Religion and the 2012 Elections

By Alan Caruba

The one thing that Presidents from Washington through to modern times have held in common was the belief that religion was a central component of the life of the republic.

Calvin Coolidge, President from 1923 to 1929, said “Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberality, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government. There are only two main theories of government in our world. One rests on righteousness and the other on force. One appeals to reason, and the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in the republic; the other is represented by despotism.”

Ronald Reagan echoed this view saying, “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

For Barack Obama, Sundays have often been devoted to playing golf. A self-declared Christian, there are widespread concerns that he was and is a Muslim, given his childhood as the adopted son of an Indonesian Muslim, his mother’s second husband. In the 2008 campaign, he managed to overcome the fact that his spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, led a Chicago church with a doctrine of Black Liberation theology that was frequently highly critical of America.

When John F. Kennedy ran for office, the question was whether his being Catholic would play a role in whether he could be elected. He put that question to rest. Obama had to sever his ties with Rev. Wright in order to seek and win election.

As Mitt Romney closes in on the Republican nomination some liberals are already sniping at his Mormon faith. while Rick Santorum’s emphasis on the strictures of his faith has played an unknown factor in his fluctuating fortunes.

The Gallup organization began systematically tracking religion in 1948, asking Americans to name the major religion with which they personally identified. Back then, two percent (2%) of Americans volunteered “no religion” and another three percent (3%) had an otherwise unidentified religious identity. By the 1970s, the number of Americans with no formal religious identity began to increase, reaching eleven percent (11%) by 1990.

By 2010, sixteen percent (16%) said they had no religious identity or had an otherwise undesignated response. A Gallup analysis noted that “Lack of identification with a formal religious group does not necessarily mean religion is irrelevant in a broad sense in a person’s life. One can remain quite religious, or at least spiritual, while at the same time eschewing attachment to or identity with a formal religion or denomination.”

The Gallup polling demonstrates that eighty-four percent (84%) of Americans, a huge majority, do identify themselves as affiliated in some fashion, formal or not, with a faith of choice.

Drawing on two surveys, the General Social Survey and the National Congressional Study, Mark Chavez, a professor of sociology, religion, and divinity at Duke University, author of “American Religion: Contemporary Trends”, concluded that traditional belief and practice is relatively stable, but that confidence in religious institutions has declined more than confidence in secular ones.

In a March 3rd, Wall Street Journal commentary, Peggy Noonan wrote, “The other day in a seminar at a university, a student of political science asked a sort of complicated question that seemed to be about the predictability of human response to a given set of political stimuli. I answered that if you view people as souls, believe that we have souls within us, that they are us, then nothing political is fully predictable, because you never know what a soul will do, how a soul will respond, what truth it will apprehend and react to.”

The current firestorm over the Obamacare mandate that contravenes personal conscience, a pillar of all religions, has ignited a debate over the separation of church and state. The Constitution specifically forbids “the establishment” of a state religion and, by extenstion, forbids the federal government from coming between an individual’s spiritual beliefs and its demands.

Coolidge also said “We do not need more intellectual power; we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge; we need more character. We do not need more government; we need more culture. We do not need more law; we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen; we need more of the things that are unseen.”

Religion is hardwired into humans. From the Stone Age onward, we have created religions as a means to cope with an often dangerous and indifferent world, and to peer into what Shakespeare called “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Consciously or not, three years into President Obama’s term, millions of Americans are reexamining their religious beliefs and I suspect this will play an important role in the outcome of the 2012 elections.

Americans may have grown more secular in their general outlook, but there is still that inner voice, their relationship with the faith into which they were born or they embraced—their soul—and the historic distrust of big government that will shape the outcome of the election.

The Founding Fathers believed that only men of “virtue” could lead America and only citizens who practiced virtue in their lives could preserve and protect the republic. They were right.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

God and Governance in the USA

By Alan Caruba

I confess I always look forward to July Fourth because it carries with it memories of my parents who proudly displayed the flag on every holiday and of the full day of celebration by my hometown that began with races in the morning by the various grades of school kids, baking and other contests, a circus and a concert in the afternoon and early evening, concluded with a grand display of fireworks at night.

My parents were both first generation Americans and their parents understood what the American Dream was because they had lived it. They had endured hard times and good, and were fiercely patriotic.

They would have been mystified and angered to hear the talk of the “separation of church and state” to justify thwarting the acknowledgement that God is at the very center of the nation’s creation. The Constitution does not speak of separation. It says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

The Founders were well aware of the torments and injustices of the “old world” in which there were state religions and woe to those who were not members thereof. They were not anti-religion. They were against formal alliances between the state and a particular religion.

Atheists and secularists fail to acknowledge 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.”

The belief in God and the right to worship Him as one wished literally accounts for the first brave journeys to the land that would become colonies and then an independent nation. The Pilgrims came in search of the freedom to worship as they wished.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, Samuel Adams wrote, “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and…from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come.”

