Crying out against the State of Texas

As John the Baptist cried out against the sin of King Herod, saying "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife," so today the Voice of John blog cries out against the Government of Texas, saying, "It is not lawful for you to have the children of the FLDS sect."

I have zero religious support for the FLDS religion, or the mainstream LDS religion, for that matter. I have no doubt that things are going on at the FLDS YFZ ranch which I could never condone. However, it appears that the vast majority of these things are legal, and it appears that the State of Texas has produced no concrete evidence in court of abuse and/or imminent danger to the 437 it has unlawfully kidnapped. And even if the state does manage to produce such evidence, it looks like it would only be able to prove this happened in some families, giving them no warrant whatsoever for kidnapping the other children. Constitutional protections in such cases are in place to protect real rights. They do an imperfect job of this, but to sweep them away is to oppress and persecute people. For Christians to support this is to participate in state sin. God held David responsible for authorizing the murder of Uriah on his behalf; I expect He would hold me responsible for authorizing the state to kidnap children on my behalf.

Before siding with the state in this matter, please educate yourself by reading at the Common Room. Please do not shield yourself from opposing points of view. You may find that your initial impressions based on what you hear in the news are false and not based on fact. You may "think" or "feel" now that these children should be taken away, but people should not go to jail based on a feeling, and children should not be taken away from their parents based on a feeling, either. One of our God-given protections in this land is the presumption of innocence until we are proven guilty. Suspicion of guilt is not enough to authorize the state to take action. And unless you have truly investigated things, your feeling is mere suspicion. "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." (John 7:24) You shall not follow a multitude to do evil. (Exodus 23:2)

I have been asked for some suggestions about what people can do to help in this matter. I have brainstormed some suggestions. I am only confident of the effectiveness of the first two.

Things which I know will help:

• Fast and pray, for the children, and for the parents


• Purpose in your heart before God that you will never support similar injustice. Agencies like this could not function if the whole public did not support them and accord them a level of trust which is completely undeserved. Go look at the number of people who say "I think such and such about FLDS. I haven't read any opposing views and what I know about FLDS I heard in the mainstream media. I support the government in this." That is the true source of this tragedy.

Other things which might help:

• Find out how to foster FLDS children. Make your home a loving temporary refuge for them. Don't try to change them. Allow their parents to come live with them if possible, or at least to see them if possible.


• Tell people the truth. If they are supporting this action and are unaware of the things you know of, ask them to read the things you have read. If they will not do that, ask them why not. Ask them their sources for what they believe, and lead them to investigate those sources. Remind them that for the Christian, the end can never justify the means. "Shall we do evil that good may come?" Absolutely not! (Romans 3:8)


• Attempt to find a way to privately help finance someone's custody battle. They will do much better with a privately-funded attorney than a state attorney.


• Help set up a legal defense fund, in fact. I don't know how to do this. I wish there were such a fund to help, run by non-Mormons, but assisting these FLDS, and committed to Constitutional law. Such a fund would abandon anyone who truly committed abuse to whatever horrors the government wants to inflict on them, but would seek to protect the rights of everyone who did not.


• If you live in Texas, attempt to contact your representatives as well as the people involved here. Tell them that the legal protections that they are skipping are a right you are unwilling to give up and are unwilling to see removed from other people in your name by your agents and representatives.


• It's my personal belief that people outside of Texas should not tell people inside what to do, and vice versa. Nevertheless, if you do not live in Texas and do not share this conviction, you might want to mount some federal campaign. Alternatively, I see nothing wrong in saying, "I don't live there, but what you people are doing is WRONG. We see it and are taking notice."


• Preach to state officials like John the Baptist. Remind them that God is watching them and that "It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that, to face the judgment," and that they must give an account for the deeds which they have done in the flesh. Majority vote or government appointment will not shield them from responsibility in That Day.


• Make sure your own state isn't legally authorized to do things like this.


• Protest. In public, in groups.


