Life and economics: A liberty argument

Life & Economics:

A Liberty Argument

By Dave Racer, MLitt

R ed , W hite & B lue B ook #4

Life and economics: A liberty argument

Life and Economics: A Liberty Argument

By Dave Racer, MLitt

Alethos Press

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Alethos Press Div. of DGRCommunications, Inc. Woodbury, MN

Life and Economics: A liberty argument

By Dave Racer, MLitt

ISBN Print Version: 978-0-9863773-7-2

ISBN eBook Version: 978-0-9863773-8-9

Copyright: Dave Racer (2021)

All rights reserved. No reproduction in whole or in part in any form is authorized without written permission. Portions may be cited with attribution.

https://alethospress.com

Printed in the United States by Bethany Press, Int.

Proofed by Zoe Brekke

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication

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Introduction: Joe Langfeld

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Chapter 2: Psalm 1: Godly, Ungodly

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Foreword: Rev. Todd Olson

Chapter 1: My Mission

Chapter 3: Human Life Preeminent

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Chapter 4: Broader Battlefield

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Chapter 6: Economics and Moral Character

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Chapter 5: Candidates of Character?

Chapter 7: New Organizing Doctrine

Chapter 8: Slouching

Chapter 9: What Does this Mean?

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Dedication

DEDICATION

My wife Rosanne, whom I met in high school choir, and we’re still making music together. My five children and grandchildren–my progeny who will love with the decisions we make.

James Phillips, PhD, taught me in ninth grade A black men teaching in St. Paul public schools in 1961-62, the lessons Dr. Phillips taught me prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1984 set me on this path to study liberty.

Alan Keyes, PhD inspired me to study life as I managed his 1996 campaign for President of the United States, and since then as good friends.

The Founders of our great nation feared God and, though flawed, set us on a path dedicated to the proposition that all humans are created equal.

One very special student, Zoe Brekke, former Student Senator. Now my proofreader.

All my students. Whether American Government –For Real!! or Student Senate, I have been blessed to know and serve each one. And to their parents for investing in them. iv

Life and economics: A liberty argument

FOREWORD

By Rev. Todd Olson, M.Div., Th.M., D.Min.

In Life and Economics: A Liberty Argument, Dave Racer is on a mission to convince business owners that low taxes and more freedom produce healthy economic development and prosperity, but in the United States, prosperity requires a nation with a godly worldview. Likewise, he informs “values voters” about the importance of maintaining a free marketplace in which businesses can flourish.

This book is a much-needed reminder of our foundation and history as a nation, and what has made us a good and prosperous country.

This book is timely in that we as a nation are rapidly declining under a moral and cultural revolution that rapidly is moving away from any objective sense of moral absolutes as established by Someone (the God of the Bible) other than ourselves. The cultural and moral landscape changes daily in America as people define truth in their own eyes based on what humanity “feels” like doing, unchecked by any boundaries and with no respect for God OR for the innate human value given to human beings who were created in the image of God. v

Foreword

In chapter two Dave takes us back to our nation’s Founders, the Declaration of Independence, and the recognition that our nation was built upon a Christian or godly world view. This worldview serves as the foundation for the value of all human beings, and the freedom we have in America to pursue life (also recognizing the value of life in the womb, the focus of chapter three), liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Chapters 5 and 6 address the critical need for moral character as a governing factor for reducing taxation.

Chapter 7 sounds the alarm of a global reset rooted in radical environmentalism. Ultimately this reset is deeply spiritual or religious in nature. The object of this religious movement, however, is the worship of creation rather than the God of creation as described in the Bible. Dave points out that this kind of movement will ultimately destroy the American way of life.

Chapter 8 is a call to spiritual revival and a return to the God of the Bible. Dave ends the book with a plea for a return to a godly worldview, without which our nation cannot function as the Founders originally established it.

Dave Racer brings a wealth of knowledge and life experience into his books, articles, blogs, and teaching on a wide range of cultural topics. He is well versed in politics, health care, economics, and American history. Dave’s cultural and Biblical knowledge are evidenced throughout the book. vi

Life and economics: A liberty argument

I have known Dave Racer as a close and trusted friend for over a decade. He is a man of character and conviction and can be trusted as he commends this timely book to a hurting nation.

Reverend Todd Olson is the lead pastor at First Evangelical Free Church, Maplewood, Minnesota

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Introduction

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

INTRODUCTION

By Joe Langfeld

Our culture is changing.

Challengers to the nation’s founding principles, ideas, and even the concept of religion or “faith” in the public square, clamor for cancellation.

What can we do to approach our moment in history? How should we engage each other in this important debate?

For decades cultural anthropologists, political science professors, and church leaders have referenced what authors William Strauss and Neil Howe call “The Turning.” Both alarming and provoking, this concept describes an 80-year cycle that will usher in significant cultural change, replacing it with a new normal.

Thoughtful leaders of all political persuasions expect this cycle to end and reset between 2025 and 2030.

An obvious foreshadowing of that notion came from the two 2020 Presidential Candidates. They proclaimed their leadership vision through the campaign slogans “Make America Great Again” and “Build Back Better.” Each reference longed for better times, from decades ago, in hopes of establishing their vision of an improved future. ix

l Introduction

These branded slogans sought to show voters how each candidate recognized a need to address today’s cultural conflicts. Both Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump sought to show how their political leadership would guide the “turning” without uttering the politically-charged words, “cultural reorganization.”