When the fifty-six men from the thirteen colonies first gathered in Philadelphia on September 7, 1774 as a sitting Congress, there was a suggestion that the meeting begin with prayer. The motion was initially opposed, not because the delegates did not believe in God, but because they represented various religious backgrounds. There were Episcopalians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists.

Samuel Adams stood to address the assembly. “I am no bigot. I could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue.” He suggested that an Episcopalian clergyman, Jacob Duche, fit that description and that he be asked to read prayers to the Congress the following morning. The motion was seconded and passed.

In a book by Toby Mac and Michael Tait, “Under God”, they note that “A paid minister, whose salary has been paid by taxpayers since 1789, opens every session of Congress with prayer.”

On December 4, 1800, just weeks after moving into the newly opened Capitol Building, it became a home to religious services. Senator John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary, “Religious service is usually performed on Sundays at the Treasury office and at the Capitol. I went both forenoon and afternoon to the Treasury.”

Among the many interesting facts and stories they cite is one about the Washington Monument that is topped with an aluminum cap upon which two words are etched, Laus Deo, meaning praise to God and, within the cornerstone, laid on July 4, 1848, rests the Holy Bible, presented by the Bible Society.

Let those who would cast out God, would cast out the religion of the Founding Fathers and tolerance for those seeking freedom under God be rebuked. They are strangers to what it means to say, “I am an American.”

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Greens Begin to Parody Themselves

This is an actual news release:

"I thought you might be interested in a “green” feature in the July issue of O, The Oprah Magazine on newsstands June 15th.

A GREENER CALLING

Four inspiring environmental leaders are joining forces to preach the gospel of green.

The Climate Cleric Rev. Canon Sally Bingham: An Episcopal priest preaches energy conservation to people of all faiths.
The Witness Bishop Walter Thomas: An American pastor takes on water pollution in Africa.
The Animal Activist Dekila Chungyalpa: A Buddhist defends the Earth’s last tigers.
The Compassionate Foodie Nick Savage: A devout Jew feeds his flock—and redefines kosher.

Please let me know if you’d like to see the full piece."

It has been widely noted that environmentalism, i.e. being green, has long since become an alternative religion. Any number of clerics of different faiths have climbed on the green bandwagon.

A Russian Warns Americans Against a Communist Takeover

By Alan Caruba

There is considerable irony involved when a Russian warns Americans against what is taking place before their eyes as President Obama seeks to transform and ultimately acquire dictatorial powers by a series of steps that are both bold and obvious.

In April, Stanislav Mishin’s post on his blog, Mat Rodina, was published in Pravda. The title was “American capitalism gone with a whimper."

You can read the commentary at
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0.

Having lived under Communist rule in the former Soviet Russia, Mishin and his fellow Russians were literally freed by the fall of that regime that began with the overthrow of the Czar in 1917 by the Bolsheviks. What followed was an experiment in Communism that killed millions of Russians as a succession of dictators, starting with Lenin, sought to impose an economic and political system that simply does not work.

Mishin enumerated the ways the path to the present effort to destroy capitalism and our political system has been laid in America.

“First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics.” There are few that would argue that the American education system is not controlled by the National Education Association, a union, and the American Federation of Teachers, a union. Both have long supported the Democrat Party. Virtually every way one can measure the system reveals its failure to educate the millions passing through government schools.

“Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different ‘branches and denominations’ were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses…” America is a “religious” nation if one looks at the survey numbers of those who say they believe in a supreme being. This, however, is not reflected in the breakdown of moral values as seen in the spread of pornography, the use of illegal drugs, the divorce rate, and the touchstone issue of abortion in America. Our popular culture is drenched in sex and violence.

“The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama,” says Mishin. I would argue that the threat Obama poses to the U.S. Constitution and to our economy is indisputable. “His spending and money printing has been (a) record setting,” all pointing to an America that “will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.” The former preceded the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s and the latter’s money is worthless.

What better way to destroy America than to destroy the value of the U.S. dollar, the standard against which all other currencies are set? If you want to know why Obama has instituted the spending of billions in just over a half year's time and imposed a $9 trillion deficit on the nation, you need look no further for an explanation.

Nor did it escape Mishin’s notice, having lived in a nation in which all industry was under the control of a central government, that under Obama the government now owns General Motors and that the President demanded and got the resignation of the company’s former president. Every other CEO in America got the message. No where in the Constitution will you find permission for public money to be spent in this fashion.

The ironies and the threat to our nation continue. “Prime Minister Putin…warned Obama…not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster.”

In brief, here’s the case for free market capitalism as opposed to government-run enterprises and interference.

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. It took 234 years to get it right. It is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935. It has had 74 years to get it right. It is broke. Cost of living increases to recipients will not be enacted for the next two years. It is broke.