• Contact conservative talk radio hosts and persuade them of the importance of advocating for Constitutional rights in this matter


• Speak to your church leaders about the subject. They have a flock they should be leading in this matter


• Oppose welfare and government subsidized loans. The FLDS sect likely benefited from both of these, and both are sinful programs which Christians should not support, anyway. The state likely could have forced the end of the FLDS group by ceasing to distort the free market like this. No violence or sin would have been needed. This is one of many cases where the state has caused a problem it is now using as an excuse to claim more power.


• Enlist the support of your congregation for any of these suggestions


• For the really serious: pack up your car and drive to Eldorado. Cook, do chores, and otherwise take care of FLDS women (and possibly men, too), so that they can devote themselves full time to seeking the welfare of their children. In this way you can be a personal testimony to them as well as to the world. I have no doubt that there are plenty of wrong things about the FLDS; the Scripture says, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Of course, right now the FLDS parents may welcome mundane chores to take their minds off of the tragedy they are going through; don't insist on offering unwanted help. Take your children along with you; keep them with you at all times; bring your spouse and/or your children's grandparents, if possible, or a group of several adults. In this way you will be offering quite a testimony to the world, about many things.


• If you can get in touch with the FLDS, watch for news items that quote them and put them in a bad light. They are quite naive about many things, and this is probably hurting their case in the court of public opinion (which is very much where this thing is being judged). Offer them advice on how they can bolster their case; things not to say, things which should be said differently. Stress the importance of competent legal counsel.


• Convince the FLDS to sell or mortgage the YFZ compound and use the proceeds to purchase the best legal help money can buy for any parents who are innocent of sexual activity with children under 16 since 2005, or under 14 before 2005. Explain to them that while the state provides free counsel, the state is still footing the bill, and therefore there is every reason to expect the suggestions offered to them will not be quite as good as they could get by paying for advice themselves.

Totalitarians looking for another name

Leftist politicians are abandoning the word "liberal" in favor of the word "progressive." Of course, they pretend they are fighting to restore the original definition of "liberal," which meant being in favor of freedom, which they definitely are not. But as we know, it's politically expedient to claim that things which are not freedom and liberty actually are freedom and liberty. Like democracy, for example.

I know a bunch of libertarians who would love to have the word back. That's what it used to mean. Of course, it's truly bizarre to see advocates of religious faith in government like Hillary Clinton pretend to care that liberal doesn't mean liberty anymore.

I'm fine with them labelling themselves progressives. I just hope there will always be an extremely large number of people like me around to point out that the "progress" that they want is totalitarian. What this world does NOT need is just the "right" leaders in charge so that we can finally make "progress." True progress would be liberty.

A couple of years ago my local city politics had a group calling itself "Moving [our city] Forward." I opposed it, of course. What utter dreck! You'll never hear a politician who doesn't say things along the lines of "a vote for me is a vote for moving forward; I just think we need to move forward," etc.

Free human beings don't define "moving forward" like a collective, like a communist nation, like the Borg. The only meaningful definition of "progress" at the government level is the progressive elimination of government itself. Want to make progress today? Call one of your agents in government and tell them to stop doing anything, and especially to stop taking money from your neighbors and telling them what they can and cannot do. And convince your neighbors to do the same. Help build a world where we don't gladly hand out the reigns of tyranny to people who promise to make the most "progress." That would be a world where anyone who stands up and says "put me in charge, I'll help us make progress" doesn't get a single vote.

What is permitted

Al Sharpton says, "We must have a broad discussion on what is permitted and not permitted in terms of the airwaves.".

Dear Al Sharpton,

Read the First Amendment.

It's a despicable thing to make hurtful comments based on someone's skin color. But it's an even more despicable thing to threaten to use the law to take away somebody's freedom, and to encourage a society that thinks it is right to decide what is and is not permitted for other people. The former hurts feelings. The latter ultimately results in either free people submitting to enslavement, or free people having government force used against them when they refuse to submit. In the end, when you tell people you think there should be a law against certain things they say, you are telling them that you authorize your representatives to act in your behalf and pick up a gun to threaten those people. That's not right, and it's far worse than simply saying something hurtful.

