply with it.”

Rienzi says the proposed rule would be only the first step in correcting the problem.

“And the second part,” he adds, “would be an order from the court making clear what I think the interim final rule essentially acknowledges, which is that the federal government doesn’t have authority to force religious groups to do this.”

Otherwise another “progressive” president in the future might order HHS to reverse the rule and impose it on religious organizations once more.

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This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

Yesterday a Washington Times headline read “GOP wins first Obamacare fight in Senate budget vote.” Katie Pavlich reported this at Townhall.com:

Republicans eager to show quick action against Obama’s health care law took an initial procedural step Tuesday, introducing a budget bill that would have to be considered under a parliamentary procedure that would prevent Democrats from using a Senate filibuster to protect the health care law.

Pavlich also reported that Vice President-elect Mike Pence told Congressional Republicans that President-elect Donald Trump wants Obamacare (i.e., the Affordable Care Act) repealed and sent to his desk by February 20.

With Republicans in control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue after January 20, the Republican Congress will be able to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with the help of the new president.

Candidate Trump made clear his intentions, and President-elect Trump began to make good on his commitment to repeal and replace the ACA with his choice of U.S. Representative Tom Price (R-GA) to serve as his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Rep. Price is considered one of the most knowledgeable Republicans on healthcare policy.

Since the election, a lot has been written about the challenges in repealing the ACA. The bill ran thousands of (mostly unread) pages when it was signed into law in March, 2010, and tens of thousands of pages of regulations dealing with the ACA have been added since then.

What will replace Obamacare is a work in progress as conservative health care expert Lanhee Chen explained:

It’s not that we don’t have enough ideas as conservatives, it’s that we actually have too many. A lot of thinking and research has gone on the last several years around how you create a health care system that is more consumer friendly, that pays attention to costs first, that recognizes the importance of health care in people’s lives but doesn’t believe that the federal government is necessarily well-suited to make all of those important decisions.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, and your local U.S. Representative asking them to support the repeal of Obamacare.

Obamacare has caused many to lose their existing coverage, insurance rates to soar, policy options to be restricted, and increased the national deficit. The law has negatively affected the economy in several ways, especially by discouraging companies from hiring.

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Join IFI at our Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Sat., Feb. 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Written by Melanie Israel

The American people have returned a pro-life majority to Congress and have elected a president committed to rolling back the Obama administration’s radical abortion policies and to appointing pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. This presents an incredible opportunity for defending innocent human life. Now is the time to act.

Executive Action

President-elect Donald Trump should act to defend life and conscience immediately after he takes the oath of office, and should:

• Reinstate the Mexico City Policy to ensure that federally funded nongovernmental organizations do not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in foreign nations.

• Enforce the Weldon Amendment to stop states from unlawfully discriminating against health care entities that refuse to pay for or cover abortions.

• Reject a proposed parting gift to Planned Parenthood through new Title X regulations designed to lock in the abortion giant’s cut of federal funds.

• Nominate an U.S. Supreme Court justice that will respect the Constitution and the right to life.

• Repeal the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring insurance coverage of certain contraceptives and abortifacients. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has protected the consciences of closely held businesses and religious institutions, consciences of individual consumers and employees are still vulnerable absent full repeal.

• Reinstitute Bush administration conscience protections for health care providers.

• Reaffirm states’ freedom to exclude abortion providers from state Medicaid programs.

Congressional Action

With a pro-life majority in both the House and the Senate, pursuing a life-affirming agenda is a must. Congress should:

• Pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The United States is one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortion past 20 weeks (5 months), at which point the baby is capable of feeling excruciating pain during an abortion procedure.

• Pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Instead of relying on a patchwork of policy riders attached to appropriation bills each year, Congress should permanently end taxpayer funding for abortion once and for all.

• Defund Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have disqualified themselves from federal funding due to their callous disregard for human life. The money should be redirected to comprehensive health centers not entangled with abortion.

• Pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The disturbing case of Kermit Gosnell has shown there must be criminal consequences for abortionists who violate the law and refuse to provide medical care to infants born alive after abortions.

• Pass the Conscience Protection Act, which ensures that individuals get their day in court when their rights to conscience concerning abortion are violated by the government.