Recognizing the pending final adjustments to our public belief system, or norms, is the challenge of the late 2020 decade for American Christians and people of good will.

Historically in the United States, Judeo-Christian values and beliefs set our cultural norms. Somewhere between the Millennials and Gen Z, large portions of the population exited both church and synagogue. College and high school students today are twice as likely to never, ever, have entered a church.

Is it the end of Christendom? Certainly not, but the shift of one generation, Millennials at 8 percent, to Gen Z’ers at 16 percent indicates the beginning of a massive change or end of an assumed way of life.

So how should we approach this looming moment in history? How must we engage citizens to reclaim our culture before the coming reset? By boldly proclaiming the truth to new generations.

Far too long have people of faith abdicated to others our responsibility to lead in the public sphere, to share the Gospel, and proclaim our beliefs in word and action. Without that boldness, without that proclax

Life and economics: A liberty argument

mation, we will lose it all—the freedoms earned by patriots, the liberty secured by our founders, and the grace poured out by God through His Holy Spirit.

Could it all be lost? Could we lose the United States in which we grew up?

We don’t have to be the loser of the culture war, but we must equip ourselves now.

First steps are easy. As an example, do you consider yourself pro-life? Either due to your faith belief or a scientific understanding of developing human life? How do you articulate and share those beliefs with others around you? Do you try or do you cower in fear from cultural martyrdom? Do you lack knowledge to stand against the new religion of political correctness and cancellation?

Organizations and people exist who stand ready to help. In the case of abortion and assisted suicide, as referenced above with pro-life beliefs, simply knowing the truth, sharing it with others, and gently correcting false assumptions works to change minds and transforms hearts.

Truth can crack the hardness of a stone-cold human heart. Real truth, if it must even be stated that way, allows the Author of Life—the God of Truth— to transform hearts and minds. He can place a soul on the path to a full, insightful, and fruitful life. Then, boldness in the public square follows.

Freedom to live out this truth and proclaim liberty was the vision of our founders. It’s not too late to xi

l Mission My

reclaim it and reset this culture. We must be steeped in an understanding that all people, in all circumstances and any stage of life, deserve one another’s respect. It’s a basic recognition of human dignity.

Are you willing to help change or even reset a nation teetering on the edge of loss? The first step is learning to understand and proclaim truth.

Joe Langfeld is the Executive Director of Human Life Alliance.

His views many not necessarily reflect those of HLA. Mr. Racer is a member of the HLA Board of Directors. https://humanlife.org/

“Elect me and I will work to reduce your taxes, and I won’t try to impose my morals on you,” said the pragmatic politician.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 1: MY MISSION

One of my closest political allies is a retired longtime Minnesota legislator and small business owner. In deference to our friendship, I’ve decided not to use his name. I’m calling him Jack.

While a legislator, Jack voted “right” on just about everything I care about, whether it was economic or social issues, environment or education. If I were to design “Dave Racer’s Voting Guide” and rank legislators based on their votes, bills introduced, and behind-the-scenes work they do to effect good public policy, Jack would probably get close to a 100 percent.

As a businessman, many of the severe pro-labor laws and high taxes common to Minnesota hit Jack hard. But as much as I admire Jack and as close a friend as he is, he also made himself a symbol of a much larger problem, or so I learned reading quotes attributed to him in a Twin Cities newspaper.

Before I quote from that article, a little background. At the time of the article, Minnesota was engaged in a gubernatorial battle, and among the Republicans, there were three major candidates. None of these three met Jack’s high standards for political 1

My Mission

leadership, so he began toying with the idea of making a late entry into the governor’s race himself.

“If he runs, Jack said the point would be to move the party away from an emphasis on social issues to a renewed commitment for permanent tax cuts and restrained government spending,” the article reported. “His hope would be to influence the endorsement to embrace a broader message than is being pushed by the anti-abortion, anti-gay-rights activists in the party, many of whom he says are just refugee Democrats anyway.”

Jack was both right and wrong in his assessment. He was right that many new GOP activists formerly were Democratic activists. They left their party because of its growing radical positions on social issues, but they did not necessarily leave behind their view that government should play an active role in economic issues or the delivery of social services.

They did not necessarily leave behind their pro-labor positions. Their views on fiscal issues were then, and remain in many cases, not traditionally Republican.

Some of the GOP pro-life legislators with whom Jack served have worked hard to prevent tax cuts or fight for increased funding for social programs. Others failed to coalesce on economic or regulatory issues facing businesses, and this became a major frustration for representatives and business owners like Jack. you can understand why he might make those statements.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

Jack was wrong, though, when he failed to understand the relationship between the fiscal conservatism of a great many Christians and their zeal for moral revival in America. He echoed the sentiments of a many business owners who think the “Christian Right” movement has precluded any real progress on issues they think are most important.

If we cut to the quick, the real dividing line for the sentiments uttered by Jack is not frustration with social conservatives–it’s abortion politics. Now, even though Jack votes for life, it’s the politics surrounding abortion that creates real frustration for him. Many abortion zealots care not about fiscal policies, nor do they fill the role of stereotypical “bleeding-heart Liberals,” willing to line the pockets of bureaucrats and citizens unwilling to work for a living.

In contrast, I’m on a mission to convince fiscal conservatives, especially business owners and managers, that attitudes about abortion and those bothersome social issues hold the key to their survival in the American economy. I’m also on a mission to convince social conservatives of the absolute importance of providing business owners with as much freedom as possible and cutting taxes to the raw bone. These two seemingly disparate sides are in fact joined at the heart and in the mind. Moreover, these issues hold the key to America’s survival as a nation of free people.