Fannie Mae, an intrusion into the housing and mortgage market place was established in 1938. There have been 71 years to get it right. It is broke and it was a major contributing factor in the failure of the mortgage lending system and the present failures of banks across the nation. Likewise, Freddie Mac was established in 1970. After 39 years to get it right, it is broke.

The “war on poverty” set in motion in 1964 was a classic “redistribution of money” as a transfer to “the poor.” Now the nation is, for all intents and purposes, broke.

Medicare and Medicaid were established 1965. After 44 years, both are broke.

The Obama administration is allegedly seeking to “reform” both by rationing medical services to the elderly while expanding the systems to require all Americans to involuntarily purchase insurance. Universal healthcare requires more doctors. Until tort reform is enacted and until doctors can be free to practice in a free market, there will be fewer and fewer doctors.

The trillions of dollars spent by TARP and the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, are showing no signs of working. ACORN, a “community organizing” group received millions and is likely to be given a working role in the forthcoming U.S. Census, a program that is part of the Department of Commerce, but whose management has been transferred to the White House!

“The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how free he really is. The world will only snicker,” predicted Mishin.

If the town hall meetings and “tea parties” from coast to coast are any indication, Mishin is wrong that Americans will not fight. A forthcoming September 12 protest gathering in Washington, D.C., is likely to draw more than a million protesters to the capitol.

Obama and his panoply of “czars” have only a few months in which to manufacture a "crisis"as a pretext to transfer all power to the White House. They will fail.

Sex Has a Price

By Alan Caruba

There is often a price to pay for sex and I am not talking about the dollars former Governor Elliot Spitzer spent or even his downfall, which everyone keeps saying is a tragedy. It’s not. It’s the judgment society should correctly require of a public servant whose private life does not conform to moral standards.

If you want to spend time with whores, don’t run for public office. It’s not a tragedy. It’s arrogance, hubris, and your bad judgment. When caught, it’s a problem for family and friends.

Talking about moral standards almost seems out-of-date. Other than clergy, who discusses such things any more? The talking heads and chattering class on television seemed more concerned with who would replace Spitzer and whether his downfall would affect Hillary’s campaign.

Still, moral standards do exist and many have been codified into laws intended to protect us from ourselves and others. It is still wrong to lie, cheat, and steal.

It is still wrong to be a whore or one’s customer.

I was thinking about this because the Spitzer meltdown and a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, with exquisite timing, occurred the same week. The CDC released a study that revealed that about one in four teenage American girls has a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

For every four girls existing the local high school every day one of them has human papillomavirus, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, or genital herpes. And those were just the STDs the study examined.

Statistically, the study adds up to more than three million teenage girls nationwide. Only about half the girls in the study admitted to having sex and some of them defined it only as intercourse though oral sex can spread disease as well. The study found that 40% of those who admitted to having sex had an STD. The CDC report is probably just the top of a very big iceberg.

In the Nineties, thanks to Bill Clinton, a generation of parents had to explain to their children what oral sex was. Apparently, permitting the school to instruct pubescent young ladies in the arts of oral, anal, and vaginal sex, has helped to spread the word.

I had already graduated university by the time the sex, drugs, and rock’n roll generation arrived along with the hippie scene, the beatnik poets, and various icons of that era let it be known that “free love” was okay.

Only there is no such thing as “free” love or sex. It always comes with a price.

That, apparently, is not being taught in schools that often seem to be teeming with women teachers eager to seduce their male students or male teachers who find their female students irresistible.

One way or the other, the young woman who serviced Elliot Spitzer had learned that free love was for suckers. Barely in her twenties, she had absorbed the message of MTV, the tabloid television shows like Entertainment Tonight reporting on yet another pregnant, but unmarried actress or the “reality” shows that pit young women against each other to snag a hunky bachelor.

This is how societies eventually come to ruin. By the time the barbarians are at the gate, it’s too late.

The next time you hear someone sneer at the evangelical Christians and others who want to home-school their children or send them to a parochial school or yeshiva; who make sure they attend Sunday school, church or synagogue with the family, you can be pretty sure their girls are not the one out of the four teenagers with a STD.

Between God and a Hard Place

By Alan Caruba

Politics in America must seem baffling to those unaccustomed to the bloodletting we call our campaigns.

It is, however, a special burden these days for the nation’s atheists during this season of joy and backstabbing. Not only must they wake each day to Christmas carols with their “glory to the new born king” message, but, if they are Republicans, they must also try to sort out for whom to vote amidst more Bible thumping than one could get in a good old “Come to Jesus” tent revival.

I happen to know one such atheist and the poor thing is just bouncing off the walls. To listen to her, it was bad enough she has had to live the passed seven years with a President whose favorite “philosopher” is Christ Jesus, but now she has some choices to make as the forces of darkness descend in the form of Hillary Clinton or some bi-racial guy with a Muslim name, Obama, who goes to a church in Chicago.