• End funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). President Barack Obama sent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the UNFPA despite evidence of its involvement in China’s coercive two-child policy. This funding should end.

• Repeal Obamacare. Under Obamacare, tax subsidies are available for health plans that include coverage of elective abortion, and the HHS mandate requires coverage of certain abortion-inducing drugs and devices. Both anti-life policies would disappear with Obamacare’s repeal.

Promoting a Culture of Life

The success of pro-life candidates up and down the ballot is a victory for the pro-life movement. But more importantly, it is a victory for the most vulnerable and innocent among us. Since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton effectively legalized abortion on demand, more than 56 million children have been denied the opportunity to live.

For over 40 years, the pro-life community has worked to counter the devastating impact abortion has had on mothers and their unborn babies, witnessing to the fundamental truth that from the moment of conception, a distinct human being with inherent worth and dignity has a right to life.

Congress and Trump have an opportunity to codify important policy riders, stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to organizations that perform or promote abortion, end the inhuman practice of late-term abortions on babies who are viable or capable of feeling pain, appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, and much more.

They should take action with confidence, knowing that Americans have spoken for life at the ballot box.

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This article was originally posted at the DailySignal.com

Written by Richard Wiley

Freedom of conscience is at risk, and the attack upon it has officially enveloped the field of medicine.

Remember the 11,588,500 word bill passed by Congress in 2010, accompanied by the hopeful promise of easy-access healthcare? The bill that continues to cause the closure of small businesses and price hikes in the insurance market? That’s right, the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) strikes again. Pointing back to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now using Obamacare to target the right to liberty of conscience.

Reminiscent of the rainbow colors projected on the White House after Obergefell v. Hodges, the HHS is doing everything it can to solidify its celebration and special treatment for those struggling with their sexuality. Pursuant to a final rule to become effective July 18th entitled “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities,” every medical practice treating any patient who participates in HHS administered or funded health programs or in the health insurance marketplaces will be required to comply with Obamacare’s new “nondiscrimination protections”.

According to HHS, unlawful “discrimination” based on “sex” is not limited to choosing to operate on a female instead of a male simply because she’s a female and he’s a male; the new definition includes refusing to provide sex-reassignment surgery because you disagree with it as a matter of medical or moral judgment. The rule thus mandates that medical institutions provide sex reassignment surgeries to patients regardless of the religious interests of the institution or physician. Possible penalties for violating the rule include civil suits, fines, and criminal investigations.

It doesn’t stop with transgender conundrums, however; the new rule also includes those requesting abortions to the list of protected classes. Although the HHS declares that the rule (section 1557) does not replace the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act or other provisions pertaining to religion, it fails to articulate any means of seeking relief under religious exemptions and is silent as to which provisions would be lifted and which would be stayed, should any relief be requested. The rule simply states, “[i]nsofar as the application of any requirement under this part would violate applicable Federal statutory protections for religious freedom and conscience, such application shall not be required.” No other mention of religious exemption is provided, leaving further procedural steps in limbo to be determined on a case-by-case basis with no uniform application.

Regulations will typically lay out a section detailing which providers are exempt under which circumstances because not doing so produces nebulous interpretations of the law. The practice is more than a courtesy, and omitting such a provision is a telling action indeed.

In addition to breaking down the freedom of conscience and religion, the rule erodes doctors’ professional judgment regarding which procedures are necessary, effective, and plausible for their patients. It’s another case of micromanagement that will have additional economic and moral ramifications for the medical field.

In the end, it’s clear that the rule is a ruse. While the federal government brandishes the colorful flag of the downtrodden class of sexual revolutionaries in its hand, it tramples on the ashes of truth, proudly proclaiming its fidelity to the cause of the deceived. Ironically and tragically, the very thing that can cause healing, that can provide some long overdue stability to struggling families, is the very thing the government continues to deride: the truth.

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This article was originally posted at the FamilyFoundation.org blog.

Obamacare is a complex regulation mandating universal insurance coverage. It also contains deliberate offense against Christians, requiring that everyone purchase insurance having “contraceptive coverage.” All employer health plans must provide this coverage. In practice this means plans that provide abortifacient products like IUDs and Plan B pills. [i]

But never fear, your religious objections will be catered to. An employer can avoid providing these products. All it must do is to fill out a little four page form. After that the contraceptive products are provided directly by the insurers and the employer is no longer in the loop. [ii] Everybody happy?

