The Manhattan Declaration

As Thanksgiving Day approaches, it is good not only to be grateful for God's blessings, but also to take action to protect them.

Charles Colson and James Dobson are promoting "The Manhattan Declaration," which is a pledge and call to protect things for which we should be thankful. The Declaration begins with a list of these things:

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Libertarian scholar Thomas E. Woods has described these and many other things for which we can be thankful in his book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization -- a book which Protestants can enjoy as well. Alvin J. Schmidt did the same thing in his book, How Christianity Changed the World. Likewise, Rodney Stark is thankful for The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Easier reading is Kennedy and Newcombe's books, What if the Bible Had Never Been Written?, and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?

We should be thankful for what we call "Western Civilization," which is really Christian Civilization, and one way of giving thanks is doing something to preserve civilization, and a worthwhile example is to read and sign The Manhattan Declaration.

Sam Adams: Giving Thanks to Drones

Yesterday we looked at Samuel Adams' Nov. 20, 1772 letter to the Committees of Correspondence setting forth the rights of the Colonists as human beings, Christians, and English subjects.

With Thanksgiving Day approaching next week, let's look at a Thanksgiving Proclamation written by Sam Adams and approved by the Continental Congress in 1777:

Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received, and to implore such farther blessings as they stand in need of; and it having pleased him in his abundant mercy not only to continue to us the innumerable bounties of his common providence,

[so far, so good]

but also to smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war, for the defence and establishment of our unalienable rights and liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased in so great a measure to prosper the means used for the support of our troops and to crown our arms with most signal success:

[oops!]

It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive powers of these United States, to set apart Thursday, the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise; that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor; and that together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favour, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessing on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God, to secure for these United States the greatest of all human blessings, independence and peace; that it may please him to prosper the trade and manufactures of the people and the labour of the husbandman, that our land may yet yield its increase; to take schools and seminaries of education, so necessary for cultivating the principles of true liberty, virtue and piety, under his nurturing hand, and to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth "in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."

And it is further recommended, that servile labour, and such recreation as, though at other times innocent, may be unbecoming the purpose of this appointment, be omitted on so solemn an occasion.

Everything Sam Adams and America's Founding Fathers fought for has been lost: "independence," "peace," "virtue," and "piety."

The explanation is simple: although they trusted in God and in Jesus Christ, they also trusted in horses and chariots (Psalm 20:7).

A nation cannot long last as a Christian nation if, in the pursuit of their "inalienable rights and liberties," it is willing to kill IRS agents (with or without Red Coats) and Afghan peasants. It only takes a little toxin to poison a lot of pure water. If we want the American dream of everyone living safely under his own Vine & Fig Tree, we must be willing to beat our swords into plowshares.

Had Sam Adams and America's Founders been consistent in their trust in Divine Providence, they would have endured the violation of their rights -- as Jesus did -- and waited patiently for God to change the hearts of the British. It was less than honest for John Adams, Ben Franklin, and John Jay to claim, "In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity," that they relied totally on "Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third" and the United States to reach an amicable agreement.

We don't really trust in Divine Providence if we are willing to kill our enemies. And it's hypocritical to give Thanks to God for His blessings if we pursue those blessings (such as oil for our industry) with powerful and indiscriminate armed military intervention and mass destruction around the globe.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.
1 Kings 18:21

Samuel Adams: The Rights of the Colonists

On this day in 1772, Samuel Adams sent a letter through the Committees of Correspondence that helped earn Sam Adams the title of "Father of the American Revolution." The letter can be found at the Hanover Historical Texts Project.

Adams focused on three things:

• The Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men.
• The Rights of the Colonists as Christians
• The Rights of the Colonists as Subjects [Englishmen].

Reading this letter is the first step in becoming

• An Extraordinary American
• An Extraordinary Christian
• An Extraordinary Human Being

Virtually nobody in Washington D.C. cares about our rights as Americans, as Christians, or as human beings. If Samuel Adams were to travel through time to our day, he would take immediate steps to repeal the Constitution and abolish the government it created.

Please take a few minutes to read Samuel Adams' letter, and a few comments we've attached, here.

