Benefits for Freedom

(c) Copyright 2015 Despair.com

Today, many people are signing up for lots of government benefits.  And our leaders in Washington, both those on Capitol Hill and in the White House, keep lining up bills to protect us from threats that are both real and imagined, and along with each protection comes a list of things that ordinary Americans can no longer do without breaking the law.

I call this exchange of government benefits for our freedoms, Esau's Bargain.  This is based on an event that is described in The Old Testament.

Esau Selling His Birthright by Matthias Stom, 17th Century

 ... Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint... 

     And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 

     And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?    And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 

    Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

Genesis 25:29-34

Later on, when Isaac, Esau and Jacob's dad, wanted to give his son's a blessing all this came back on Esau and he got pretty angry about it.  So angry, that Jacob had to leave home for quite a few years before his brother Esau cooled down about it.

So, what Esau despised when he was hungry, he valued later on.  But, then it was too late.  The deal was done, and he could not reclaim his birthright.

Today, we are giving up our birthright as Americans, the freedoms we enjoy under the Constitution, in exchange of a big bowl of government sponsored benefits soup, just like Esau did.  And as each freedom is taken, we are not likely to be able to get it back, just like Esau.

I could point to all the body searches we now go through just to take a flight today, but as intrusive as that is, it won't be going away anytime soon.  Since Esau didn't ask to borrow Jacob's sword, let's look at the bowl of soup instead.

Obamacare - quaintly called The Affordable Care Act is one of the biggest exchanges of benefits for freedom in the history of our country - so far.

A few years ago, if you were young and healthy and didn't feel the need to buy health insurance, that was your choice.  Starting this year, the government will be getting reports from all the insurance companies listing who are their customers.  The IRS will cross-check those lists with tax returns.  If they find a taxpayer who doesn't have health insurance, they will impose a fine on that taxpayer.

Last year, the fine was pretty trivial and it was only levied on those who didn't have insurance and told the government the truth.  This year, the fine gets a lot more severe, and Uncle Obama has a way to see if you are lying.

A few years ago, if you didn't need or want maternity insurance - which was generally only purchased by folks who were planning to have a baby, you didn't have to get it.  Considering the fact that a huge segment of our population today is made up of Baby Boomers, thousands of whom reach retirement age each day, there are a lot of folks who aren't going to have any more babies.  And yet, we all get to pay for Maternity Coverage, because those are the rules imposed on us by our people in Washington.

To be very blunt, the whole case for health insurance is totally messed up.  I would use stronger language, but I try not to use foul language.

The first problem with health insurance is that most people totally misuse it. And, that makes the costs for insurance to shoot through the roof.

Insurance companies are better than the best professional gamblers.  They hire super mathematicians called actuaries to sit around all day and calculate the odds for and against them having to pay a claim for any given condition, disease or event.  If the actuaries do their job right, and they do, the insurance company takes in more money in premiums than they pay out in claims.  A little known fact is that those insurance companies then invest the difference between what they pay out and what they take in and they make money on their money.  That is how they stay in business.

Ordinary people have totally screwed up health insurance, because instead of using it as a safety net against some really big, bad event, they have used it like a Christmas Club.

You may (or may not) remember the Christmas Club your bank or credit union used to offer.  The idea is simple.  In January, you figure out how much you are going to spend at Christmas and then each month you deposit one twelfth of that amount into a special savings account.  Then, when Christmas time comes, you close out your special Christmas Club account and spend your money.

This is what people have unwittingly been doing with their health insurance.

Remember what I told you about what actuaries do?  If the bank were using actuaries to see what money they could make on Christmas Club accounts the actuaries would tell the bank that the odds that the Christmas Club accounts will survive beyond a year are something only slightly higher than zero.  This means that the bank cannot afford to put that money into a loan to some customer unless the loan will be repaid before the Christmas Club account is cashed out.

Let's go back to Maternity Coverage again.

People who buy Maternity Coverage are usually planning to have a baby.  Actuaries know this, so the odds the insurance company will have to pay a claim to someone who takes out the coverage is pretty close to 100%.  It is only reduced by the probabilities (which the actuaries will calculate) that a person cannot have a baby, or dies before they have a baby.

What this means to the insurance company is that they have to charge more in premiums than they believe they will have to pay out in Maternity  Coverage claims.  So, what you get when you buy Maternity Coverage is a Christmas Club, with a surcharge (because the insurance company still has to pay it's people and make some profit, even after they pay out your claim).  With this Christmas Club, you pay in for about a year and at the end of that time, if all goes according to your plan, you get to come home from the hospital with a baby and without a big hospital bill to go along with it.

Of course, instead of paying the surcharge to the insurance company, you could have found out what it would cost for the doctor and hospital for a delivery, divided that figure up by at least 9 months, and then opened a savings account where you deposited that money each month.

Then, in about a year, you could come home from the hospital with a new baby and no big hospital bill, because you had the money to pay in cash (and it is less than what the insurance company would have been forced to charge you).