The Little Sisters of the Poor, which provides charitable services to elderly people, saw through this scheme right away. They recognized that they were still indirectly authorizing the provision of the abortifacients. They saw that they weren’t being allowed to select an insurer that itself wouldn’t provide them. The Little Sisters still felt culpable for possibly supplying abortifacients to its employees. So they objected both to providing the products and to filling out the little form. Their legal objection has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has asked for the parties to try again for a compromise solution. [iii]

What is this form, seemingly so unobtrusive and yet so objectionable? It’s a modern version of the pinch of incense offered to Caesar. Through it you affirm that your beliefs aren’t substantial enough to materially affect the world about you. After all, we can’t have religion affecting government policy, can we?

This is just another round of the fight about who will rule, Christ or Caesar. Compared to the troubles that Christians face in the Middle East or in Asia our troubles seem trivial. Yet these forms, the legal rulings against florists or proclamations about restrooms point the way to larger troubles. What can we do to keep our leaders from asking us to choose some invented “government compelling interest” [iv] over Christ?

First and always we must pray for national revival. Its coming will be God’s doing and His timing.

Next, remember that these are still the United States. Christians are not second class citizens, prohibited from advocating in society for Christ and his people. We can educate, petition, vote, organize, march, rally and otherwise tell and show our officials where they are stepping on our religious rights. We can also file lawsuits, just as the Little Sisters did, when the government demands an unrighteous obedience. Remember that judges also read election returns.

The church is already called to enlighten the world. We are a lamp set on a hill – not self-setting but put there by the Lord – providing light to all who are around it. [v] How will society know what is right or wrong unless we approve the right and admonish the wicked?

The U.S. Constitution encourages our advocacy. The First Amendment doesn’t say “separate your religion from politics”, it says “government, don’t interfere with religion”. [vi] Government must not favor a denomination but otherwise must get out of the way. This reading might shock you but it is what the amendment says.

If we don’t want to give to the government the things that are God’s then we will have to tell our politicians and judges – again – what they can’t touch. Telling them over and over again is a good start to reclaiming the public square for Christ. [vii] 

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Footnotes:

[i]       One provision in the Obamacare law mandates that health insurance cover “additional preventive care and screenings” for women, as specified in regulations to be issued by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).  PPACA (not in service at this moment) 2713, (a)(4) The contraceptive mandate is result of HHS regulation.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Coverage_for_contraceptives

[ii]      HHS administrative rules provides for birth control services even if the employer doesn’t want to directly provide them.  https://newrepublic.com/article/100636/obama-announces-contraception-accommodation-bishops-catholic-hospital-exemption

[iii]     The Little Sisters case before the Supreme Court was sent case back to Appellate Court to negotiate a compromise.  http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/435446/little-sisters-poor-just-beat-obama-administration-supreme-court

[iv]    Obama administration policies have asserted a compelling interest in reproductive rights. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-woodman/hobby-lobby_b_5029820.html

[v]     Matt. 5:14-16

[vi]    First portion of text: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, …

[vii]   James 2:26

In what is already a controversial session due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on many cases in the upcoming months that will have wide-reaching effects in American life. Here are three decisions that Christians should know about.

Health Standards: Protecting or Burdening Women?

Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (formerly v. Cole) 

Pro-lifers across the country will want to pay close attention to this case arising out of Texas. In light of the haunting Kermit Gosnell story in 2013, the Texas state legislature enacted safety measures for abortion clinics. The law would require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers and would require abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles in case health complications for the mother arise. If enforced, approximately three quarters of Texas abortion clinics now in operation would close.

Abortion advocates say this law violates the “undue burden” standard of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a doctrine which says any law that places a substantial obstacle to abortion is unconstitutional. In contrast, Texas argues that these are commonsense health regulations and that women are not burdened because the remaining abortion facilities are within reasonable driving distances throughout the state.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas law saying that it is not the role of the judiciary to consider the extent a state’s health laws have on restricting abortion access. The Supreme Court will now determine whether the Fifth Circuit properly used the “undue burden” standard in making its decision.

