“The wicked freely strut about when what is vile is honored among men.” Psalm 12:8. “Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for He guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.” Psalm 97:10


Lists of ten have become popular and almost habitual in our culture. For convenience and for the sake of familiarity, the following is a list of ten of the major negative influences which we must face and conquer in America or suffer significantly as a living, healthy society. They are not intended to be in any order of importance or intensity, but a certain logic entails from one category to another and there is both an overview and an underlying relationship which ties all ten of them together in a giant spider web which has captured us as a people and which has caused some frantic response followed by inertia, even as one would view a fly caught in the trap of the gossamer strands struggling and finally giving up to its fate. The first in the list--lies and fraud--was chosen because it permeates all areas and levels of our culture today and is the slippery slope which makes recovery of our sanity very difficult if not impossible.

I. THE EPIDEMIC OF FALSEHOOD, LIES, DECEIT AND FRAUD:
A MAELSTROM OF MENDACITY

From the highest to the lowest our nation is flooded with fraud and lying. Truth is not even recognized by the post modern world as an attainable value. Everything is relative and one can make up his own morality and define his own truth. Thus standards have fallen and the national power structure and the “anointed” establishment dominate by deception and lies. Honesty, integrity, truth and morality are no longer important. Some of the most important and prominent leaders of our nation are pathologically devoted to hypocritical dishonesty and deception. No society can exist for very long with this kind of perversion. That great sucking sound is our culture being drawn down into a vortex of confusion and moral oblivion.

In their 1996 programming Dateline NBC devoted a week of programs to the growth of lies, fraud and deceit in American society. They concluded that a major reason for this epidemic of mendacity was that more and more people were becoming devoid of conscience. This is the result of parents and educators not teaching right and wrong to our children. When morality is relative and truth is obscured, the conscience has no standard by which to develop. This kind of epidemic of fraud, lying, and deceit is mentioned in the ninth chapter of Jeremiah the Old Testament prophet as one of the major causes of God’s judgment upon the nation of Judah. (For examples see James M. Murk, “The Big Lie: The Tool of the Leftists,” Mt. Juliet, TN: Murk Family Ministries, Inc., 1995)

A lack of trust in any society inhibits economic success. This is the theme of a book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity by Rand Corporation scholar Francis Fukuyama. He refers to the philosopher Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) who contends that the early Puritans renounced materialism and sought to glorify God stressing the development of virtues, such as thrift, honesty, diligence, responsibility, and dependability, which actually promoted the accumulation of wealth. American capitalism and its success was built on this idealistic but practical foundation. Because of the diminishing trust and virtue in our society today, however, we are squandering our rich accumulation of associations and civic institutions upon which our economic matrix and well-being has been based. Fraud in the material world can result eventually only in economic chaos.

II. THE NEW CONCEPT OF FREEDOM-- DOING AS YOU PLEASE
INSTEAD OF AS YOU OUGHT

A most important and classic example of fraud in American culture is the new absolutist philosophy of freedom which has become a new motivating value in our society. This contemporary hedonistic, libertarian philosophy of freedom has virtually replaced the principle that the Founding Fathers fought for in the American Revolution. The same words “liberty” and “freedom” are used, but they have been defined differently. In this redefinition exists an element of fraud. This new counterfeit concept of freedom, which has asserted itself as authentically vintage American, grew out of atheism and the Age of the Enlightenment and is the idea of liberty espoused by the French Revolution, which dissolved very quickly into genocide, anarchy, and dictatorship. Absolute freedom was never advocated by the Founding Fathers nor was it the spirit of the American Revolution as can easily be ascertained from the historical documents of the period.

The freedom advocated by the Declaration of Independence is viewed as a liberty or rights granted as a gift of God. This acknowledges our responsibilities to the Creator and His laws. This is called “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” which was expressed in British Common Law. Historically British Common Law can be traced primarily from the influence of the Jewish-Christian Scriptures. American law was based on British Common Law, and the Ten Commandments were the basis for the laws of every colony or state in America. This Biblical interpretation of freedom in our nation has been flagrantly violated especially since the rebels of the 1960’s threw over all traditional morality. It is the underlying philosophy which has permitted all our other social pathologies to develop.

This new “do as you please,” “anything goes,” “make up your own rules” definition and practice of American freedom leads to anarchy. Human self-autonomy has replaced the Divine autonomy. The irresponsibility of this kind of freedom must of necessity result in more and more social and governmental control. Benjamin Franklin said that those who lacked virtue or were without self-control “had more need of masters.” This is the direction in which America is headed as we increase federal regulations to control abuses and put more and more law enforcement on the streets.

The simplest theological definition of sin is “selfishness” or “self-expression.” This concept and practice is at the root of this new nihilistic definition of freedom. Therefore sin has been elevated to the level of civil liberties. Human sin and rebellion has literally become the basis for the new definition and practice of American freedom.

The leftist philosophies are imbued with the idea that human nature is essentially benign and can be molded by social influences to become good. They neglect to realize that what they interpreted to be benign had already been socialized by strong families, churches and schools in the past which assumed and taught the Biblical morality. The Judeo-Christian concept of human nature, on the other hand, begins with the Biblical record of the fall and evaluates the human condition in summaries such as Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?”

Evidence for the truth of man’s natural depravity confronts us on every side in our contemporary world. The wages of sin, furthermore, still predicts death for both the individual and the society. This new philosophy of freedom has doomed us as a culture.

The philosophy of freedom of the Founding Fathers was subsumed under and limited by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” They believed that there were transcendent absolute moral laws just as there were absolute physical laws. To ignore a moral law had the same ultimate consequence as ignoring the law of gravity. One could not therefore “make up his own rules,” because they had already been established as a part of God’s natural order of creation. Freedom therefore had its limits and its boundaries eternally and absolutely set from the beginning. A libertarian “anything goes” philosophy was anarchy, an anathema to the Founders of our nation. Self-government assumed self-control. Self-control resulted from the moral order being internalized in each individual through religion and education.

The freedom idea of the Founding Fathers was summarized by John Adams who wrote in 1776, “Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand . . . The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”

III. TRASHING THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE CONSTITUTION IN ORDER TO ACCOMMODATE ATHEISTS AND LEFTIST PHILOSOPHY.

Many of the decisions of the leftist liberal judiciary and the Supreme Court have been outrageous during the past 35 years. They are based on a philosophy expressed by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes who said, “The Constitution is what the judges say it is.” This arrogant statement is supported by the idea that the Constitution is a living, dynamic document which must be adjusted, i.e., reinterpreted and changed to suit the modern world. Judges have the authority and must be the ones to do this even to the extent of overruling public opinion and the legislatures. Some of their new interpretations of the Constitution are themselves rooted in the new philosophy of freedom, which does not reflect the opinions and the principles of the Founders. The Founders’ opinions are considered only peripheral or even “out of date.” They are important and quoted only when they support modern judicial doctrine. The strict constructionist approach to the Constitution or the “doctrine of original understanding” is rejected by all but a few conservative jurists today.

“Judicial authority” is not clearly defined in the Constitution. This has made it easy for leftist-liberal jurists to read their own sociological ideals and principles into their decisions. Thomas Jefferson in 1821 warned of this weakness in our Constitution, called the judiciary “an irresponsible body,” and predicted exactly what is happening today; namely, the potential permutation of our federal government and the rule of the nation by an oligarchy.

Constitutional law is no longer an interpretation of the Constitution as such, but is based on case law, the aggregate of previous decisions or jurisprudence. This creates the judicial precedents upon which new decisions are made. Decisions are therefore not based on the Constitution per se. The idea of the original understanding of the Constitution, or what the Founding Fathers actually meant or intended by their words, is inconsequential. Modern judges allow themselves any subterfuge or manipulation of precedent in creating new law or amendments to the Constitution by judicial decree, often bypassing the legislatures and the will of the people. In this manner they impose their own moral, political and sociological opinions on the entire body politic. This is called the politicizing of the courts, or “the political seduction of the law.” Popular sovereignty has been rejected over and over again by an overarching judiciary, jeopardizing our democracy and the freedom of the American people.

Since most of the judges come from the intellectual classes, called the “culture elite,” they reflect and are supported in their opinions by this class which is by and large very thoroughly secular humanist and often agnostic, atheistic and in opposition to Judeo-Christian or Biblical morals, principles and values. By inclination, therefore, they often find themselves in direct opposition to the original American heritage and tradition. They have been gradually creating an entirely different society, which our Founding Fathers would not recognize. Their incentive has been the approval of their peers in the intellectual classes. Many judges glory in the opportunity to create new precedents and establish new law. If they can successfully
“rewrite the constitution” through judicial opinion and decisions, they receive the kudos of most of their associates and have established a prominent place for themselves in judicial history. The most successful of these revisionists was William J. Brennan, associate justice of the Supreme Court.

