My Argument to a Conservative Christian

While conservatives see the major flaw in the often liberal belief of social justice as compared to the Gospel, they often overlook that they make the same mistakes in their beliefs on sin. This mistake is clear, in both cases. It is that they forget that God has given humans free will.
Social justice, if used in a political way, is the belief that the government should take the money from the upper class, and spread it around to the lower class usually through health or welfare programs, so that it can be more even and fair for those in poverty. Keep in mind that I am speaking only from the political view of this issue. Conservatives naturally and rightly point out that although this sounds charitable and good, it really doesn’t involve any charity at all. No one helps because they want to be charitable like Jesus commanded, they are forced to give without a choice. This is not charity, and this is not what the Gospel commands. There are no good intentions behind signing your tax forms, there is only a feeling of forced surrender of property, and loss. Clearly the conservatives are correct in opposing this on moral grounds, but they don’t seem to realize that conservatism is based on similar principles.
Conservatism often attempts to stamp out sin. As a result conservatives in general are quick to go to war, and regulate what people are allowed to do in their homes if it disagrees with their beliefs. As Richard J. Maybury comedically pointed out in Are You Liberal? Conservative? or Confused? “Show them [conservatives] a communist and they are ready to send in the marines.” If we look at the Bible for our answer once again, we find that the same argument can be applied against conservatism that was used by conservatives against social justice. You see at the beginning of time, God purposely gave man free will. Why? I can’t fully answer that question, but no matter what the reason, it was a clear and purposeful decision by God. Therefore the government should not take the position that God Himself refused to take. The world would certainly be a better place if everyone followed Scripture and never sinned, but the government should not be responsible for insuring this, it is a decision of the will. We receive our help from Jesus Christ, not from the fear of being arrested. A Biblical reference supporting this can be found in Romans 13:5, “5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.” Does this mean that we should live in complete lawlessness because everyone has the God given right of freewill? Of course not. When our behavior affects the people around us in a negative way, it should be stopped (by the government if absolutely necessary). Which is why the verse started with, “submit to the authorities”. This also fits in with what Jesus was saying when He said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. The problem has become that the government has now tried to take what isn’t theirs: our inalienable rights, our God given liberties.
Although the argument against these two positions are the same, the positions themselves are truly opposite. That’s why it’s ridiculous for liberals and conservatives to argue over which one of them is freedom promoting, or statists, or helpful, or loving, because they are really on opposite ends of the spectrum when freedom and love lie in the middle. The difference is that while conservatives and liberals try to find help and love in government (which cannot give either), it truly lies with the people following the example of Christ.