But, what if something goes terribly wrong?  THAT IS WHAT INSURANCE IS FOR!

At the same time that you are putting aside money each month, you should also be buying a Major Medical insurance policy.  These policies will pay your medical bills if something unexpected happens.

Those crafty actuaries calculate the odds that something will go wrong, and tell the insurance company how much they need to get to hedge their bets.  And they are betting that nothing major will go wrong - and most of the time they are right.  Because they are right most of the time, the insurance company makes money and can keep offering major medical insurance policies.

I could show you how this same thing applies to dental insurance and vision plans as it does to Maternity Coverage.  But, the chances are if you haven't gotten my point by now, you won't.

And here is point #1 - the whole scare about the spiraling costs of health insurance is a manufactured crisis that has its origins in people being ignorant about how they use their health insurance.  Yet, this was one of the main drivers the folks in power used to convince folks that forced insurance (socialized medicine) was a good idea.  Never mind the fact that it pretty much stinks everywhere it has been implemented.  Its only fans tend to be the politicians who put it in place and the bureaucrats who make their livings running it.  Even the doctors and nurses hate it.

Point #2 - those in power want more power.  Some of them want it because they think they are so much smarter than everyone else that they have an obligation to protect us from our own foolish actions.  They take away our freedom of choice for our own good.  Unfortunately, that has several really bad consequences.

A) People who are temporarily saved from the consequences of their own actions begin to believe that there are no consequences for bad choices, and so they make more bad choices.

B) People who get power by helping others avoid the consequences of their actions get reinforcement that they are doing something good when they look at all the bad consequences they have helped people avoid.

C) Bad consequences are eventually going to happen, no matter what.  And the natural law called the Conservation of Energy says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - this ensures that when the bad consequences finally do happen, they will be really big, because they will contain the built up energy from all the consequences from bad choices that were temporarily avoided by some government program.  And when that stuff finally hits the fan the people who have been trained to make poor choices are going to blame the people in power for the pain they are feeling for the consequences of their actions and they are going to be very hurt, very angry, and a whole lot of people.

And when "C" finally happens, there will very likely literally be blood in the streets, only it will be on a scale that will make the riots in LA and Ferguson look like a Sunday picnic.

It is because I want to avoid that really bad pile of consequences that I am urging people now to make good choices and choose to defend our constitutional rights in every way we can and on every front.  Don't surrender your freedom for a bowl of government benefits soup.

By the way, if you think I am making all this insurance crap up, I'm not.  I have spent many years working in the insurance business.  Or, if you don't believe me, call up your insurance agent and ask him if I am giving you the straight scoop.  If he's honest, s/he will tell you what I just did.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Pathway to Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants

Out POTUS-wannabes are making a lot of press about illegal immigration and a pathway to citizenship for illegals.  Most seem to want to give the illegals a pass on their law-breaking, calling it amnesty.  And they believe this is a first step toward citizenship.  In one regard, they are right, for someone to become a citizen, they must first find themselves here legally.

What all this amnesty chatter ignores is that there is a viable pathway to US Citizenship for illegal immigrants.  The "amnesty" crowd seems to ignore this existing pathway in favor of their disregard for the rule of law, in favor of the "we must be kind at all costs" soft-headed thinking.

The path is simple, but not easy.  I have outlined the steps below:

1) Return to the country of your origin.

2) While in the country of your origin, apply for a visa to the US

3) After entering the country legally, and while the visa is still in effect, apply for US Citizenship.

4) Follow the directions of the US to obtain legal citizenship

5) Obey the laws of the US and the state(s) where you live while in the US

It really isn't as complicated as all the politicians make it out to be.  However, I will admit it isn't easy.

In addition to requiring all aliens to enter the US legally, I believe there are several reforms that should be made to current US immigration laws.  Before I offer my reforms, it is useful for people to understand how we went from "send me your poor, your huddled masses" on the Statue of Liberty to the state now where a company has to prove (under the H1B visa program) that there are no qualified US applicants for a job before they can hire someone with an H1B Visa.

According to Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, but a very convenient one), naturalization (the process of becoming a citizen) was written into the Constitution.  This means it was considered a fundamental enough issue that they didn't even wait to put it into The Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution).

"The United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. Article I, section 8, clause 4 of the Constitution expressly gives the United States Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.^"

Even though they made mention of naturalization within the actual Constitution, they did not define how it would be done.  Rather, they left that to be written up as (easily changeable) laws to be enacted (and altered) by Congress.  I am guessing, they recognized that naturalization laws might need to be more reactive to the needs of the country than is allowed by making amendments to the Constitution.

Wikipedia goes on to explain the general structure of the laws that followed.

"Pursuant to this power, Congress in 1790 passed the first naturalization law for the United States, the Naturalization Act of 1790. The law enabled those who had resided in the country for two years and had kept their current state of residence for a year to apply for citizenship. However it restricted naturalization to "free white persons" of "good moral character"."