"We" don't need to have any such discussion, Mr. Sharpton. If I own a printing press, I'll decide what gets printed on it. If I own a radio station, I'll decide what gets broadcast on it. If you have a problem with that, get your own press or station and quit trying to take (or control) what doesn't belong to you.

Pizza for pesos, part two

Pizza Patrón has announced their intention to continue accepting the Mexican Peso at their stores. Good for them! I'm sure they are making a lot of money off of this service. Good for them! Unless somebody was using force to affect the transaction (for example, by pointing a gun at someone, or passing a law requiring authorities to point a gun at someone), such voluntary transactions mean that people were served, and society, on balance, advances. In general, they will prosper in proportion to the value of the service they provide.

Money liberty is a freedom we don't often think about. The authors of the United States Constitution intended American money to be limited to gold and silver. It is impossible for the government to inflate the supply of gold and silver. Inflation is a means of stealing some value from the entire money supply and using it to create new (stolen, counterfeit) money. It is a violation of Leviticus 19:35-36. Inflation does not add value to the total money supply; it merely redistributes the value that already exists. (And unlike other government programs, it usually doesn't make any pretense of redistributing the value to the poor. This value tends to go to bankers and other credit-driven industries like real estate.) After millenia of human existence, the free market had selected gold and silver as money, the medium of human exchange. Governments used force to confiscate gold from their citizens and force their populations to use paper money instead, giving government powers over the money supply, such as inflation. (They call this power "flexibility.")

The sole reason government insists on paper money is in order to have this power over the money supply. If left to the free market, trade would probably resume again in some commodity like gold or silver. Platinum has presented itself as a modern choice that some people think could be a good medium of exchange. In older times, some societies were known to trade in butter, cartwheels, and even cigarettes. But over time, gold and silver have always tended to win out as being the most convenient for trading.

If you own your property, you have the right to do whatever you want with it, including trade it to another property owner for whatever he is willing to trade for it. But we have decided that modern societies need to have limits on freedoms like this. We tell people they may keep their property, but then we limit what they may do with it. This is a violation of God's command that we honor private property: "Thou shalt not steal." If I tell you how to use your property, I've stolen it and left you as a mere custodian. On top of this fundamental abuse of freedom that occurred in order to bring about our present money situation, the whole reason for this system's existence is so that the government can create new dollars at will: in other words, so that the government can steal from every single dollar holder at once, any time it wishes. Is this a power that Christians should vote for?

The Constitution granted Congress the power to make coins out of gold and silver, and to establish their value. In its first act pertaining to money, the Congress declared the United States dollar would be equal to the amount of silver in a one ounce silver coin that was circulating at the time. This coin had a lengthy history: in the middle ages, some of the best silver coins came from the German area of Joachimsthal. The coins came to be known as the Joachimsthaler, or later the Thaler. If it's not obvious, this is where the name "dollar" came from. Eventually there were lots of sources for Thaler-sized coins, and they were all called Thalers or Dollars. It doesn't matter where an ounce of silver comes from as long as its the same weight as every other ounce.

Long before our modern paper money, the most popular coin for trade in America was a Thaler coin called the Spanish Milled Peso, or the Spanish Dollar. America's founders couldn't care less what was stamped on their silver and gold coins, as long as the coins were of the right valuable substance, and of the right weight. Even though America eventually started minting its own coins, Spanish Pesos and American Dollars circulated side by side for over a century. Nobody thought this was strange. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson -- all of them almost certainly traded in Spanish Pesos at some point in their lives, here in America.