Political Labels

There is so much discussion in this country about Socialism vs. Capitalism etc., but most people seem to have little understanding of these terms. Lets begin with the socialism vs. Capitalism example. Capitalism believes in a free market, where businesses and individuals are free to do what they want with their money without any government intervention. Socialism basically means that the government either takes over parts of the free market, or forces people to buy certain products, or tells businesses what they can sell, or how much they can sell it for. By those definitions, you can conclude several things. First of all, the United States, and most other countries in the world are socialist. Now socialists themselves will tend to disagree with this, but by my very loose definition of the word, the U.S. definitely fits into this category. Another thing that you can conclude is that most conservatives will be in favor of capitalism, and quite a few liberals will be in favor of socialism. Now a lot of conservatives disagree with socialism simply because of socialist Russia during the cold war, but usually they don't have a real understanding of socialism. First let's take a look back into history to see if socialism really works. Some examples of socialist nations are, "Communist" USSR, NAZI Germany, "Communist" China, and plenty more. Now there are a lot more examples, but these are the most well known because these were nations that had been capitalist, and therefore were some of the most powerful nations in the world. Most people will also be confused by the labels, because communists aren't usually considered socialist, and a lot of people don't connect NAZI with socialism. NAZI stands for National Socialist German Workers Party. When Hitler gained power, he was able to take over the media, and the businesses, and therefore the individuals lost there power to fight him when he decided that the government should kill all Jews because Germany had become a socialist nation. In a capitalist nation, he would not have the power to take over those things and therefore the holocaust could have been avoided if the government's power was restricted. On to the argument about communists not being socialist. You are correct that communism is not socialism, but these countries were not really communist. If you look at Marx's writings, you will see that a "communist" government progresses from feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism, to communism. These countries were definitely not in the feudalism stage, and they had control over businesses and technology, so they could not be in the capitalist stage, and communism means that there is no government and all of the people's earnings are shared, so obviously the only stage left is socialism. These were socialist nations, with the government having the same amount of power that our government has today. The only difference was that these nations decided that it was right to stop people from earning more money than others, and so thousands of people died, because the obvious result of any socialist nation over an extended period of time isn't everyone becomes rich, but instead makes everyone poor. Now a Marxist will say that these examples were distortions of true Marxism, which according to Marx's theory they may have been. But if you were to attempt to achieve Marxism in any nation, you would end with very similar results. Why? The same reason why the United States has become socialist... political power. It corrupts anyone who it is given to, and they will use it to achieve their own goals instead of giving the people liberty. For this reason, Marxism is really not reasonable. You see, while feudalism, capitalism, and socialism were governments that he could observe around him, communism was only a hypothesis that doesn't agree with the data.
So now that we understand socialism, capitalism, and communism, let's move on to democracy, vs. republic. Most people think that it shouldn't be democracy vs. republic, but instead democracy vs. dictatorship, or some other label that accompanies governmental power. The truth is that democracy promotes "freedom", and a republic promotes "liberty". What's the difference? Freedom means that you are given the privilege by the government to do what you want, until they (or the voters) decide to take it away. Liberty means that you are given inalienable rights that cannot be taken away whether the majority says so or not. Obviously you can see the degradation of countries over time. The United States is a perfect example. It went from the weakest most inefficient government of all time, to the most powerful government in the history of the world. We've gone from capitalist to socialist, and from a republic, to a democracy. Luckily for us we have the constitution that puts so much restriction on what the government can do that it basically is just made to sit there and do nothing. In order to become a socialist democracy, our politicians had to squeeze past its regulations and restrictions, until they were completely forgotten all together. Since we were the most prosperous and free nation, we will most likely have the hardest fall onto poverty and desperation unless we go back to the original principles of our founders.

Am I Really Just a Liberal or Conservative?

I have seen plenty of liberals telling libertarians that they are really just trying to force their conservative beliefs on others by labeling themselves as something else. I have also seen a few conservatives saying the same thing about libertarians being liberal. So am I really just trying to disguise my true beliefs in a middle-ground, freedom loving mask? Well obviously I'm going to tell you no, but how can I justify this claim? Well, considering my last post, I have a feeling that most liberals who look at this are going to think that I'm just another conservative, and most conservatives will probably agree with me. The reason for this though is in my earlier posts. If you'll notice, the last post was about money. In one of my earlier posts where I listed the general beliefs of liberals conservatives and moderates, I explained that generally conservatives promote freedom in fiscal areas, and liberals promote freedom in social areas. Since the last post dealt with the fiscal side of things, and Juris Naturalists always promote freedom, I would naturally agree with conservatives in this area. So while in the last post I sounded like a conservative, in later posts I may sound like a liberal, but truly I am something completely different.
Before I end this post, I would like to go back to my claim about conservatives making the fiscal side of things free. This is obviously not always true. If you go back to any conservative, or liberal president within the last 100 years, they have increased restrictions on all of the peoples freedoms, not just the social side. The reason for this is political power. Conservatives tend to argue with this and often make the claim that they are the party that promotes small government and freedom, but if you look at their beliefs on issues, they simply don't agree with that claim. I recently saw a summary on liberal vs. conservative beliefs (obviously done by a conservative) that stated at the beginning that the conservatives were for small government, and complete freedom and liberals were for large government to help the people, but as I went down the list of issues of conservatives vs. liberals, I noticed that not one of the issues on either side promoted freedom in the least, but instead took more away from the people. Both liberals and conservatives restrict freedom not promote it, and that is why I am a Juris Naturalist.