We can see in the limitation to "free white persons" that the slavery issue was very much on the minds of our Congress in 1790 and that immigration law was used from the start to maintain certain elements of the current situation that were deemed important at the time.  Giving non-whites citizenship could tip things at the ballot box.  Anything that affected the functioning of slavery had both economic and racial impacts.  

Five years later, they made more changes.  And again three years after that.  Both times they made it harder for people to become citizens by increasing the period of probation.  Presumably, this was to prevent criminals from coming here and then becoming citizens.

"The Naturalization Act of 1795 increased the residency requirement to five years residence and added a requirement to give a three years notice of intention to apply for citizenship, and the Naturalization Act of 1798 further increased the residency requirement to 14 years and required five years notice of intent to apply for citizenship."

"The Naturalization Law of 1802 repealed the Naturalization Act of 1798.

"The act of 1802 was the last major piece of naturalization legislation during the 19th century. A number of minor revisions were introduced, but these merely altered or clarified details of evidence and certification without changing the basic nature of the admission procedure. The most important of these revisions occurred in 1855, when citizenship was automatically granted to alien wives of U.S. citizens (10 Stat. 604), and in 1870, when the naturalization process was opened to persons of African descent (16 Stat. 254)."

Once the Civil War was ended we see that the laws were amended to align with the principles underlying the Emancipation Proclamation. 

"The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, protects children born in the United States. The phrase: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" was interpreted by the Supreme Court in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark as covering everyone born in the U.S. regardless of the parents' citizenship, with the exception of the children of diplomats. See the articles jus soli (birthplace) and jus sanguinis (bloodline) for further discussion.

"In 1870, the law was broadened to allow African Americans to be naturalized. Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization but not from living in the United States. There were also significant restrictions on some Asians at the state level; in California, for example, non-citizen Asians were not allowed to own land."

Again, we see that immigration law was used to maintain the status quo and "protect" the established against the encroachments of the newcomers.  Wikipedia goes on...

"After the immigration of 123,000 Chinese in the 1870s, who joined the 105,000 who had immigrated between 1850 and 1870, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 which targeted a single ethnic group by specifically limiting further Chinese immigration. Chinese had immigrated to the Western United States as a result of unsettled conditions in China, the availability of jobs working on railroads, and the Gold Rush that was going on at that time in California. The xenophobic "Yellow Peril" expression became popular to justify racism against Asians.

"The act excluded Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for ten years and was the first immigration law passed by Congress. Laborers in the United States and laborers with work visas received a certificate of residency and were allowed to travel in and out of the United States. Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin. The act was renewed in 1892 by the Geary Act for another ten years, and in 1902 with no terminal date. It was repealed in 1943, although large scale Chinese immigration did not occur until 1965."

It is interesting to note that the law was used to allow for the inflow of cheap labor, without granting them the benefits of citizenship.  I am going to make a guess here and suggest that the repeal  in 1943 had a lot to do with China being our ally against Japan in World War II.  So, the repeal was probably a political issue, rather than a labor and economic issue.

What Wikipedia skips over in this article is the implementation in 1921 of immigration quotas.  After World War I a lot of Southern European and Eastern European people came to the US to escape the recession that hit Europe.  The immigration quotas established in 1924 were designed to specifically limit, but not totally prohibit, immigration from these areas of Europe.  Jews too were singled out for discrimination.  However, Arabs and Asians were totally prohibited, because the Act disallowed migration of anyone not elegible to become a citizen.

The 1924 Act also gave the State Department its first role in immigration, establishing the Consular Visa system we use today.    

Apparently, the motives were politcal, ethnic and economic.  In addition to trying to limit cheap labor and competition for jobs, there was a lot of fear that these immigrants might support communist ("Bolshevik") movements in the US and foment a revolution such as happened in Russia.  The ethnic element was expressly acknowledged in a State Department communication which mentioned preserving the homogenity of the American character. 

I could go on, but I think this information provides enough data points to establish the fact that immigration policies in the US have always been about race, economics and politics.  That is as true today as it was in 1870.

Rather than engaging in a fruitless argument about how the motives should be changed (an attempt to change human nature), instead, let's look at how those underlying factors are going to play out in the next few years and adjust our immigration policy proactively to manage those issues.

Labor - Regardless of complaints to the contrary, most immigrants don't take jobs from citizens.  The citizens aren't applying for jobs that immigrants take.  They prefer to sit at home and collect welfare instead of cleaning houses and tending yards for rich people or cleaning offices, and trimming bushes for businesses.  Too many of our natural born citizens today think that hard work and low pay are somehow beneath their dignity.  They remind me of the idle rich and nobility of Europe, only without the money or the fancy titles.  

Realistically speaking our birth rate is declining along with that of every other industrialized nation in the world.  Our labor pool is not large enough to support the boomers who are retiring.  Expanding the labor pool is the easiest "fix" for Social Security.  Just like any other Ponzi Scheme if you get more contributors to Social Security you can keep paying benefits to the early entrants into the scam.