Torture and Natural Gas

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.
Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’ - Raw Story

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. "The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan," Murray noted.

U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics 105TH Congress 2nd Sess., Feb. 12, 1998

HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS - HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Oil and the Moslem World
Blueprint for Afghanistan

Obama the Socialist

Will Grigg, in Obama and the "Predator Left", writes:

Among the few principled commentators on the left who see Obama for what he is can be found former war correspondent Chris Hedges, who has consistently condemned the warfare state under both Republican and Democratic management.

"The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true," writes Hedges. "He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country’s future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state." (Emphasis added.)

Name one socialist (who actually controlled a government) who did not use the power of government to "practice socialism for corporations," which of course does not mean socialism for the janitors of the corporations, but for the institutional Nomenklatura.

Why Celebrate "Reformation Day?"

Today is "Reformation Day" in churches that have their roots in the Protestant Reformation. The actual day is next Saturday, October 31, the anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing his "Ninety-five Theses" to the door of the church in Wittenberg, but any churches that observe the anniversary will be doing it today.

Why should they?

The first answer would be Because America is/was a Protestant nation, and it was Protestantism that made America the most prosperous and admired nation in history. Having repudiated its duty to be a Christian (Protestant) nation, America is now bankrupt and despised.

There is a second reason we should observe (though not "celebrate") "Reformation Day." That's because the Protestant Reformation planted the seeds of secularism which are now choking America to death. That post has not yet been written. Please contribute your suggestions for that post in the comments below.

Public Credit?

Paul B. Farrell at MarketWatch.com offers 20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable. I'm always hopeful when someone talks about "soul." But then he says, "Go see Michael Moore's documentary, 'Capitalism: A Love Story.'" Oh well. He explains:

Greed's OK, within limits, like the 10 Commandments. Yes, the soul can thrive around greed, if there are structures and restrictions to keep it from going out of control. But Moore warns: "Capitalism does the opposite of that. It not only doesn't really put any structure or restrictions on it. It encourages it, it rewards" greed, creating bigger, more frequent bubble/bust cycles.

Does he mean the Ten Commandments are good, within limits? Is adultery good "within limits?"

Greed (or "avarice") is one of the "seven deadly sins." It's always wrong, it's never right. But capitalism, as defined by those who defend it, is not based on greed. It's based on productivity and service of consumers. It's the exercise of dominion, for which we were created.

Back in 2002, in the days of Enron and WorldCom, the NewYorkTimes (July 21, 2002) focused on Alan Greenspan’s remarks to the effect that “infectious greed” is responsible for "recent business scandals," and that more government regulation might be needed. Greenspan was obviously no longer a follower of Ayn Rand.

Political philosopher and Ayn Rand expert, Dr. Edward Hudgins notes, “Rand was virtually alone in celebrating the virtues of productive, innovative individuals and the wealth they create. She emphasized that businessmen at their best will first and foremost love their work and the challenge of creating products and services that earn them profits. If that’s greed, it’s to be praised! Rand also singled out for condemnation businessmen who seek money by any means, including fraud, or government handouts and special favors. If that’s greed, it’s to be damned!”
The Atlas Society, Release: Is Greed Good?

Greed, contrary to Michael Moore, is not the cause of the boom/bust cycle. That honor rests with the Federal Reserve.

“THE PRAGMATIC CAPITALIST” responds to the MarketWatch article, asking, Is This the Death of Capitalism? No, he says, but hopes it is the end of "crony capitalism" run by bankers instead of producers. He leads with this quote from Woodrow Wilson:

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men… We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world — no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”

The first sentence is a fountain of toxic errors. Credit is not necessary for industrialism. It is only necessary for rapid industrialization:

Credit and Rewarding Losers

Production, savings, inheritance and the absence of government confiscation and redistribution of wealth are all that's needed to accumulate capital. Credit is only needed routinely by those who are greedy for that which they have not already earned, or whose parents did not earn it through production and service, and lack the patience to accumulate capital through production and savings.

Relying on credit for day-to-day expenses is an indicator of incompetence or slavery.

The rest of the quotation has been used to attack the Federal Reserve. Wilson wrote these words in 1912, before the Federal Reserve was formed, and the sentiment of the quotation formed the basis for the justification for the Fed, which was sold to Democrats as a “public” guardian of credit.

