No Men or Women needed to create a Child? I don’t think so.

The headline on the Drudge Report tonight is, “Babies without Men or Women”.  The link is to an article in the UK mail titled “No men OR women needed:  Scientists sperm and eggs from stem cells.”

My answer is that of course men or women are needed.  Where do you think the stem cells came from?

All scientists have managed to do is copy the natural process whereby the human body produces sperm or eggs, and they had to have the raw materials the body produces to do that.  It reminds me of the joke about a scientist who wanted to have a “man making” contest with God.  The scientist bends down and scoops up a handful of dirt to start with and God say, “No, no, no.  You go get  your own dirt.”

By the way, it’s the same thing with cloning.  If you could perfectly produce a clone, all you would have created is an identical twin.  Note that identical twins have different souls; individual minds, wills, emotions and spirits.  Unfortunately though most cloning doesn’t create an exact copy because it involves mixing genetic material which means short life spans and messed up genes.  The sperm and eggs created had similar problems.

Washington State’s “Same Sex Marriage” Law Affirms Traditional Marriage

Recently Washington State passed SB 5688, legislation which redefines the word “marriage” as effectively having a legal meaning of anything the State calls a registered domestic partnership. 

The ironic thing is that the text of the law itself actually affirms traditional marriage.

This is Section 3 of the bill, the first of many of nearly identical paragraphs being inserted by it all over in the Registered Code of Washington:

“…For the purposes of this code…the terms spouse, marriage, marital, husband, wife, widow, widower, next of kin, and family shall be interpreted as applying equally to state registered domestic partnerships or individuals in state registered domestic partnerships as well as to marital relationships and married persons….gender-specific terms such as husband and wife used in any statute, rule, or other law shall be construed to be gender neutral, and applicable to individuals in state registered domestic partnerships.”

Read the text again carefully:

“… the terms spouse, MARRIAGE, MARITAL, husband, wife, widow, widower, next of kin, and family shall be interpreted as applying equally to state registered domestic partnerships or individuals in state registered domestic partnerships as well as to MARITAL relationships and MARRIED persons…”

“…GENDER-SPECIFIC TERMS SUCH AS  HUSBAND AND WIFE used in any statute, rule, or other law shall be construed to be gender neutral…”

So the text of the bill itself upholds the meaning of the terms “marriage”, “marital”, “husband” and “wife” even while pretending to redefine them. 

Lower IQ Scores Demonstrated by… Someone…

This morning there was an AP article getting big exposure on several major news outlets:

“Lower IQ scores linked to prenatal pollution“

The article stated that during a recent study pregnant mothers were asked to wear backpacks designed to monitor pollution around them for 48 hours at some point during their last term of pregnancy.  Their subsequent children were IQ tested at the age of 5 before entering kindergarten, and the children whose mothers were exposed to the most pollution scored on average four or five points lower than some unspecified sub-group of the children whose mothers had experienced less exposure.

This must be cause and effect, right?  The children who scored lower must have done so because of all the nasty pollution their mothers were exposed to during pregnancy, correct? 

(By that logic, all rural people should be more intelligent than all people who live in major metropolitan areas, meaning that the most intelligent people consistently support conservative values rather than liberal ones.  But I digress.)

No, there’s not necessarily a direct cause and effect relationship.  A much more likely explanation would be that those pre-natal mothers who commuted the most were actually employed or doing something else useful that involves traveling on a regular basis.  And as such, they wouldn’t have had as much time at home to teach their children during the pre-kindergarten years. 

Who knows if that’s actually the case.  The article doesn’t provide enough information about the study to know exactly what was going on, and I can’t find documentation for it on the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health website (the site of the institute directed by the study’s primary author) or on any other site.  However I do notice that the Columbia Center’s “About the Center” page, their mission statement is listed as being to:

 ” improve the respiratory health and cognitive development of children and to reduce their cancer risk by identifying environmental toxicants, genetic susceptibility factors, and conditions related to poverty that increase their risk of disease. In turn, our research results are used to educate parents, families, and health professionals and inform prevention strategies and public policy to reduce levels of harmful environmental toxicants.”

So the group says up front that their goal is to inform (read: change) public policy. 

(Maybe that’s why the author hasn’t published the report on her group’s website; the “inform…public policy” clause in the mission statement might be taking precedence over the “educate parents, families, and health professionals” clause.  But again I digress.)

The logic fallacy of assuming that something is caused by something else just because the other thing happened first is known as post hoc ergo proctor hoc (after this, therefore because of this).  According to the website “Logic Fallacies and the Art of Debate“, “The conclusion is invalid, because there can be a correlation between two phenomena without one causing the other. Often, this is because both phenomena may be linked to the same cause.”

But I haven’t found this kind of critical reasoning being done yet by any of the major news outlets who are handling the story .  All I see is an endless list of reprints of the story’s headline, “Kids’ lower IQ scores linked to prenatal pollution”.

Well, maybe pollution and urban life really does result in people having lower IQs.

Is the United States a Christian nation?

This is a subject I’ve thought long and hard about.  I’m considering running for the Washington State legislature at some point, so this is an issue which has a direct impact on me.  Here are my thoughts:

I believe this nation is a Christian nation, yet only to the degree that Christians take part in representative government.