National Deficit

Obama has unveiled his 2011 budget. It will cost 3.8 trillion dollars even after the supposed deficit cutting. On top of this, it will spike the tax rate for the rich. Let's once again go back to the founders. The founders knew that government and taxes were a "necessary evil". Although they are necessary, the founders also wanted freedom for Americans. To balance this out, they make taxes as low as possible, and only put taxes on things like tobacco, alcohol, and overseas trade. As a result, the people were happy, and free. Obviously, there were still poor people, but a lot fewer of them. Today tobacco, alcohol, and overseas trade make up 3% of our taxes. This means that 97% of the taxes that we have today were not originally intended by our founders. This includes income tax, sales tax, property tax, etc. etc... The founders started a revolution against England, partly because their taxes were at rates that were extremely low compared to today. Frankly they revolted because England had become what our country is currently becoming. The king had taken away all of their "unalienable rights" that were "endowed by our creator". They had destroyed to liberties of the people, and that is what our leaders are doing today. They forget that the money is ours, not the governments. They forget that what we do on our own property is our business even if it hurts us or is unethical, and they forget most of all that we have rights that they cannot simply take away on a whim.
So now that I've ranted and annoyed all of you who read this... I will once again offer my solution. My solution is simply this: Instead of taking away the liberty of the people, let's take away the liberty of the government. To do that we must throw away all dependence on the government. This includes all of the government programs that we have our money stolen from us to fund. This includes health care, and medicaid, and, the government printing our money for their own purposes, and unions, and any other program that could be run by a private business more efficiently, which is almost every one of them. We need to repeal thousands of laws that tie down our freedom, and instead "tie down the government with the constitution". Our laws have already been created and cannot be changed. Our laws don't include Not being able to choose between health insurance companies, or not being able to own a gun, or even not being able to take drugs. We are given the right of liberty, but our government has replaced it with "freedom" which they own, and can change whenever they see fit.


"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Liberal, Conservative, Moderate, and The State of the Union

Dear readers,

In this post I will compare the Juris Naturalis viewpoint to the most common viewpoints in America and also discuss some of the current events around the world and how they relate with Juris Naturalism.

Most people view the parties as being like this:

I would like to propose this view instead:

Now I will explain all of these world-views which will show why I arranged them like this. First I will talk about the differences between conservatives and liberals. Generally speaking, conservatives believe in freedom of the fiscal or monetary side for people, but believe that it is necessary to restrict people from doing socially, or morally incorrect things. Liberals, generally believe that people have a right to do whatever they want when it comes to social and moral issues, but believe that they cannot ruin the economy by using their money unwisely. Keep in mind that you will very rarely ever find someone who believes that there should be complete freedom in one area and total restriction in the other, but this is just a general idea of the parties. I would also like to state another part of my bias, which is that in my personal life, I am very conservative, but I believe that the government should not be conservative for reasons which I will explain throughout my posts.

The next topic of discussion is the middle ground. By my diagram of the parties, you can see that there are really two middle grounds. How is this possible? Well like I said, conservatives and liberals both restrict one side of liberty and support the other. So moderates take the route that there should be some restrictions on both sides, while Juris Naturalists believe that there should be liberty on both sides. Just consider the red in the diagram liberty, and the blue restriction. A libertarian can be a Juris Naturalist, but most libertarians are not, so I have separated them.

Now that we have a basic understanding of Juris Naturalism, you can clearly see that Juris Naturalists are for the smallest government possible which I wrote about in my last post. Now that we know this, I can talk about current events in the world, and what a Juris Naturalist would say about them.