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Psalm 1: Godly, Ungodly

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 2: PSALM 1: GODLY, UNGODLY

A sermon on Psalm 1 inspired me as I thought about Jack and political tension. The thoughts I describe are certain to be met with great passion by those who hold sentiments like my friend Jack and by those who stand on the wrong side of the line that I’m about to draw, but the truth is that they’re in plain words.

Psalm 1 teaches that there are two kinds of people: godly and ungodly. It charts no gray areas. Jesus taught in Luke 9:50 that a person is either for Him or against Him, godly or ungodly. We try to draw all sorts of shades of these verses. We say a person acts in this way or that way and seems to be a pretty good man or woman. Certainly we find there are godly persons who act in ungodly ways, as there are ungodly persons who seem to act in a godly manner. That’s not the issue here.

The issue has to do with how a person sees the world, his or her point of view. This is often labeled a world view. According to Psalm 1, that world view will either be godly or ungodly. The point of view a person brings to their daily life, business affairs, homes, jobs—all of it will be directly affected by 5

Psalm 1: Godly, Ungodly

whether that person holds a godly or ungodly world view.

At America’s beginning as our Founders penned the words in “The Declaration of Independence,” they understood the truth of Psalm 1. They had a godly world view—more so a Christian world view. Do not confuse the reality of their having a Christian world view with always acting in conformity to it. Sin challenged them as it does us.

Having a Christian world view would have placed the Founders in the epicenter of their culture and society. They directly relied on this world view in the Declaration. The Declaration could be said to lay out America’s creed and define what makes us, as a people, different from other citizens around the globe.

Consider these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” The Founders spoke from a solid standard that they identified as truth, not some relational or culturally rationalized confusion based on political correctness.

“That all men are created equal.” Human beings are created beings. The Founders did not mean “created out of primordial slime.” In their Christian world view, humans are created in the image of God. [Sidebar: In my studies, I came across the teaching of Irving Greenberg, a Jewish Rabbi, concerning the nature of humans as a reflection of God. Since the Rabbi is not a believer in Jesus the Messiah, he does not see this Image as three parts—Father, Son, and 6

Life and economics: A liberty argument

Holy Ghost. yet, there is an important lesson Greenberg teaches us about this image. This is found in these three statements, with emphasis added: "An image of the human has a finite value...However, the image created by the Infinite God is worth infinitely more. The image of God has infinite value."

"In human images, there are in fact superior or preferred images...But, all images of God are equal. There can be no preferred image of God. 7

Psalm 1: Godly, Ungodly

That claim to know the preferred or absolute version of God constitutes idolatry."

"The image of God is unique...all humans come from one mold (Adam and Eve, if you will), yet each one is unique. That uniqueness is the hallmark of the image of God. The reason we do not recognize a person's uniqueness is that we are not seeing him/her as an image of God."1]

The Founders would have seen human beings as mirroring God’s image. Infinitely valuable, unique, and equal and in the image of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.2 Stripping away this truth leads to all manner of mischief.

“That all men are created equal.” This radical concept that all persons—regardless of their state in life, ancestry, religious persuasion, or any other number of factors—is equal flows from the godly world view that there is a Creator. That the nascent nation did not fully-embrace the broadest application of this truth does not discount it. Rather, this idea of the

Greenberg, Irving (1997). “Seeking the Religious Roots of Pluralism: In the Image of God and Covenant.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 34 (3): 385–394. http://rabbiirvinggreenberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/SeekingReligious-Roots_Journal-of-Ecumenical-Studies_red.pdf 2 Certainly it must be conceded that concerning some humans, the Founders’ theology and understand of human life fell short.

We can acknowledge that short falling without giving up the aspirational aspects of God’s creation of mankind in His image.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

equality of humans would have been radically aspirational during that era.

“That they are endowed by their Creator.” The source of their life and all that they are, have, and hope for flows from the Creator, not from some consensus, majority vote, court decision, or reason of other human beings. An endowment–a gift of God–strongly implies that we who are endowed have an obligation as stewards to protect and invest it. We are not mere caretakers of God’s endowment, but instead, we are responsible to nourish and grow its blessings and benefits to our posterity.

“With certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The Founders’ Godly world view held that God granted humans a special privilege not afforded to other life forms or other parts of the creation. The first and foremost of these is the right to human life. The second is our liberty. The third means the right to pursue that which the individual believes will make him or her happy, often associated with owning and accumulating property earned by the sweat of one’s own brow.

The very idea of the “American way of life” flows from a godly world view. It was then and remains a revolutionary idea, but out of it flowed the potential for the huge American middle class, the right for individuals to own and operate businesses, and the right for other individuals to decide what kind of work 9

Psalm 1: Godly, Ungodly

and which employer to choose. Though it took a long time and a Civil War, the Declaration’s principles animated the slow slog toward emancipation of the slaves. These principles continue to urge us to do better to recognize the infinite value, unique nature, and equal status of all humans, born and yet to be born, young and older, of all races, creeds, and skin color.

Take away the concepts in the Declaration based on the foundational issue of the value of human life created by God, and America is nothing more than a union of competing interests, the strongest, wealthiest, and mightiest of which will rule all the rest. Such a departure from the truth results in tyranny.