Government came up with the idea that it should have a monopoly on coin production within its territory. It started teaching its people the idea that they should use only their own national coins, as a matter of national pride. Almost all governments did this. Eventually governments passed laws to try to require people to use their own national currencies in most day to day transactions. This was just a step on the road to currency the government could inflate. (If everybody can switch to gold or silver coins from another country or a private mint, then they will do so the minute the government starts issuing inflated coins with less gold or silver in them. Competition, the free market, protects people's interests far better than any government.) Search your Constitution -- you'll find the power to mint coins granted to the federal government, you'll find the power to mint coins and the power to issue paper money denied to the States, you'll find an amendment that says the federal government doesn't have any powers that aren't granted to it by the Constitution (this is in an Amendment because the original writers of the Constitution thought it was obvious). If you compare with the previous Articles of Confederation, you'll find that the phrase used to grant Congress the power to mint coins originally contained permission to issue paper money -- this was intentionally taken out when the sentence was moved to the Constitution. What you won't find in the Constitution is the right for the federal government to monopolize money. You won't find any sentence granting them the right to require people to use American coins. In 1920 it took an Amendment to the Constitution to give the federal government the right to outlaw alcohol. Why did it not take an Amendment to give Congress the power to monopolize money, or issue paper bills?

If you'll check this link, you can see how much value has been stolen from American dollars. Originally, a dollar was one ounce of silver, or one twentieth of an ounce of gold. How much silver is a dollar worth now? How much gold?

Given that America's founders used coins like the Spanish silver Peso interchangeably with American Dollars, and intended us to continue doing so, I find the uproar over Pizza Patrón's private business decision to take Mexican paper Pesos to be somewhat out of place. A more appropriate uproar would be one against the criminals in government who violated the Constitution and required us to start using fake paper dollars.

Pizza for pesos!

Pizza Patrón has announced their intention to continue accepting the Mexican Peso at their stores. Good for them! I'm sure they are making a lot of money off of this service. Good for them! Unless somebody was using force to affect the transaction (for example, by pointing a gun at someone, or passing a law requiring authorities to point a gun at someone), such voluntary transactions mean that people were served, and society, on balance, advances. In general, they will prosper in proportion to the value of the service they provide.

One reason people want to restrict immigration is because of security concerns. It's true that right now we are at great risk from people sneaking in to the country who might desire to harm us. We certainly need some diligence. But private property is a better way to resolve this. I don't let people on to my property unless I trust them. If we all followed the same policy, we'd be a lot safer than we are now. All of us would be on the lookout for dangerous or suspicious individuals. But unfortunately we have this "we are in this together" mindset about so much that "we" do. This mindset is just another name for socialism. We've socialized large portions of the land of this country, including land along the borders, and we've socialized the service of defending that land. The result of socialism is always that resources are misallocated.

Another reason people want to restrict immigration is to "protect American jobs." But this is a wrong position to take. There's nothing better about Americans than other people. It's not moral to use American guns to protect American jobs, period. Besides, America's economy would be better served if we allow the free market to make things more efficient. More efficient generally means lower costs, which generally means some people are going to have to find another line of work. Again, this is better for all of us.

People are also concerned about immigration because of our government's policy of giving so many free handouts. These handouts generally go even to illegal immigrants, and they consist of resources stolen from other people. Obviously these handouts are sinful and harmful, but as Walter Williams is fond of saying, "That's a problem of socialism, not a problem of freedom." In other words, if your socialism means you need to restrict my freedom, the real solution is that your socialism needs to be eliminated, not that my freedom should be curtailed.

God's immigration policy to Israel was amazingly broad: "You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Exodus 23:9) Over and over again the same sentiment is expressed. If somebody comes in, they are allowed to stay, unless they are stealing and harming people. Most of the thievery in our nation is committed by the government, not immigrants.

Prohibiting people from immigrating amounts to a sinful theft of property rights: you are denying people the freedom to do what they will with their own property, which is to decide who is and is not allowed on it. It's sinful. It's also economically harmful.

More on Pizza Patrón tomorrow.

Jesus Christ, socialist?

Last month, Hugo Chavez was reinaugurated into office, saying, "I swear by Jesus Christ -- the greatest socialist in history." Was Jesus a socialist? Did the church which He founded (Matthew 16:18) and the apostles which He required all men to accept (Matthew 10:40) practice socialism?

