What do you believe?

This post is meant to challenge you to examine what you believe, in a political sense.

A Survey of Beliefs

Question 1: Do you believe that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are the rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? 

Follow up: Where do those rights come from? 

Question 2: What should the role of government in your life be?

Follow up: What role does government play in your life now?

Question 3: What economic system best suits you?

Follow up: What economic system do we live under now?

Question 4: What about our country do you appreciate?

Follow up: What don't you appreciate?

Question 5: Do you attend religious services regularly?

Follow up: Explain why you answered the way you did?

Question 6: Do you believe that the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land?

Follow up: Explain? Should the Constitution be the supreme law of the land?

Question 7: Should an Article 5 Convention of the States be called to propose new Amendments to reign in the federal leviathan?

Follow up: Do you know what an Article 5 Convention is?

Question 8: Do you support federal congressional term limits?

Follow up: Explain your answer.

Final Question: Why do you believe what you believe?

Print these out and answer them or copy and paste them into a document, answer them and send them to the email address linked at the end of this blog post. You will find my answers to the above questions below.

 My Answers

1. I believe that our rights are not derived from any statute or from any other man made decree but come from God, who created us, our Creator, and as those rights are derived from the benevolence of a Supreme Being, they can no longer be taken away by man than can the air we breathe. When man acts to limit our God given rights, we are being subjected to the will of man and that is an affront to a Holy God. Civil government is ordained in the bible but it must not serve to limit God or His wishes for His people. Once government becomes oppressive of our natural rights, we must act to throw off such government. 

2. Government's current role is vast and sweeping, and as such, it forms a statist system that seeks to substitute its will for the consent of the governed. Many people are seeking a ruler to vanquish their perceived iniquities. Many want government to solve their problems. It can never do that because government is just a group of people and when we give that group of people the power to solve our problems, the inherent nature of the people comes to the forefront and government grows out of being a useful servant and becomes the master. Government's role should be to provide for our defense against enemies foreign and domestic. Execute the laws as outlined by the Constitution. Wage war against our enemies and negotiate the peace once we win. That's about it.

3. The economic system that suits me best is a free market system where people are free to buy and sell what they wish, with a small network of regulations(decided at the local and state level) and the only thing the federal government should do is keep states from imposing tariffs on one another. Our current system is a quasi Marxist system where the government, through regulation and force, imposes the will of a few moneyed donors and lobbyists on the rest of the country. There should be no federal regulatory state. I don't even think that most state regulations need to exist. If I want to buy my milk from my friends who happen to own a dairy before that milk is sent to a factory to be processed, why should the government care. I would be buying the milk with the foreknowledge that the milk had not been processed. It should be none of the government's business. No subsidies for any good or service should be provided. All businesses should pay one level tax rate and the only break should be a deduction for capital investment.

4. I appreciate our religious liberty, our freedom of speech, assembly, press and our ability to address our representatives for a redress of our grievances. I appreciate that I, as a Christian, am free to preach the Gospel, if I so choose(or at least I was appreciative of that). I appreciate that our country was founded on an idea that man should be free because our Constitution limited what government could do to usurp our God given rights.

I don't appreciate what we've become. We've become a country of selfish people who think that the government should solve their own pet problems. We've become hostile toward truth. We've become hostile toward our fellow man. We treat government as a charity, all the while forgetting that compelling someone into charity(taxation) is just institutionalized theft. We must give back those responsibilities to groups that actually care about the souls of people, not just their votes every two or four years.

5. This one has made the biggest difference in my life. I attend church services 3 times per week, if I can. I am so blessed to be in a bible believing, bible preaching church. A church shouldn't be a museum of saints, it should be a hospital for sinners. I had moved away from the church because I was repelled at what mainstream American churches had become. Not until I was asked to come to my current church did I reacquaint myself with the value of a body of believers supporting one another and keeping one another accountable to the words and teachings of God through the Bible.

6. I do believe the Constitution of the United States is the Supreme Law of the land and should be used as the measuring stick for all civil and criminal statutes. The Constitution must be the chains that bind the mischief of government. Our courts should heed the words written in our Constitution and subsequent amendments as the basis of all law under their jurisdiction. In order for that to happen, words must mean what words mean or we cease being a nation of laws and we become a nation of men. That is a recipe for tyranny. We see the slide toward tyranny right now. 

7. An Article 5 Convention of States should must be called. There is a movement under way in several states to do just that. We must reign in the federal government. Congress and the Courts have failed in their responsibility to hold the line on budget issues, on Constitutional issues and on issues surrounding the defense of our country. The only way to bind government is to reacquaint them with the citizenry they are supposed to be subordinate to. As such, a Convention of States must be called to propose several amendments, including a balanced budget amendment, a Congressional pay and benefits restructuring amendment, an amendment to limit the number of years spent in Congress(see below), an amendment to pull the Supreme Court back into compliance with the original intent of the founders and an amendment to make the Supreme Court subject to its own term limits(I propose one 20 year term, unless a term would expire during the last year of a lame duck presidency). Even ratifying just a few of these proposed amendments would go a great distance toward binding the hands of government so that they may no longer do mischief against the American people.

8. I think Congressional term limits are the single most important legislative reform that an Article 5 Convention must push through. We CANNOT and MUST NOT(sorry for yelling) allow elected representatives to keep making careers out of being in the House of Representatives or Senate. Our representatives were intended to be of the people, not above the people. Don't get me wrong, I want the best and brightest to run and make up our government, but they must do that with a servant's heart and the knowledge that their time in DC is limited. We currently have Senators in Washington, DC who have been in the Senate for over 30 years!(I don't use exclamation points often, and when I do, I mean it.) This cannot be allowed to continue. My proposal(feel free to send me your own, either by commenting or emailing me) is for term limits of a total of 12 years in both houses of Congress. 6 terms in the House. 2 terms in the Senate or any combination where the total doesn't exceed 12 years as an elected legislator in our nation's government. 12 years is three presidential terms. No more time in Washington is needed. 

To answer the final question, I believe what I believe because I'm a Christian Constitutionalist and I'm an American. My overriding belief is in the virgin birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. I know I couldn't enter heaven without calling on Jesus to save me and to be born again in my belief in His grace. And for all that God has bestowed on me, I am thankful. 

Rather than the trite line that many speeches are closed with, I close with this; God, have mercy on America. We, as a nation and a people, have turned away from your Word and from You. Please, have mercy on Your remnant. Amen.

Email me with longer responses or comment below. Share this post with your friends and use this as a tool for discussion. We need to keep dialogue alive. 

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