God created humans as equal, but with different body styles, talents, skills and interests. Freedom starts with protecting the life of each individual.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 3: HUMAN LIFE PREEMINENT

Let me be clear about this. The preeminence of the issue of the value of human life is that it forms the very foundation of everything that we must hold onto in America if we wish to be a nation of free people.

Not all people desire to be free, however, at least in the sense that the Founders understood, nor which most of us have presumed to be true. We are nearly always at war to preserve our way of life, and this is a war in which there are no bystanders. Our modern days have exposed the raw and sometimes ulcerous attacks on American liberty.

Make no mistake: this is an all-out world war.

It is a war which is fought on many fronts, and there is no escape from it. Either a godly world view that leads to liberty will prevail, or it will be an ungodly world view that leads to increasing government influence and eventually, tyranny. Either moral humans will rule themselves or the mightiest humans will rule over them.

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years ago, a radio station in Massachusetts began running ads for an abortion provider. At the time, Massachusetts prohibited abortions for girls younger than 18 without parental or guardian permission. The radio station aired the ads from 3 PM to midnight, and its target audience was 12 to 17 year-olds.

These ads were one element of the arsenal used by those with an ungodly world view to strip from our children their unalienable rights. These are the same children who are the “victims,” so say many of our government leaders, of the tobacco industry with their Joe Camel and e-Cigarette ads. These helpless teenage dupes need the government to act as their moral arbiter when it concerns tobacco, but the same government apparently sees these young people as capable of making literal life-and-death decisions about their own offspring, at the same time determining that they are unable to control their sexual appetites.

In this war, truth plays no part so that on the one side, the government blames ads for corrupting children and addicting them to tobacco, but on the other suggests promotion of abortion should be appropriate and useful, in their world view.

We’ve witnessed over the last many years a national debate on partial-birth abortions—taken to the newer extreme recently of “aborting” babies delivered alive. The debate has been good because it focuses on the brutality of the partial-birth abortion procedure and abortion’s extreme nature.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

My daughter gave birth to my grandson, Andrew, 8-weeks premature. His mother had developed a life-threatening condition, and a choice had to be made. It would have been legal for her to choose abortion, and no doubt, partial-birth abortion would have been the technique of choice. My daughter, who has a Christian world view, chose life.

Abortion is a violent procedure, no matter how it is performed.

Those who hold a godly world view find abortion repulsive, not only for its violence, although they despise it, but because it destroys a life created by God. Every time one of those pre-born human creations loses its life, America loses a measure of its moral integrity and its claim to be a nation of free people. Another part of America dies with each aborted child.

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l Broader Battlefields

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 4: BROADER BATTLEFIELDS

A story surfaced many years ago of three Minnesota state employees whose supervisor ordered them to attend a sensitivity session that would deal with issues surrounding the treatment of homosexuals in the work environment. Despite their religious convictions about homosexuality, they were ordered to attend, which was a direct assault on their personal liberty.

When they attended, they did what many others in the class did–they ignored the instructor! In these days, they would spend time on their smart phone or tablets. These three decided to read what they believed to be useful as the instructor delivered her lesson. But in their case, the three chose to read a Holy Bible. It created an uproar.

During this sensitivity session, they were told that homosexuals should have the right to marry and to adopt or birth children. They were told to avoid openly discussing their heterosexual relationships because it might make homosexuals uncomfortable.

Specifically, they were told not to talk about their chil15

l Broader Battlefields

dren because children were “a heterosexual privilege not currently available to homosexuals.” They were told that heterosexualism, or believing it to be a superior lifestyle that it is, is as bad as racism and sexism!

Because these people did not pay attention but had the audacity to read their Bibles during the lectures, they received written reprimands that affected their promotability! This case is not isolated, but it is another cannon shot by people with an ungodly world view, and though they may appear to be but small blows, their cumulative effect is powerful. Is this effect not self-evident in today’s cultural acceptance of something it calls the LGBTQA+ movement as nothing more than individuals expressing their own gender preference?

Eric Roseman, in his memorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote this: “I’m proud to be an American. As an American, I treasure my freedom to display a statue of Christ in a jar of urine on a National Endowment for the Arts grant, or make millions from a movie claiming that LBJ killed JFK with the help of the CIA. I would never abuse my freedom of expression, question the virtue of sodomy, never. We’re absolutely free to say it’s beyond question. I thank God that in America we’ve taken prayer out of the public schools and put metal detectors in.”

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 5: CANDIDATES OF CHARACTER?

During the 1996 campaign for the presidency, Alan Keyes, the first “black” American to run for President as a Republican, kept insisting that character was the central issue, not economics. “We don’t have money problems,” Keyes said repeatedly. “We have moral problems.”

Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign, in contrast, emphasized, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Republican Bob Dole backed away from character issues and tried hard to sound moderate, perhaps like this: “We can give away tax dollars more efficiently than Bill Clinton and the Democrats!”

As Keyes repeatedly said, “you cannot out-give Santa Claus.”

With Bill Clinton, we learned that character in a president does matter, and it matters greatly. After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, his detractors tried to make every discussion about Trump a matter of questioning his character. During the 2020 election, Democrats avoided discussing the economy (stupid!).