And how's that working for you?

Rumsfeld's Report

Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, recalls:

In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld directed the Defense Science Board Task Force to review the impact which the administration's policies -- specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- were having on Terrorism and Islamic radicalism. They issued a report in September, 2004 (.pdf) and it vigorously condemned the Bush/Cheney approach as entirely counter-productive, i.e., as worsening the Terrorist threat those policies purportedly sought to reduce.

The Report's conclusion:

"Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies ... [which have] not led to democracy ... but only more chaos and suffering."

Other conclusions reported by Greenwald deserve your attention.

We have forgotten America's original foreign policy:

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible."
— Washington, Farewell Address (1796) [Washington’s emphasis]

I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration,…peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.
— Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)

Even more important than government "isolationism," is voluntarist intervention:

“If American Christians simply gave a tithe rather than the current one-quarter of a tithe, there would be enough private Christian dollars to provide basic health care and education to all the poor of the earth. And we would still have an extra $60-70 billion left over for evangelism around the world.”
Book Review: The Scandal Of The Evangelical Conscience - Acton Institute PowerBlog

A massive missionary outreach of charity and libertarian evangelism would win the hearts of the Muslim world, rather than create terrorists. But this action (required of Christians regardless of the pragmatic foreign policy benefits) would not buttress the power of neoconservatives and state-supported oil companies. So don't expect the mainstream media to promote the idea.

Drudge and the Dollar

The Drudge Report has seen its fair share of links to reports on the decline of the Dollar. Some have speculated that Drudge is even causing part of that decline by his relentless coverage of the Dollar's woes:

Zeroing in on the dollar’s decline – Ah ha! It’s all Drudge’s Fault! « Commodity Trade Alert .com

Is Drudge working with George Soros to destroy the Dollar and establish a new global currency? Not intentionally, one would think.

The Dollar's greatest enemy is not "conspirators" like Soros, it's knowledge of economics and informed traders. The Dollar is not like a patient with cancer. The Dollar is the cancer. Wise investors do not invest in cancer.

Killing the cancer will be very traumatic for "the body politic." But economic health is on the other side.

Drudge is helping our grandchildren by helping to destroy the Dollar -- as long as the forces that destroy the Dollar also work to prevent replacing it with a global fiat currency.

God and Gold

There is a connection between a nation banning God from public schools, and banning gold from public currency. Few want to admit it. F. William Engdahl writes:

The problem for the US power elites around Wall Street and in Washington is the fact that they are now in the deepest financial crisis in their history. That crisis is clear to the entire world and the world is acting on a basis of self-survival. The US elites have lost what in Chinese imperial history is known as the Mandate of Heaven. That mandate is given a ruler or ruling elite provided they rule their people justly and fairly. When they rule tyrannically and as despots, oppressing and abusing their people, they lose that Mandate of Heaven.
"America's Phoney War in Afghanistan," GlobalResearch.ca

Now, really, who cares about the superstitious ideas of "Chinese imperial history?" But in a secular nation like ours, it seems so much more sophisticated and credible to refer to this exotic tradition rather than quoting the discredited Christian worldview of America's Founding Fathers:

[W]e ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained . . . .
George Washington, "Inaugural Address," April 30, 1789

Fractional reserve banking robs the poor. Paper money is unconstitutional and violates more than one of the Ten Commandments (e.g., "Thou shalt not steal").

Heaven is no longer smiling on America.

Gas: $400.00/gallon

TheHill.com is reporting that the Pentagon pays $400.00 for every gallon of gas used in the war in Afghanistan.

But it's obviously worth every penny. Think about how the outcome of the war in Afghanistan is going to affect you personally: your job, your retirement, and your children's test scores in school.

It isn't easy getting gas to Kabul. But if we don't accomplish President Obama's objectives in Afghanistan, you can easily see all the many ways that will impact crime in your neighborhood, and the quality of medical care for you and your family. I mean, just think about it.






Take your time.








If you run out of space, use the next blog.