By these means the courts have been responsible for (1) nullifying popular sovereignty or usurping the self-government of the people, (2) for restricting the local powers of the states, (3) for the “religious cleansing” of our schools and public places, (4) for the growth of pornography, (5) for encouraging a corrupt cinema and TV, (6) for permitting unrestrained sexual practice, and unrestricted abortion, and (7) for favoring criminals over their victims and thus promoting crime. Recently they have taken a stand virtually equating sexual orientation with race and gender differences thus virtually accepting homosexuality as an officially recognized minority. They are moving in the direction of promoting same sex marriages as a legal, alternative life style. They are flirting with legalizing physician assisted suicide, and possibly euthanasia. What pagan practice will next be advanced and justified? Pushed by the ACLU and other leftist organizations, activist judges in the courts have easily become the major contributors to our moral disintegration.

Christians believe these decisions to be destructive and therefore immoral. They are the opposite of “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” which was the foundational principle of the Founders who gave us this nation. This is a usurpation and abuse of power by an oligarchy of the judiciary, bypassing self-government and imposing leftist-liberal values on America. It is a denial and violation of the Constitution, which the judges are sworn to uphold. As it is practiced, it could be classified as legalized sedition. At the least, in the words of the conservative jurist Robert Bork, it is “judicial lawlessness.” This is perceptibly impacting our American heritage and culture and is causing monstrous and irreparable damage to our society in the name of a false definition of freedom.

IV. THE INSUFFERABLE INTOLERANCE OF AMERICA’S UNIVERSITIES
FACTORIES OF LEFTIST THOUGHT, CITADELS OF PAGANISM, TEMPLES TO ATHEISM

The African-American economist and educator Thomas Sowell has called the universities the most intolerant institutions in America. Most of the older universities (about 108 of 120) were founded by Christians in order to train students to study the Bible, spread the Christian message and maintain Biblical morality. They have, however, today become destroyers of our Christian heritage, our origins and our traditions. They are apostles of pagan ideas, socialist dogma, atheistic philosophy and a destructive morality. Most of the members of the legal profession from which our judges are chosen, plus our teachers, media personnel and political leaders, are being trained in these leftist liberal institutions, which tend to keep themselves cleansed from conservative principles and ideas. Our future leaders are being brainwashed in leftist liberal ideas as they sit, unsuspecting and impressionable, in classrooms across America.

Our institutions of higher learning have become the principal purveyors of a new moral code of conduct called “political correctness.” They are unconsciously or consciously dedicated to indoctrination as much or more than to education. Their emphasis is on feeling and self-esteem instead of truth and reason. One of their goals has become to change America into a nation entirely different from what was bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers. Many are supporters and teachers of every leftist-liberal idea and dogma and are driven to impose these new ideas and values on American society. In support of the new philosophy of freedom and political correctness they have become exclusive, dogmatic, and dictatorial in their spirit and in much of their practice.

Jeffrey Duban, a Georgia Tech faculty member turned lawyer said, “Higher education has just gone to hell because of political correctness, and a lot the problems that faculty coming up for promotion and tenure have these days are ideologically motivated.” He went on to explain that if you express a view or oppose another faculty member in these areas, you may very well be passed over for promotion or tenure. He said, “God help you if you question; the ideologues . . . won’t forget it.” (Quoted in Human Events, Oct. 12, 1997, p. 6.)

“Political correctness” comprises a new morality or set of commandments. Major divisions in the universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, have become huge propaganda distributing and brainwashing machines. They have more and more become citadels of neo-paganism and temples to the secular religion of atheistic humanism. If you look at the new curricula of most major universities today, you will find a tremendous change from just thirty years ago. Courses in the history, literature, and culture of Western and American civilization have been greatly curtailed, and courses in aberrant and erotic subjects have been added in great profusion.

Examples from the course catalog (1994-95) of the venerable Brown University in Rhode Island include the following: (1) Topics in Human Sexuality; (2) Introduction to Lesbian and Gay Studies; (3) Black Nationalism, Black Power, and Black Militarism in the 1960’s; (4) The Big Picture: Contemporary Hollywood and Social Crisis; (5) Producing Asian American Sexuality; (6) Histories of Early Modern Body: Scientia Sexualis/Ars Erotica; (7) Development of American Feminist Theories; (8) Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Tropes; (9) Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars; (10) Unnatural Acts and Split Britches; (11) The Early Modern Sexed Subject; (12) Queer Theory; (13) Sexual and Racial Politics of African American Women Novelists; (14) Gays and Lesbians in Twentieth Century Germany; (15) Pornography and Culture; (16) Circumcision: Male and Female, Jewish and Gentile; (17) Feminism and Poststructuralism; (18) Disney: Uncle Walt and the FBI; (19) Feminist Philosophy; (20) Readings in Feminist Theory; (21) Christianity, Violence, and Victimization. Would you want to send your child or grandchild to a university with these kinds of educational emphases?

CBS TV’s venerable news-magazine “60 Minutes” featured a number of universities in America which were including in their curriculum the new academic discipline known as “queer studies.” In a Duke University class called “Perspective in Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Studies” Professor John Younger teaches the idea of the “butch-femme” combination in lesbian history and sadomasochism in homosexuality. The S&M male relationship is actually acted out by students wearing black leather costumes, leather chaps, and using whips and chains to inflict pain. The purpose of this definitely “hands on” course is to examine the students’ narrow-minded views and give them a broader understanding of varieties of sexuality. The State University of New York at New Palz was featured as having a conference called “Revolting Behavior--The Challenge of Women’s Sexual Freedom” in which razor blades were used in “blood-letting sexual activities.” Dartmouth offers “Queer Theory, Queer Text,” Stanford students can sign up for “Homosexuals, Heretics, Witches and Werewolves: Deviants in Medieval Society,” and The University of California at Santa Cruz features “Latex Lovers: A Workshop on Queer Women, Safe Sex.” In the meantime studies in Western civilization and culture are being dumped because they are very EWM (European White Male) and have a definitively Christian bias. So go our pagan universities.

University students are no longer encouraged to be on a relatively unbiased intellectual quest. They are subjected to being enthusiastically indoctrinated with the new leftism and the prevailing amorality. The universities are therefore deteriorating as models of educational excellence particularly in these areas of the humanities and the social sciences, which often even find themselves at war with the more objective physical sciences. With the new advances in astronomy, cosmology, and theoretical physics, scientists have come face to face with the unnerving reality based on laws of probability that there must be a super intelligence behind this universe we have called the Creator. The scuttlebutt on campus today, therefore, is that now you will usually have to go to departments like philosophy, sociology and psychology to find the atheists. They are in short supply in the physical sciences.

A study of this new, ”enlightened” curricula of our major universities is all one needs to understand how far they have fallen in their concept of the purpose of education. Everything seems geared to cutting us off from our roots, from the so-called white male, Anglo-Western culture which also has a Christian cultural base. Liberals are instead promoting a multicultural society based on the philosophies of cultural and moral relativism, which is at its heart anti-Western and anti-Christian.

Recently Yale University was forced to return 20 million dollars to a billionaire alumnus who had earmarked his gift to subsidize studies in Western civilization, the roots of our culture. The involved faculty rebelled at the suggestion that this should any longer constitute an important core emphasis in higher education and rejected the strings attached to his gift. Yale University was therefore forced to return the donation. No other society has exhibited such foolishness unless it was the USSR, which cut itself off from its roots, and destroyed itself. We are infected with the same craziness, and we are moving in the same direction. Cut flowers are doomed to die. On the other hand, Yale has included 50 courses in its curriculum which deal with gays and lesbians--their history, their sociology, their sexual orientation, and their lifestyle. Have we gone insane? (Note more details in Martin L. Gross, “Colleges in the New Establishment,” The End of Sanity. New York: Avon Books, 1997, pp, 107-43)

Unless we can reverse the radical domination of our colleges and universities, it will be impossible to stop America’s plunge into moral and intellectual disorder. It will mean the complete corruption of the American story and extinguishing the lights of “the city on a hill.”

V. REMOVING GOD AND THE MORAL IMPERATIVE
FROM AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The influence of the universities has now reached down to substantially influence the education of America’s children in the public schools. After all, the institutions of higher learning train the teachers. Not all teachers are infected with the new morality of political correctness and anti-Western, anti-Judeo-Christian biases, but many have been influenced by their exposure and training and have purposely or unwittingly become propagandists for the new philosophies. It has been purposed and planned for many years, primarily through the influence of John Dewey and other socialist, secular humanists, to use the classroom to indoctrinate America’s children in a new philosophy, which was really foreign to our Judeo-Christian tradition.

