The U.S. Supreme Court of the United States has consistently upheld the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children within the guarantee of liberty found in the U.S. Constitution. A subversive movement emanating from the United Nations, however, is seeking to undermine parental authority by, in effect, making children wards of the State. Under the guise of protecting children, globalists are pushing a draconian agenda known as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which if ratified will overrule the authority of parents to act in the best interests of their children.

Standing between American families and the all-consuming power of the State is the Parental Rights Amendment to the United States constitution. This constitutional amendment will protect parents and their offspring from an overreaching bureaucracy that promotes unbiblical practices that harm children and also punishes households that seek to maintain Christian values.

Only two countries, the United States and Somalia, have not approved the UNCRC. According to Article VI of the United States Constitution, all treaties entered into by America “shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Ratification of the UNCRC would, therefore, limit American sovereignty and supersede all federal or state laws. But the endorsement of any treaty requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate to pass, which the Senate has thus far failed to achieve.

At first glance the UNCRC sounds both appropriate and needed. After all, few would disagree that children should have human rights as well as adults. But, as they say, the devil is in the details, and the UNCRC truly emanates from the Pit. It would sweep aside all restrictions on abortion and contraception under the rubric of providing “health care services” to children–without the consent of their parents.

Moreover, children will be indoctrinated with values and views that many parents will find objectionable. The UNCRC mandates that underaged youth be exposed to “information and material from a diversity of national and international sources,” including a variety of viewpoints related to their “spiritual and moral well-being,”–once again, values and views that many parents will find offensive.

Relegating the instruction of moral and religious beliefs to a host of questionable sources will have predictably  deleterious consequences. The United Kingdom is a prime example of what happens when the State becomes the instructor of ethics. A government-issued pamphlet entitled “Talking to Your Teenager about Sex and Relationships” advises children to choose their own morals regarding sexuality and instructs parents to keep silent lest they discourage their children from exploring any and all views on sexuality and relationships.

The World Policy Analysis Center at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health noted a number of areas of progress regarding children’s rights since the introduction of the UNCRC. However, the Center also noted that “Global challenges still remain in the area of child marriage.” Despite all the rhetoric about “children’s rights,” the proponents of the UNCRC still cannot face up to the massive inconsistencies of their position.  If they are fighting for “children’s rights,” should that not include the right to marry?

Far from evincing concern about this worldwide scourge, the UNCRC apparently approves of the “right” of children to be forcibly married at young ages.  Michael P. Farris, is a constitutional lawyer and president of ParentalRights.org, an organization that has been campaigning against U.S. ratification of “dangerous U.N conventions that “threaten parental rights” such as the UNCRC.   Farris notes:

“The United States demonstrates its commitment to human rights whenever it follows and enforces the Constitution of the United States, which is the greatest human rights instrument in all history.”

The Washington Post predictably rails against Farris and ParentalRights.org, claiming:

The group fears that ratifying the treaty would mean children could choose their own religion, that children would have a legally enforceable right to leisure, that nations would have to spend more on children’s welfare than national defense, and that a child’s ‘right to be heard’ could trigger a governmental review of any decision a parent made that a child didn’t like.  

The Post is apparently oblivious to the fact that children have few if any of these “rights” in the vast majority of countries that so eagerly climbed aboard the bandwagon of the UNCRC. According to The Post,

The United States can learn from other member nations on how to reduce poverty, ensure women’s rights, improve education and educational access, and healthy living conditions, for starters.  

Such facetious claims are the epitome of hypocrisy when hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central America have either arrived or are at this very moment making the arduous thousand-mile journey on foot to have the opportunity to cross the border and enjoy lavish government benefits that are unknown in much of the world.

The Migrant Policy Institute confirms that the United States is by far the preeminent destination country for migrants seeking a better life–with more than four times the number of immigrants seeking asylum than in the second-place country: Saudi Arabia. Accounts of the horrific abuse suffered by those who are forced out of necessity to work in the desert kingdom are well-known, but lie beyond the scope of this article.

Contradicting the implications of the UNCRC charter, another United Nations organization, UNICEF, states unambiguously:

Marriage before the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights…. Child marriage often compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at increased risk of domestic violence. Child marriage also affects boys, but to a lesser degree than girls.

Yet today dozens of countries openly allow child marriages below the age of fifteen. While the United Nations is quick to condemn the United States for its alleged failures, nary a peep is heard concerning the travesty of child marriages primarily in South America and the Arab world, which have the highest rates of child marriages.

Hope is on the way: the Parental Rights Amendment to the United States constitution is gaining momentum.  Introduced this week by U.S. Representative Jim Banks (R-IN).  The Amendment already has fifteen cosponsors, six more than when it was introduced last year.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Congressional representative to urge him/her to become a cosponsor of the Parental Rights Amendment (H.J. Res. 36).  The Parental Rights Amendment will ensure that the next generation of children will be raised and guided by their loving parents, not by an impersonal government bureaucracy pushing an agenda inimical to the values of American families.

Christian Life in Exile
On February 22^nd, IFI is hosting a special forum with Dr. Erwin Lutzer as he teaches from his latest book, “The Church in Babylon,” answering the question, “How do we live faithfully in a culture that perceives our light as darkness?” This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Jubilee Church in Medinah, Illinois.

Click HERE for more info…

Written by Daniel Horowitz

If Bashar Assad or other Islamic entities came to our border, set up multibillion-dollar global criminal networks sending drugs as powerful as chemical weapons flowing into our country, wouldn’t we treat it like a national emergency on par with a war? Well, take a look at what these violent global entities (still simply known as “drug cartels”) are doing at our border. Breitbart Texas has posted unimaginably gruesome photos of their daily activities. (Warning: extremely graphic.)

Somehow, it’s only cool to care about humanitarian and national security problems of other countries, but not our own or even those of the country just south of us. The reason? Because it implicates the agenda of illegal immigration.

Last week, I caught up with several law enforcement agents who have decades of experience dealing with the southwest border. Here is a synopsis of what a few of them told me of the seriousness of the situation.

Sheriff Mark Napier, who heads local law enforcement in Pima County, the largest border county in America, lamented the callous disregard of the politicians and the media to our border crisis. “This is a human rights issue,” said Napier, who is also vice president of the Arizona Sheriff’s Association. “Unlike Pelosi, who says border walls are immoral, I would say what is immoral is to create a system that encourages some man in Central America to grab his small children by the hand, walk hundreds of miles north through all sorts of climate conditions, environmental hazards, and criminal hazards, and come here believing they could just walk in for a better life. That is the humanitarian tragedy – the system that encourages this very dangerous and desperate behavior that is the problem. By fixing our border, the aliens would know that they can’t come north.”

The media and special interest groups have spent years ignoring the national security threats to Americans while actually fueling the humanitarian crisis for the very migrants that they claim to care about. Now, U.S. House Democrats plan to hold hearings pointing fingers not at themselves, but at Border Patrol for the recent deaths of two child migrants in BP custody. Perhaps the politicians should hear more from border sheriffs rather than special interest groups. Here is what is causing the humanitarian problem, according to Napier.

“My deputies recover over 100 bodies a year in the desert of my county, mostly skeletal remains. This is not the fault of CBP that this child died in their custody; it’s the fault of the system that encouraged that dangerous behavior on the part of that minor’s guardian. I’m not a very political guy, but when you argue against border security, you are incentivizing very dangerous behavior that seems to counter-indicate to me any degree of caring for those people that you profess to care about.”

He expressed a sentiment I’ve heard from many local and federal law enforcement agents who are not trying to score any political points and are driven simply by the dangerous facts on the ground they are confronted with – facts that the political elites want to ignore:

“Long after I’m no longer the sheriff of this county, this county is still my home, and I care about it because my children and grandchildren live here,” said the veteran sheriff. “We’ve got to fix this. I’m so tired of the politics and sound-bite policy. This is not a partisan issue; this is a human rights issue, this is a public safety issue, and a national security issue, which should transcend partisan politics, but unfortunately it does not.”

The frustration at the lack of federal help was also echoed by Mark Dannels, the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, just to the east of Pima County:

Our southern border has become the largest crime zone in America, and law enforcement at all levels work tirelessly every day to secure our border and communities to prevent and detect those that use our border for an avenue to promote illegal activity that degrades our quality of life in America. As the political debate continues, law enforcement deputies/officers/agents will continue to do their constitutional mandates/expectations in securing our borders. I just wish our elected congressional members would do the same.

Inextricably mixed with the humanitarian crisis is the national security crisis posed by the evil cartels. Last week, I had retired Texas Department of Public Safety Captain Jaeson Jones on my podcast. Jones worked for 24 years in the intelligence and counterterrorism division. He now teaches the intelligence community, federal, state, and local law enforcement across the country about border security and Mexican cartels. He warned that cartels such as Jalisco are “now operating in 42 countries” and that “the Mexican cartels are no longer just drug trafficking organizations, they are global violent networks” for a multitude of reasons:

Not only should we treat them as terrorists because they’re operating globally, but because they are also employing terrorist organizations such as FARC to conduct their baseline training. They have killed over 200,000 Mexican citizens since 2007.