The most current thing that has happened is the president's state of the union address. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch the entire speech, but I saw a large portion of it. I have to say that comparing this speech, and every other state of the union address in this country's recent history to the founder's beliefs was absolutely appalling. Every single point that was made was either about increasing government, or spending money. The only thing in the speech that I could agree with, was that our country's debt is not entirely Obama's fault. While he has certainly contributed to the debt, and raised the budget by hundreds of billions of dollars in the name of saving money, all of the presidents before him for the last hundred years have done basically the same thing. Yes conservatives; this even includes Ronald Reagan. Reagan raised the budget during his term just like so many presidents before him. Now during the Clinton years, you often hear that we balanced the budget and had a surplus. This is true if you consider a surplus as being trillions of dollars in debt. You see, when they say that the country had a surplus, they mean that they spent less that what their budget called for. They truly had no money what soever. In fact they owed trillions of dollars, but it was still considered a major feat, and then the next few years, they went on raising the budget again.

The word that I probably heard the most in the state of the union last night was afford. From our government's current position, this word means nothing. President Obama said that people question if we can afford certain programs and then went on to try to explain why we could. What does afford mean to our government. We can't afford anything. We have no money and owe trillions of dollars. Think of an individual person with hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. He may still be able to spend money, but eventually he will have to pay it off or declare bankruptcy. Now think of that same situation times one billion dollars. That's the trouble that our government is in, but instead of trying to find a way to pay this debt off like any individual would have to do, they continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The reason we spend so much money is that we have so many programs that are supposed to help the American people, but you would never want to get rid of those right? Well I will explain why I believe we should get rid of the vast majority of government programs and how it would still help the people who benefit from those programs in my next post.

Common Law

Dear readers, I thought that to begin my blog, I would discuss worldview, and state mine. My worldview will very likely not be yours, and I don't expect you to see the logic in what I am saying, but I believe that there is plenty of logic to it, frankly because it is my worldview, and therefore I would be crazy to believe it if I didn't think it had any logic to it. The reason I start with my worldview is because so many writers try to be an unbiased observer, but this is an impossible feat. Therefore it is best to state your bias before you begin writing the "obvious truth". My bias is basically a libertarian, but I like to just say that I believe in Natural or common law. Richard Maybury calls this belief, Juris Naturalism in his book Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused, and that is the title I will use throughout my posts. Juris Naturalis is Latin for natural law. Natural law is the belief that law is a science that is to be discovered, not made. It has always been the same and always will be the same in the same way that physics or biology are always the same. You can see by this connection between these sciences and law that (just as in physics) we have not discovered everything about law. We were well on our way to making incredible discoveries about law, but sadly, today all of the things that we knew about law are completely forgotten. Thankfully there are still plenty of writings by some of the greatest scientists in this field that are well known today, but people simply fail to draw the same conclusions that these men had. The chief of these writings is known as the constitution. At the beginning of the discoveries natural law, it was decided that to form the law, governments would look at every major religion or philosophy and find things that all of them agreed on. The results were the beginning of common law, which our country is founded on. Common law is based on two basic laws: Do all you have agreed to do, and do not encroach on other persons or their property. From the first law, tort law was formed, and from the second, criminal law was formed. The governments based on this common law were easily the most prosperous in the world. When the founders broke away from England and became a separate country, they had a difficult decision to make. They didn't truly want to form a government, but they realized that if they didn't, then someone else would. Why wouldn't they want a government? Because government itself is a violation of common law. Government is given the special privilege of encroaching (common law #2). They realized that any man who is given power over an entire country will become a slave to this power. He will misuse it to get more. The founders came up with the only possible solution to this problem; they created a government, and then they crippled it, giving it as little power as possible. They clearly outlined how little power the government should have in all of their writings. They outlined it so well, that for the first hundred years or so, even the power-hungry polliticians didn't completely destroy the country, but the next 100 years was a completely different story. This country has spent trillions more than we have, and then encroached on their people's money to pay off their mistaken policies. Almost every decision the government has made over the past hundred years has increased the power of the government, and decreased the power of the people. Whether liberal, or conservative, the government has increased spending and decreased the people's rights. Now that you can clearly see my bias, I will begin explaining it in more detail, and comparing it to opposing viewpoints in my later posts.