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Even those who claimed that Americans do not care that Bill Clinton scandalized the Office of the Presidency over issues of sexual infidelity could clearly observe that character matters. The indisputable fact is that if President Clinton had been a man of character, he would not for a moment have been distracted by charges of sexual dalliance. Instead he would have been free to do the job the people hired him to do. Certainly, if Donald Trump’s demeanor and moral record had more represented that of Mike Pence, his detractors would not have focused on his character. Doubtless, they would have found other ways to dog him during his Presidency (as goes our virulent politics of today).

Character does matter, both as an observable, practical matter, and especially when it is rooted in a godly world view.

In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted the following statement as part of their platform: “Moral character matters to God, and it should matter to all citizens, especially God’s people, when choosing leadership.” The Baptists stopped short of using Bill Clinton’s name, choosing instead to focus on the name of Christ, but it was clear to everyone who paid attention to this skirmish what was meant by the declaration.

In an editorial that same year, though, Hollywood superstar Kirk Douglas wrote about issues of character. He said he lived with the knowledge that he 18

Life and economics: A liberty argument

probably sired many children about whom he had no knowledge. It was part of the lifestyle he lived, traveling here and there, making movies. He said we’re wrong to concern ourselves with the president’s sex life, or his unfaithfulness to his wife.

Douglas’ frustration led him to write, “Politics has become a dirty game played with sex, bribery, and corruption. How many young men and women with the right qualifications to help out our country have avoided playing this game?”

This paragon of moral virtue, Kirk Douglas, felt compelled to lecture us about character, and then declared that our insistence on a moral order based on traditional, Biblical values drives away otherwise qualified civil servants. The truth is the young people with the right qualifications are exactly what America needs, and those who hold these qualifications in an environment of moral virtue do so without fear of discovery. There’s nothing to be discovered!

Robert Reno, the former Newsday columnist and brother to former Attorney General Janet Reno, wrote about his renewed hope for a Democratic victory in the 1998 fall Congressional elections. He based his hope on the recent agenda of Newt Gingrich about whom he wrote, “He wasted the Republicans’ majority status on things like flag burning, term limits, and prayer in the schools, issues of profound indifference to the businessmen who are the chief source of the party’s riches. He failed to deliver in abundance on 19

l Candidates of Character

many of the things they do care about: deregulation, protection from getting sued, more relaxed environmental enforcement.”

Unfortunately, Reno may have been right. Business people may actually have disdained Gingrich for concentrating on issues of the heart instead of issues of the pocketbook. They should not have, because they are directly linked.

During his 1996 campaign for President of the United States, Alan Keyes, PhD, often repeated this: “In the United States, we don’t have money problems, we have moral problems.” In 2021, we see how our moral problems have resulted in the U.S. now facing money problems.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 6: ECONOMICS AND MORAL CHARACTER

Taxes are like the weather. They seem to fall on some of us like the torrential rain of a heavy thunderstorm. Some are given shelter to stay out of the rain.

Everyone has an opinion about the weather and taxes, but no one does much about taxes. As an aside, it is ironic that a massive international movement is underway to control the climate, i.e. “to do something about the weather.” yet, no one seems able to do much to rein in government spending and taxes.

How much tax is right and proper? The amount of taxes is dependent on how much governments spend. The more they spend the more they must tax.

The more programs governments provide, the more they must spend to provide them: hence, more taxes.

Most of us agree that government has a host of constitutionally-defined responsibilities, and it needs money to do them. The role and extent of government, it follows, must be carefully defined and guarded, unless we are to experience uncontrolled spending and more taxes to support it.

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l Economics and Moral Character

What excess taxes amount to is government-enforced transfer of your unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness from you to “them.” It directly means the government is taking funds by fear or force from one person, filtered through a government bureaucracy, to give to someone else who is most likely not even known by the taxpayer. This is a moral issue! It is a Biblical issue! It is addressed in the Ten Commandments under “Thou shalt not steal.” History is replete with examples of government theft by taxation. Only a government restrained by moral convictions has any hope of controlling it. yet far too many politicians, investors, and business managers want to avoid the messy moral debates while trying to pathetically deal with the outcomes!

If I have no regard for the value of human life, why should I have any regard for the property accumulated by those human lives that produce the property? “I’ll play God with your life and your property, and as long as my troops are stronger than yours, I will prevail.” That’s the ungodly world view.

It’s informative that the Federal Congress has voted to strengthen bankruptcy laws, making it tougher for people to skip out on their debts. A previous change in the federal bankruptcy law, making it harder to declare, resulted in this sentiment: “Creditors argue that the changes made good sense in a society where declaring bankruptcy has lost the stigma it once held.” Indeed, just as has a president’s adultery.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

The stigma of bankruptcy is gone. The stigma of being “on welfare” is gone. The stigma of adultery by elected leaders is gone. The stigma of abortion is gone. The stigma of pre-marital sex is gone. The stigma of employees lying about sick days is gone.

The stigma of suing your neighbor or lying about injuries on the job or spreading gossip about your employer—in all of this, the stigma of shoddy character is gone! In businesses, neighborhoods, cities, states, and our country, we suffer directly because of it.

This lack of stigma and the deadly and dark pathologies of society are the result of a culture increasingly adopting an ungodly world view, one that is temporal and driven by selfishness. From a governing standpoint, when the peoples’ moral character fails, the only solution to increasing cultural and social problems are more programs to service the victims of societal breakdown and more prisons to incarcerate those who become uncontrollable. Again, to quote Alan Keyes, “There cannot be enough policemen on the streets if there are no policemen in the heart.”

At America’s beginning, a godly world view prevailed – more specifically, a Christian world view.