Of Nuns and Birth Control

Zubik v. Burwell 

What wins? Freedom of conscience or government interests? In Zubik v. Burwell, religious employers, such as Christian universities and Little Sisters of the Poor, are fighting Obamacare’s HHS mandate which requires them to cover the costs of “all FDA-approved contraceptives,” including abortion-inducing drugs, for their employees.

This may sound similar to last year’s Hobby Lobby case where the Court ruled the government cannot force employers with longstanding religious beliefs to pay for coverage that violates their conscience. To comply with Hobby Lobby, the Obama administration created an exception for religious employers that excludes the objectionable content from their insurance plans.

However, the federal government is still forcing the employers’ insurance companies and other third-party administrators to cover the costs of their employees who seek to obtain abortion pills. This means employers are still actively involved in providing drugs in their healthcare plans that violate their conscience.

The Court will weigh whether Obamacare’s HHS mandate and its “accommodation” violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Court’s decision will depend on whether the government can prove that this is the least restrictive way of advancing a compelling public interest.

A Separation between State and Playgrounds

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley

The state of Missouri prevented pre-school and daycare centers from using a government program that provides recycled tires for safer playground surfaces. The reason? The pre-school is run by a church. Missouri claims that allowing the program to serve a church-run daycare will violate the principle of separation of church and state.

The Court will determine whether excluding churches from an otherwise neutral government program constitutes a violation of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses.

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This article was originally posted at Mauck & Baker, LLC.

 

Written by Kathryn Watson

Lawyers filing an amicus brief on behalf of Little Sisters of the Poor before the U.S. Supreme Court claim federal health officials were working behind the scenes years ago to make as many religious organizations as possible subject to Obamacare’s contraception coverage mandate.

Internal government emails from October 2011 and July 2012 obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials obsessed over which Catholic universities are exempt from the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage for students and staff.

Judicial Crisis Network chief counsel Carrie Severino said the emails reveal federal officials defined religious organizations narrowly and arbitrarily by the tax code, rather than broadly and based on a desire for religious freedom, in order to make the maximum number of such organizations subject to the contraception coverage mandate.

“The fact that these officials are drawing these distinctions without having any relationship to the real, actual religious freedom concerns shows they’re not actually interested in religious freedom,” Severino told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “They were just trying to cover as many people as they could possibly cover.”

An Oct. 12, 2011, email from CMS’s Alexis Ahlstrom to colleagues advised them to “see last question on what student health plans at Catholic universities cover today” and asked “can we reach out to our sources at Aetna and Nationwide to see if they can answer the question? Thanks.”

Severino told TheDCNF that the email “was showing they were trying to figure out, is this going to cover Catholic universities.”

Little Sisters of the Poor, a Michigan-based group of Catholic nuns, is leading one of the most prominent religious liberty challenges against the Obamacare contraception mandate, which the U.S. Supreme Court will hear during its Spring 2016 term. Severino and the Judicial Education Project are filing an amicus brief on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor on Monday.

The Judicial Education Project contends that the federal government should define exempt religious organizations under a portion of the Civil Rights Act concerning religious freedom, rather than under a the ever-changing federal tax code.

The federal government currently exempts churches and their “auxiliaries” like church-run schools or programs. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision last year declared that “closely held” corporations can be exempted from the contraception mandate for religious reasons.

But the tax code requires even explicitly religious organizations unaffiliated with a specific church to apply for an exemption from the mandate. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals told the Little Sisters they still have to require a third-party to provide contraceptive coverage in July. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last November to hear the sisters’ case this Spring.

Severino said federal agencies defined exempt religious organizations under the tax code because they were “just trying to find a neutral reason so they can say that they’re not targeting these groups.”

“Religious freedom in America is under attack,” Severino told the DCNF. “This (case) is going to be very important. This administration is trying to limit religious freedom as much as possible.”

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This article was originally posted at the DailyCaller.com

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will revisit the legality of the Obama Administration’s contraceptive and abortion drug mandate in a crucial case this coming term.

SCOTUS announced last Friday that it will hear another challenge to the mandate filed by various religious groups, including the Catholic religious order The Little Sisters of the Poor.