Then you take the integration of military-grade weapons such as light antitank weapons, surface-to-air missiles, and hand grenades. The tactics that they’re employing in the tradecraft that they’re gaining from working with terrorists and from special forces units is incredible.

Jones blames not only the media, but even much of federal law enforcement for not adapting their tactics to confront the “quantum leap” the cartels have made from being small-time drug traffickers to violent global entities with endless resources at their disposal.

And no, the violence is not just staying on their side of the border. For those of you asking “why now?” in terms of the urgency at the border, heed the words of this veteran agent:

I can remember a time in this country when we never even heard the term “human trafficking.” That occurred in other countries around the world. … Today it is not only here, it is in every state in this country. We first saw it at the southwest border. I can remember cases when I was stationed in Brownsville, where we had … one of the first cases, I remember, was a woman that was brought in the country, smuggled here through some coyotes by her husband. She was stripped naked and tied up and duct-taped in the back of a car. We were pinging the phone trying to locate her, while they were selling her from Dallas to Houston, putting her into the trade. It was absolutely horrific. I can remember thinking, my God, what is happening? Sadly, now it’s all across the country and not even newsworthy. Now the question is, why did American law enforcement not stop this?

How can we allow this to continue at our own border when we race off and spend billions and endless lives in the Middle East at the drop of a hat, based on a fraction of the security concerns that exist at our border?

Jones lamented the amount of crime from criminal alien networks that is not being quantified in federal data:

Along our southwest border right now the level of cartel infiltration at local and state and federal levels is unbelievable. Look at the kidnappings that are occurring. The extortion, drug trafficking. … To this day at a national level, the American people have no idea how much dope is actually seized in this country. Human trafficking, labor trafficking, money laundering, weapon seizures, cybercrime. I mean the list goes on.

What about those who believe blocking cartel infiltration is somehow not the purview of national defense? U.S. Representative Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said that he opposes any plans to use defense spending for the border because “it is not a responsibility of the Department of Defense” to build the wall, which he considers to be “non-defense purposes.”

Here’s what Jones said about the threat these cartel members pose in our communities:

“When we see these individuals learning the tradecraft of how to utilize armored vehicles and military-grade weapons in two-man, four-man, 10-man tactics … our everyday law enforcement officers domestically are not capable of handling that. That’s not what they train for.”

It’s a shame that establishment Republicans, even those in border states, refuse to recognize the severity of the problem or offer any realistic solutions while criticizing the president. How much longer will they allow this to continue?

This article was originally published at ConservativeReview.com.

Bernie Sanders, a socialist and U.S. Senator from Vermont, doesn’t like capitalist economics. Visiting the Pope in 2016, he made some serious accusations.

I told him [the Pope] that I was incredibly appreciative of the incredible role that he is playing in this planet in discussing issues about the need for an economy based on morality, not greed…[i]

Doubling down, Bernie went even farther:

At an economic conference held at the Vatican, Bernie Sanders found occasion to denounce capitalism. “At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.”[ii]

Even if we don’t like his politics, suppose that he is right. What if capitalism really is immoral. Shouldn’t Christians then be working to make things right? This article explores capitalism and economic immorality. It aims to:

• Define capitalism, so that we can agree on is being discussed.

• Examine what it means to have morals in an economic system.

• Discover what the Bible has to say about property, economics, and morals.

• Look at the American economy, seeking patterns of economic injustice.

• Give thought on ways to fix patterns of economic injustices.

Capitalism in two minutes

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

“an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”[iii]

This definition implies:

People are allowed, even encouraged, to own things, tangible and intangible, useful for producing other things. A person always can use his or her own labor, ideas, and creativity. A person may also own the means of production: farms, mines, factories, and warehouses stuffed with useful items. Money stored in bank accounts is also good, for it can be used to acquire the means of production.

An owner gets to choose what happens to his or her property. What a person owns, or can produce, can be sold or gifted to others. It can even be kept idle, producing nothing. All of those choices are good.

Some people will become wealthy, but others won’t. When people have the freedom to apply talent, industriousness, social connections, and “luck” to their endeavors some of them will succeed and others will fail. Importantly, the successful people are allowed to keep their gains.

Capitalism has no built-in morals

The concept of capitalism is simple and short. It basically says that people can own things, and exchange ownership of their things. There is nothing there about morals, nothing prescribing prices, defining contract law, or prohibiting certain activities.

Economic morals come not from theories, but from application of that society’s morals and ethics. For example, a society that prohibits armed robbery will also condemn theft by way of dishonest weights and measures (Proverbs 16:11). Since discussion only of capitalist theory would make for a really short article, we’ll continue by concentrating on the American expression of capitalism.

When a society’s morals change then the marketplace soon reflects the changes. Here is an example from our too-recent past.

• Early in the 19^th century United States law permitted importing slaves from Africa.[iv] A slave buyer from America could go to Africa and purchase slaves from a seller. Buying foreign slaves was socially and economically acceptable for American society, at least in some states. Selling slaves to Americans was acceptable to this African society.

• In 1808 it became socially and legally unacceptable to buy and import slaves into the United States.[v] The practice was outlawed, and ceased, because of our society’s new morals, which were applied to the marketplace. However, African sellers stayed in business, for selling slaves was still acceptable to their society.[vi]

In this example the American and African societies expressed different moralities on the same topic, slavery and slave trading. It shows that you can’t usefully judge a society’s economic morality without also considering its general morality.

What does the Bible have to say about property and capitalism?

The Bible instructs us in righteous living. And unless you’re a hermit farmer, its instructions also cover the economic interactions you have with others. In fact, the Bible has over 2000 verses dealing with money.[vii] What does the Bible have to say about owning property?

God gave Adam and Eve the right to own things. God created everything, and still owns everything (Deuteronomy 10:14; Psalm 24:1; Psalm 50:12; 1 Corinthians 10:26, etc.). He delegated His ownership authority to Adam and Eve, giving them, and their descendants, dominion and the right to rule (Gen 1:28-30).

Mankind practiced capitalism from the very beginning. Cain was a farmer, Abel a shepherd. Each sacrificed to God out of his own provision, not from some community pool (Gen 4:2-5). They individually enjoyed the rights of private property and capitalism. After all, farms and flocks are means of production and thus capital goods.

The New Testament affirms private ownership. When Jesus warns us to store up treasures in heaven, He acknowledges that people can, and do, own treasures here (Matthew 6:19-21). He didn’t tell all of us to abandon them, but rather to use them as tools and not be enslaved to them (Matthew 6:24). The warning “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36) speaks of a common understanding of capitalist principles. To the people of Jesus era, capitalism was likely the only economics they knew.

Early in the Jerusalem church its people pooled their goods for the common good, selling property and land for the needs of the saints (Acts 2:43-45; 4:32-35). Yet communal life wasn’t the norm for Christ’s church. For example, Paul encouraged to the Corinthian church to prepare a gift they promised for the benefit of the Jerusalem church (1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8:2, 6-8). If the Corinthians were living communally then Paul could have simply asked the elders about the gift. This means that members of a congregation may choose to act communally, but they aren’t obligated to do so.

It is OK to be wealthy. The Bible has no problem with a person being wealthy. Look at Abraham, who found favor with God (Genesis 12:1-3). He was blessed with enormous wealth (Genesis 13:2), so much so that it took a literal army to properly care for it (Genesis 14:14).

It was also OK to be wealthy even if you weren’t Abraham. When Moses was done leading Israel through the wilderness he lectured them about the kind of land they were to occupy and enjoy.

• They would occupy towns and homes they didn’t have to labor over, and eat from orchards they didn’t have to plant (Deuteronomy 6:10-15).

• They would have an abundance of crops, flocks, and children, along with the health to enjoy it all (Deuteronomy 7:12-16).

• They would have abundant land for farming and shepherding, with minerals to mine, refine, and use in factories. (Deuteronomy 8:6-10).

After being set up so nicely, all that they then had to do was to devote themselves to the Lord. Over time Israel failed to do that and had an up-and-down history.

The New Testament also has wealthy people, even wealthy Christians.

• Jesus challenged a man to give up his wealth. He saw it as a snare to the man’s devotion to God. The problem wasn’t that he was wealthy, but that the wealth was the man’s master. (Luke 18:18-27).

• Philemon had at least one slave, indicating a large, wealthy household. Paul encouraged him to free his slave Onesimus. But he was OK with Philemon’s wealth. If he wasn’t then Paul would have also rebuked him for being rich (Philemon 1:18-20).

• James admonished men going on a business trip. The problem wasn’t their occupation, but that they wouldn’t acknowledge the God who directs their steps (James 4:13-15).

