Kevin Craig for Congress: April 2010

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Immigration Hypocrisy

Most of those who support Arizona's recent and controversial law regarding immigrants would consider themselves supporters of the Tenth Amendment. They oppose, for example, the federal mandates of "Obamacare." They say the Constitution does not give the federal government authority to build a health-care industry.

Ironic, then, that these same people want the federal government to build a fence between Arizona and Mexico. Nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government authority to build such a fence. Nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government authority to prevent Mexicans from entering Arizona. Nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government authority to "secure the border."

The only authority "We the People" gave to the federal government was to make sure that someone from Mexico who wanted to become a naturalized U.S. citizen would have the same requirements in Arizona that he would have in California. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution empowers Congress "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," not to build fences, not to prevent immigration.

Becoming a resident of the United States means moving your body across the border and living here. Becoming a citizen of the United States is a very different thing. (Something that should be highly-prized.)

If Arizona wanted more immigrants from Mexico, a federal fence would be a federal offence. In 1776, The Declaration of Independence complained that King George III "has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."

All human beings are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, according to the Declaration of Independence. These rights do not come from Congress. All human beings have these rights because they are created in the Image of God, not because of their citizenship. You have the God-given right to hire a Mexican who is hard-working and willing to work for a competitive wage. I do not have the right to maintain my uncompetitive wage by using the federal government to prevent you from hiring an immigrant at a lower wage and forcing you to hire me at an uncompetitively high wage. The Mexican has a God-given right to work for you so he can feed his family. "We the People" gave Congress no authority to meddle in the exercise of these rights under contractual arrangements like this. Congress has no Constitutional authority to prevent any Mexican from traveling into Arizona, getting a job, buying a house, and living in Arizona. Even if she does not become a U.S. citizen.

The current policy of the federal government is to ensure that only those willing to break a law will enter the U.S. A more sensible policy would be to allow those who don't like to break laws to enter the U.S. These law-abiding immigrants certainly outnumber law-breaking immigrants, and would, like "salt" and "light," have a healthy effect on the Mexican-American community, especially in our cities.

Immigration expands the beneficial effects of the division of labor. There should be no federal laws restricting immigration of Mexicans into the U.S.

In 1776, there were no federal welfare programs which rewarded (and attracted) immigrants who did not work, or wanted something for nothing. In 1776, the federal government did not claim ownership of nearly half the land in America. An immigrant to America had two choices: live on land that was not owned by anyone, or live on someone's private property, with the consent of the owner. As a Libertarian I defend the liberty of any human being to move to America and take up residence on unowned property. (Good luck.) As a Libertarian, I defend the property rights of those who own land in America. If an immigrant and an American can strike up a deal, so that the immigrant can live and work in America without trespassing on anyone's private property, the federal government has been given no authority in the Constitution to prevent the exercise of these God-given rights.

Last time I checked, the federal government claimed to own 56.8% of all land in Arizona.

The Federal Government is a far, far greater threat to my rights and my economic well-being than hard-working immigrants. The federal government takes my money and gives it to immigrants who don't work, through federal welfare programs. The federal government allows me to sell a mind-altering leafy plant called tobacco, but prohibits law-abiding people like me from selling a leafy plant called marijuana, forcing buyers of marijuana to buy from criminals, increasing the profits of organized crime. Most of the crimes in Arizona connected to immigrants are the result of unconstitutional federal laws.

But today's immigrant-bashers bash the tired, the poor, the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," "the homeless, tempest-tost," and those willing to work -- rather than Washington bureaucrats who ought to get a real job.