Atheists Suck at Being Atheists

Pastor and "Weird Guy" Douglas Wilson raises an interesting argument in the Huffington Post:

From the perspective of a Christian, the refusal of an atheist to be a Christian is dismaying, but it is at least intelligible. But what is really disconcerting is the failure of atheists to be atheists. That is the thing that cries out for further exploration.

We can understand a cook who sets out to prepare a reduction sauce, having it simmer on the stove for three days. But what we shouldn't get is the announcement afterwards that he has prepared us a soufflé. The atheistic worldview is nothing if not inherently reductionistic, whether this is admitted or not. Everything that happens is a chance-driven rattle-jattle jumble in the great concourse of atoms that we call time. Time and chance acting on matter have brought about, in equally aimless fashion, the 1927 New York Yankees, yesterday's foam on a New Jersey beach, Princess Di, the arrangement of pebbles on the back side of the moon, the music of John Cage, the Fourth Crusade, and the current gaggle representing us all in Congress.

If the universe actually is what the materialistic atheist claims it is, then certain things follow from that presupposition. The argument is simple to follow, and is frequently accepted by the sophomore presidents of atheist/agnostic clubs at a university near you, but it is rare for a well-published atheistic leader to acknowledge the force of the argument. To acknowledge openly the corrosive relativism that atheism necessarily entails would do nothing but get the chimps jumping in the red states. To swallow the reduction would present serious public relations problems, and drive Fox News ratings up even further. Who needs that?

So if the universe is what the atheist maintains it is, then this determines what sort of account we must give for the nature of everything -- and this includes the atheist's thought processes, ethical convictions, and aesthetic appreciations. If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo's David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still.

If the atheist is right, then I am not a Christian because I have mistaken beliefs, but am rather a Christian because that is what these chemicals would always do in this arrangement and at this temperature. The problem is that this atheistic assumption does the very same thing to the atheist's case for atheism. The atheist gives us an account of all things which makes it impossible for us to believe that any account of all things could possibly be true. But no account of things can be tenable unless it provides us with the preconditions that make it possible for our "accounting" to represent genuine insight. Atheism fails to do this, and the failure is a spectacular one. Nor does atheism allow us to have any fixed ethical standard, or the possibility of beauty.

It does no good to appeal to the discoveries made by science and reason, for one of the things that reason has apparently brought us is atheism. Right? And not content to let sleeping dogs lie, reason also brings us the inexorable consequences of atheism, which includes the unpalatable but necessary conclusion that random neuron firings do not amount to any "truth" that corresponds to anything outside our heads. This, ironically enough, includes atheism, and so we find ourselves falling out of the tree, saw in one hand and branch in the other.

Contrast this with the Christian gospel -- God the Father is the Maker of heaven and earth. He sent His Son to be born one of us; this Son died on gibbet for our sins, as the ultimate and final human sacrifice, and He rose from the dead on the third day following. Having ascended into Heaven and taken His place at the right hand of His Father, He sent His Holy Spirit into the world in order to transform it, a process that is still ongoing. Now obviously, this is a message that can be believed or disbelieved. But the reason for mentioning it here includes the important point that such a set of convictions makes it possible for us to believe that reason can be trusted, that goodness does not change with the evolutionary times, and that beauty is grounded in the very heart of God. Someone who believes these things doesn't believe that we are just fizzing.

You can deny that this God exists, of course, and you can throw the whole cosmos into that pan of reduction sauce. And you can keep the heat on by publishing one atheist missive after another. But what you should not be allowed to do is cook the whole thing bone dry and call the crust on the bottom an example of the "numinous" or "transcendent." Calling it that provides us with no reason to believe it -- and numerous reasons not to.

In response, atheist Christopher Hitchens basically says, "Nobody can force me to think about this."

Singleness

I generally like Dr. James Dobson and his "Focus on the Family" radio show. He had an interesting guest this past week. I tried posting the following comment on her blog, Radical Womanhood, a post called, "The Conversation Continues." The blog software told me, "We're sorry, we cannot accept this data." I don't think it was human moderation, but I didn't expect my comment to pass that either, since the webpage I linked to behind my name was this one.

You should read that post before reading my comment:

I was in and out of the room and heard only a couple of lines from the Focus show, but what I heard made me resolve to listen to the whole show later online. I had no idea who the guest was at that time.