Under the mandate, all health insurance policies issued in the United States must include coverage of abortifacient drugs and devices such as Ella and Plan B without co-pays or deductibles.

Ella and Plan B and the like are often marketed as “morning-after pills,” or “emergency contraceptives.”  However, these drugs also operate after conception to destroy developing human embryos in their earliest stages.

The SCOTUS has previously ruled that closely-held corporations with religious objections cannot be forced to subsidize abortifacient drugs in their health insurance plans.

In a high profile case involving craft giant Hobby Lobby, the court ruled that family businesses were “persons” under the Constitution, and thus entitled to the free exercise protections of the First Amendment.

The Obama Administration has attempted to evade the SCOTUS ruling by establishing what they have called an “accommodation” for religious institutions and religious ministries.

Under this sham arrangement, religious entities can notify their third party health administrator or the Department of Health and Human Services that they object to the abortion drug mandate on religious grounds.

The religious organization’s health insurer is then required to provide contraceptive and abortion drug coverage to the company’s employees directly “for free.”

Christian colleges and ministries have rightly objected to this “alternative,” which still requires that they facilitate and likely pay for drugs and devices that destroy human life.

“We perform this loving ministry because of our faith, and we cannot possibly choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith, and we shouldn’t have to,” says Sister Lorraine Marie McGuire, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

“All we ask is that our rights not be taken away,” Sr. McGuire continued.  “The government has exempted [others] from what they are now imposing on us.  We just want to keep serving the elderly poor as we have done for 175 years.”

The SCOTUS is consolidating a number of cases in hearing the appeal of the Obamacare mandate.  Other plaintiffs include Priests for Life, two Catholic dioceses, East Texas Baptist University, Southern Nazarene University (SNU), and Geneva College.

“The government has no legitimate basis for forcing faith-based organizations to be involved in providing abortion pills to their employees or students,” says Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Gregory Baylor, who is representing Geneva College and SNU.

“These Christian colleges simply want to abide by the very faith they espouse and teach,” Baylor explains.  “They should not be forced to choose between giving up their fundamental freedoms and paying financial penalties.”

Failure on the part of an employer to comply with the abortion drug mandate can result in fines of $100 per day per employee.  Such fines would bankrupt many nonprofit religious ministries.

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Written by John Zmirak

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will hear another Obamacare case, this one connected to the Obama administration’s mandate that religious employers help their workers buy contraceptives, including abortifacients such as the “morning after pill.” In this case we can see the stark outlines of the struggles Christians will face over future decades in America. Can we maintain any freedom of action in a country where a massive and growing federal government believes that it has a mandate to impose a godless utilitarian worldview into every nook and cranny of life? Or will we have to settle for a narrow “freedom of worship,” which covers a couple of hours every Sunday?

When Obamacare was proposed, it received broad support from naive religious leaders because it rectified a supposed injustice: unequal access to health care in America. Some, like Chicago’s Archbishop Blaise Cupich, still argue that supporting an egalitarian system of health care is the genuinely pro-life position to take: Since better health care can save lives, if you aren’t willing to do whatever it takes to offer everyone the same level of health care, then you are really not much different from doctors who abort unborn children.

This kind of sloppy thinking smooshes together the intentional murder of unborn children for convenience with the sad but stubborn fact that in a fallen world, man is mortal. There is a radical, absolute difference between directly killing someone, and not diverting all your resources to postponing his death. Otherwise, every time you switch the channel away from some hunger appeal on TV, you might as well have hired a hitman to knock off a neighbor — since either way, people die. To use “pro-life” this way is to make it mean everything and nothing, which is handy if your other political priorities make you lean toward the rabidly pro-choice Democratic party.

Conservative critics, many of them Christians, warned that federalizing health care would pose a grave threat to the independence of employers — including religious employers, such as Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor — to follow their consciences and make their own free decisions on how to spend their own money, time and talents. And the Obama administration’s fierce fight over this subject proves that conservatives were right. The Democrats know that letting religious employers opt out of paying for abortifacients won’t “force” working women into pregnancy. They are fighting on principle, the principle that no citizen’s conscience can be permitted to trump federal policy. If the mandarins in Washington, D.C., decide that a practice is in the best interest of the masses, then the masses will comply. They must be forced to be free.