Certainly not!

Socialism is practiced through state control. As we have seen, Christians are prohibited from exercising state control. Christians are also prohibited from practicing taxation, which is required in order to commit the redistribution of wealth that is the basis of socialism. Christians simply cannot be socialist.

But the early church was commanded to care for the poor, was it not? Isn't this the same as socialism?

No, there's one gigantic difference. Read Acts 5:4. "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?" Nobody in the Christian Church was required to give all of his property into common control, nor even a set percentage. Nobody was compelled to give. God left this all up to the freedom of each individual and their own personal sense of the obligation to God to help the poor in the name of Jesus (as well as their own individual judgment about holding the recipients accountable, which is required in certain ways, for example, by not helping those who refuse to work (II Thessalonians 3:10)).

Hugo Chavez doesn't offer anyone in his country the terms Peter did in Acts 5:4. Nobody in Venezuela is going to get the choice whether they want to participate or not. The state wants their possessions and industries to be socialized, and they will be. Chavez is taking the Lord's name in vain when he applies It to this.

The early Christian church did not practice socialism. The early Christian church practiced charity.

Compulsory education is slavery

Texas state Representative Wayne Smith wants to make it illegal for parents to miss parent teacher conferences, in order to encourage more parental responsibility.

As homeschooling parents, we're not worried about missing any parent teacher conferences. (Though according to the old joke, if you talk to yourself you only have to worry about yourself answering back...)

In a free society, free citizens can never be told what to do, where to go, when to be there, etc. The only exception to this is when a free citizen steps outside the law, by violating another person's right, and thus loses his freedom to the extent to which he took it away from someone else. (In older times, the term "outlaw" meant someone who had literally been deemed outside the protection of the law because he had chosen not to abide by the law.)

If we're telling grown parents where to go and when to be there, aren't we taking away their freedom? Of course we are!

But we crossed that line long ago. We tell the children where to go, right? We force the parents to make their children go to school. We've been violating the liberties of parents and children through compulsory schooling for almost one hundred fifty years.

The founders of the United States knew that the free market (the organic institution you get when you respect God-given liberties) furnished the best possible education. Until about 1850, every one of them was privately schooled, either through a private institution or at home. Literacy was near universal, and love of liberty reigned. Then some people who wanted to take away liberty decided it would be a good idea to have a centralized, universal education system so that all children could be educated in the same values. The result is over a century of indoctrination, and a society that is less educated and less interested in liberty. In fact, amazingly, lots of people see forcing children to go to school as being essential for liberty. The founders would've disagreed.

A book you might like to read on this subject is John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. You can buy the book, or read it for free online at the link provided. I promise it will open your eyes.

You might also like to know that Thomas Jefferson explicitly declared it to be wrong and inconceivable to violate the liberty of parents and children through compulsory schooling:

"It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father." (Note to Elementary School Act, 1817.)

Of course, in a free society, uninterfered with by criminal force (whether exercised by the state or others), people have natural incentives to see that their children receive the education they find to be most fitting. But the state has eliminated an enormous number of incentives for this. Chalk up Representative Smith's idea as yet another misguided attempt by the state to correct a problem caused by itself. The solution is less government, not more, Mr. Smith. Government IS the problem.

In earlier posts, I've proved that taxation is simply another name for stealing. Compulsory funding of education means robbing people to educate children. What kind of lessons does this teach? What kind of lessons does it teach when the children themselves and their parents and all of their neighbors have their liberty violated for the sake of this education? As an answer, think how many people (maybe even you, dear reader) will react negatively to this essay, asserting that the state (or society) does in fact have a claim to the lives of its citizens -- perhaps we should say its "subjects" -- and the right to violate their liberty in these ways. Yes, compulsory education teaches its lessons well.

Has God entrusted you with the authority to command other people what to do? I don't think so. Don't support the government doing so in your name.