In the twentieth century, Americans replaced that world view with a man-centered world view we label “secular humanism.” It’s a world view that exchanges the idea of a Creator God Who is actively involved in the events of the world for a different idea. Instead, individual men and women (or any of a variety of other 23

Economics and Moral Character

“gender” choices) are the center of everything, and there is no Divine Power to which the individual must answer, and if there might be, it would be a god (certainly not the God) who forgives every indulgence.

To the humanist, each person is a god and does not need to answer to any other. We’ve learned to compartmentalize our lives, learning to separate issues of antiquated morality from the results of our efforts.

If the economy is good, that’s all that matters. If we have nice homes, good schools, and lots of parks and entertainment to keep us occupied, we’ve achieved some kind of high standard of living.

We’ve made our public schools the temple of humanist philosophy so that all other religious convictions such as those held by the Founders, who had a Christian world view, would need to be declared illegal in public. Christianity, our political and cultural leaders tell us, instead should be relegated to the holy huddles of our churches and to our prayer closets and homes. But secular humanism has not filled the natural yearning of human souls for something greater than themselves nor explained the vagaries of life. What has resulted is predictable as we continue to slide into a new paradigm.

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

CHAPTER 7: NEW ORGANIZING DOCTRINE

Vice President Al Gore stated in 1992, “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.”

In 2021, the world’s leaders are saying it again through the World Economic Forum and in national and state capitals all across the globe.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates plans to invest billions to curb “climate change” which will require massive changes in how people live, work, and interact with their environment. Truly, a large faction of world and local leaders believe it is their right and duty to use their moral suasion and inordinate wealth to convince you of your moral obligation to give up unalienable rights as they reorganize the world for your good.

Minnesota is one of many states to adopt an organizing principle called “community-based planning.” Community-based planning in its earliest days was based on the Oregon model that started as a voluntary effort and grew into a mandatory program. It’s based on the idea that future use of all land should be 25

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evaluated, planned, and those plans should be submitted voluntarily to the state.

Once the plans have been submitted and state government has approved them, the resulting land use becomes, in effect, state-wide zoning, severely limiting the ability of private citizens, businesses, and farmers to decide how they’re going to use their own property. This is a direct assault on the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. “The greatest good for the greatest number of people,” they say.

The attitude is reflected in the words of a Minnesota State Senator, Ann Rest, a Democrat who once chaired the Minnesota House Tax Committee. “The local arms of government, townships, and county boards have done such a poor job of planning and zoning that we must mandate it from the state.” The government closest to the people must be replaced by State bureaucrats. Why? Apparently the local residents do not have the requisite moral fiber or intelligence to make decisions for their own neighborhoods. Senator Rest can rest assured in 2021; those decisions will now be made at a conclave in Davos, Switzerland, by powerful, wealthy elite world leaders who care little for hard fought unalienable rights.

The stated objective of community-based planning is to stop urban sprawl. The effect is to compress the population into metro areas. This way, metro areas can justify increased funding for mass-transit and pro26

Life and economics: A liberty argument

duce “livable communities” like those in, Caracas, Kiev or Moscow.

Consider that this idea is not new. Herein is a reference to a 1992 publication in Minnesota, titled Sustainable Development: The Very Idea. On page 7, it says there must be a complete reorganization of our way of life. On page 5, it says that all planning will conform to Agenda 21 of the 1992 United Nations Biodiversity Treaty. Page 13 says that communitybased planning will integrate environmental constraints into the design criteria for everything that people do.

Al Gore says the environment will be the new organizing principle, and it seems as though he’s being borne out in many ways. This principle is self-evident at the World Economic Forum in 2021, where leaders talked openly about the Great Reset planned for January 2021 and beyond. Their view of the future world is in sharp contrast to that of everyday U.S. citizens.

It seems racism also falls into this “new green reformation.” The Environmental Protection Agency requires that even if a building project meets all local, state, and federal environmental regulations, it still can block that development if there’s a disparate impact on minorities. Even though a project is shown to be safe, if a large number of minorities are somehow affected by the plant’s location, the plant will not be allowed to be built, and the unintended consequence is, of course, that plant owners will seek to build where 27

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resistance is the lowest, near majority-populated areas while making access to the jobs they create even more difficult for minorities.

But most of all, this enviro-centered principle takes away the individual’s unalienable right to property, a right arising from a Christian world view and specifically mentioned by the Declaration as, “Pursuit of Happiness.”

America began with a Christian world view. It evolved downward to a humanist, ungodly world view. For decades, it has been plunging to an Earthcentered world view.

“WE’RE WINNING!”

During an episode of The Dave Racer Show (a daily talk radio show I delivered for many years in the Twin Cities), I received a call from a man identified as Ray. I want to share a verbatim transcript of a portion of that call.

“What issues obsess you?” I asked.

“The environment” he said.

“What about it?” I asked.

“I’m a militant radical environmentalist.”

“Do you worship Gaia?” I asked. “yes, I do.”

“Well, see, there you are,” I said. “you’re a religious person.”

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Life and economics: A liberty argument

“I talk to stones. I worship Gaia. I see the ‘creator’ as ‘she’ is,” Ray explained.

“So you believe we created God after Gaia created this environment for us,” I stated.

He agreed. We talked about some other issues, then Ray observed, “We’re not gonna agree, right? you know the reason I called you was not to harass you, not to pick on you, but to let you guys know that you’re not the only game in town—that we pagans are back, and we’re not going to go away. We’re going to get bigger, and we’re going to move us beyond Western religion.”