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Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.
Exodus 22:21

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 19:34

So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:19

So you shall divide this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. And it will come about that you shall divide it by lot for an inheritance among yourselves and among the aliens who stay in your midst, who bring forth sons in your midst. And they shall be to you as the native-born among the sons of Israel; they shall be allotted an inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.
Ezekiel 47:21-22

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The Borders Are Closing In - Pro Libertate

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Gulags American-Style: Where People Disappear - John W. Whitehead

"Unfortunately, in our zeal to halt the estimated 800,000 plus illegal aliens flooding across our borders annually--an undeniable problem that needs to be resolved, we risk undermining our own rule of law and rendering our Constitution null and void. After all, if government agents can detain citizens like Mark Lyttle and Hector Veloz, what's to stop them from snatching you up and locking you away, without the ability to contact your loved ones or your lawyer?

"Moreover, national ID cards aren't a solution, either. They're a monstrosity, according to FOX commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano. Especially since the Bush presidency, there has been an intense push for a national ID card, and as Napolitano points out, the Arizona immigration law may be the slippery slope toward requiring these invasive tracking devices not merely of immigrants but all Americans."

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Political Polytheism

Gary North describes his book Political Polytheism:

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Long Description

Who Is Lord Over The United States?

A Christian citizen knows the answer: Jesus Christ. But if this really is the true answer, grounded firmly on the Bible, then why is it that so few Christians are willing to proclaim this fact publicly, and why is it that no Christian political candidate dare mention it?

There is a reason: the theology of political pluralism, the dominant public theology in our day.

Political pluralism is not simply a political philosophy: it is a theology. It is America's civil religion. This theology teaches that there must never be a nation that identifies itself with any religion. Well, not quite. The nation of Israel is grudgingly allowed to do so, as are the Islamic nations. But no nation is ever supposed to identify itself as Christian. "A Christian nation is self-contradictory!"

So we are told. But who tells us?

• Secular humanists who are dedicated to wiping out all political opposition.
• Also, Christian teachers who teach in tax-supported schools.
• Also, professors in Christian colleges who attended either state universities or secular humanist private universities, which are the only accredited universities in the United States that grant the Ph.D. degree.

Also, the U.S. Constitution.

This is the problem. God-fearing Christian Americans have been told that the Constitution teaches the absolute separation of Church and State. They have been told correctly. But what they have not been told is precisely where it says this. It does not say this in the First amendment. The First amendment says only that Congress shall make no law regarding religion or the free exercise thereof. So, where does the Constitution prohibit a Christian America? In a section that has been ignored by scholars for so long that it is virtually never discussed—the key provision that transformed American into a secular humanist nation. But it took 173 years to do this: from 1788 until 1961.

Political Polytheism discusses this crucial provision in detail—the first Christian book to do so in over two centuries.

But if Christ is Lord over the United States, yet the citizens of the United States either publicly deny this or are afraid to affirm it publicly, and if the elected politicians and appointed officers of the nation are legally prohibited from pursuing the implications of this fact, then what does this mean for the nation? It means that God intends to bring American under judgment. Why? Because this nation was originally founded as a Christian nation, covenanted with God, and then it broke the covenant. The results are predictable:

And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish, As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.
(Deuteronomy 8:19-20)

This book presents a new vision of politics and a new vision of America, a vision of self-consciously tied to the Bible. It challenges the political myth of humanism: many laws, many gods.

Inside Flap

In 1787, every nation on earth was openly religious. Rulers and citizens around the world affirmed the existence of a particular god, and they called upon their god publicly to defend the nation, bless it, and bring his will to pass in history. Even in those religions that affirm no god, such as Buddhism, the people affirmed their faith in a particular religion. Nations were explicitly religious.

There was only one exception to this rule in all the earth, one isolated political experiment that had affirmed the possibility—even the moral necessity—of avoiding all public references to religion in its covenantal charter. Its founder believed that no city, not state, and no nation should ever publicly affirm the existence of any particular god or religion. This was the first public experiment in secular humanism. In 1787, it had been in operation for a century and a half. That experiment was called Rhode Island.

Three and a half centuries after its founding, Rhode Island's vision of political order has conquered the Western world.