Economics - I already mentioned the benefits to Social Security from increasing our labor pool with legal immigrants.  Added to that is the fact that a great many immigrants to this country start small businesses.  Often, they open them to serve their own ethnic community initially, but they also expand into the community at large.  Small businesses are the largest employer in our country and provide the greatest amount of economic fuel than all the big businesses together.  

Did you know that immigrants are four times more likely to become millionaires than natural born citizens of this country?  And they do it by starting small businesses.

Race - I believe the argument for "racial purity" was lost a long time ago in the US (even before the Civil War) and it is both a lousy and immoral argument.  In my opinion there is no place in the teachings of Christ for racism.  While it is true that Christ limited his ministry to the Jews, there were covenant reasons for that.  And, after his resurrection, he commanded his Apostles to "go into all the world," thus lifting any further prohibition against allowing non-jews to enter the waters of baptism.

In this country, when Texas was liberated from Mexico and later when the Southwest was taken from Mexico, we effectively made all those hispanics in those areas into US citizens.  From that point on, we were no longer truly an "anglo-saxon" nation.  A significant portion of the US population is hispanic by descent and were never immigrants.  The whole community character of the Southwest US and California is heavily influenced by the hispanic culture that is native to that area.

Immigration, legal and illegal, has strengthened that sub-cultural identity and will continue to do so.  We can either follow the path of brutal Balkan nations and opt for ethnic cleansing and mass murder, or embrace our American ideals and assimilate this segment fully into our national tapestry and "Americanize" it.

Economic and political conditions in Mexico as well as the rest of Central and South America will not change for the better any time soon.  The corruption and drug cartel wars will continue to make life for ordinary working-class folks perilous for the forseeable future, until the rule of law can truly be established there.  Given that threat to life and liberty, many will continue to seek the greener grasses on the north of the Mexican-US border.

As our labor pools shrink due to declining birth rates, in a near decade the US will be competing to bring cheap labor to the US.  We should take appropriate advantage now of the cheap labor just over our border and instead of sending factories down there, take steps to legally allow workers to come here.

The labor unions won't like that solution.  The racial elitists won't like that solution either.  But, the reality is that we need what they have (labor), and they need what we have (stability and prosperity).

Now, to my proposed immigration law changes:

1) Eliminate the quotas for all countries that are not totalitarian, communist, sponsors of terrorism, etc. - the political stability (not to be confused with electoral stability) of our system is a legitimate reason for immigration restriction.  All other quotas are inherently racist and should be eliminated.

2) Create a biometric database (fingerprints, DNA, etc.) available to all US law enforcement agencies and require all entrants to the US to be registered in this database (even "visitors").  Their information remains in the database until they become citizens. 

3) Routinely grant work visas to all applicants unless they are on a watch list or from a restricted national origin (see #1 above).

4) Any "visitor" or immigrant who is convicted of a felony is immediately inelegible for citizenship and is deported.  Once deported for a felony, they are never again elegible for re-entry to the US under any status.

5) Any visitor or immigrant who is found here without an authorized visa is guilty of a felony (see #4 above).

6) Require applicants for citizenship to attain English competency in reading and writing and speaking and to live here for at least 5 years with no felonies (pending indictments or convictions)  and demonstrate that they have been gainfully employed for the majority of that time before they are elegible for citizenship.

7) No publicly funded welfare benefits of any kind (including college tuition subsidies) are availalble to non-citizens.

8) All working immigrants must pay all the same taxes as citizens, but they get no benefits from those taxes.  Not even unemployment.  In other words, if you aren't a citizen, you don't get any government benefits and none accrue until you actually become a citizen.

9) Declare English as the official language of the United States of America.  Some may feel this is racist, but it is actually just a practical step.  Establishing an official language for the nation will avoid future contention over the language of contracts and official documents.  It also enforces a defacto standard language for use in business and schools in order to function effectively.  This does not in any way forbid ESL efforts or foreign language classes, but it does eliminate any right to having public school courses taught in a language other than English.

So, what do you think about my immigration reform and my pathway to citizenshp?

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Rightful Role of Government Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two-part article on what I believe is the rightful role of government.

I wrote this in response to a couple of different groups that have been agitating for the scrapping of the US Constitution.

Before you go throwing the Constitution under the bus because of how it is being subverted today by an immoral people in favor of an anarchist view that has NEVER operated successfully, you should consider that our foundation is built on the notion that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  To me, that sounds a lot like the rallying cry of Libertarians and anarchists.  So what are they fighting against except the notion "that  to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..."

Libertarians and anarchists seem to want to throw out the baby along with the bath water.  The bath water is dirty (our government has become corrupted) so get rid of the baby since it made the water dirty (abolish the Constitution because it frame the government which others have corrupted).  This is a foolhardy approach to solving the problem, and one which, if followed will result in much less individual freedom, not more.