Kathryn Barrett, National Association President in 1973, frankly and openly told about this new approach and agenda in American education. She said, “We need to recognize that the so-called basic skills--which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools--will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day. When this happens, and it’s near, the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. We will be ‘agents of change’” So only a couple of hours of school time will be devoted to skills, such as reading, writing and arithmetic. The rest of the time will be used in teaching the tenets and conclusions of naturalism, political correctness, and secular humanism.

This has been a goal of theorists in “educational laboratories” in America for many years. These liberal educational think tanks were the offspring of Kurt Lewin and other members of the Comintern who fled as persecuted communists from Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and were warmly embraced by America’s liberal establishment. Dr. Shirley McCune, senior director of the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory, addressed a state governors’ summit on education a few years ago and made the following bold assertion: “What is happening in America today is not simply a chance situation, and the usual winds of change. What it amounts to is a total transformation of our society.” What she failed to tell the governors was that this new ideal for American students was the same as the image of the “Soviet man.” This vision of education has resulted in a severe “dumbing down” of our whole educational program in an effort to produce, not highly articulate and skilled student who was a capable independent mind, but a collectivist character who could more easily serve in a socialist state. This vision was iterated by Sumner Welles years before when he stated that the Soviet Union must become more like America and America more like the Soviet Union. After all socialism is simply communism without a dictatorship. They share the same assumptions and beliefs.

Fifty years ago Christians were warned that their children could “lose their faith” at some universities. Today this is a threat on the level of the public schools where whole new and biased curricula undercut parental teaching and religious values, destroying respect for the past and even undermining patriotic respect for one’s society and one’s country. This has been a primary motivation behind the founding of private and religious schools and the mushrooming of the home-schooling movement.

Values clarification, secular humanism, and prohibiting the Ten Commandments all would be an anathema to our Founding Fathers. They were the ones who put prayer and the use of the Bible into the schools. In fact, they insisted that religion and morality be taught.

(Northwest Ordinance, Article 3) This did not come under the principle of the “separation of church and state” which only forbade government support of a specific church or sect, meaning Christian denomination. Any fair examination of the sources would prove that the term “religion” to the Founding Fathers simply meant a Christian church denomination. Scores of statements and examples can be cited from our early history and the Founding Fathers, who wrote the First Amendment, which support the traditional practice in America of encouraging religious influence throughout all of society including education and politics.

The contemporary absolutist interpretation of this idea of separation is completely contrary to our heritage and everything Americans believed and practiced for over 300 years. The First Amendment was intended to protect religion from the government not the government from religion. The most revolutionary genius of the American experiment was its commitment to the freedom of religion. The “establishment clause” therefore must be understood in the context of the “free exercise clause.” It is inconceivable that the Founders conceived the former as a limitation on the latter. They would have considered this interpretation a heresy and a violation of the most important liberty of all.

Referring to the Christian religion and Biblical morality, George Washington said in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness. . . . Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail, in exclusion of religious principle.” This is why the Founding Fathers insisted that prayer and the teachings of the Bible be included in all students’ education.

The separation of the church from the state is not at all the same as the separation of God and the Bible from public life. Only the agnostics and their fellow-travelers think that this must be so. This is another monumental expression of deceit and fraud among some in the intellectual and legal classes of American culture.

Again it was the leftists, particularly atheistic Marxists represented by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who fought for this victory in the courts (1962-63) and have succeeded in imposing their worse than pagan values on America. Absolute separation of church and state is a tenet of the Soviet Russian constitution. It can easily be proved that what in reality has been adopted in America is an atheistic, Marxist-Leninist communist doctrine not an American ideal.

All interpretations of our Founding Fathers words which are used to support this absolutist interpretation of the separation of church and state are a smoke screen. It is a con game of complete subterfuge and deception pushed by the culture elites and their pigeons who are usually pseudo or anti-Christian or simply anti-religion. It is therefore widely supported by the legal profession, the universities, the liberal church hierarchy, the media and the popular movie, TV, and music culture.

Historically separating the church from the state, however, meant nothing more than forbidding the Congress to choose one Christian denomination over another and favor it by supporting it with public funds. It did not even mean that public funds could not be used to advance the cause of religion, which was done many times by the early Congresses; in fact, missions were supported, Bibles were printed and chaplains’ salaries were paid. Many have been duped into the acceptance of the absolute interpretation. It betrays in those who aggressively promote this new interpretation an underlying, even subconscious or subliminal, enmity toward religion and toward the very idea of God. This has denied the vision of our Founders and immeasurably hurt our culture.

By giving the control of the education of America’s children by default to secularists, materialists and moral relativists, this has contributed substantially to the social pathologies in our nation. The strict application of this new principle has been one of the causes contributing to the wholesale decline in morality in America since 1962-63. Christians believe that when we slapped God in the face on the level of the Supreme Court, God removed His special protection from this nation and left us vulnerable to evil.

Since the sixties we balanced our last budget and lost our first war. We have not only plunged into a moral morass but we have acquired a 5 trillion dollar debt, and we have seemed to have lost the capacity to manage ourselves as a nation. We lead all civilized nations in just about all the social pathologies, have the lowest family formation of any, and the most scandal-
ridden, morally lax, and corrupt government in our history, with an admittedly unethical president who has been called by his own people “an unusually good liar.” We are moving inexorably in the direction of the gradual loss of our democracy and the beginnings of totalitarian control by a government with which the American people find themselves more and more disenchanted even fearful. (See William Murray, “Why Not Prayer in Schools,” The World and I,June, 1995; and James M. Murk, “The New Leftist Doctrine of the Separation of Church and State,” Mt. Juliet, TN: Murk Family Ministries, Inc., 1995.)

One of our social pathologies is our alarming decline in education. A hot topic and a major concern in education today has been the decline in performance of American students, especially in reading, science and math, indicating serious problems within the public school system. The powerful unions--the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers--who are unconscionably seem to be much more concerned for money and power than they are for student education--have been guilty of blocking meaningful reforms. They oppose anything which would dilute their control and financial interest.

Milton Friedman, Nobel prize winning economist from the University of Chicago, is one among many who has argued for a “market economy” or competition on the elementary and secondary school levels. Our institutions of higher education have sustained a much higher standard and success rate in the past because there is a vast smorgasbord of choice among thousands of disparate schools. America’s public schools, on the other hand, says Friedman, have all the incentive of Soviet agriculture. They are the largest socialist monopoly in America.

Charter schools, school vouchers given to parents who could choose a school for their children, and tax credits for private education have all been suggested. They are vehemently opposed by the unions and now even by Richard Riley and the Department of Education. These are bedfellows--an unconscionable vested self interest cabal seeking to control the education of America’s children from the national level and minimize the input of parents and the local community. This is partly a desire to maintain the monopoly of money and power and also an ideological motivation to control American education from the top and imprint America’s children with a revised set of values.

This centralized control of organization, policy and curriculum has been the goal of secular humanists from the time of the famous teacher’s teacher John Dewey, who espoused socialism, atheism, and humanism. Unfortunately the program includes (1) a dumbing down of skills, and a low priority on high literacy and the ability to think independently; (2) an emphasis on feelings, self-esteem and working together--a collective mentality; and (3) a move toward preparing students to become a human resource for industry and the state. The “school to work” and “careers” program is almost an exact copy of the Soviet Union’s technological educational system, the brainchild of Nicolai Lenin. It is uniquely suited to train a society managed and controlled from the top.

Outcome Based Education includes an effort to change America’s thinking about our Judeo-Christian heritage and substitute politically correct pagan values, multiculturalism (the Marxist teaching that all cultures are equal), and globalism (minimizing America and preparing the next generation to live under world government, which was the dream of the Comintern and world socialism from the beginning). Goals 2000 includes all the above. It would seem that American education has become saturated with Marxist assumptions and ideology derived from America’s educational laboratories and taught in the teacher’s colleges. This has sparked much political opposition to a national testing program to be administered by leftist-liberals.

Competition on the public school level would certainly not hurt the students or the teachers, but it would hurt the Unions and the Department of Education. They are obstacles to school reform primarily because of greed. There are hundreds of people supported in the union structures, all of whose salaries average almost twice the average teacher’s remuneration. Perhaps as much as 25% of these “administrators” make over $100,000 per year. To protect this monetary castle, the unions send out more political operatives than both the Democratic and Republican parties combined.