“Ray,” I answered, “your people have sent out education and training kits to 67,300 churches in America to teach the worship of Gaia and paganism.”

(1998) “Good! That’s why we’re gonna win!” he responded with glee.

“So you are on the move, and so are we!” I answered.

“And we’re going to have you for lunch,” Ray said confidently. you may have concluded that Ray was just some crazed tree-hugger trying to take me to task, and you may think he represents some small fringe group of hopeless romantics caught up in an irrational world view. you would be wrong.

The Animal Liberation Front opened a national press office in Minnesota during 1998 (it is now lo29

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cated in Asheville, NC). In their 1998 release, they explained their mission to protect non-human animals from members of our species.

An activist writing in “Earth First” journal wrote about a strategy the Animal Liberation Front might use. This urban gorilla, in an effort to protect non-human animals from the human species, suggests turning off the gas at restaurants: places like McDonalds, Taco Bells, Arby’s, and others. He suggests doing this during the lunch rush hour while cars are lined up at the drive-up window and counters are filled with impatient customers. He described his delight watching the fat in deep-fryers coagulating and store managers watching their profits dry up. He’s doing this in the name of protecting the non-human animals from the human species!

I heard an interview several years ago with a man who described a sublime moment shared by his wife and him. He explained how they drove out into the woods and each found a spot near a lake. They leaned up against hundred-year-old white pines and listened. The trees talked to him. That’s what he said: they talked to him.

I know you might have labeled these last three examples as radical, crazy, and out-of-touch. I would agree, if reality or truth still had any meaning, but you would be wrong if you think their message isn’t gaining resonance, even in our places of worship.

Let me share with you some data we gathered 30

Life and economics: A liberty argument

from the University of Texas in the 1990s. It dealt with the formation of a well-funded, strategized approach to bring Earth-worship and pagan beliefs directly into America’s churches and synagogues.

In a long 1990s document titled “Global Green Religion,” the writer described efforts by the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. (Since 1992, the group has moved to Washington, D.C. and “global green religion” continues as a featured field of study and contemplation.) Organizers formed this group in 1992 as an effort to assist the process whereby Al Gore’s “global warming” organizing principle would become the norm in America. They were heavily financed and influenced by an international gaggle of so-called “Earth’s death is imminent” scientists who insist that humans are destroying their Mother Earth: their god.

By the mid-1990s, the National Religious Partnership for the Environment provided education and action kits to 67,300 American congregations representing 100,000,000 congregants. The education they provided flows from their “enlightenment” provided by their belief in Gaia as the giver of life.

The activity they promoted is political in nature and is designed to force people to modify their behavior to conform with an enviro-centric Earth-first world view, ungodly at its core. This group, however, wraps their false doctrine in the words of faith, customized 31

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to fit the various twists and turns of religious dogma held by different congregations.

Why would Gaia worshipers concern themselves with people of Christian and Jewish faith? After all, their infiltration of the government schools is complete, and as despots throughout history have known, if you get control of the young minds of one generation of students, you will own them in adulthood.

During November 2019, Gallup published the results of its 2018 poll indicating 87 percent of Americans believe in God, depending on how the question is worded. In the case of pagans, “God” is the Earth, but Gallup went on to explain his concern. “… a 2018 Gallup poll found that U.S. church membership has reached an all-time low of 50%, and one in five Americans does not identify with any religion.” In 1998, by contrast, he reported, “We are in the most churched 32

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period of our entire history, yet while religion is broad, it is not very deep. It is not rooted biblically. Most Americans are hard-pressed to say what they believe and why.”

Might it be true that the concerted efforts by the National Religious Partnership for the Environment and its modern offshoots have succeeded in prying people of faith away from rational science, reliance on the Bible, and faith in God? Is it not self-evident that today, a major American party openly campaigns on a “Green New Deal” that will reduce a people of liberty to the despotism of a Gaia-worshipping political class?

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6

God said that His people perish for lack of knowledge. Ungodly, Earth-worshiping pagans are teaching (brainwashing) His people, and many who claim Christian faith are joining right in with religious fervor, and they don’t even know it! yet, God says it is their children who will suffer the most.

What has been the response of American Christians to counter these pagan claims on the truth? Who can name any successful effort to specifically offset this ungodly infiltration of the minds and hearts of 33

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people of faith? Who do you expect will come to our rescue and save us from this further globalization of society, this ordering principle that seeks to rip unalienable rights right out of America's creed?

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CHAPTER 8: SLOUCHING Judge Robert Bork wrote in his book Slouching Toward Gomorrah that only a spiritual revival would save America. Spiritual revivals begin with preachers and laypeople, under the power of the Holy Spirit, calling people to truth: to a Godly world view.

We the People also must legislate morality.

Before being offended by the idea that we should legislate morality, first understand the nature of law. All law has a moral base. your City Council says you cannot drive more than 25 miles an hour in the city–that is a moral decision made by the city council. your state taxes “high income” earners at a 9.6 percent rate. Taxes have a moral foundation. The United States Supreme Court rules that people of the same sex have a legal right to marry – that was a moral decision made by five of nine justices of the Court. yes, we must impose our morals on society because the truth is that all laws are an expression of morality, or someone’s version of it. Whether it’s the morality that says the government knows better how to live your life than you, so therefore it sues tobacco 35

Slouching

companies or mandates airbags or uses zoning laws to prohibit you from using your property as you see fit, or whether it's the tax moralists who take money out of your pocket to give to someone else you don’t even know, it's all the same. Someone or some group is imposing its set of morals on you.