For more than 100 years, the US Constitution stood as a bulwark, generally doing a good job of protecting the majority of people from the predations of a minority (the minority being those who want to exercise unrestricted power over others - call them "king-men" (and women) if you will).
And protecting the minorities (minorities of race, religion or creed) from the predations of a majority.  There are notable big exceptions such as slavery and when the US Government declared war on the Mormons before the Civil War.  And there are notable smaller exceptions such as when local governments were corrupted and turned a blind eye to the operations of groups like the KKK who operated according to their own views of right and wrong (lawful and unlawful).

The Rule of Law has ushered in an unprecedented era in world history.  Today, the rule of law is being supplanted by the rule of regulatory fiat (monarchy or Executive Orders) posing as the rule of law.  Regulatory fiat (monarchy) allowed both the creation of the Ma Bell Monopoly and its later dissolution.  Regulatory fiat allowed the creation and later dissolution of the railroad monopolies.  Regulatory fiat (monarchy) has allowed the creation of the postal service monopoly and allowed the partial dissolution of that monopoly into its present pathetic state.  In this country the supplanting of the Rule of Law began when the ideas of Marx and Engels were embraced by powerful and weak Americans who wanted power and embraced the notion that the State should embody the will of the people instead of serving as a bulwark against the usurpation of their individual freedoms.  Inasmuch as people adopt the view that the state is to embody the will of the people, rather than serving the people to protect their individual freedoms, then they are embracing the notion that the state and the strengthening of the government of the state is the starting point for the solution to all of society's ills. 

The obverse view, that the state exists solely to preserve individual freedom, puts the burden for righting societal injustices or inequities on the shoulders of each individual and requires them to act on their own or to persuade others to join their cause with their time, energy and money given freely to act to improve the lot of the poor or other downcast or disadvantaged peoples. 

Too many people would rather abdicate their individual responsibility, along with their individual freedom, to government, thereby giving the government the ability to coerce folks who are not like-minded to support the "noble" causes adopted by the masses (or presented by demagogues to attract the attention and pity, or concupiscence of the masses).

I believe that government has no business getting into the business of charity.  And the federal government and Supreme Court have no business trying to legislate or adjudicate moral issues.

When government gets into the business of charity - providing economic help to disadvantage sectors of society, several bad things happen:

1. Government robs individuals of the responsibility to account to God for their treatment of the poor and needy by making the individual contributions both compulsory and utterly without connection to the individual contributor.
2. Government sets up programs which always have the unintended consequence of increasing the number of people in disadvantaged group.
3. Government always put most of the money (consistently around 80%) devoted to the issue into the hands of facilitators and government employees and a fraction (consistently around 20%) into form of actual benefits delivered to the needy.

When the Federal Government and the Supreme Court get into the business of legislating or adjudicating moral issues, several bad things invariably happen:

1. The democratic process is short circuited.  Instead of allowing for lively public debate to be held in each state and locality and allow local people to decide with their votes or vote with their feet by moving to localities that favor their views, a decision is forced upon major sectors of the society which is in direct conflict with their moral views.  This does not settle the matter, rather it drives lasting wedges between different segments of society.
2. When the Federal Government or Supreme Court try to settle a moral issue with laws or rulings, they ride roughshod over the right of every citizen to the free exercise of conscience.  They make it illegal to be on the "wrong/losing" side of a moral decision. 
3. This trampling of rights of conscience can only lead to what is, by definition, subversive behavior as people will violate the law, seek to thwart the enforcement of the law, or even violently oppose the government that is seeking to impose the law which they find morally reprehensible.

The decision of the Supreme Court to create a right to abortion, the decision of the Supreme Court to create a right to gay-marriage are high profile examples of situations where the imposition of a decision, instead of settling the matter, has provided a club for one group to attempt to rob the opposition of their rights to dissent on grounds of freedom of conscience.

What is needed today is not an abandonment of the US Constitution.  Rather what is needed is individual and mass commitment to adherence to the principles of individual responsibility and individual rights.  Along with acknowledgement that the exercise of individual rights requires the acceptance of the consequences of those exercises, including failure, unhappiness, ill-health, poverty, incarceration, disability, or even death.

The Constitution was designed to give us the opportunity to succeed and the opportunity to fail.  And, as every successful person knows, failure is always a necessary precursor to success.  What those who seek to cast aside the principles of our Constitution want is a framework that prohibits success and protects us from failure and from the negative consequences of our own choices.  That kind of institutionalized irresponsibility is what is largely wrong with our society today.

I believe that 90% of our current statutes and at least 50% of our Federal and State government infrastructures would evaporate if every regulation and every law passed or currently existing were forced to show 1) origination in the rights enumerated in the US Constitution and 2) adherence to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The problem is not the baby in the bath, the problem is the bathwater getting dirtier every minute  because mom and dad are using dirt for soap.  The problem is being compounded by the fact that some are deliberately throwing dirt on the baby because they want the baby to be thrown out so they can install their own child and rule the roost.