In the Bible we see some people thrive with wealth. It is a blessing to them. Other people get rich and it warps them into selfish oppressors. We see how wealth can corrupt (1 Timothy 6:9-10) and cause the possessor to worship their treasure rather than God who provided it (Luke 16:13).

What does the Bible have to say about the responsibilities of wealth?

Has God blessed you with wealth? Do you get regular meals, a good job, a place to call your own home? Very good. Is God pleased with how you handle your bounty? Or are you only vaguely aware that with wealth comes responsibility (Luke 12:48).

Here are some of the Bible’s charges regarding wealth.

Don’t trust in your wealth. Wealth has its uses, but you can’t eat gold during a famine (Genesis 47:15). What you have saved can be taken from you by thieves or armies. And your wealth won’t help you at all when you die – you can’t take it with you (Luke 12:15-21). You need to look to God to provide for your needs (Luke 12:28; Philippians 4:19).

Don’t use your wealth and position to subvert justice. Those with wealth and influence can influence leaders and judges to achieve more favorable outcomes. The Bible shows this, how David tried evading acknowledging his adultery with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:1-4, 14-17), and how Ahab acquired Naboth’s vineyard by arranging a lynching (1 Kings 21:8-16). Judges are to be upright and honest (Exodus 23:6-7; Isaiah 1:26), not favoring the rich or the poor (Exodus 23:1-3; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:16-17; Proverbs 18:16), and never open to bribes (Exodus 23:8; Proverbs 17:23).

Have honest business practices. Honesty isn’t just a personal ethic (Exodus 20:15, Proverbs 22:22-23). It also covers how you gain your wealth, and how you run your business.

• Do you delay paying your bills? It gooses your cash flow, but it also cheats your creditors of the payments they need today (Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:10-13; Deuteronomy 25:13-15; Jam 5:4).

• Shortchanging your customers is not only dishonest but theft (Leviticus 19:35-36; Deuteronomy 25:13-15; Proverbs 11:1; Proverbs 20:10; Amos 8:4-8).

• You can stretch expensive supplies by “watering it down.” But diluting or adultering food and medicine is theft by misrepresentation and shortchanging. It can also sicken or kill those who consume your products.

• Counterfeit parts are low-quality products represented to be the genuine article. When counterfeit parts are installed in high-stress situations, where a high-quality part is expected and needed, it can cause accidents and death.

In brief, be a straight shooter (Matthew 7:12). Knowing the right thing, and then doing it, might cost you your job. But it also might save lives, and certainly save your conscience.

Be generous to those in need. The Bible reminds us to be generous to those in need (Deuteronomy 15:7-8; Matthew 25:31-46; 1 Timothy 6:17-19; Hebrews 13:16; James 2:15-16). And not just generous, but cheerfully generous (Deuteronomy 15:10; 2 Corinthians 9:7). You’re cheerful because you’re using God’s grace to you to help someone else, effectively sharing the Gospel in a practical manner. You’re mastering your wealth, rather than the other way around.

We also learn whom to be generous to.

• Support your family, including your extended family (Exodus 20:12). Jesus criticized those who wouldn’t support their parents, who instead devoted resources for Temple use (Mark:7:9-13). If we support church ministries, but not our family members who are in material need, then we’re doing things wrong. Charity begins at home (1 Timothy 5:3-4).

• Support the church. In Paul’s letters a recurring theme is collecting for the saints in Jerusalem (Romans 15:25-27; 1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8:1-6; 2 Corinthians 9:1-4). Paul himself is supported by the Macedonians, who were poor and yet generous in support of spreading the Gospel (2 Corinthians 11:7-9).

• Support your neighbor. Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29:37) shows that Christians shouldn’t limit their help to just their physical neighbors, or confine it to other Christians. Yet understand that in your charity you’ll have to learn how to tell the needy from the deceivers. You ought to be working to get needy people “on their feet” again, and not merely easing your conscience by flipping a few dollars their way.

The rich and the poor alike can have a generous heart. The Macedonians were very poor, and yet dug deep for the church in Jerusalem out of heartfelt concern (2 Corinthians 8:2-3). You’re never so poor that you’re disqualified from caring. The degree of your generosity is something you can discuss with God.

For a deeper discussion on wealth and its responsibilities, visit the web sites referenced in this end note.[viii]

Selected success stories of repairing American capitalism

The Bible says the wealthy are to be honest, not influencing officials to favor them versus the poor. These warnings also apply to businesses. They could easily defraud their customers through false weights or adulterated products. And they could oppress their own workers by misusing the employer / employee relationship.

American business practices haven’t always been the finest examples of applied Christianity. But America has also been open to reforming, collectively willing to see our errors and change. Here are some past examples of successful changes in economic morality.

• Occupational safety: Whether at a factory or construction site, work activities can be dangerous. Examples include machines with exposed moving parts, fumes or dust that damage workers’ lungs, and inadequate fire exits.[ix]

But adding safety guards, and implementing safety procedures, increase operating costs. This puts a safety-minded producer at a price-competitive disadvantage with less scrupulous competitors (Exodus 21:28-36; Deuteronomy 22:8). Without external pressure, whether moral, economic, or legal, worker safety loses out.

Since businesses were unable to collectively reform on their own initiative, activists campaigned for safety laws. After about sixty years of effort, by 1948 all the U.S. states had workplace safety laws and workmen compensation laws.[x]

• Child labor in factories: In the 1800s children were encouraged to work in factories, sometimes alongside their parents. Although it may have increased the family income, it also kept the children out of school and stunted their adult career possibilities.

After many years of passing child labor laws, only to have them struck down, those passed in 1938 stuck. These laws, in addition to side effects of the Great Depression, effectively ended the employment of children in factories.[xi]

• Food and drug laws: In the 1800s an increasing amount of our food was processed and packaged in factories. With the processing hidden from consumers, unscrupulous vendors did much to cheapen the products, yet selling them as the genuine article. For example, diseased or rotten meat was disguised to seem good. These business practices were unhealthy for consumers, and robbed them by not providing the purity or quantity they paid for.

Although food safety activists had campaigned for decades to implement food purity and inspection laws,[xii] nothing substantial happened until the author Upton Sinclair published his novel The Jungle.[xiii] He hoped that his expose of horrific conditions in meat packing plants would promote a socialist revolution. What actually transpired was a successful push for increasingly effective food and drug laws.[xiv]

These examples show a pattern for getting the desired social change. Mere moral outrage doesn’t produce the desired change in society. Rather, persistent argument works to change individual beliefs. Eventually enough people believe that the complaint has merit, and social pressure results in a permanent individual behavior change. Usually the social pressure is reinforced with legal sanctions having a painful bite.

How to fix an economic immorality

In the past, Americans responded to patterns of unjust business practices and fixed them. But do we still have the ability to overcome such challenges? Let’s examine something that I think should get changed, a form of worker oppression. We’ll discover how could we change our attitudes and behaviors to eliminate it.

A sweatshop is “a factory or workshop, especially in the clothing industry, where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions.”[xv] Frequently these factories have dangerous workplace conditions. In the United States corrective labor laws have almost eliminated sweatshops.[xvi] Some of this change is through improved working conditions, but the biggest reduction is caused by this sort of work having moved to foreign factories.

A problem with this job export is that workplace conditions in these factories are worse than we ever imagined. Many articles show that these foreign factories make their employees work long hours,[xvii] in unsafe workplaces,[xviii] while spewing pollution into the neighborhood.[xix] Americans get cheap fashion and these workers pay for it with their health, even their lives.

This is really an American economic scandal because we’re hiring these factories. We’re letting them sin on our behalf, by contracting for goods at prices we know are too low to provide decent working conditions.

Suppose a factory were to change things to provide a better worker experience. Those changes would raise its production costs. However, their American buyers won’t accept those higher costs and would move their business elsewhere. So, instead of making changes, they merely cheat at workplace inspections and keep abusing their workers.[xx]

We shouldn’t turn a blind eye to how our goods are made. We mustn’t accept ruining someone’s health just to get inexpensive clothes and toys. How can we go about fixing things?

Recognize that there is a problem. Acknowledge that there is a problem with these imported goods, then tell others. No significant changes will occur until there is a critical mass of people demanding them.

Pay more to patronize the good guys. Learn which firms insist on better labor conditions, then give your business to them. Hewing to something like a “Healthy Workplaces Seal” creates public opinion about the issue. Be willing to pay a premium for such goods, for merely seeking the lowest price is how the foreign sweatshop problem got started.

Criticize the bad guys. Investigate business supply chains, and shame those who keep using oppressed labor. See through those cover-up reports that hide workplace problems. This is the flip side of patronizing the good guys. No business wants bad publicity.

Get the government to lean on the bad guys. We can’t prosecute foreign producers for not hewing to American workplace or environmental standards. But we can sanction their imports. Create a foreign EPA, a foreign OSHA, inspecting their factories and supply chains. Their findings can lead to punitive tariffs. If a factory won’t spend for safety or cleanliness, why should they pocket their savings? They’ll soon learn to spend on health and safety, rather than lose their business, or line Uncle Sam’s wallet.

As with other social change campaigns, expect that this effort will require long, persistent effort before there are signs of success. By the way, can someone tell me where to get shirts made with the “Healthy Workplaces Seal?”

Conclusions

Let’s return to our original question: Is capitalism immoral? No, it isn’t. The Bible likes private property ownership, and endorses capitalism.

A more pointed question is: Can there be immorality in society’s capitalism? But of course! This article has shown many examples of this in American economic history. It comes about because society is, or was, willing to tolerate immorality.

A society’s morals are the collective result of individual morals. There isn’t an amorphous “it is society’s fault,” where we get to blame our environment for our own attitudes and deeds. Each of us are responsible for our own sins, our own failings. The great thing about this is how we can change and learn to act more morally. Changing beliefs and behaviors is the beginning to fixing any social, or economic, problem.

Footnotes:

[i] Nichols, John, Bernie Sanders Went to Rome to Discuss the Immorality of Unfettered Capitalism, The Nation, April 17, 2016, https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-just-met-with-pope-francis-to-discuss-the-immorality-of-unfettered-capitalism/

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism

[iv] Smith, George H., The Slave Trade and the Constitution, Libertarianism.org, September 29, 2017, https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/slave-trade-constitution

[v] US law abolishing transatlantic slave trade takes effect, Oxford University Press, January 2, 2012, https://blog.oup.com/2012/01/slave-trade/

[vi] Sieff, Kevin, An African country reckons with its history of selling slaves, Washington Post, January 29, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/an-african-country-reckons-with-its-history-of-selling-slaves/2018/01/29/5234f5aa-ff9a-11e7-86b9-8908743c79dd_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7f453fdfe6fb

[vii] Brown, Chris, 3 Things the Bible Says About Money, Stewardship, May 21, 2015, https://www.stewardship.com/articles/3-things-the-bible-says-about-money

[viii] These web pages are well-composed summaries of Bible teaching on wealth and its responsibilities. They’re worth visiting.

• What Does the Bible Say About Money and Wealth?, Christian Bible Reference Site, https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_money.htm

• What Does the Bible Say About Generosity and Duty to the Poor?, Christian Bible Reference Site, https://www.christianbiblereference.org/faq_generosity.htm

• Sunshine, Dr. Glenn, Rich and Poor 2, Institute For Faith, Work & Economics, May 29, 2012, https://tifwe.org/rich-and-poor-2/

[ix] Brown, Don, 3 TURNING POINTS IN THE HISTORY OF WORKPLACE SAFETY, BasicSafe, August 5, 2014, https://info.basicsafe.us/safety-management/blog/3-turning-points-in-the-history-of-workplace-safety

[x] Aldrich, Mark, History of Workplace Safety in the United States, 1880-1970, EH.Net Encyclopedia, August 14, 2001, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-workplace-safety-in-the-united-states-1880-1970/

[xi] Child Labor in America: History, Policy, and Legislative Issues, EveryCRSReport, February 9, 2005 (revised through November 18, 2013), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL31501.html

[xii] Saxowsky, David, Milestones in U.S. Food Law, North Dakota State University, https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/foodlaw/overview/history/milestones

[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

[xiv] Pure Food and Drug Act: A Muckraking Triumph, United States History, https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h917.html

[xv] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sweatshop

[xvi] Segment hosted by Zwillich, Todd, When ‘Made in America’ Means Made in Sweatshops, WNYC, September 11, 2017, https://www.wnyc.org/story/when-made-america-still-means-sweatshops/

[xvii] Merchant, Brian, Life and death in Apple’s forbidden city, The Guardian, June 18, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract

[xviii] Barboza, David, In Chinese Factories, Lost Fingers and Low Pay, New York Times, January 5, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05sweatshop.html

[xix] Yardley, Jim, Bangladesh Pollution, Told in Colors and Smells, New York Times, July 14, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/world/asia/bangladesh-pollution-told-in-colors-and-smells.html

[xx] Roberts, Dexter and Engardio, Pete, Secrets, lies, and sweatshops, Bloomberg Businessweek, November 17, 2006, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15768032/ns/business-us_business/t/secrets-lies-sweatshops/

Written by Cal Skinner

Lakewood resident Steve Willson did the following analysis:

Hate Crimes Up — and Down

The FBI just released their annual report on hate crimes in the U.S. It’s useful to look at the data in more than one way to gain perspective.

First, how serious an issue is “hate crime”?

Well, in 2017, there were 1.2 million violent crimes reported to the FBI and 7.7 million property crimes.

Of these incidents, a little over 7,000 were classified as hate crimes.

Hate crimes constituted 0.04% of all crimes against property and 0.33% of all violent crimes.

Second, what is the trend in hate crimes?

The good news is that hate crimes are far lower than at their historical peaks. The bad news is the last few years have seen a large increase.

FBI statistics go back to 1996. Since then, incidents of hate crimes against blacks have fallen by 45%.

Undoubtedly the fall from earlier periods, before the FBI began tracking such statistics, is much greater.

However, in the three years since 2014, the number of incidents of hate crimes against blacks has increased 24%.

Hate crimes against Jews is down 15% from the peak recorded in 2000 but is up 54% since 2014.

Hate crimes against Muslims jumped in after 9/11, jumping from 28 incidents in 2000 to 481 incidents in 2001.

Fortunately, after that, the number of incidents fell sharply, to 155 the next year. From the peak, incidents involving Muslims has fallen 43%.

However, the increase since 2014 is 77%.

Hate crimes based on sexual orientation peaked in 2001 and has fallen 19% since then.

The increase since 2014 is 11%.

Third, how is hate crime distributed?

Hate crimes against

• blacks constitute about 28% of all incident
• sexual orientation 16%
• Jewish 13% and
• Muslim 4%

This article was originally published at McHenry County Blog.

When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, his campaign strategist James Carville gave him the formula for success: Focus on the economy. In Carville’s famous words, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Today, President Donald Trump could easily campaign with a similar mantra, since many Americans are pleased with the economic uptick under his leadership.

But, in terms of a lasting legacy, in terms of societal impact, the real mantra should be, “It’s the courts, stupid.” You can be assured that Trump and his Republican colleagues have a good grasp on this already.

And now, with a strengthened majority in the U.S. Senate, the sky is the limit with the good they can do.

As noted (with great concern) by Jennifer Bendery in the Huffington Post, “With a newly strengthened Senate majority, Mitch McConnell can plow ahead with reshaping the nation’s courts.”

Yes, “McConnell has said all along that judicial confirmations are his No. 1 priority as Senate leader. That won’t change going forward.”

And this, in fact, is a major reason many of us voted for Donald Trump: U.S. Supreme Court appointees and, more broadly, federal court appointees at all levels. Transforming the courts was our No. 1 concern.

How much has been done already?

Bendery writes, “To date, the Republican leader has confirmed two U.S. Supreme Court justices, 29 circuit judges and 53 district judges. He’s confirmed so many circuit judges, many of whom are strongly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ rights and anti-voting rights, and nearly all of whom are ideologues handpicked by the conservative Federalist Society, that 1 in 7 seats on the U.S. circuit courts are now filled by judges nominated by Trump.”

Some might say, “But this is not healthy. The courts will now become distinctly conservative. They’re supposed to be neutral and impartial.”

To the contrary, the goal is to get the courts back to where they’re supposed to be, namely, rightly interpreting our Constitution rather than creating new laws. Yet for decades, many of the courts have swung dangerously left, leading to rampant (and dangerous) judicial activism.

Judicial activism, in turn, has become a direct threat to our freedoms. (For Mark Levin’s now classic exposé, see here.)

A lengthy, 2013 article published by the Heritage Foundation gave three glaring examples of judicial activism whereby the courts were guilty of “Contorting the Text” (meaning the First Amendment), “Playing Legislator,” and “Abusing Precedent.” (For the liberal argument that it is conservatives who are the judicial activists, see here. For an effective rebuttal to this position, see here.)

Since 2013, we have seen the courts redefine the very nature of marriage (in 1,000 lifetimes, the Founders would have never envisioned this) as well as rule against fundamental freedoms of conscience and speech. And it was judicial activism that made abortion legal in 1973.

Sixty-million slaughtered babies later – far more than the population of Canada (about 38 million), even more than the population of England (about 55 million), and roughly equal to the population of Italy – our nation is still reeling from this unjust and unconstitutional ruling.

It’s about time we had a reformation in our courts.

More recently, what if the U.S. Supreme Court had ultimately ruled against Hobby Lobby? Against the Little Sisters of the Poor? Against Jack Phillips?

Back in 1962, without any legal precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court removed organized public prayer from our schools.

Fifty years later, on June 16, 2012, the Saturday Evening Post ran this story: “Atheists v. Evangelists: The School Prayer Decision of 1962.”

“50 years ago, school prayer was declared unconstitutional, causing Billy Graham to wonder if we were becoming a spiritually-bankrupt nation.”

The article begins with these simple but striking lines: “How much has America changed in the past 50 years? Imagine kids in American public schools now starting each day with a prayer.” (For my answer to the question of how much America has changed since the early 1960s, see here.)

Earlier in the year, Graham had warned Post readers that “if the Court decrees negatively, another victory will be gained by those forces which conspire to remove faith in God from the public conscience.

“American democracy rests on the belief in the reality of God and His respect for the individual. Ours is a freedom under law. But it is also a freedom that will evaporate if the religious foundations upon which it has been built are taken away.”

Of course, he was right, although he had no idea of just how radically the society would be transformed in the decades that followed.

As for prayer in the schools, from the founding of our nation until 1962, it never occurred to the courts that this was a violation of separation of church and state. It was judicial activism that made this landmark decision.

And even though the prayer itself was quite generic and any student could opt out of praying, it was the symbolism that mattered. Prayer no longer belonged in our schools.

All of which leads us back to where we started: It’s the courts, stupid.

Thank God President Trump is keeping his promise to nominate conservative justices – meaning, Constitutionalists – to the courts. Keeping this up for two more years (or, better still, 6 more years) could well be his greatest legacy, not to mention the greatest legal bulwark against the loss of our fundamental freedoms.

As for those who protest, “Trump and the Republicans have no right to do this!”, to the contrary, the American people elected them to office.

They are doing what we the people have empowered them to do.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.com.

Written by Walter E. Williams

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate’s confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.

Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, “You won’t be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it’s time to abolish the Electoral College.”

Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, “Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

A large part of Americans’ miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution — in Article 4, Section 4 — guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.”

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” John Adams wrote: “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: “We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty” is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say “to the democracy for which it stands” or “to the republic for which it stands”? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song “Battle Hymn of the Republic”? Should she have titled it “Battle Hymn of the Democracy”?

The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation’s leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people”; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.

Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, “The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

This article was originally published at  the Creators Syndicate webpage.

We are very sad to report that the U.S. House of Representatives voted last night, by a vote of 361 to 61 (with 6 not voting) to pass a spending bill that includes taxpayer-funding for Planned Parenthood, which is still getting around $500 million a year in federal money.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that the entire Illinois Congressional Delegation–pro-life Republicans and pro-abortion Democrats alike–voted in unison to approve these appropriations. This despite the repeated strong appeals from pro-life groups in Illinois to defund the abortion giant.

Ironically, Planned Parenthood has been very vocal about spending millions of dollars in the midterm elections to target pro-life candidates for federal office. Why would supposedly pro-life representatives subsidize a wicked organization that is intent on promoting pro-abortion opponents?

Take ACTION: Click HERE to urge President Donald Trump to veto this legislation when it arrives on his desk. Ask the president to uphold the first unalienable right to life conferred on us by our Creator.

How Did They Vote?

Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D)—YEA
1st Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-4372
District Phone: 773-779-2400
Webform

Rep. Robin Kelly (D)—YEA
2nd Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-0773
District Phone: 773-321-2001
Webform

Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D)—YEA
3rd Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5701
District Phone: 773-948-6223
Webform

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D)—YEA
4th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-8203
District Phone: 773-342-0774
Webform

Rep. Mike Quigley (D)—YEA
5th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-4061
District Phone: 773-267-5926
Webform

Rep. Peter Roskam (R)—YEA
6th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-4561
District Phone: 630-232-0006
Webform

Rep. Danny K. Davis (D)—YEA
7th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5006
District Phone: 773-533-7520
Webform

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D)—YEA
8th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-3711
District Phone: 847-413-1959
Webform

Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D)—YEA
9th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-2111
District Phone: 773-506-7100
Webform

Rep. Bradley Schneider (D)—YEA
10th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-4835
District Phone: 847-383-4870
Webform

Rep. Bill Foster (D)—YEA
11th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-3515
District Phone: 815-280-5876
Webform

Rep. Mike Bost (R)—YEA
12th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5661
District Phone: 618-457-5787
Webform

Rep. Rodney Davis (R)—YEA
13th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-2371
District Phone: 217-791-6224
Webform

Rep. Randy Hultgren (R)—YEA
14th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-2976
District Phone: 630-584-2734
Webform

Rep. John Shimkus (R)—YEA
15th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5271
District Phone: 217-347-7947
Webform

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R)—YEA
16th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-3635
District Phone: 815-708-8032
Webform

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D)—YEA
17th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-5905
District Phone: 309-966-1813
Webform

Rep. Darin LaHood (R)—YEA
18th Congressional Dist.
Washington Phone: 202-225-6201
District Phone: 309-671-7027
Webform

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Allowing just three states to impose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution
that even proponents admitted died in 1982 is a moral fraud and a constitutional farce.

Written by Robert G. Marshall

Proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) want to create a constitutional Frankenstein by breathing life into its corpse some 36 years after its ratification was defeated, in large part thanks to Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum.

The ERA Congress sent to the states in 1972 stated: “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

This simplistic language hid a radical progressive social agenda. Amendments were rejected to exempt women from frontline ground combat duty, to require husbands to support their children, to keep certain sexual assaults as crimes, to neutralize ERA’s effect on abortion, to exempt private schools from the ERA, to protect tax-exempt status of churches that have male-only clergy, to permit different insurance rates for men and women, and to deny men access to women’s private facilities and vice versa.

In 1972 Congress imposed a seven-year limit for states to ratify the ERA, as it established for all but two constitutional amendments since 1918. But when the amendment stalled in 1977 with the support of 35 states — three states short of the three-fourths needed for ratification — ERA advocates lobbied Congress to extend ratification seven more years.

Major ERA proponents said the amendment would die without an “extension.”

• National Organization of Women President Eleanor Smeal said, “We believe the life of the equal rights amendment is indeed in peril.”
• Marjorie Bell, American Association of University Women President noted: “Failure to extend now the time limit for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment would terminate … what Congress initiated six years ago.”
• Barbara Jordan said if the extension failed, “… the time will have expired for that resolution and I do not feel that would be a viable issue for consideration by the Congress because the resolution would, for all intents and purposes, be dead.”
• Then Professor, now Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said that if the original ratification time passes, “and Congress says nothing, it is unlikely that a State, given no green light by the national legislature, would nonetheless come forward and ratify.”
• President Jimmy Carter wrote to Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino in July 1978, “I am hopeful that ERA will be ratified before the present deadline expires.”

Congress eventually extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. (The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, The New York Times and The New Republic all supported the ERA, but opposed the time extension.)

The ERA extension resolution did not recognize withdrawal of previous ERA ratifications from Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky, and South Dakota even though North Dakota’s rescission of the Presidential Disability Amendment was recognized in 1967 by the U.S. Secretary of State, who then tallied records.

Even with the unprecedented extension, the ERA fell three states short of the 38 needed for ratification. ERA advocates recognized their 1982 loss and re-introduced the amendment to Congress in 1983, but failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed for it to pass the U.S. House of Representatives.

ERA proponents now claim they need only add three more states to the original 35 which ratified by 1982 (ignoring the five states rescinding approval), to reach the 38 states required to add the ERA to “their” Constitution!

Their novel claim derives from the adoption of the 27^th Amendment limiting congressional pay increases from taking place without an intervening election. This amendment passed Congress in 1789 without a ratification deadline. When 38 states finally approved it in 1992 — more than 200 years later — Congress declared it part of the Constitution, ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1921 finding that Congress could require contemporaneous approval of amendments.

Democratic Rep. Don Edwards, who supported the ERA extension and the Pay Amendment noted, “It should be clear that this [Pay Amendment] is an exception, not a precedent.”

Liberals are counting the actions by Nevada’s legislature (2017), and Illinois’ legislature (2018) allegedly ratifying the non-pending ERA as two of the three states they contend will bring them to the 38 state requirement.

Congressional joint resolutions from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) proclaim that whenever 38 states “ratify” the version of the ERA submitted to the states on March 22, 1972, the ERA will be added to the Constitution. The resolutions do not mention the failed ERA time extension. Speier’s resolution has 165 cosponsors and Cardin’s has 36 cosponsors.

Cardin tweeted approval of the Illinois vote. “Most Americans are shocked to find out that the U.S. Constitution still lacks a provision ensuring gender equality. … We need just ONE more state to ratify and we need Congress to do its part by passing S. J. Res. 5, which would immediately remove the arbitrary and unnecessary deadline for states to ratify the #ERA.”

The words “Gender Equality,” mentioned in Cardin’s Tweet are not in the 1972 ERA, but hint at what liberals hope to achieve under their bogus ERA scheme. Opposition to “making women part of the Constitution” will invite the label of “bigot” or “hater.”

If one more state “votes” for the ERA, progressives are set to pressure Congress to declare the ERA approved. Possibly the Archivist of the United States, who initially certified the Pay Amendment before Congress did, will relieve Congress of its role.  This would duck the ruling in Idaho vs. Freeman (1981), in which a federal district court ruled states could rescind approvals and Congress could not extend the ratification time.

“Approval” of the ERA will legitimize other amendments still “floating around,” including one that increases the House of Representatives from 435 Congressmen to 6,400 (one for every 50,000 persons). Allowing just three states to impose a dead ERA on the Constitution, when even proponents admitted it died in 1982 is a moral fraud and a constitutional farce.

The passion of Leftists’ for their Utopia must be met with forthrightness from conservatives for constitutional government.  Find out today if your congressman and senators would affirm that only three states need to approve the ERA. If so, vote them out of office in November.

This article was originally published at The Federalist.

In the first few days of his confirmation hearings,Judge Brett Kavanaugh has already been doggedly questioned on his views on abortion, specifically whether he will overturn Roe v. Wade. The attention on his views is warranted. If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 5-4 conservative majority will have the ability to overturn the court-protected “right” to abortion.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, Roe v. Wade is no longer the main constitutional guardian for abortion access. While Roe established that the constitutional right to privacy extends to the choice of whether to abort a baby, most of Roe’s jurisprudence has been replaced by another U.S. Supreme Court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. It is Casey, not Roe that governs most of abortion jurisprudence today.

When Roe was first heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, few on either side of the abortion debate thought the case would produce a far-reaching decision on the issue. The case was initially taken up by the Court to decide a technical civil procedure issue. As a result, the Court did not have a factual record of the medical, social, and legal effects of abortion restrictions (Roe’s questionable background is excellently documented in Clarke Forsythe’s book Abuse of Discretion). This left Justice Harry Blackman without much guidance and the freedom to be creative.

The result was ugly and not just due to Roe’s tragic consequences for millions of unborn children. Justice Blackman’s unwieldy legal reasoning made legal scholars of all viewpoints blush for its broad scope and legislative-like assertions. The Court found that the U.S. Constitution’s implied right to privacy (based on the famous birth control case of Griswold v. Connecticut) extends to a woman’s decision to choose abortion, though the state had legitimate state interests in protecting the mother’s health and “potential life” of the child.

To balance these interests, Justice Blackman created a statute-like three-trimester system outlining what aspects of the abortion procedure the state can regulate at each of the three stages. In the first trimester, the decision whether to abort the child was left completely to the mother. In the second trimester, the only regulation on the procedure had to be necessary to protect the mother’s health. It was only after the point of fetal viability—which Justice Blackman also chose without any substantive legal basis—that the state could prohibit abortion altogether. The decision was disjointed, ill-informed, and without a grounded basis in constitutional law, making it vulnerable to being overruled.

In 1992, Roe was put on trial in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But instead of overruling Roe, the Court decided to keep the outcome yet overhaul its legal structure. Gone was Roe’s clunky trimester system. In its place, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor implemented a more judicially scrupulous standard, known as the “undue burden test.” Now when reviewing a law restricting access to abortion, a court must ask whether the law has the purpose or effect of placing an undue burden on the woman deciding whether to seek an abortion. For example, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 2015 Texas law that placed new health and safety standards on abortion clinics that would have caused 21 of the 40 clinics in the state to close due to their inability to comply with it. The Court found that the health and safety concerns of mothers were not valid enough concerns compared to the decreased access to abortion. Therefore, the law was unconstitutional under Casey because it placed an undue burden on access to abortion.

With Casey, the path to overrule Roe becomes more difficult for several reasons. First, Casey’s undue burden standard is widely considered to be a more judicially acceptable constitutional standard than Roe’s unusual trimester system. Before Casey, if the U.S. Supreme Court wanted to overrule to right to abortion access, they could have said that Roe was simply a poorly conceived decision and should be overruled in its entirety. However, under the undue burden test, the Court loses that justification.

Second, courts have a general rule of respecting prior decisions in a doctrine known as stare decisis. The more case law that backs a certain position, the less likely the Court is to be willing to overturn that precedent. Having two major U.S. Supreme Court decisions supporting a precedent will make a future court wary to change it.

This is not to say all hope for protecting the lives of the unborn is lost. It is unlikely, however, that the Court will overrule the right to abortion in one bold stroke in a single case. More realistically, the Court’s conservative majority will slowly chip away at past precedent by upholding pro-life laws. Ironically, the conservative majority could do this by using the flexibility of Casey’s undue burden standard. What comprises an undue burden on abortion access can mean essentially anything the Court wants it to mean. The Court could say that few or even no government restrictions on abortion would constitute an undue burden on abortion access. For example, a health and safety law that closes abortion clinics like that in Hellerstedt does not place an undue burden on abortion access, because it merely insures the safety of the mother, and any clinic closures are simply an incidental effect. Roe would not be explicitly overturned but effectively undermined.

Some argue that the undue burden standard is already weaker than what it was in Casey. In the 2007 case Carhartt v. Gonzalez, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a congressional ban on partial-birth abortion, a procedure that kills the child once he or she is partially outside the body of the mother. The Court ruled that simply banning a certain form of abortion does not place an undue burden on abortion access.

With Judge Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court bench, the pro-life movement has reason for hope that legal protections for the unborn will not be struck down. With, however, all the attention focusing on whether Judge Kavanaugh will strike down Roe, a more poignant question is how stringently he will apply the undue burden standard of Casey.

IFI’s Annual
Faith, Family & Freedom Fall Banquet

Friday, October 5, 2018
The Stonegate in Hoffman Estates

Featuring special guest, George Barna

The early bird special expires on Sept. 14th 

Secure your tickets or table now – click here or call (708) 781-9328.

In Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s U.S. Senate confirmation hearing earlier today, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) made a mind-blowing—make that head-exploding—statement. Citing the liberal Guttmacher Institute, Feinstein said, “In the 1950s and ’60s, the two decades before Roe, death from illegal abortions in this country ran between 200,000 to 1.2 million [emphasis added].”

That is not what the Guttmacher Institute says. The Guttmacher Institute says, “Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year.” Please note, this statement does not mention death. Feinstein’s numbers would have been correct if she had been referring to humans in the womb, but she wasn’t.

Here’s what Feinstein omitted, also from the Guttmacher Institute:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200.”

The number of (accidental) deaths of women caused by illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s doesn’t come close to 200,000, let alone 1.2 million. Compare the number of actual deaths of women from illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960’s to the almost 61 MILLION intentional killings of humans in the womb since 1973, or the almost 630,000 humans intentionally killed in the womb just this year.

The “Conservative Millennial” Allie Stuckey recently wrote this:

The most impressive feat the Left has accomplished is convincing millions of people that decapitating a child inside the womb is worthy of celebration. That alone should teach us to never underestimate the power of a lie and the willingness of ignorant people to believe it.

The success of the Left can be attributed in no small measure to their repugnant willingness to lie in the service of evil.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Diane-Feinsteins-Big-Fat-Abortion-Lie.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

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Based on the response from the left, you would think that the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court would virtually guarantee the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Why, then, are some conservative and pro-life groups opposing his confirmation?

On the positive side, many pro-life leaders reacted enthusiastically to the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the highly-respected Susan B. Anthony List.

She said, “President Trump has made another outstanding choice in nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, keeping his promise to nominate only originalist judges to the Court.”

In her opinion, Kavanaugh was “an experienced, principled jurist,” who has a “strong record of protecting life and constitutional rights.”

Many others were enthusiastic as well, including conservative think tanks and long-term pro-life leaders.

On the negative side, Jane Coaston wrote an article for Vox.com explaining, “Why social conservatives are disappointed that Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh.”

She pointed to a number of top leaders in the conservative and pro-life movement who had reservations about Kavanaugh or who called for outright opposition.

Upon hearing of President Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh, the National Review’s David French wrote, “I’ll defend [Kavanaugh] vigorously from unfair critiques tomorrow, but tonight I join many conservatives in a slight sigh of regret. There was a better choice.”

Tim Wildmon, President of the highly influential American Family Association, wrote, “AFA has opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S Supreme Court for some very valid reasons. We are deeply concerned about how he might ultimately rule on issues related to abortion and religious liberty. For these reasons, we consider this nomination to represent a four-star appointment when it could have been five-star.”

Other groups, like Columbia [South Carolina] Christians for Life sent out e-blasts with titles like, “ROE VS. WADE protector Kavanaugh: Another red flag for Jesuit-educated, Jesuit school director, BRETT KAVANAUGH.” (This was sent out August 30.)

Another pro-life activist sent out links to this video, with this warning: “President Trump broke his campaign promise to pro-lifers when he nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Ricardo Davis of Georgia Right to Life calls Kavanaugh’s pro-abortion position ‘morally reprehensible’ and urges pro-lifers and conservatives to demand Kavanaugh’s withdrawal and for Trump to replace him with a real pro-life nominee such as Amy Coney Barrett.”