Meanwhile, she is looking at GOP contenders that include a Baptist preacher and former Governor (of Arkansas for the love of God!), a Mormon former Governor from Taxachusetts, an Arizona Senator whose political fortunes more resemble one of those carnival rides that yank you up and drop you down at dizzying speeds, and the rest who remind some people of those tiny cars in the circus from which a dozen clowns spill forth.

So let’s have a moment of silent prayer for all the bewildered Republican atheists because surely they are between God and a hard place these days.

The Third Rail of God

By Alan Caruba

The third rail in a train system is the exposed electrical conductor that carries high voltage power. Stepping on the high-voltage third rail usually results in electricution.

The phrase “third rail” has come to mean an idea or topic that is so "charged" and "untouchable" that any candidate for office, public official, and these days anyone who posts to the Internet, who dares to deal with the subject is likely to find himself or herself in hot water.

Nothing gets Americans more worked up than religion. In what was the first experiment in which a nation was forbidden from declaring a national religion by its founders and which has a long tradition of tolerance, religion rallies Americans like nothing else. A Newsweek poll earlier this year found that 91 percent of those surveyed believe in God.

Unsaid, however, is that these same Americans believe in a largely Christian God. When Christians say God they mean Christ Jesus. Catholics take it a step further with the concept of the trinity. Jews reference only a single God figure. The god of the Muslims is Allah, the name of a former Arabian Moon god adopted to represent the God worshipped by Christians and Jews. When Muslims pray, they face Mecca. When Jews pray they face Jerusalem. Buddhism, by contrast, is opposed to violence and doesn’t posit an omnipotent god.

American politicians have their job cut out for them when it comes to religion as they must, by tradition, embrace all as equal and valid. That can create some interesting situations. For example, the White House just hosted an iftar dinner to mark the beginning of Ramadan and there was a ceremony held on Monday, October 1 in the Pentagon for approximately 100 Muslim Department of Defense employees.

If the notion of Muslims working in the DOD at the same time a considerable portion of our military is deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq gives you pause for concern, you are not alone. Afterall, the task at hand is the killing of their co-religionists who are bent on imposing Islam on the world. Grant that not all Muslims are jihadists or believe in the establishment of a new global caliphate, even if only 10 percent do, that’s still more than a hundred million Muslims! That said, Middle Eastern Muslims seem to have no problem with killing other Muslims, often for belonging to the “wrong” sect, be it either Shiite or Sunni.

In contrast to the Christian message of love and forgiveness, Islam’s message is “convert or die” or keep your religion, become a “dhimmi”, pay a tax to your local mosque to be left alone, and accept a variety of unpleasant conditions meant to remind you that you’re going straight to hell because Mohammed said so.

While Ramadan was beginning—its month-long fast no doubt borrowed from the fast that Jews observe on Yom Kippur—there was a convention not far from Pentagon headquarters, sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International. Held at the Crown Royal Hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, this past weekend, it featured some of the stars of Atheism as speakers.

One of my favorites was the writer Christopher Hitchens, a genuine talent. He shared honors with Oxford professor, Richard Dawkins, and author Sam Harris, all three of whom have some bestselling books decrying religion as myth and God as the biggest myth of all. According to reports, several hundred attended the event.

A general theme of atheism is that religions start wars, are responsible for all manner of persecution, animosities, et cetera. And this is empirically true. Anyone familiar with history can point to a long list of awfulness involving the three major religions, even citing accounts from the Old Testament and, of course, the execution of Jesus by the Romans. The rise of Christianity was essentially a conflict between the new religion and the older gods of Hellenism. The Koran is one long account of battles fought, truces broken, and the Hadith, the book based on Mohammed’s life, also tells of assassinations and dreadful behavior.

The West, led by the United States, is engaged in a new religious war. Some say we invaded Iraq for the oil, but we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because Osama bin Laden and others have declared war on the West, i.e., Christianity and Judaism, in the name of Islam. Islam has an equal contempt for Hinduism and Buddhism. We can either choose to wage war against them to preserve ourselves and Western civilization or we can surrender.

That’s where the third rail of God has gotten very dangerous for the politicians running these days for their party’s nomination. None dare come out and say this is going to be a long and bloody war. None dare even suggest it is a religious war. Consider the charades going on in the White House and Pentagon to hide this fact.

The split between the parties is quite obvious. Democrats declare they intend to withdraw from the Middle East’s field of battle. Republicans are intent on waging the war no matter how long it takes. And Republicans bring to the voting booth their religious beliefs while Democrats rarely even mention having any.

In November 2008, a lot of voters—many of whom believe in God—are going to decide whose side they’re on, His or His enemies.