The solution is to find and elect individuals who are willing to adhere to and support a return to the foundational principles of individual responsibility AND individual freedom, protected by limited government restrained within the boundaries of enumerated powers consciously, deliberately and thoughtfully yielded by the people and preserved by the individual rather than collective energies of the people.

It took 100 years of misguided statism to get where we are today.  It will take many years, decades or perhaps even a century of unremitting, unceasing, individual vigilance and individual effort to regain the individual freedoms and responsibilities which have been usurped by those who I called statists (variously known as progressives, liberals, communists, socialists, marxist, maoists, etc.).

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Rightful Role of Government - Part 1

This is Part 1 of a two-part article on what I believe is the rightful role of government.

I wrote this in response to a couple of different groups that have been agitating for the scrapping of the US Constitution.

One of those groups, the Libertarians and Anarchists want to scrap it because they believe that any government other than self-government is too much government.  Based on FaceBook (FB) posts adherents to these views have made, they view the Constitution simply as a vehicle to usurp their personal sovereignty. They also tend to embrace the decadent cultural stance that all forms of external government are equally wrong from a moral standpoint.  This stance utterly ignores the reality that under various forms of despotism like Socialism and dictatorships, their very ability to voice such opinions would likely be ended with a bullet to the head.  Which stands in sharp contrast to how the US Constitution protects their rights to free speech.

The other group that wants to scrap the US Constitution are the Progressives / Socialists / Communists / Liberals.  This second group wants to scrap it because it expressly thwarts their efforts to eliminate personal property rights, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.  They use a variety of arguments against the Constitution and they have successfully implemented a vast array of laws, regulations and court rulings that fly in the face of the express authorities granted and reserved by the wording of the Constitution.  One of their chief arguments, not being able to truly contest the principles in the document, is that it was written by dead white farmers whose ideas are totally out of touch with the events of our day.  This argument ignores the facts that the principles embodied in the Constitution are derived from millenia of human experience and thought and that the "farmers" were actually among the best educated people in the world at the time and were experienced farmers, business owners, clergy, soldiers, philosophers and public servants.

There is no question (at least among serious students of history) that the US Constitution was an expansion of Federal power.  The problem at the time was that the Articles of Confederation left the union open to being picked apart by large European powers, mostly through connivance - since force would likely have been met with a united response from the American states.  And the Articles of Confederation had already proven inadequate for managing the financial obligations incurred in the war as well as the commercial and legal issues that were raised in the course of the Revolutionary War. 

In spite of what flaws there may be in the US Constitution, it was as Cleon Skousen calls it "a 5,000 year leap" forward in the governments of men.  And, it still stands as the best form of government in existence today, even after some significant dismantling and perversion by forces (legislatures as well as courts) over the past 100 years. 

In fact, most of the flaws cited today are those created in the past 100 years by those who are seeking to destroy the Constitution.  The beauty of the US Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) as originally framed and interpreted is that it created a strictly limited Federal government while explicitly recognizing that the powers of government derive solely from the governed.  Prior to this time, nearly every government in the world assumed that the powers of government derived solely from God onto the shoulders of the monarch, and that the citizens were not citizens, they were subjects (a person who is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign) and they had NO inherent rights, the king being accountable only to God for the use of his power.

The Magna Charta was a huge leap forward in that it made the king accountable to the nobles and the people through the powers given to the parliament.  Previously the only accountability of the king was to those who could wield sufficient military or financial power to bring him to heel.  And financial power without the military might to back it was simply an invitation to have debts cancelled and wealth transferred at the point of bloody sword.

Anarchy or total self-government is not a realistic model for sustainable society in today's world.  In fact, the anarchist movement is largely a tool of the statists.  If the model of the anarchists were accepted, and every man became a law unto himself, human nature (essentially unchanged through 6,000 years of recorded human history) would soon find the strong preying on the weak.  The victims would band together and seek the protection of the strongest, or strength in numbers.  Either way, they would immediately have to trade some or all of their personal sovereignty for increased security.   The strongest would protect them and demand obedience and we would have feudalism and monarchy in short order.  Again, the stronger would "eat the sovereignty" the weaker until Empires were rebuilt and the monarch (the state) would again be the source of all authority and individuals would have surrendered all their individual sovereignty so that they would be prey only to one predator (their monarch) rather than be prey to a hundred different bullies.

The only time self-government (total individual sovereignty) will work is when the individuals will also agree to relinquish their sovereignty promptly (in a minute - e.g., minutemen militia) for self defense and the apprehension of predators (of the 2-legged variety), and agree to a common set of public standards for interaction (e.g.,  thou shalt not steal...).

Realistically speaking, the US Constitution has worked out very well for us so far.  It's bedrock is under unremitting attack right now and if it falls, the end result will be despotism, not freedom.  The US Constitution has successfully limited government and assured individual freedom for more than 200 years and helped create the most prosperous and powerful  nation on earth - powered by the will of individuals who believe that these freedoms are worth defending and that the principles underlying this structure are eternal beacons for the happiness of both individuals and society.