Forty miles north of Providence, Rhode Island, another experiment was in progress in 1640. In Boston dwelled the Puritans, the most self-consciously biblical people in history. They had turned to the Bible in search of moral and political order. Their Body of Liberties (1641) served as their political charter, and that charter was biblical to the core, even citing specific Bible verses to justify its laws.

It was against the Puritans' vision of a New Israel in the New England wilderness that the citizens of Rhode Island rebelled, and in doing so, they led the world, step by step, into a politically conspiracy against God.

Governor John Winthrop in 1630 had hoped that Massachusetts would serve the whole world as a city on a hill, a bright beacon of biblical Christianity that would persuade men to construct a biblical civil order in their lands. But it was not Winthrop's beacon that illuminated the future; it was Roger Williams' beacon, a blinding light that promised autonomy from God for humanist political man.

That light has blinded Winthrop's Christian heirs. The thought that a nation can and should be explicitly, publicly Christian is unacceptable to men and women who openly affirm the need for Christian families, Christian schools, and Christian everything else.

"There is no neutrality," they proclaim, until someone mentions civil government. Then they back off. Here, apparently, there has to be neutrality. Somewhere. Somehow.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union takes another small town into court for putting up a manger scene at Christmas on public property. Meanwhile, another high school coach is threatened with dismissal for praying with his team before a game. Meanwhile, evolution is taught as a fact in just about every public school biology textbook.

Neutrality, you understand. Just good, old fashioned neutrality.

Believe that, and you'll believe anything.

Boston vs. Providence, Winthrop vs. Williams: in this classic confrontation we can see the beginning of a war that has lasted for three and a half centuries, a war not just for American civilization but for world civilization. For the most part, American Christians have applauded Williams. Also for the most part, they are in political and cultural bondage.

In Political Polytheism Dr. Gary North sets forth a challenge to the reigning political philosophy of our day, a philosophy which says that God's people must remain politically silent, that neutrality is a valid religion, and that the King of history must confine Himself to the home, the church, and the funeral parlor. Everything else belongs to autonomous man, this religion asserts.

Not so, says Dr. North. Everything belongs to the God of the Bible, and the only way that mankind can build a free society and maintain it is to honor this principle in every area of life.

Political Polytheism pulls no punches. It takes on all comers: humanists, Christian philosophers, and historians. Especially historians. Dr. North, himself a trained historian, shows how a conspiracy of silence has joined with another conspiracy—first, to capture the government, and then to rewrite American history.

Political Polytheism challenges the myth of neutrality, they myth of political pluralism, and the myth of the Constitutional Convention. There has never been a book like it. The book is designed to launch the hottest political debate since 1787. It asks the most controversial political question that can be asked today: If there is no such thing as neutrality, then whose law should rule supreme, God's or man's? For two centuries, American Christians have refused even to ask the question, let alone answer it.

Catalog Description

No political order can be religiously neutral, and the modern political order in the United States and other Western nations, called "pluralism," is in reality polytheism. As in the ancient world, polytheists are offended at those who claim that there is only one God, and this is why orthodox Christianity is increasingly under assault in the United States and throughout the Western world. In this book, Gary North brings his many years of theological and historical research to bear on the question of how this polytheistic state of affairs came about, and what must be done about it. In a powerful argument, sure to be controversial, North points a finger at the framers of the Constitution of the United States, who self-consciously broke with 1000 + years of Western heritage by not referring to the Trinity and to Christ as King. This was the hole in the dike, North contends, through which modern secularism has poured. No one concerned about the state of the American nations can afford to ignore this book.

Created By: debbie on 05/13/96 at 02:05 PM Some typos corrected by kc on 04/24/10

My book on the Constitution (free, on-line) goes into the right-wing Enlightenment and Freemasonry: Conspiracy in Philadelphia: Origins of the United States Constitution (2004). This is an update of Part 3 of my book, Political Polytheism (1989). [History: European -- The Two Wings of the Enlightenment]

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My doubts about North's thesis are here.