I hadn't made time to listen to the show when a friend told me to check out "ali's african adventures," and as I was looking for that blog, I found a reference to it on your blog, and discovered who was on Dr. Dobson's show. Now I was finally motivated to actually listen to the show. It was very thought-provoking.

After reading "Ali's African Adventure," it's hard for me to agree with Dr. Grudem's claim that nobody over 50 "has not had a significant trial or affliction." As I see it, there are a billion people on earth who live in perpetual "trial or affliction." I would go crazy if "Scotty" were to "beam me" into their world. Americans are the most pampered people on earth. I can't say I've ever been tried or afflicted.

Maybe "trials and afflictions" are the result of marriage and family, and the fact that I have never been married explains why I have not experienced any trials, and is proof that I'm just lazy and irresponsible to have avoided these duties. That could be. I don't know exactly why I have never married (Jeremiah 17:9). Your three days on Focus and your blog are helping me find answers.

Rush is Wrong

Rush Limbaugh criticizes the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama:

"The intent of the committee is to neuter the United States of America. They've done it by rewarding a pacifist."

Laurence M. Vance explains why Obama is no pacifist, and why Obama is not "destroying your country as a superpower" and "emasculating this country," as Rush Limbaugh claims.

We can talk about this at the Ozarks Virtual Town Hall this morning.

Wall Street Bailout Benefits

What part has Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Barack Obama played in the greatest war in the 20th century?

Smallpox was the greatest killer of man ever known. Dr. Matt Bivens looks at the 20th century and notes:

if you tally the worldwide death tolls for World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Iran-Iraq war and the Mexican Revolution, the civil wars in China and Russia and Spain, and all the other wars of the last century, from Afghanistan to Zaire, the total is less than one-third of the smallpox death toll.

And that's just a single 100-year period, for a disease that disfigured Egyptian pharaohs, allied with Hernando Cortes to rout the Aztecs, left a young George Washington scarred, later stalked his Continental Army, and left Abraham Lincoln pale, weak, and dizzy as he delivered his Gettysburg Address.

And yet, in the 1960s, smallpox was targeted by visionary public health experts - and in just 10 years it was gone. An excellent new book by DA Henderson, the doctor who led the effort, tells the story: Smallpox - the Death of a Disease: The Inside Story of Eradicating a Worldwide Killer.

According to the World Health Association, the total cost of the 10-year campaign to eradicate smallpox from the world was $300 million. An investment of one dollar given by each American, each dollar saving one human life.

According to Bivens, "The price paid to defeat humanity's greatest foe wouldn't cover a 24-hour day of Iraqi combat operations." The cost of the war in Afghanistan will soon be 1,000 times greater than the cost of preventing hundreds of millions of smallpox deaths. The amount of money given to Wall Street banks in the last year is about 10,000 times greater.

Dr. Bivens notes that volunteers from the Rotary Club have spearheaded the effort to eradicate polio from its remaining global outposts. The hundreds of millions of dollars raised by Rotarians for this anti-polio project came from voluntary donations. The amount "wouldn't cover the bonus pool for the executives of the insurance company AIG after its great meltdown," Bivens reminds us; a figure forcibly extorted from us by the government.

Who brings war? Who brings peace?

Who creates wealth? Who destroys wealth?

The amount of good done by voluntary associations must be weighed against the evil, violence, and destruction committed by governments. The pocket change of costs borne by voluntary donations to save so many lives must be weighed against the trillions in costs extorted by government force to kill the innocent and redistribute wealth to the guilty.

James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," is quoted as saying,

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves ... according to the Ten Commandments of God.

What if a spiritual revival brought about a conviction in a majority of people to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments. No more stealing ("taxation"), no more killing ("national security"), no initiation of force against the innocent.

What would happen if we set out to eradicate violations of the Ten Commandments the way the Rotarians set their sights on polio?

What if a majority of voters voted against a killer disease we inflict on ourselves?

Would humanity really "collapse into anarchy" if we closed down all governments and told politicians and bureaucrats to go home and get a job creating goods and services that consumers would voluntarily pay for?