Competition would also undermine goals for national control and the need for a Department of Education. There are over 5,000 jobs at stake here. This is why Secretary Riley has currently been feverishly writing op-ed pieces in the major media in order to influence public opinion and forestall any move to undermine the potential power and influence of his department. All of these educrats, therefore, are in bed together in a conspiracy to frustrate real reform. The good news on the horizon, however, and a source of great fear to the vested interests, is that well over 50% of parents and teachers, including blacks, want school choice. Where it has been tried, such as in Cleveland, Ohio, the statistical improvement of students in math and reading is very significant. We can only conclude that the educrats are much more concerned for themselves and their own well-being than they are for America’s children.

Finally, it is ironic that the very people who want to eliminate the influence of our Judeo-Christian tradition in the schools because is it “religious,” themselves support a secularized form of religion in the classroom as a substitute. The Supreme Court has declared atheism to be a form of religion. Secular humanism, in fact, for many years declared itself to be the new religion of humanity. “Humanism is a new type of religion altogether. . . It is both a religion and a philosophy of culture.” (Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930, pp. 3, 114) “Humanity is on the march towards a new religious faith which I dare to believe will provide us with a religion greater than Christianity.” (Roy Wood Sellars, The Next Step in Religion. New York: Macmillan, 1918, p. 125)

Since the “church dogmas” of secular humanism are the heart of the new philosophy of life and values with which the “culture elite” wish to brainwash our children, how come the principle of “the separation of church and state” is not applied to them? By their own definition of religion, they would seem to come under the “establishment clause” as they wish it to be interpreted. This is obviously the imposing of one set of “religious” values and world view in place of another in a very dishonest and highhanded manner. It is a blatant rejection of our American heritage and tradition which the “culture elite” deride and have wished for many years to see replaced. (William Bennett, The De-Valuing of America: The Fight for our Culture and our Children. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992, pp. 26-30)

In an essay “Public Education” Ayn Rand asked, “Should the government be permitted to remove children forcibly from their homes, with or without the parents’ consent, and subject the children to educational training and procedures of which the parents may not approve? . . . . What is the implication of this, if not that the child’s mind belongs to the state?” This is identical to the techniques used in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Fifty years ago Isabel Paterson wrote in The God of the Machine warning against the state dominated system of education. “But every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . (‘All blessings flow from government’ --Madalyn Murray O’Hair) . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy.” (Quoted in Linda Bowles, “Bring Education Into the Market Place” The Conservative Chronicle, March 25, 1998, p. 23) In other words, we will have accepted the dogma of a new religion.

VI SEXUAL IMMORALITY AND DIVORCE

Laxness in moral instruction or even blatant value neutral teaching in the area of sex in our schools has contributed to a loosening of sexual restraints throughout the society. Sex is now celebrated in literature and entertainment as a form of extra-curricular recreation, especially among the young. The subject is no longer regarded as a matter of morality, but is judged to be amoral. This is part of the “do as you please” philosophy of freedom which has deceived our historically illiterate society into believing that this is the “American Way.”

Sexual license has become the number one destructive practice in Western culture, America’s dirty little secret, which few want to talk about. It has been largely responsible for the shattering of the traditional family and a tremendous increase in venereal diseases. Promiscuity has produced multitudes of single mothers and caused a 400% increase in divorces, both of which are devastating our children. Infection with HIV is just the tip of the iceberg of STD’s which infect almost half of the American public.

Considerable blame for this moral breakdown must be laid at the feet of the radical feminists. They are perhaps the number one destructive, revolutionary force in America. They have destroyed the ideal of marriage and scorned the traditional family. Margaret Sanger said that marriage was the most degenerate institution in America. Helen Gurley Brown called the housewife and mother “a parasite, a dependent, a scrounger, a sponger, a bum.” Gloria Steinem described traditional women as “inferiors” and “dependent creatures who are still children.” Betty Friedan said that housewives and mothers were “less than full human,” decried their lives as a “waste of the human self” and that they were “like male patients with
portions of their brain shot away and schizophrenics.” And Simone de Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex is either a text or required reading in all women’s studies in our universities and colleges, said that the woman at home is a “dead weight,” and “a parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism.” She said that society must prevent women from becoming homemakers: “No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. . . Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”

The solutions of the feminists to force women to pursue careers and become like men included pushing three destructive agendas: (1) Sexual libertinism was urged where the woman freed herself from sexual restraints by treating the sexual act as amoral recreation in the manner of men without the intention or desire for procreation. If pregnancy should occur, they insisted on the legalization of an unrestricted abortion right, which passed in the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, 1973. Then feminists euphemized the right to abortion into “a woman’s right to choose.” They wished to destroy the confining restrictions of motherhood by abortion in order to be free to pursue all their other rights in a world outside of marriage and the home.
(2) They promoted child-care subsidies for working women, which turns over to professionals the responsibilities of motherhood. The cost is shared by all taxpayers even by women who do not wish to join the work force thus penalizing traditional families who don’t need the outside child care.
(3) They insisted upon “no fault” divorce laws because this would take security away from women at home and force them into careers to protect themselves from irresponsible husbands. Men could walk away from their wives and families with ease and without penalty. Feminists even discouraged alimony, forcing women into the workforce. Divorce thus has been allowed to multiply over 4x and has virtually undermined the stability of the American family giving us the lowest family formation in the civilized world.

The breakdown in sexual restraints and no fault divorce are the primary causes of the dysfunctional family, which is responsible for most of the social pathologies in our culture. It is a direct result of our having forsaken God and Biblical morality, and has brought upon us the consequences mentioned in Romans 1--the defilement or open vulnerability of our
society. Sexual practice is no longer viewed by the majority in America as being moral or immoral. It is amoral, a natural phenomena to be enjoyed, i.e., for recreation more than procreation. We have eaten and digested this heresy of the radical feminists.

The fraudulent studies of Dr. Albert Kinsey beginning in 1948 laid the foundation for a whole set of wrong assumptions concerning human sexual behavior. All of his findings concerning children’s sexuality, for example, were drawn from the diaries and notebooks of a notorious pedophile. He himself was a homosexual and sadomasochist, whose own lifestyle and biases, plus his use of prisoners and prostitutes as his subjects for data, completely dominated his so-called scientific studies. We can rightly say that the propaganda of Dr. Kinsey’s deeply compromised studies created an atmosphere of violent opposition to the teaching of sexual abstinence and promoted morally loose dogmas advocated by SIECUS and other proponents of sex education in the public schools. Pronouncements of former AIDS Coordinator Kristine Gebbie and more recently Jane Fonda that to teach abstinence is morally wrong demonstrates how upside down the leftist liberal ideas are on this subject. The emphatic promotion of condoms and the denial of parental authority in this area condones this new set of sexual values and continues to promote sexual promiscuity among children and teenagers. This has created a whole new set of values which have dramatically undermined marriage, the family, and the security and well-being of children who are America’s hope for the future. Pitrim Sorokin, the great Harvard sociologist, studied the sexual practices of societies all over the world. He came to the conclusion that when a culture lowered its sexual restraints it had signed its own death warrant. We are on that path. (See details in James M. Murk, “Reaping the Results of Our Sexual Revolution,” Mt. Juliet, TN: Murk Family Ministries, Inc., 1995)

VII. UNRESTRICTED ABORTION OR VIRTUAL INFANTICIDE

Recreational sex was bound to produce a lot of unwanted babies. It is no coincidence that the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and the whole abortion debate followed hard on the practice of the new morality, the renewed emphasis on self-expression and untrammeled personal freedom, and the tearing down of the traditional restraints of the past. All of these ideas and practices mushroomed in America as part of the 1960’s rebellion against the Viet Nam war and all contemporary authority including mores and ideals which grew out of our Puritan and Victorian roots. It included a general rejection of what was viewed as Biblical morality, which had long before been denied by the intellectual elite in favor of moral relativism--the libertine moral philosophy which permits “making up your own rules” and “anything goes.”

The right to abort or the right to rid one’s body of an unborn child was the result also of radical feminism wanting to be equal or on an equal level with men. Feminists have regarded pregnancy as a weakness. It was the only thing that stood in the way of their achieving equality with men. A standard statement was “We want the right to abortion so that we can enjoy all of our other rights.”

The right to abortion was softened by using a euphemism--”a woman’s right to choose.” This was declared to be a fundamental right meaning that it stood beside the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Presumably it came under “the pursuit of happiness,” because feminists did not believe that they could achieve happiness, which was equality with men, unless they could eliminate the barrier of pregnancy, which was considered a limitation, blemish or defect, which stood in the way of their ambitions and complete fulfillment. But on the face of it this contradicts “the right to life.”

The major philosophical problem here is that if the right to abortion is a fundamental right, it theoretically gives women worldwide the right and the capacity to do away with the whole human race in one generation. The idea of a woman’s right to choose to abort her unborn child is rooted in the philosophy of atheism because where God does not exist anything is permissible, including the killing of one’s own children. The “right to choose” applied to abortion is the single most deceptive propaganda phrase of this century. A woman should have no more right to kill her unborn baby than she does her one month old baby or her three year old child. The baby in her womb is not even her own body. To say otherwise is a bold-faced lie, a complete misrepresentation of the biological facts.

The feminists argue vehemently that they do not want the government interfering in a free choice “about our own bodies or our private lives.” This is as insane as saying that we don’t want the government prohibiting the murder of our one month old baby or our three year old child. For the judiciary and the Supreme Court to imply that an unborn baby is only fetal
tissue and not a living human being is the most arrogant insult thrown in the face of Almighty God, the Creator, that any nation has ever concocted. Brain waves appear at 8 to 10 weeks, confirming the contemporary medical definition of the certain presence of human life.

Women who refuse the responsibility to have babies and who insist upon the right to abortion for the above reasons are like the angels who left their first estate. The whole idea is utterly contrary to the Biblical or Judeo-Christian value system and ethic and would be considered in the category of an “abomination.” It carries a very severe punishment both in this life and in the life to come.

In the Bible children are always a blessing and not a curse. Pregnancy is a privilege and an honor, not an evil. Men cannot have children. It is only women who have been given the responsibility to continue the human race, or there can never be another generation. For a woman to abandon this responsibility and call it a fundamental right for her to do so has all the character of the absurd. It is firmly rooted in selfishness, which is the simplest theological definition of sin. Unrestricted abortion is very destructive to any society which practices it. It is therefore by definition immoral.

Abortion is a contemporary or modern form of child-sacrifice. The motivation and purpose of abortion and child sacrifice are very similar. Both are for the purpose of advancing the well-being of the parent or parents. Both are to provide a blessing for the mother or both parents in order to avoid the encumbrance of child rearing and/or to gain the approval and blessing of the god, like Moloch or the Baals of the Canaanites or Quetzalcoatl of the Mayans. Both actions are for the selfish, personal advantage of those getting rid of the child.

94% of all abortions are elective; 80% of partial birth abortion procedures are elective. This means that the vast majority of abortions are not for matters of health, illness, rape, incest or danger to the mother. They are simply for the psychological or physical well-being of the persons involved or to satisfy the selfishness of the mother or the scandal or burden of illegitimacy. Partial birth abortion, furthermore, is primarily for the convenience of the abortionist and the speed with which it can be accomplished according to its inventor Dr. Marvin Haskell in his procedural paper in JAMA. The use of this hideous procedure, therefore, is driven far more by the hoped for financial gain of the doctor than it is by any “health of the mother.” PBA’s have been condemned by the American Medical Association as unnecessary and dangerous, but liberals cannot bear to give up one inch of their commitment to this pagan practice. Necessary trimester abortions because of life threatening defects of the unborn child are a small minority and can be handled by other more safe procedures. Planned Parenthood lied to the Congress when it claimed that only a few hundred PBA’s were performed. This procedure numbers in the thousands and may now be free to grow to include most of the nearly 20,000 trimester abortions performed in America.

Abortion is the trashing of a human life. This places the sanctity of human life at risk. It demeans the family and frustrates the whole plan and purpose of God. A woman may choose virginity or choose not to become pregnant, but she can never be justified in killing her own healthy, viable child. The West German Constitutional Court, having learned from one holocaust, has declared abortion to be “an act of homicide.” This is exactly what it is, pure and simple. This has always been the position of the traditional Christian church. The church fathers, who were used to infanticide in the Roman empire, called abortion, “quicker murder.” There can be no other conclusion if there is a God in heaven and if the Bible is His word or special revelation to us. This is why pro-life Christians today are reviled as “Bible bigots” and “having a love affair with the fetus.” (Joycelyn Elders)

One out of three children today is destroyed by abortion. This means that in the last 30 or more years, America has allowed the destruction of one-third of its population that would have been born during that period. Recent census data estimates that America’s birthrate has declined by 36 million. This is just about the same number of persons as have been killed by abortion. It is the number one reason for our present labor shortage in America and the concomitant effort of American business and industry to encourage the immigration from other nations to beef up our labor force. This results almost always in a lower labor cost than what is incurred by using American born workers. The encouragement of abortion in America has denigrated the woman, demeaned the family, undermined the sanctity of human life, and weakened the total fabric of our population. It has opened the door for a moral decline which includes violent crime especially among children and young people and a general disrespect for human life. It could easily pave the way for legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. It is one of the most destructive choices that any society could ever make. It is one of those moral choices that will ultimately destroy a culture. The promotion of a woman’s “right to choose” to have an abortion is a philosophy born in the pit of hell.

William Kristol, neo-conservative pundit, political consultant and publisher of the Weekly Standard, has summarized it neatly. “Abortion is today the bloody crossroads of American politics. It is where judicial liberation (from the Constitution), sexual liberation (from traditional mores), and women’s liberation (from natural distinctions) come together. It is the focal point for liberalism’s simultaneous assault on self-government, morals, and nature.” (Quoted in The Washington Times, March 1,1998, p. 33)

VIII. HOMOSEXUALITY--THE ADVANCING OF THE GAY AGENDA

In the changing moral climate of liberated sex, homosexuals began to come out of the closet. The supposedly scientific Kinsey Report in 1948 had fraudulently claimed that 10% of Americans were homosexual in sexual orientation. Although the truth was closer to 1.5%-2.5%, the Kinsey propaganda plus the new heterosexual freedom promoted in the 1960’s gave the excuse and the boldness to those Americans who had aberrant sexual fantasies and appetites to make them public or to “come out of the closet.” Eventually they demonstrated and organized and the Gay Rights movement was born. Currently it numbers scores of militant organizations.

According to many conservative observers of our culture, such as Cal Thomas, the agenda of gay rights’ movement is the most dangerous contemporary movement in America. It demeans the family, transgresses the moral rights and consciences of those who honestly believe that practicing homosexuality is grave sin, and makes no permanent contribution to the continuation of human society. It reproduces itself through (1) seduction of children and youth and (2) as fallout from our pathological society, which has a large percentage of absent or uncaring fathers. It seeks to elevate what is a psychological sickness to the level of the normal and forces this new value on a civilized culture in spite of every rational argument, moral objection, and instinct to the contrary.

Homosexuals are made not born. Contrary to what you may have heard, no gene for homosexuality has ever been discovered, although homosexual behavior produces neurological changes in the brain which is true of any addiction or prolonged habitual behavior or thought process. This condition is part of the results of “the fall” and the resulting
imperfection of the human race. It is not natural. At the most some like Newt Gingrich have classified it as a defect like nearsightedness or color blindness. Homosexual practice has been considered a perversion and an evil by virtually all historical cultures because it has brought breakdown and destruction to any society which has permitted it; e.g., the Greeks whose homosexual population grew to 20%. “Righteousness exalts a nation; sin is a reproach to any people.” (Prov. 14:34)

Homosexuality is a learned sexual orientation rooted in a problem of gender identification. It is often produced through the absence of a caring father or an “invisible father” coupled with a dominant mother. Male children are deprived of male acceptance and nurturing, and so they reach out for it another way as they mature. Greg Louganis said in his autobiography that, in his first experiences with sex with an older man at the age of 16, it was not the sex that he craved but the hugging and the caring.

Homosexuality can also be imprinted during childhood by child molestation. Those who have had this experience as children have testified that they can never forget it, and that even one encounter has marked their personalities and sexual orientation for life. This is another way homosexuals reproduce themselves; namely, by the seduction of children. Pedophilia has always existed side by side with homosexuality. Internationally NAMBLA (The North American Man Boy Love Association) has been linked with the whole homosexual movement. Its adherents contend that there is nothing morally wrong with adult/child love and would like to see it legalized and promoted. A favorite saying of theirs has been, “Sex before eight or it is too late.” That is, it is “too late” for homosexuality to make a most effective imprint on the child’s sexual preferences.

Homosexuality is a powerful a sexual addiction. It is so strongly fixed in the psyche of individuals that any efforts to rectify the pathology of homosexuals is vigorously, and even viciously, opposed. Homosexuals refuse any suggestion that their sexual orientation is anything but natural and have aggressively attacked psychiatrists and psychologists who universally used to call this condition a pathology. The professionals’ national conventions were threatened for so long and so persistently by demonstrations and disruptions that the American Psychological Association and similar groups have been forced to withdraw their public evaluation of homosexuality as perverse and pathological. Only by “caving in” to their demands could they get the militant homosexuals off their backs.

Gays continue to castigate all efforts to “cure them.” Doctors and psychologists who persist in trying to “help” homosexuals who want to recover from their addiction are accused of being unethical or guilty of malpractice. Gay activists are trying to get the professional doctors’ organizations to declare reparative therapy to be unethical or illegal. Even today few dare to ask the question, “How did you become a homosexual?” This would undermine the presupposition that we are dealing with virtually a separate gender. In spite of this rejection of therapy, nevertheless, hundreds have been helped by caring practitioners. Religious conversion has also been a large factor in changing the mind and life style of those addicted to the homosexual addiction. This explains why some conservative churches and Christians have been savagely attacked and believers have been charged with being Bible bigots.

So powerful has the homosexual lobby become that the Clinton administration is coming close to calling any vocal opposition to homosexual behavior “hate speech” punishable by a federal law. What would this do to the freedom of a Christian teacher or preacher who believes the Bible and shares with people teachings from the Bible, such as the following?

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have donewhat is detestable.” Sodomy was considered such a serious breach of God’s law that the punishment in ancient Israel was death. “They must be put to death; their
blood will be on their own heads.” (Leviticus 20:13) In the New Testament it was regarded by the Apostle Paul as a sign of thejudgment of God, of God “giving them up to a depraved mind.” When God took His hand of protection off a society or a people, they were “turned over” to defile themselves with sexual impurities--“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful
desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator. . . Because of this, God gave them over to
shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” Romans 1:24-28.

The fierce militancy of the homosexual movement has been documented in a booklet distributed by the Family Research Council, 801 G Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001. It is called The Other Side of Tolerance: Victims of Homosexual Activism, and highlights the experiences of about 30 individuals targeted by the vehement, and sometimes ferocious and vindictive, attacks of homosexuals. One of these was a campaign against Ron Greer a Madison, Wisconsin fireman, who is also a Christian pastor of a Madison church. He had given some of his colleagues a Christian tract called “The Truth About Homosexuality.” I will let his wife Rosalyn tell the story in her own words,

“The tract said that homosexuality was immoral and sinful according to Holy
Scripture. And that’s when radical homosexual groups came after Ron, myself,
and our three children. Madison’s new fire chief--a woman with strong ties to the
homosexual community--ordered that my husband be suspended for three months
without pay. Plus she ordered Ron to attend a pro-homosexual ‘sensitivity’ training
class.
“More than 100 militant homosexuals stormed into our Church service--shouting
and swearing at the congregation while Ron and another speaker tried to speak from
the pulpit. These militants also urinated on the hallway floor, while those outside
threw rocks at the Church windows.
“Radical homosexuals from the hate group, the Lesbian Avengers, vandalized
our home in the middle of the night, trying to break in--and leaving pink triangle
stickers with graphic homosexual references pasted to our walls and windows. A
radical student homosexual group from the University of Wisconsin admits to
paying for the attack on our home--yet the police did nothing to bring them to justice.
“Now openly homosexual City, County and even State elected officials are insisting
that Ron be fired from his job--even though Ron has been an excellent fireman in
Madison for over 17 years. Ron has already had 6 hearings in front of Madison’s Police
and Fire Commission. He is fighting to overturn his suspension and hold on to his
job, but I am losing hope. You see, many of the elected officials are homosexuals and
are strong allies of the homosexual community. And they have openly attacked Ron
at every public hearing. The city attorney held a press conference and tried to attack
my husband’s good reputation. The mayor said that it was his job to keep anyone else
from being ‘infected by’ Ron’s views. Even the local newspapers and media have cried
for Ron to be fired for his view of homosexuality.
“Yes, radical homosexuals and their allies have harassed and threatened our
family. They’ve terrorized our Church. And now they want to fire Ron from his job
as a fireman. All because Ron expressed his views on the sinfulness of homosexuality.
It’s been quite a scary ordeal for our whole family. Sometimes I would rather pack
up and leave town than put our children and family through this persecution.”

Mrs. Greer goes on to make an appeal for Ron’s legal defense fund, 10300 West Lincoln Avenue, Lower Level, West Allis, WI 53227.

There is a current active effort to classify the gay life style nationally as a legitimate new minority category to be covered by civil rights legislation and anti-discrimination laws. The anti-discrimination ENDA bill almost passed the Senate, losing by only one vote in 1997, which would have virtually recognized homosexuality as a legitimate alternative life style with full legal protection just like race, gender or disability. The Supreme Court has already laid the foundation for a similar commitment of the law in their decision Romer v Evans, which was a nullification of the popular sovereignty, the rejection of the State of Colorado’s Amendment 2, which would have prohibited Colorado’s communities from granting special It based on sexual orientation. Justice Anthony Kennedy was lambasted by Justice Antonin Scalia in a publicly stated minority decision from the bench for this “elitist” decision, which virtually rejected the moral conscience and traditional morality of millions both today and historically. This decision actually contradicted an earlier traditional decision by the Court, which had called Georgia’s anti-sodomy laws legal and legitimate.

The foundation has been laid therefore for the complete legal recognition of this pathology as normal and legitimate. This is a very offensive, appalling, or frightening proposition for a majority of Americans. A study cited in the article “The Homosexual Exception” in the New York Times Magazine (February 8, 1998) deplored the fact that “suburban Americans are surprisingly tolerant of everyone but gay men and lesbians . . . Middle-class American have not come to the conclusion that homosexuality represents an alternative that is the moral equal of any other.”

Although the elite classes in Maine pushed a gay rights law through the legislature supported by popular governor Angus King, a referendum supported by Christian conservatives repealed it February 10, 1998. It was called “The People’s Veto” and was supported by such questions as, “Do you believe that church-run schools and day-care centers should be protected from lawsuits by homosexual activists?” and “Should parents object to the teaching of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle in the public schools” It claimed that minority rights belonged only to those with “unchangeable characteristics, proof of widespread discrimination and political powerlessness.” A majority of the people decided that the homosexual community failed to meet any part of this paradigm. Their discrimination bill was declared bogus and unmasked as simply one more indirect, covert and devious effort to legitimize their lifestyle. Ten states, however, have passed gay rights laws.

The Gay agenda insists upon minority recognition equivalent to categories of race, gender and the disabled. More than any other group, they want to impose their values on American society and furiously attack any who oppose them, accusing them of intolerance. They are not satisfied with a tolerance defined as “putting up” with their behavior, but rather they want homosexuality recognized as the moral equivalent of heterosexuality. In fact they want recognition as a separate sex, one of five which includes male, female, homosexual, lesbian and transsexual. Many insist upon the right to “same sex” marriages. This is a new and perverted definition of tolerance, which views all ideas, moralities and lifestyles as morally equivalent. As Newt Gingrich lesbian sister and gay activist Candace has asserted, “Mere tolerance is not enough.” Because it waters down moral values, this “virtue” of unlimited tolerance has correctly been called the last surviving value of a failed society.

Gay rights advocates are desperate to be recognized as possessing a legitimate lifestyle. To achieve a certain acceptance through anti-discrimination ordinances is one thing, but the only real legitimacy would come through their acceptance as part of America’s social and family structure. Two major efforts are being made in the courts to achieve this goal: (1) The legal adoption of children by gay couples, and (2) the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. The courts in New Jersey recently okayed the adoption of a male child by two homosexual males living together. Gays hope that other states will follow this lead. Hawaii is in the process of legalizing same-sex marriages. Traditionally marriages and divorces performed in one state have always been recognized in all the others. DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by the Congress and signed by the President was enacted to bypass this tradition. The liberal legal profession in America is on the side of gay marriage and homosexual adoption of children as witnessed by 90% of the articles on the subject in legal writings. It may be only a matter of time before the federal government acquiesces and the Supreme Court gives complete recognition to the gay life style and family. Dr. Paul Gibson of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in an official government report wrote, “All youth need to be provided with positive information about homosexuality that presents it as a viable adaptation. We must accept homosexual orientation in young people in the same manner we accept heterosexual orientation. Finally, we need to assist gay and lesbian young people in the coming out process.”

More and more major corporations are providing partner benefits to homosexual couples. This was fostered originally by a Hollywood organization encouraged by Michael Eisner of the Disney Corporation and others in the popular culture sphere. The National Education Association has a strong gay and lesbian lobby which has encouraged the public schools to teach the legitimacy of the gay sexual lifestyle to children from the beginning grades using homosexually oriented readers, such as, “Heather Has Two Mommies.” Efforts have been made to declare a universally observed gay rights month during the school year.

What gays are trying to force on the public schools has been fostered on the university level for several years. Included on come campuses are gay counseling sessions and even special rooms set aside for the exploration of one’s sexual identity under the guidance and control of homosexuals. Might we consider this a predatory program? Many gays have a great drive to reproduce themselves as much as possible from among the so-called “straight’ population.

The legalization of homosexual “marriage” will open a Pandora’s Box of perversion throughout our culture. It will mean that no sexual degeneracy or licentiousness, including sadomasochism, Pedophilia, or even polygamy will be considered “off limits.” The big question is will the culture elite in our nation finally succeed in redefining the family and erasing the ideal of traditional morality from American society? It seems that we are well on our way to this conclusion.

One of the major arguments for curbing the gay agenda is the practical danger of homosexuality as a certain public health menace. The average life span of homosexuals is 42 years, not including those with the HIV virus. If you include those with AIDS, the lifespan average drops to 39. Both these figures compare to the average male lifespan in America of about 75 years. The sexual practices of homosexuals are so depraved and bizarre, I don’t even want to include their description. It is sufficient to say that the practices of anal and oral sex have been proved to spread many kinds of disease. These sexually transmitted diseases number as many as ten and include several fatal illnesses, such as hepatitis and AIDS.

The gay agenda has for the first time intimidated public health officials into turning a dangerous epidemic into a political issue. It is unconscionable to insert the issue of privacy into this concern when so many lives, especially babies, are at stake. The fact that the gay organizations have been able to hide the identity of HIV carriers, even pregnant mothers, speaks volumes about their political clout. Never before has a communicable disease of epidemic proportions had this kind of protection. Public health departments and the national Center for Disease Control should be severely censured for succumbing to this kind of “politically correct” pressure.

There are 40,000 new HIV cases in America each year; one youth becomes infected every 20 minutes. Medical science knows how to keep epidemics from exploding out of control, but the gay lobby has suppressed tracing the carriers and stopping them from infecting new victims. Every effort to identify those who are infected is inhibited. Gays have intimidated the medical profession just as they have the psychologists and psychiatrists. Public health officials have “refused to take the tough measures necessary to curb the epidemic’s spread, opting for political expediency over the public’s health. People have died while gay community leaders played politics with the disease, putting political dogma ahead of the preservation of human life.” AIDS did not just happen in America; it was permitted to happen by those who were entrusted with the responsibility to safeguard the public health. “The primary responsibility of halting deadly diseases has been abandoned. The traditional methods of disease prevention have been trashed by the politics of AIDS and the scare tactics of some AIDS activists. For many health experts, testing the political waters has become more important than testing for AIDS.” Discovery and prevention of a deadly communicable disease has thus been politicized and compromised in the arena of civil rights. This is outrageous insanity. (Dr. Carl Savitch, “AIDS: The Only Infection Disease Given Free Rein,” The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, March 29, 1998, p. 37.)

The case can easily be made that HIV/AIDS is essentially a “gay venereal disease.” Except for some illicit heterosexual infection, use of infected needles by drug users, and transfusions with infected blood the spread of HIV has not invaded the general population as much as some had anticipated. It is sufficient to say that those who keep God’s rules for human behavior as described in the Bible have very little to fear from this disease. Some in America are innocent victims, but as the Bible predicts (Romans 1:27), “Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” It couldn’t be stated more plainly than that, but gays are in denial and have an intense prejudice against this conclusion. The leading act of depravity; namely, sodomy, which caused God to call this practice an abomination, can be described as taking the organ God intended to be used for procreation and life and sticking it in a sewer used for excrement and waste. Like any kind of idolatry, it is a slap in the face of the Creator.

IX. HEDONISM--THE QUEST OF PLEASURE IN THE , “
REALM OF THE PHYSICAL

James Reston, the venerable New York Times columnist, when asked to comment on the America he knew before he died, replied that he had viewed with amazement America change from Puritanism to Hedonism in one generation.

The Declaration of Independence presents the pursuit of happiness as one of the fundamental or “unalienable” rights--a truth that is considered self-evident or axiomatic. Note that it does not guarantee happiness, simply the opportunity to have the liberty to pursue it. Hedonism pursues pleasure in the fulfillment of the physical drives both natural and artificially created, and is the reason for drugs, pornography, sexual recreation, and most forms of visual and physical entertainment.

The Biblical view is that happiness is far more than a physical fulfillment. Jesus said that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions or his toys. It is found or stumbled upon when pursuing one’s duty. When one does what is right, he finds happiness. The Psalmist said, “Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of mockers.” This man’s delight was in the law of the Lord--the Word of God--the commandments of God for human life. True happiness is thus found pursuing or seeking and finding the purpose of God for one’s life.

The spiritual dimension of happiness is far stronger than the physical. The physical has its place but is not an end in itself, because man was created to be like God. There is a balance mentioned in the New Testament: Paul’s suggestion-- “Bodily exercise profits a little, but rather exercise yourself unto godliness.” This is because man was made for God and finds his fulfillment in finding God’s way and doing His will.

Jesus therefore said that the happy man could even be one who was poor in spirit, pure in heart, was a mourner, a peacemaker, and one who was persecuted for righteousness sake.

The Puritan idea of happiness, alluded to by Reston, included self-discipline, diligence, responsibility, self-control, self-sacrifice, love for others, allegiance to duty, and even practicing sex within the marriage relationship where it is “undefiled”; in other words keeping God’s rules for human behavior. It was the pursuit of happiness in this manner and using this code of values and behavior which helped to make America a great nation. The pursuit of physical pleasure for its own sake will tear any nation down, because it can easily become destructive. It is rooted in selfishness and was the basis for the decline and disintegration of many civilizations in the past.

Hedonism is concerned with going my own way instead of God’s way. Its theme song is “I Did It My Way!” It is therefore closely akin to the very nature of sin. Isaiah 53:6--”All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way.” This is selfishness--unrestricted self-expression--which is the simplest theological definition of sin.

The Biblical approach to happiness is always tied in with seeking and doing the will of God. Matthew 6:33--”Seek first to make God the King of your life and his right ways, and all these material things which you need will be taken care of.” In other words, put God first and He will help you care for your other needs. The Psalmist summarizes it: “Delight yourself also in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” (37:4)

This is the same as the emphasis in the Old Testament, the 5th book of the Torah or the Pentateuch--Deuteronomy, which means “a second law.” This book is a summary by Moses in a series of sermons--a review of everything that God had revealed to Moses written in the previous books. One of its main themes, repeated over and over again, is that fulfilling God’s laws or keeping the commandments is done for the purpose of a happy life. In other words,

God’s purpose in giving us His rules for human behavior is that our lives may be prosperous and successful. The rationale is that God created us. He loves us and knows what is best for us. We lost the capacity to know the right way and to control ourselves; therefore, He gave us rules for the best kind of human behavior. It is proper that we obey Him because He gave us the chance for life. Furthermore, His plan for our lives helps us achieve our greatest potential and find our optimum fulfillment. This is the right and only way to find true happiness.

X. BIG AMORAL GOVERNMENT

Huge bureaucracies, which always become vested self-interests, are strangling our nation with regulations, absorbing its resources and choking its progress and its freedoms. Many of the tenets of the Communist Manifesto have been adopted by the American system, which began to develop a creeping socialistic philosophy in the 1930’s. Socialism presupposes a strong central control; and government in America has almost taken on a life of its own, like some giant, impersonal machine which threatens the freedoms of the American people. To say “The era of big government is over” is only wishful thinking or demagoguery unless efforts are made to radically slash the existing bureaucracies to about half their size. Majority leader Dick Armey, representative from Texas, and other responsible Republicans have said that the federal government should be cut in half.

Popular sovereignty or the will of the people has been violated again and again. The Constitution has been violated until it seems little more than a monument to the past or a venerable scrap of paper. The American people have been seduced into looking to a big nanny government instead of to themselves, their opportunities and to their God for their ultimate well-being and progress. Government is the god of socialism as man is the god of the secular humanist. Vice-President Al Gore recently recommended that Americans should regard their government as a nurturing grandma or grandpa. So the “nanny state” could become the “nanna” or “nampa” state which dramatically illustrates the liberals’ commitment to socialism. Many of these assumptions have their roots in the atheism of the old European traditionalists of Marxist socialism.

The pursuit of happiness has been funneled for many in the population through the halls and caverns of the vast bureaucracy. For those on welfare it has destroyed the work ethic and undermined incentive and initiative, creating a dependency which has multiplied and spread to several generations. The socialist organizing of public education, like a planned economy, has introduced a whole new “politically correct” agenda and completely undermined incentive for improvement. It has caused a dumbing down of American education to the extent that our students test on a level equivalent to third world nations. In the most recent international exam including 23 nations, in fact, American high school seniors ranked next to the last in math and dead last in physics.

The leftist-liberal control of education through the teaching of neo-pagan, post modern universities and the radical, politically and financially motivated national teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, are fast destroying the American public education system. Value neutral education also has undermined the traditional virtues of our nation, denying the values of faith, honesty, diligence, dependability, responsibility, integrity and everything that used to make up moral character. These universal values are therefore gradually being deleted from public life. The values of self-discipline, self-control, and self-denial have been replaced by self-expression, self-indulgence and self-esteem, exalting human selfishness to the level of civil liberties. And selfishness is the simplest theological definition of sin.

It is insisted that all government programs be value free, unencumbered by moral judgments. This makes the solving of problems, which are caused by moral weakness and depravity, impossible. The asking of moral questions is not even permitted as a matter for discussion.

The Christian religion and the morality of the Ten Commandments are seen by the pagan secularist leftists as a great danger to the society and government. Therefore everything that smacks of religion should be forbidden to government. The doctrine of the separation of church and state is not interpreted by them, therefore, as a protection of religion from the state, which was the motive of the Founding Fathers. They have perverted this view by reversing the emphasis. The state must be protected from religion and, if possible, the state should be separated from God. This is a core value of atheistic Marxist-Leninist-Socialism and is alive and well among liberals in America today. This is why, as Bill Bennett says, the “culture elite” hate the original American heritage and culture because it was moralistic, Biblical, and Judeo-Christian.

The Constitution of the United States was created by the American people and serves as a guide and even a contract between the people and their government. The Constitution begins “We the People,” teaching us that the people are sovereign. Self-government is what our Founders called it. The people are therefore the ultimate authority. When government exceeds its delegated powers and responsibilities and tells the people what to do and runs roughshod over the people’s will, the guide is violated and the contract is damaged to the point of being broken. Overweening bureaucratic regulations and enforcers combined with arrogant judges who place their own political biases, prejudices and ideologies above the written law by twisting the meaning of the constitution and manipulating jurisprudence have become a great danger to the people’s freedom and the continuing viability of our Republic.

For many, our American government has become like another great Marxist-like monster as we have moved gradually closer to the discredited model of the Soviet Union with its planned economy and repression of individual freedoms when they are at odds with the leftist vision. Leftism has a totalitarian bent. Big government in America, borrowing from a Marxist vision, has been moving us inexorably in the direction of a kind of totalitarianism.


EPILOGUE

We still are theoretically organized in America around representative government. We are a republican democracy. An enlightened electorate can still make a difference, although it is becoming more difficult because of leftist propaganda, corruption and the “bribery” power of lobbies and vested interests. Notice the apparent ease with which the left blocked much of the Republican conservative program promoted by the 104th Congress. Impeachment and the power to amend the Constitution are still available to effect a balance of power. Maybe the sleeping giant at the grass roots level can be awakened, become properly informed, and be willing to act honestly and responsibly. Lincoln, with his own unique understanding of the Constitution and American history, told us that we could be a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Our Constitution begins with the words “We, the people of the United States, . .” This, however, is a frustrated ideal in America today.

We can always have hope since the polls tell us that in general the majority of the common people still are possessed of common sense. Here are some recent statistics from the Gallup News Service:

(1) 73% of Americans favor a school prayer amendment;
(2) 58% favor teaching creationism as an alternative to evolution in the public schools, i.e., teach it as a viable option considering the phenomenal design of the universe, the earth and life;
(3) 59% favor school choice;
(4) 82% favor English declared to be our official language in the USA.
(5) 56% oppose all abortions except to save the life of the mother.
(6) 57% favor the ban on partial birth abortions, which number would be much larger if people knew what it entailed. Even Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it was “too close to infanticide,” but many of your board members supported it, such as Edmond Browning and Joan Campbell.
(7) 67% oppose homosexual marriages. I am sure that a larger number than this would vehemently oppose a homosexual clergy.
(8) 73% oppose the legalization of marijuana.
(9) 71% favor reducing the size of government by shrinking all government agencies.
(10) 71% favor a two year cut off in welfare funds in favor of work.
(11) 83% oppose racial preferences in jobs and school admission policies.

Truly religious people have been accused of being extremists. Liberals will read this paper and think that our statements and conclusions are extreme. According to the above poll results, however, most of the American people believe like the so-called extremist right. This is because the conservative philosophy is the traditional heritage of our nation. The majority of Americans’ beliefs and opinions are far closer to the Christian Coalition than they are to the Interfaith Alliance, to the Hollywood crowd, to 90% of the media, to most in academia, and to the Rainbow Coalition gang, such as the ACLU, the PAW, NOW and the National Education Association. These are the liberal elite whom Thomas Sowell has dubbed “The Anointed” because they consider themselves and their ideas superior to average Americans.

We still have a strong, religious base with traditional moral convictions in our nation. But God said through the prophet Hosea, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (4:6) We must have well-informed citizens so that rational decisions can be made unsullied by a smokescreen of deceit. The future of our nation depends upon the quality of self-discipline and self-government, which we can muster in the muddy waters of these confused days. An economic solution is not enough. The answer is in the realm of the moral and the spiritual--what our Founding Fathers would have called Christian character and integrity--rooted in the Judeo-Christian value system of our heritage. Unfortunately this value orientation has been ruthlessly subtracted from our educational system, and youth are being brainwashed by public schools and universities in leftist ideas which are in complete contradiction to our historical heritage. Through the technique of revisionist history or a perversion of the historical record, youth are being taught a completely different concept of what it has meant to be American, and God has been removed as much as possible from all societal equations.

Also multiculturalism, born of cultural relativism which says that all cultures are equal, is producing a balkanization of America, emphasizing many competing values and idea systems. This movement encouraged in leftist educational circles with the purpose to create an entirely different America is gradually submerging and erasing the knowledge of and belief in our heritage, which was rooted in Biblical values and ethics. No society has ever survived long with a multiplication of competing value systems.

This all is a part of the globalist vision which says that the physical national boundaries are the next barrier which should be erased among human beings. Supporters of this philosophy want wide open borders with no restrictions on immigration just as between our states. Even Walter Cronkite has gotten on this band wagon. Leftist organizations, such as the Ford Foundation, have funded groups which endorse these ideas, such as the Hispanic Aztlan movement, which wants to carve out a Spanish state from lands in the southwestern United States once owned by Mexico. Prominent editors, journalists, and news reporters as well as academic and some political leaders are favorably disposed to this globalist ideal.

The new doctrine of multiculturalism, furthermore, automatically demeans both our Judeo-Christian heritage and America’s uniqueness. Ultimately it really seeks to undermine patriotism and endorse globalism. Vice President Al Gore in support of multiculturalism completely misstated our national motto in a grand faux pas which, contrary to their treatment of Dan Quayle, the media has utterly ignored. Showing his ignorance of our history and purpose as a nation, he mistakenly said our national motto E Pluribus Unum means “Out of one, many” instead of “Out of many, one.” Multiculturalism, which Gore was falsely trying to make a part of our heritage, is a Trojan horse, a fraud, intended to attack and undermine our American culture, tradition and history. American values are demeaned and mocked, our Founding Fathers and heroes are attacked, and our history is revised to highlight all our warts and imperfections so that students will reject any notion of nationalism or patriotism.

This is at the heart of the new revised standards for American history which are intended to guide publishers in the choice and promotion of school history textbooks. I repeat, it is part of an attempt by the “culture elite” to brainwash our children in a new set of values and world view. As Abraham Lincoln observed what is taught in the school classroom will be reproduced in our society and government for years to come.

Our nation is in the process of rapid moral decline and is becoming more and more vulner-able. In the opinions of many prominent Christian thinkers and leaders, America may eventually lose our moral legitimacy as a civilized nation. (See five articles entitled “The End of Democracy,” First Things, November 1996, pp. 18-42) We could even soon lose our status as a superpower and eventually sacrifice much of our capacity to be a viable culture. No society can prosper or even continue to exist for long with these ten destructive demonic influences destroying its foundations, seducing the body politic. We are rapidly surrendering and even disparaging our moral integrity as a society. Many are seriously wondering, “Is there yet hope?” Maybe more apropos are the words of God describing a paganized, immoral and soon to be doomed Judah to the prophet Jeremiah, “Shall I not avenge myself on a nation like this?”

Rev. James M. Murk
Murk Family Ministries, Inc.
P.O. Box 873, Mt. Juliet, TN 37122