Coming Up - The Rightful Role of Government - Part 2, including...

• Predation by the minority
• Predation by the majority
• The Rule of Law

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Bernie Sanders v Donald Trump for President - Hurray!

Today's Wall Street Journal features a front page article titled, "Unhappy Voters Shake Up Contest."  The article notes that Hillary Clinton's lead in the polls is sinking while her Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders has jumped to 25%, from less than 10%.  Likewise, it points out that Jeb Bush, once the heir apparent now finds himself running in third, with Donald Trump pulling the top numbers among Republicans.

I look with relish and uncommon excitement at a presidential election that would pit Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump.

First of all, if those were the two picks, for the first time in decades we would have two contenders who are truly, fundamentally, different from each other, instead of having candidates who were just two different shades of the same color.

Second, this would be the first presidential election in my memory where the two candidates are not saying whatever they think it takes to get elected and instead are taking principled, and frequently unpopular stands that are consistent with their ideologies.  Both men appear to be willing and able to state their convictions and stand up for them, regardless of any pressure to do otherwise.

Third, this particular match-up would give Americans the chance to make a clear choice between the two competing economic models of the last century - a choice that historic facts would appear to be moot, but still it persists.

Bernie Sanders is an unapologetic Socialist.  For decades he has consistently voted for laws and measures that drove this country closer and closer to the socialist ideal.  He makes no apologies for his approach and he doesn't try to hide it. 

While I personally find it amazing that anyone can look at the lessons of history and see the massive failures of socialism in the former USSR and China, and any other country that has embraced the policy of trying to make their people all equally poor (except for those ruling elites), and yet continue to espouse such blatant stupidity, nay economic suicide; still, I find Bernie Sanders admirable in his consistent commitment and advocacy of his principles.

In sharp economic contrast to Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump is an unapologetic capitalist.  Unlike the hypocrisy of uber-rich George Soros, Warren Buffet and Oprah Winfrey, who having feathered their own nests through capitalism now seek to destroy the means for others to attain similar levels of prosperity, Donald Trump continues to espouse policies that would keep the American Dream alive and keep the doors to individual success and prosperity open to all comers who are willing to work hard and smart.

Unfortunately, I suspect that if the establishment fails to keep these two zealots out of office, they will arrange for the untimely demise of any President of the United States (POTUS) who they cannot control.  And neither Bernie Sanders nor Donald Trump sound at all like the kind of men who will dance to any tune that is not their own.  I am not one of those crackpot conspiracy theorists, seeing some nefarious hand in everything.  Still, I recognize the realities of human nature and power.  Those who benefit from the ongoing trend toward socialism in this country will do what they can to encourage the movement that direction.

I know many Republicans are as horrified at the prospect of having The Donald as their candidate or POTUS as some Democrats are at the prospect of having Bernie as their front man.  Still, for the American People, I hope that each of these two contenders manage to knock out the same-old-same-old front runners from both parties and give us a real, discernible choice in this upcoming presidential election.  I think it would be just what the country needs - a clear choice instead of choosing between socialism (liberal Democrats) and socialism lite (moderate Republicans).

Let's have a real, public, debate over the virtues of capitalism v socialism.  Let Donald and Bernie go toe-to-toe and let the American People make a clear choice for one economic approach versus another.  I am hopeful that the majority will choose the opportunity of capitalism over the oppression of socialism.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Am I Being Judgmental?

 The Bible teaches, "Judge not."  Or does it?

"Judge not" is not the whole of the teaching.  What it really says, is, "Judge not, that ye be be not judged.  For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged"  Matthew 7:1-2

Many take this as a commandment that we should not judge others.  However, that understanding is false, because it is incomplete.  In John 7:24, we are told, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."  In Psalms (37:30) we read, "The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment."

So, actually, we are commanded by God to judge.  And, we are cautioned to use righteous judgment. 

That begs the question, "what is righteous judgment?" 

In part this can be answered by saying what is unrighteous judgment.

Hypocritical judgment, where we point the finger at someone else when we are guilty of even worse, unrepentant, behavior is unrighteous judgment.  This is what Jesus was referring to when he said we had to first remove the beam from our own eye (truly repenting), before we can legitimately help remove the speck (mote) from another's eye.

When our judgment is based on presuming to know things that we cannot know, we are engaged in unrighteous judgment.  For example, when you assume you know the motives for an action, unless the  actor told you their motives, you cannot know it, because you cannot read minds. 

Another example of this is when you assume someone is going to Hell, or Heaven.  You don't know the thoughts and intents of their hearts (which God will use to judge us), and you don't even know ALL the acts another has done, so you lack the necessary information to make righteous judgment on this matter.  And, God has reserved this particular judgment and kept it out of our hands.

You can exercise righteous judgment by judging actions (rather than actors).  To put it another way, you can righteously judge that someone who is commiting adultery is doing something wrong (evil).  But, if you judge that the adulterer is going to Hell you have engaged in unrighteous judgment.  You can righteously judge whether or not someone has broken a law of man or of God, but you cannot know if a person has broken a law of conscience.