It was independence of conscience which our country’s founders thought that they were declaring in 1776. They rejected those systems of government which tried to micromanage the religious and moral decisions of their citizens “for their own good,” like the Inquisition’s Spain or Calvin’s Geneva. Our government would not be closing churches because they taught the “wrong” doctrine, nor banning books because they spread “pernicious” ideas that led people astray.

Nor would our government try to iron out all the inequalities that naturally arise among human beings, who freely choose to use their talents wisely or squander them, to save their money or waste it, to run marathons or to smoke cigarettes, to invest in health insurance or face the tender mercies of the public emergency ward (which should offer a basic, minimum level of care to all comers). Instead of viewing its people as hapless children to be coddled and protected from themselves, America’s leaders were supposed to see its citizens as their equals, moral equals who could make their own decisions and face the consequences, like grown-ups. And grown-ups can decide where they want to work, who they want to hire, and what kind of priorities govern the way they run their businesses. They can also decide how to pray, and how to obey their consciences, so long as they do not violate the fundamental rights of others.

Inflate and distort those rights in the name of equality, and you take away that freedom. If everyone has the right to equal health care, why not equal housing? Interchangeable education? Equally well-cooked, nutritious food? Equal amounts of healthy exercise? That all sounds lovely at first blush, very small “c” Christian. Such a vision appeals to college sophomores still living on their parents’ dimes in spaces kept “safe” from pointy, dissenting ideas. But what such a vision yields in practice is a gray world of uniform public hospitals, public schools, mandatory gymnastics and federal cafeterias in government dormitories, where no one’s talents or choices matter since everyone’s outcome is the same. Such a system, created in the name of equality, once dominated half the world. We fought the Cold War to stop it from conquering the rest.

Our new battle is not with overt Marxist tyranny, but with something more subtle — an irreligious government that wants to agglomerate ever more power over our lives in the name of making things fairer and keeping people happier, of smoothing over our differences and soothing our fragile egos. If two men want to get married, then it is the Supreme Court’s job to protect their “dignity” and open the way for them — and the state’s job to punish those florists, caterers, or preachers who won’t cooperate. If an employee wants the abortion pill (and in five years, if the Democrats win you count on it, a sex change operation), then Mt. Zion Baptist or Our Lady of Sorrows will have to pay for it. There is no logical stopping point for this kind of radical secularism and statism. It is an ideology, which means that its appetite only grows, the more that it feeds.

Because our government is by its very nature secular, the larger the sphere of government action, the less freedom there is for Christians — full stop. The only free spaces for conscientious action by believers are those that we carve out by cutting the state down to size. Like kudzu, this invasive species won’t give up, but will keep growing back, trying to smother us. So keep your weed-whacker fueled. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

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This article was originally posted at Stream.org.

 

For those who have eyes to see, it’s evident that an age of persecution of the church is upon us in America. Warnings have been long issued and for the most part ignored.  Ignorance, complacency, intellectual sloth, cowardice, and lukewarm faith have conspired to create fertile soil within the church and without for the sodomy-as-identity juggernaut to spread its body and soul-destroying poison.

In the days to come, Christians will face challenges as they seek to submit their lives to Christ. Individual Christians will face persecution and so too will Christian institutions.  Those whose faith is weak may come to embrace heresy, and once the authority of Scripture on marriage, “gender,” and sexuality is rejected, it will be rejected on other issues as well. As we’ve already seen, there will be schism within churches and within denominations.

But God is faithful even when those who claim to love Jesus are not. He has given us his Word and preachers and teachers to light our path in the midst of a darkening cultural. Yes, there are pastors who are preaching truth about sexuality and marriage, and despite what the liberal press reports and perhaps believes, some of these pastors are young.

As an encouragement and source of clarity on homosexuality, “gender,” and marriage, IFI will be posting sermons from some of these pastors. Please listen to them. You will be emboldened and equipped to go and share truth with a suffering and confused culture. Those who love God and love their neighbors as themselves must never affirm homosexuality as good. Learn from these wise men how to truly love those who experience same-sex attraction and how to respond to lies in the culture and false teaching in the church.

The first of our posts is a brief sermon from Dr. Rob Rienow, pastor of Gospel Fellowship Church in Wheaton, Illinois: