America in chains, Part 2:
Wake up America, and shake off your chains!
Part 1 of this article can be found here



Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Isaiah 58: 6

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

Oh say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave o'er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?
The National Anthem of the United States



We must consider the purpose of freedom and ways to restore morality. After all, freedom is the foundation on which a just, moral and gracious society can and should be built. Are we content to be free only to watch sports games on television? Do we seek the blessings of freedom only so we may be selfish, to ignore the plight of the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged? Of course not.

What is the point of freedom unless it is associated with the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness and self-control? And the virtues of self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty and faith?

The delusion of socialism is to believe that these qualities of life can be imposed by a government, and the ultimate joy of freedom comes with the loving construction of the most compassionate, decent, moral society the world has ever known, free from government interference but resting instead on the solid moral foundation of Biblical teachings.

Indeed, can the transformation we seek be achieved through political leaders at all? We believe not. As Alan Keyes asked: "Why is it that the existing leadership in politics and the media are so reluctant to deal with the obvious fact that moral corruption is threatening to destroy America's capacity for self-government?" The answer to Dr. Keyes' question is that we have the politicians we deserve, and if individuals are unwilling to take a stand for moral principles, politicians will hardly feel constrained to do so either. Furthermore, many have been seduced: they are drunk with power. Perspective seems to disappear when one crosses the bridge into Washington.

Some argue that change should come through the ballot box: if some politicians are corrupt and clueless, maybe it is time to try others. Yet what happens if democracy itself has been corrupted and voting is no longer free and fair, as we believe has now happened? Anyone who still regards elections in America as free and fair is scarcely being realistic: the electoral system is as corrupt as the judiciary, the police and the media. And that will continue for as long as people are willing to tolerate it.

If America is to regain its credibility, there must be major changes in the conduct of elections. Most Americans are blissfully unaware that the electoral system, the judiciary, the police and the media have been quietly stolen and corrupted. And the burglars were clever enough not to make a single sound. America, as we have known and loved it, cannot long survive. Big Brother is watching us all. O America, beloved America, may God shed His grace on thee.

If there is a common desire to resuscitate the existing republic, drastic action must be taken to restore the electoral process. We must address the now widespread suppression of certain items of news. And there must be new rules regarding media coverage. One must ensure equal coverage in terms of time and content. Another rule must prevent reporters from offering their comments, and a third might ban opinion polls in the week prior to an election. As things stand, the media issues a new opinion poll every fifteen minutes, and we have reached the point where they have debased democracy. Some may argue that this would limit free speech, but we disagree. First, what is more important: free speech or free elections? Secondly, does freedom of speech include the freedom to demonstrably subvert democracy? If libel, perjury and false advertising are illegal, then why not false and biased reporting, and the blatant manipulation of the primary and election process. As the world's upholders and promoters of democracy, American election observers would never condone interference of this kind in another country, so why is it allowed to exist in their own?

It is a tragic delusion to believe you are free simply because you can neither see nor feel the strings pulling on your back. In that regard, ballot rigging must be eliminated. It really is time for America to grow beyond this. Voter News Service, now known as National Election Pool, is the New York company owned jointly by the major media. In the United States, some 40% of voters usually vote Democrat and some 40% Republican. Even Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide amounted to less than 60% of the vote. So if anyone wished to rig election results, only a maximum of 20% of votes need concern them, and if they have done their homework, as we assure you they have, the districts concerned are relatively few, especially given the Electoral College system.

It is astonishing but true that a national election result can be changed by influencing as few as forty districts, and it is in those places that electronic voting and computers have replaced paper ballots. Those results are more susceptible to alteration. Could this possibly be happening? Some will dismiss the possibility as far-fetched, but as we continue to see one pre-chosen president after another leading a disaffected, disillusioned nation, the subject cannot be dismissed without consideration.

Perhaps America's greatest obstacle to freedom and democracy is that power is concentrated in the hands of remarkably few people in Washington, not only the 545 in Congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the Oval Office, but those businessmen who run the nation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with free commerce and, unlike some, we do not subscribe to a conspiracy theory, but it has become apparent that those few people are no longer content to run just their own commercial empires. There is evidence that they have intervened in the democratic process, and if that is allowed to continue unchecked, America's democratic future must be regarded as uncertain. We must express our profound concern.

Until Bill Clinton became President, freedoms in America eroded slowly. From 1993-2001, they vanished at an alarming rate, and since September 11, 2001, the erosion has again been immense.Bill Clinton, who was re-elected by 24% of the voting population created distractions by trying to micromanage certain areas. He who said "the era of big government is over" announced that women undergoing a mastectomy must be allowed to stay in hospital for an indefinite period afterwards. And why stop there? How about men with lung cancer? And babies with a rash? Will he next announce a new Department of Diaper-Changing to lay out federal guidelines, the infraction of which could be punishable by law? In the late 1990s, he also spent $500 million "to end gang violence" - enough to buy each gang member in America a college education and a sports car, but was it effective? Is there still gang violence?

He also spent $51 billion on public education. Stewardship of public resources was not his strong point. Yet it is a deception to believe the problems of education are caused by a shortage of money. If that were really the case, Washington DC would have the best, not the worst, schools in the nation.

The real problem is that the politically-correct, atheistic agenda of most public schools and colleges deceives people into thinking that their children are acquiring a valuable education when in fact they are being subtly manipulated and brainwashed into becoming the kind of obedient, non-threatening serfs who are willing to be enslaved in order to provide tax revenue for the profligate programs that Washington bureaucrats and politicians enjoy initiating. The cure is thrift, not extravagance. As Plutarch once noted "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

The government is seeking to take responsibility for the education of children. Yet that is the role of parents, not governments. What life skills, what factual knowledge, what intellectual nourishment, what spiritual growth can be gained by a diet of public education and television? Though it is almost impossible to significantly educate children through television, it is quite possible to inculcate the attitudes and values of Cultural Marxism, which we know to be contrary to anything beneficial.

The godless, amoral, socialist messages of television are usually subtle but they are always there. If parents abdicate their responsibility to nurture and guide their children in favor of the networks, they should not be surprised at the results; if they cannot tell the truth on the evening news, why should they be expected to do so to children? If you seek proof, when did you last see a program that promoted love and devotion to God? And by contrast, when did you last see one suggesting that those who trample on moral standards will be rewarded? Television is the chosen medium of Big Brother: it implies that its worldview is synonymous with reality, that it is a better source of wisdom and knowledge than literature, the church, the family or the conscience, and that obedience to its banal advertising and subtle propaganda will be rewarded. It also teaches that God must be shut out of our daily lives and visited, in church, only occasionally, presumably between writing lists for Santa Claus and watching out for the Easter Bunny.

In a lecture at London University's Institute of US Studies, Lady Margaret Thatcher observed: "The younger generation is being reared in a morally corrosive atmosphere where they are taught that in the name of liberty, anything goes. There is no elevation of the human spirit in works designed merely to shock or to appeal only to our most base instincts. In the process, liberty decays into license in an atmosphere where all is permitted and nothing prohibited. The resulting permissive society is in fact no society at all. It is little more than a state of nature where the line between right and wrong is first blurred and then obliterated, a place where no one dares to say no. There can be no order without authority, and authority that is impotent or hesitant in the face of intimidation, crime and violence cannot endure."

In America, the judiciary and the media have claimed the authority to determine the essential questions of life. They evidently believe themselves to be morally superior to the will of the people yet paradoxically, they deem morality, especially in the context of religious morality, to be the principal cause of society's evils. The very fabric of America is apparently threatened when a child bows his head to give God thanks before a school cafeteria lunch. What irony, given the world's admiration of American freedom and democracy.

The freedoms not stolen by an interventionist judiciary have been spirited away by an authoritarian executive, an electoral system so corrupt that it renders voting almost pointless, and a brainwashing media unhealthily involved in the electoral process. In his book, 'Slouching Towards Gomorrah', Judge Robert Bork suggests that the United States can be saved only by a cataclysmic war, a Stock Market crash or a political earthquake such as the fall of the President. Indeed, the latter two are reported to be imminent. Judge Bork also assumes God will forsake us, even though He has said "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5). If so, he has it the wrong way around. God has not forsaken us: we have forsaken Him. God may or may not save America, but He will certainly save those who acknowledge Him as Savior and Lord. We could find all manner of complex sociological terms to describe and explain America's tragic descent, but one word will suffice: sin. The original Hebrew word means "missing the target". Collectively and individually, we have strayed far away from God and His purposes for us; it is self-evident that we have missed the target.

A basic principle of Western Civilization is that laws which violate the moral law must be disobeyed, a principle invoked by Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and America's Founders. Pope John Paul II stated in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life): "Laws and decrees enacted in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force." Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said "A Christian should not support a government that suppresses the faith or one that sanctions the taking of innocent human life."

The Founders could not have imagined that a sophisticated elite would anesthetize the people as they stole their nation. We are deceiving ourselves if we believe America now resembles in anything other than name the free nation founded in 1776. If the Founders knew, would they not jostle us awake? The institutions they created now find themselves confused by a false competition between liberty and morality. Their nation has been displaced by a regime that neither has the consent of the governed nor wishes to obtain it; millions of Americans eschew contact with their government, and the moral basis of the Republic has been rapidly eroded. Do Americans have desire enough to regain their freedom, and knowledge enough to even realize that they are not free? Plato observed: "The punishment the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men." Must Americans now choose between God and country? Are we reaching the point where Christians can no longer support the continuation of the United States as it is?

In Timisoara, Romania in 1989, Pastor Laszlo Tokes preached boldly and his church grew to five thousand. Fearing his power, the authorities stationed armed police there and hired thugs to attack him. In December 1989, the police arrived to take him away but were stopped by hundreds of Christians of many denominations who stood guard around the church. Daniel Gavra, a 19-year-old student, pulled out a packet of candles, lit them and passed them around in a show of Christian unity.

After two days, the police broke down the church door, punched the pastor in the face and pulled him and his wife out. In protest, the people streamed to the city square and demonstrated against the government. Again Daniel Gavra gave out candles. Government troops opened fire, hundreds were shot and Daniel Gavra lost a leg, but the people of Timisoara stood against the bullets and inspired the whole of Romania. A few days later, the communists were overthrown and dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were hanged. Romania is now free because honest people like Daniel Gavra stood against a dictator to defend the Gospel and what they knew to be right.

Americans face a more spiritual battle, "for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil" (Ephesians 6:12). Americans: you have been called to action. Steve Myers © 1997, 2006