Why am I talking about judgment in a politico-religious blog?  

This exploration was spurred by something that Star Parker said in her book, "Uncle Sam's Plantation."  She took the stance that much of the problems of poverty (and society) today is the replacement of the idea of right and wrong with the notion of values. She sums the idea in the following words,

“Life is chance, and values are relative. I can do whatever I think is right”

Then, she goes on to relate this idea to the actual behavior of a variety of individuals, including herself.

The events of the past several years reveal the natural consequences of a society embracing that philosophy. People blowing up federal buildings, mailing letter bombs or anthrax, disposing of live newborns in dumpsters—these are all acts that seemed right to those who carried them out. This type of moral relativism, taken to its logical extreme, can even justify using airplanes as human bombs to murder innocent civilians. I found it easy to reject the concept of faith because all absolutes were judgmental,

She found it easy to reject the concept of faith because faith introduces the idea that right and wrong can be absolutes instead of relative.  And all absolutes are judgmental.  And, being judgmental is being bad because we are told to "judge not."

Some of my children have accused my wife and I of being judgmental because we stated, without apology, that sexual promiscuity (heterosexual and homosexual) is wrong.  They conflated our condemnation of the acts with a condemnation of the actor (their friend).  Honestly, their confusion on that point is easy to understand.  Many folks don't make the distinction between the act and the actor when they make or express their judgments.  It isn't uncommon to hear someone say, "... he is a bad person, he did bad things."

The irony of my childrens' condemnation of my wife and I as "judgmental" is that they are probably the most judgmental people I have ever met.  Those who don't agree with their views on social matters are almost universally determined to be bad people.  Case in point, if someone opposes gay-marriage, they are a bad person, trying to deny same-sex-marriage proponents of their right to pursue happiness in their own way.

This is also consistent with the utter intolerance of atheists for religionists.  A recent FB dialog I had with folks on that topic is illustrative.  The response of atheists was that religionists should "just shut the f*** up."  Profanity, vitriol and personal attacks while discussing a topic are hallmarks of bigotry and intolerance.  Bigotry and intolerance are hallmarks of unrighteous judgment.

We also see this kind of bigotry and unrighteous judgment in the most ardent proponents of the LGBT movement and among racists (of any color).  The key point here is to make sure that we are not having a beam in our own eye on the point of judgment, regardless of the size of the chunk of wood in someone else's eye.  We cannot excuse our own bad behaviors by pointing to the bad behaviors of our opponents.

But, don't get me wrong here.  I am not saying we should continue to let liberal bullies beat on us while we scream "forgive me, for I have sinned."  Rather, we need to be very assertive and even confrontational without resorting to profanity, vitriol and personal attacks.  We need to argue the cases for Constitutional Conservatism by pointing stubbornly to facts and remaining calm.  When the bullies throw punches, we need to block their attacks and counter-punch with clear-headed facts and cogent arguments, rather than losing our temper and resorting to tantrums or purely emotional responses.

There is nothing inherently wrong with an emotional argument, as long as it can be backed up with facts.  But bear in mind that an emotional argument without facts is just an opinion, not an argument.

For instance, you can say, "I know that people who live by Christian principles, live happier, more fulfilling lives."  That is an opinion and an emotional argument.  It may be right and I may agree with it or it may move me.  AND when you can also cite unbiased surveys and studies that support your assertions, it moves from being simply an opinion or emotional argument into the realm of being a cogent, well founded argument in favor of your position.

To give you a counter example, consider the arguments of the gun-banners.  They assert that banning firearm ownership, or severely limiting it makes society safer.  This is an emotional argument and an opinion.  The emotion is based on the fear of being harmed by someone with a gun.  Unfortunately for the gun-banners, the studies and statistics show that banning or severely limiting legal gun ownership consistently results in higher rates of violent crime.  Consider the current high murder rates of Chicago and New York where legal gun ownership is highly restricted, with those low murder rates in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix where gun ownership is widespread and the right to carry is largely unimpeded.

Or, to take this back to one of Ms. Star's points, consider that every time the minimum wage is increased, the unemployment and underemployment among the most economically challenged people in this country increases.  Employers, forced to pay more for each employee, cut back on the number of employees and pushes each employee still on the payroll to be more productive to make up for the folks who are no longer on the line, or they fire them all and hire robots instead.

Of course, the liberal answer to that last point is, "there oughta be a law against that." and then they try to push forward the nanny-state further by one more piece of ineffective, taxing piece of legislation.

But, back to the point about judgment, Ms. Star Parker says it well when she says, 

“God is your source, not the government!”

We should look to God, He is our source.  Look to His plan for our happiness (to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life [Moses 1:39]), and judge the actions of ourselves and others against that absolute measure of right and wrong, instead of using the changeable measuring sticks of society and government.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.