How can we make sense of this?

On the one hand, there is agreement that someone like Justice Amy Coney Barrett, if appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, would definitely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade should the opportunity present itself. The downside is that many believe that in today’s climate, despite the Republican majority, she would not have been confirmed.

Others have suggested that it’s unlikely that there will be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade as much as an incremental challenge. What if something like the Fetal Heartbeat Bill became law and was challenged up to the U.S. Supreme Court? How would Kavanaugh vote on that?

The real answer is that we simply do not know what a U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh would do.

According to Thomas Jipping, Deputy Director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and a Senior Legal Fellow, Kavanaugh’s “record meets the Schumer standard of a judge who does not predictably rule for a particular side. That is because Kavanaugh is the kind of judge who follows the law rather than his personal views.”

What, then, are we to make of the varied and passionate responses to Justice Kavanaugh? Does the left have reason to fear? Does the right have reason to rue a missed opportunity?

Here are a few things that seem clear.

First, we can be almost certain that Justice Kavanaugh will be a far better friend of the U.S. Constitution and of conservative values than any judge a President Hillary Clinton would have appointed. That is a very big positive.

Second, we who are pro-life do well not to put our ultimate trust in a man (Kavanaugh) or an institution (the U.S. Supreme Court) to change the direction of our nation. (This is not to deny the importance of both the man and the institution. It is simply to bring perspective.)

Third, it is possible that Kavanaugh himself cannot guarantee how he will rule if confirmed. There have been surprises in every direction from various appointees in the past, and even the best vetting process cannot guarantee the future.

Obviously, I hope that the leftist opposition to Kavanaugh is correct and that, should the opportunity arise, he would vote for life and for family and for our essential liberties.

But there may be a reason for the concern of some on the right, in which case we should be praying for Kavanaugh and the rest of the members of the Court that God would direct their hearts.

Scripture teaches that, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He will.” Surely He can turn the hearts of U.S. Supreme Court justices as well.

More importantly, He can turn the hearts of a nation. That is the greater goal when it comes to cultivating a culture of life, and it must always remain the foremost goal for all of us who love life. As powerful as the Supreme Court has become, it alone cannot transform hearts.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives supported the $1.3 trillion dollar “omnibus” budget bill which included hundreds of millions of dollars for Planned Parenthood.

Yes, federal lawmakers continue to fund what Daniel John Sobieski described in an op/ed as the Planned Parenthood “Chop Shop”–a business that is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for “engaging in the illegal sale of aborted baby remains for profit.” According to Planned Parenthood, “the more fully-formed the baby body parts, the more valuable those parts are.”

The same writer noted the irony that funding to fight the opioid addiction epidemic was also in the bill. This means “the government is simultaneously paying for the saving and destruction of human life.”

Sobieski’s devastating critique is worth repeating:

Defunding Planned Parenthood is something more than a campaign promise. Life is supposed to be the first unalienable right conferred on us by our Creator. Liberals are also supposed to be in favor of “safe spaces.” One would think the womb should be the safest space of all. It is not so considered on K Street.

While opiod overdoses killed about 64,000 people last year, the “leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years old is abortion, the single largest practitioner of which is Planned Parenthood.”

Yet far too many “pro-life” members of Congress voted to fund what is “by far the nation’s largest abortion provider.”  God forgive us!

Here is another morally repugnant fact that should sear the consciences of all decent people: “An analysis of the 2016-2017 report along with Planned Parenthood’s previous reports shows that Planned Parenthood is responsible for the deaths of over 7.6 million human babies.”

Congress will have another chance to defund the barbaric, feticidal Planned Parenthood in September. Pro-life voters must make their voices heard before Congress returns to Washington D.C. after Labor Day.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email to your U.S. Representative to urge him/her to reject any spending bill that includes tax funds for Planned Parenthood. Neither taxpayers nor their elected representatives should be complicit in the intentional killing of innocent humans in the womb.

You can also call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be transferred to your Congressman’s office to leave a message.

Planned Parenthood receives roughly $500 million in taxpayer dollars each year. Roughly 86 percent of these funds are provided through Medicaid reimbursements. The remaining 14 percent is provided through Title X family planning grants. All of this money is authorized by Congress.

Please pray that thousands of emails and calls will flood in to the U.S. Capitol and that our political leaders in Washington D.C. will respond in the affirmative.  It is long past time to defund Planned Parenthood.

Please also take time to pray for the upcoming elections as well as for the spiritual and moral healing of our nation.

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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“Progressives” control academia, government schools, the mainstream press, access to information (e.g., Google), social media (e.g., Facebook), professional medical and mental health organizations, the arts, and are infiltrating even churches. And now they seek absolute control over the judiciary through “court-packing.” They want constitutional revisionists to dominate the U.S. Supreme Court even if that means expanding the number of Justices. And some of them openly share their reasons for this proposal, thus exposing the brazenness of their tyrannical quest to transform America into a totalizing and totalitarian “progressive” dystopia.

Todd N. Tucker, political scientist and fellow at the liberal think tank, the Roosevelt Institute writes that,

With Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump’s Muslim ban, Wednesday’s decision attacking public sector unions, and Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announcement that he’s retiring, it is time to push a once-marginal idea to the top of the agenda: pack the Supreme Court….  A thoughtful court-packing proposal would ensure that the Court more carefully reflects the mores of the time, rather than shackling democracy to the weight of the past…. [T]he time to begin mainstreaming an enlarged Court is now.

The far wiser Richard Weaver, author of Ideas Have Consequences, wrote something a tad different about the weight of the past:

Whoever argues for a restoration of values is sooner or later met with the objection that one cannot return, or as the phrase is likely to be, “you can’t turn the clock back.” By thus assuming that we are prisoners of the moment, the objection well reveals the philosophic position of modernism. The believer in truth, on the other hand, is bound to maintain that the things of highest value are not affected by time; otherwise the very concept of truth becomes impossible. In declaring that we wish to recover lost ideals and values, we are looking toward an ontological realm that is timeless.

In an article for the online magazine Slate, Osita Nwanevu summarizes the pro-court-packing argument of David Faris, author of the troubling book It’s Time to Fight Dirty: “The argument you’re making here, in sum, is that the time has come for Democrats to throw out some parts of the rulebook of American politics and embrace radical, structural strategies.”

Faris explains—with no evident sign of irony—that his sense of “urgency definitely comes from just this long ideological march off to the right in the Republican Party. That, to me, is dangerous because the Republicans are no longer committed to the spirit of the constitutional framework as it exists. And they’re committed to policies that are going to wreak incredible havoc on this country.”

Have you ever pulled into a parking spot, looked at the stationary car parked next to you, and wrongly perceived your own car—which you forgot to put in park—as stationary and the other one as backing out? That’s the optical illusion Faris is experiencing. Faris wrongly perceives conservatives, who parked their ideological and political car securely with emergency brake activated, as moving rightward while in reality “Progressives” have careered madly leftward.

Faris ironically frets that “incredible havoc” will be wreaked by conservatives. Yes, a card-carrying member of the party that believes it’s ethical to kill humans in the womb for no reason other than that their mothers don’t want them; that destroyed marriage; that recognizes no intrinsic right of children to be raised by a mother and father; that wants to eradicate all public recognition of sexual differentiation; that wants to limit the exercise of religion to homes, hearts, and pews; that put Christian adoption agencies out of business; that seeks to force citizens to lie by using incorrect pronouns in the service of a science-denying cultic belief worries that conservatives will “wreak incredible havoc on this country” and is “no longer committed to the spirit of the constitutional framework.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe conservatives aren’t committed to the “spirit,” or penumbras, or emanations of the Constitution. Maybe they’re committed to the text of the Constitution.

The fact that “progressives” in their opposition to constitutional textualists/originalists—whom they know approach the U.S. Constitution with more rigorous fidelity than do “progressive” Justices—focus almost exclusively on the possibility that Roe v. Wade may be overturned would seem a tacit admission that there exists no constitutional right of women to have their intrauterine offspring slaughtered.

Well, here’s some food for thought about Roe v. Wade from “progressives” who support the legal right of women to choose to have more vulnerable humans killed—quotes that shrieking feminists may find wholly unpalatable:

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

• “As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose” (Edward Lazarus, former clerk to SCOTUS Justice Harry Blackmun).

• What, exactly, is the problem with Roe? The problem, I believe, is that it has little connection to the Constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent—at least, it does not if those sources are fairly described and reasonably faithfully followed” (Edward Lazarus).

• “[A]s a matter of constitutional interpretation, even most liberal jurisprudes — if you administer truth serum—will tell you it is basically indefensible” (Edward Lazarus).

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

• Roe “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be…. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-à-vis the interest that legislatively prevailed over it.… At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking” (John Hart Ely, clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren).

• Roe “is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” (Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution).

• “[T]he very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision—the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution—strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy…. As a layman, it’s hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe, with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers…. “[Roe] is a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument…. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument—but a bit of our soul as well” (Richard Cohen, Washington Post columnist).

• “Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy) …. [C]lear governing constitutional principles… are not present” (Alan Dershowitz, former Harvard Law School professor).

• “In short, 30 years later, it seems increasingly clear that this pro-choice magazine was correct in 1973 when it criticized Roeon constitutional grounds. Its overturning would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary, the pro-choice movement, and the moderate majority of the American people…. Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself. As a result, the pro-choice majority asks nominees to swear allegiance to the decision without being able to identify an intelligible principle to support it” (Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University Law School professor, former clerk to Judge Abner Mikva).

• “Liberal judicial activism peaked with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion decision…. Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching” (Michael Kinsley, attorney, political journalist).

• “[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether. It supported that right via a lengthy, but purposeless, cross-cultural historical review of abortion restrictions and a tidy but irrelevant refutation of the straw-man argument that a fetus is a constitutional ‘person’ entited [sic] to the protection of the 14th Amendment…. By declaring an inviolable fundamental right to abortion, Roe short-circuited the democratic deliberation that is the most reliable method of deciding questions of competing values” (Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania Law School professor).

• “The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution” (Archibald Cox, JFK’s Solicitor General, former Harvard Law School professor).

Roe v. Wade, my friends, is the SCOTUS decision that “progressives” argue absolute fidelity to precedent demands Justices uphold. If they think “lousy,” “indefensible,” “barely coherent,” unintelligible, a-constitutional non-reasoning must be honored in slavish service to the political end of allowing feticide, I hate to imagine what they would have thought about revisiting Dred Scott.

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/No-Surprise-Leftists-Want-to-Fight-Dirty.mp3

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In an email, conservative Chicago attorney Joseph A. Morris, former Assistant Attorney General of the United States, President and General Counsel of The Lincoln Legal Foundation, and frequent guest on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” told IFI that he is “thrilled by the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh,” elaborating,

Brett Kavanaugh is smart, learned, and honorable. He is exactly what President Trump promised to nominate and appoint: An originalist in the tradition of the late Antonin Scalia. With his hundreds of finely written, rigorously-reasoned opinions as a judge of the Court of Appeals, Judge Kavanaugh’s jurisprudence is literally an open book. He will make one of the finest Supreme Court justices in history.

While “progressives” work fast and furious to do what they do best—that is, manipulate emotions—Mr. Morris works to quell nerves jangled by the paranoia of people untethered to reality, wisdom,  or the Constitution:

Although the work of judges is not, and should not be, political, the nomination, confirmation, and appointment of Federal judges are necessarily political acts.

Much wailing will be heard, and ink will be spilled, this summer, regarding President Trump’s asserted “politicization” of the judiciary. A few simple numerical facts about the current staffing of the higher levels of the Federal judiciary may help put things in perspective.

Staffing of the United States Supreme Court:

Appointed by Republican:  4

Appointed by Democrat:    4

Vacant:  1

Total:      9

Staffing of the United States Courts of Appeals:

Mr. Morris is far from alone in his assessment of Judge Kavanaugh. All across the country, voices of support for Kavanaugh’s nomination are sounding. American Center for Law and Justice’s Jay Sekulow wrote,

The nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy created with the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy is a superb choice who is certain to serve this nation well. Judge Kavanaugh is a brilliant jurist who embraces the philosophy of our Founders—an unwavering commitment to the rule of law and the Constitution.

The Thomas More Society released a statement, saying in part,

The Thomas More Society applauds President Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States…. “We are excited to see the President nominate a great human being who is one of the finest legal minds of our time. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has a proven track record of judging fairly, always applying the Constitution and our laws as they are written. We look forward to his confirmation and anticipate that he will distinguish himself in his time on the high court.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote,

“By any measure, Judge Kavanaugh is one of the most respected federal judges in the country and I look forward to supporting his nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. For over a decade, Judge Kavanaugh has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often referred to as the second highest court in the land. He has over 300 published opinions, with a strong record of defending the Second Amendment, safeguarding the separation of powers, reining in the unchecked power of federal agencies, and preserving our precious religious liberties.

Even National Review’s David French, who was an impassioned proponent of Amy Coney Barrett, said, “Kavanaugh will be an excellent judge.”

Be of good, cheer, friends. This is most definitely not a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Thanks to President Donald J. Trump and his crack team of experts, it’s quite the opposite.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Be-of-Good-Cheer-About-Brett-Kavanaugh.mp3

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Written by Daniel Horowitz

In case you thought that the potential to flip Justice Kennedy’s seat alone will bring us back to the constitutional promised land, think again. So long as the lower courts are not restrained, we will never return to the Constitution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

There is nothing more radical than a lower court granting standing to random plaintiffs to sue against non-coerced public prayer in county government meetings, prayers that have been going on since our founding. Yet a district judge in 2015 and the en banc decision of the radical Fourth Circuit in 2017 barred Rowan County, North Carolina, from opening council sessions with a prayer, similar to what our federal Congress does every day. [Last week], the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari to the appeal from Rowan County, despite three years of being under a tyranny that the judges know is unconstitutional.

We shouldn’t even need to get into court precedent to understand our heritage and the true meaning of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But just four years ago, in Town of Greece v. Galloway, Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority that as long as the prayer “comports with our tradition and does not coerce participation by nonadherents,” there is no room for judicial intervention. “To hold that invocations must be non-sectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech,” Kennedy wrote in the 2014 case.

The Fourth Circuit rejected precedent because this prayer, in the court’s estimation, was tantamount to coercion because it makes non-religious attendees feel like “outsiders” and “the overall atmosphere was coercive, requiring them to participate so they ‘would not stand out.’” (More on that case and how contrary it is to our founding here.)

For the U.S. Supreme Court not to take the appeal is egregious, especially given that the Sixth Circuit recently ruled the other way, triggering a circuit split. Justice Thomas, as has become his tradition recently, dissented from the decision to deny cert. Thomas noted, “The Fourth Circuit’s decision is both unfaithful to our precedents and ahistorical” and observed, “For as long as this country has had legislative prayer, legislators have led it.” Gorsuch joined the dissent.

There are a number of important observations to be made here in light of the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, calling into question our ability to change the direction of the judiciary absent broader reforms:

• Aside from the contorted construction of the First Amendment inherent in this ruling, the courts are continuing to grant standing to random plaintiffs (as straw men for the ACLU) who have no justiciable injury-in-fact other than that their sensibilities are offended. The notion that you can even take such a policy to court is absurd and has grown the power of the courts to that of a legislature rather than an individualized adjudicative body. So long as the Left can lodge hundreds of frivolous lawsuits on important abstract policies every day and have the most liberal districts and circuits uphold them, the shift on the U.S. Supreme Court will not bring much relief. The ACLU and its offshoot organizations essentially have unlimited power so long as the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t change its policies and more aggressively police the lower courts.

• The fact that Roberts knows there will be a more conservative fifth justice added to this wing of the court in the fall and still refused to take up the case is all the more disturbing and demonstrates that we cannot rely on him to overturn these insane lower court rulings expeditiously.

• There is no such thing as a conservative win at the U.S. Supreme Court. Lower court justices will always find hairs to split in any case that is not 100 percent identical and completely ignore precedent, something conservative lower court judges will never do in defiance of liberal U.S. Supreme Court opinions. This is why just hours after the high court affirmed the president’s full power to place conditions on entry, a California judge said that the president must find every single family entering illegally and unite them within 30 days. In another ludicrous ruling on immigration, a New York federal judge said yesterday that the Trump administration cannot promulgate a rule requiring the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to personally sign off on the release of illegal immigrant child detainees. Yes, we have no sovereignty, and the president has no powers to even establish some oversight before swamping the country with foreign nationals, who flood into our schools and communities and who often join MS-13. Chief Justice Roberts said that there are no limits to the president’s power to regulate entry into the country, but that will not stop lower courts from granting standing to illegal aliens to sue against every minute piece of policy.

This is all to say that unless the lower courts are dealt with, we will continue to suffer increasingly at the hands of the lower courts even as the membership on the U.S. Supreme Court officially gets better. The bottom line is: We don’t have five Clarence Thomases and will not get them any time soon.

It is incumbent upon conservatives in Congress to create a movement to reorient the power of the lower courts. Rather than the default being that any random court can shut down our heritage and system of governance for years until the U.S. Supreme Court grants relief – if ever – the injunction should automatically be placed on hold until and unless the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case and affirms the ruling. Granting a congressional-created court supremacy power over the other branches of government is a case of the inmates running the asylum. If the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to act supreme to its own underlings, then why should we respect its supposed “supremacism” over the rest of us?

This article was originally published at ConservativeReview.com