It sounds almost too obvious that the morals being imposed today are proffered from an ungodly, non-Christian world view. Otherwise, how could one explain transgendered males competing in girls’ athletics and then sharing locker rooms and showers with them? How else would you label prohibition of the expression of religious faith in schools and public places, exchanging prayer in school for metal detectors other than someone legislating their morals on others?

Robert Soroco of the Acton Institute wrote, “As government bureaucrats oversee invasions of private property and individual consciences, people are increasingly being suspected for their thoughts and not their actions. New sins are created by government bureaucrats to replace the old sins of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The ministers of our modern religion condemn not fornication, but unprotected sex. They banish smokers from the public square the way adulterers were once treated.” He spoke truth.

What does this mean to those who consider themselves on the side of godliness, who have a Christian world view? I’m always intrigued by the words of 2 Chronicles 7:14.

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“If My people who are called by My Name shall humble themselves and pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from Heaven and heal their land.”

It’s one of those verses that has an “if” clause.

It’s a verse with a promise.

It’s instructive, though, what God does not say here. He does not say that if the pimps and prostitutes and criminals and homosexuals or even pagans finally get it right, He would heal the land. No, He lays the burden right at the feet of His people. Today, I think that’s Christians.

Do you really think for a moment that ungodly people will set right society’s pathologies? They can37

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not! Their solutions emanate from an ungodly, nonChristian world view where everything is affected by outside forces—environmental forces, if you will.

They have no concept of changing the heart of man in the sense that God does where people are inner-directed by the power of the Holy Spirit to do what is right simply because it’s right.

Having the citizenry do what is right is especially important for people in business.

My mother, Alice, fell when she was 78 years old. She had gone to the hospital where my dad had just been checked out by a doctor following his heart bypass surgery. As Mom approached the car, she tripped on one of those concrete barriers used in parking lots to separate the stalls. She fell right on her elbow, jamming her elbow and driving her shoulder out of joint. Instead of taking Dad home that day, she ended up in the emergency room.

Mom got more than a jammed shoulder. She got three-and-a-half years of constant pain, and it was only relieved by her death from cancer at age 81.

Many well-meaning people told my mom she should sue the hospital. After all, everyone else did it.

She absolutely refused. She said it was her own fault for falling. Why should she sue anyone?

Alice represented the world view of her generation: a Christian world view. In her world view, people were to act according to the precepts found in the Bible. She couldn’t sue the hospital because that is 38

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wrong! She had a clear view of right and wrong, and she wasn’t afraid to act on it.

In Alice’s world view, employees were obligated to put in a day’s work for a day’s pay. They were to be honest with the employer’s assets. They would never call in sick to play golf or just plain fail to show up. The fact is, the Alices of her world would get up two hours early to drive through a Minnesota blizzard to get to work on time! This is the difference between a godly and ungodly world view in action.

Alice was one of those identified in 2 Chronicles 7:14 as one of “My people”: God’s child. This verse is a powerful call to repentance and to action. In this war, there are only two sides. you’re either on God’s side and taking action, or you’re on the side of the ungodly in abiding the slide of liberty into the abyss of tyranny.

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What does this mean?

Jesus taught His followers to give a cup of cold water in His name. He, the lifegiver, gives us the choice to serve others.

Acts of kindness resulting from God’s love in us are an antidote to secular assaults on our families, communities and our personal faith.

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Chapter 9 What does this mean?

What all this means to each person is different.

It may mean, for some, running for office or helping someone else. It may mean contributing time and resources to encourage men and women of good will and good hearts to become political leaders. It may mean taking control of local problem-solving and spending the time and resources to provide faithbased, benevolent services to solve human needs.

After all, Christ told us to give a cup of cold water in His name, not to send the thirsty people to the State Office of Water Distribution! It’s our job to help people. It’s a lie of Satan to say we should rely on the government to do what we ought to be doing.

We need to educate and activate people of faith to counter the pagan assault on our churches. We believe, and I believe, that at the very least, every church in America and every pastor and priest must come face-to-face with the arguments in my book, American Christians in Government, and the ongoing programs that I envision. My calling is to teach others, especially 41

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teenagers, about the Christian world view that liberates souls, and proclaims liberty to a people.

God appointed me a combatant in this war, but He didn’t make me a general. you might be a general, though, or perhaps you’re part of the enlisted corps and you do all the work anyway, but you cannot be a civilian. That position isn’t available.

President Grover Cleveland in 1885 in his second inaugural address said:

“Let us not trust a human effort alone, but humbly acknowledge the power and goodness of Almighty God who presides over the destiny of nations and who has at all times been revealed in our country’s history. Let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our labors.”

God sets up one nation and pulls down another.

Godly nations are blessed. Ungodly nations are cursed, and the people live under oppression and tyranny.

President John Adams, our second president, wrote: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

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We cannot control human will run amok and unguided by the self-restraint so common to godly people. When Adams wrote, he wrote about the Christian faith at a time when leaders openly acknowledged that all things public and private were to be guided by a godly world view. That is our only hope if liberty is to remain a valued prize in our land.

The light of liberty is in His life, and in the life of each of us, created in His image.

God bless you.

Dave Racer, MLitt https://daveracer.com 43