To understand the significance of the United States in history, I like to go back to Samuel Rutherford.  Rutherford was Presbyterian minister from Scotland who lived during the 1600’s.  He wrote a book that is considered seminal in the development of constitutional rule and limited government.  The book was called Lex, Rex (or, “The Law is King”).  The basic premise of the book is that everyone, even the King, is subject to the Law of God (Deuteronomy 17:14-19).  Therefore, instead of Rex Lex (the King is Law) which had been the way governments had functioned for literally millennia, Rutherford was proposing that there was a higher law, the Law of God, and everyone, even the King, is subject to it.

Skip forward a hundred years to the American Revolution.  The founding fathers of our nation were faced with a Parliament and King who had grown tyrannical in their desire to exploit the colonies for monetary gain.

The idea that everyone is subject to the law (even the government itself) is clear in the Declaration of Independence:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them…”

And -

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…”

Now as near as I can tell, the purpose of government according to the founders was to maximize happiness and individual freedom while safeguarding against tyranny and maladministration.  George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was a prototype to the Declaration of Independence, spells this out:

“…of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration…”

Now, pure democracy (rule of the majority) is, apart from constitutional protection for the rights of minorities, Rex Lex (the King is Law); only instead of tyranny of the despot it is tyranny of the majority.  The best example of this is the French Revolution.  It was mob rule – democracy in it’s purest form.  On a side note, theocracies are no better because law becomes subject to what the leading teachers and clerics say it should be, and thus it becomes an oligarchy – tyranny of a select group of people.

Abraham Lincoln – who penned those famous words, “government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” in his Gettysburg Address – recognized the danger of pure democracy and of oligarchies.  He spoke about this in his first inaugural address:

“Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.”

On another side note, I have read the Constitution of the Confederate States of America from the time during the civil war.  When I read it I was absolutely struck by how identical it is to the real U.S. Constitution.  It’s basically the same document, with the Bill of Rights, reorganized a little bit and with a few small changes in some sections.  A couple of the changes were enumeration of sections which implied slavery in the original, but the others were things most conservatives would like to change in the Constitution today; namely elimination of the general welfare clause from Article 1, Section 8, and the inclusion of a Presidential line item veto.

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes… (etc.)”

That clause, “collect Taxes…for the…general Welfare,” is one of the most hotly contested portions of the Constitution.  In those two words, “general Welfare,” resides the true power of self government for the people of the United States of America.  We can appoint legislators to represent us and they have the power to legislate for the common good of the people.  Many conservatives argue that the clause should be interpreted as meaning “what the founders intended to be the general Welfare,” or, “the general Welfare meaning those things listed below (i.e., to borrow money, regulate commerce, etc.)”  I used to hold to that interpretation myself but after reading extensively of documents from the founding period and reading the Constitution carefully I can find no such restriction.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the clause was intended by the founding fathers to give broad, discretionary power to congress in the interest of self government.

Getting back to the words from Lincoln’s inauguration, “A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people,” what struck me so much when I read the Constitution of the Confederacy is that it’s really no different from the Constitution of the government they’d just ceded from.  They didn’t really have a problem with constitutional self government, they just wanted it to be themselves who were in the majority.

That’s painful, because I believe that’s where much of the Christian conservative movement is today.  We were the majority about 30 years ago.  And now that the tide has begun to turn many of us want to rule as a minority through constitutional amendments, targeted legislation and narrow interpretations of the Constitution.

In reality, there is no substitute in American government for the influence and participation of common citizens.  All of the problems of government relate back to failure on the part of common citizens to know their legislators, follow what’s happening in the capitals, and voice their opinions to their leaders often and eloquently.  If a person is not doing this, they have no reason to complain about the lack of representation of their viewpoint in government.  And the schools.  And the colleges.  And the media.  And the arts.

In fact I believe that because God has blessed us Christians in the U.S. with the opportunity of living under a representative government, part of our ministry can and ought to be having influence in each of those areas, working with specific issues we care about, working with specific leaders (whoever happens to be in office); not working with a single party or following the interests of a narrow group, but each making up their mind, being fully convinced of what they stand for and where they can have the greatest influence for good.

So, is the U.S. a Christian nation?  That depends on what each of us in the U.S. who are Christians do with the rest of our day today.  And on what we do with our tomorrows.  Get involved.  Write your representatives about the specific bills on the table right now at the state and federal level.  If you live close enough, drive to your state capital and meet your legislators.  Join a school board.  Get a job as a broadcaster.  Adopt a child.  Those are the things you can do to impact this nation for Christ right now.

_________________________________________

After thought:  When as conservatives we make it our goal to de facto limit government without regard to whether it is good or justified (yes, some government is good and justifiable!) then what we really seek to limit is the people, because this is government of the people, by the people and for the people.  It amounts to a tacit admission that instead of representative republic, we’d rather see theocracy (tyranny of the religious leader’s interpretation) or oligarchy (tyranny of the minority) be the law of the land.

Viable Conservative Alternatives to Help Stop a Spiraling Economy

1.  Eliminate the Federal Reserve and restore Congress’ constitutional role of regulating money.
2.  Deal with AIG and the trading houses from an antitrust perspective instead of nationalization; break them up into smaller entities.
3.  Illegalize, monitor and penalize naked short selling.
4.  To lower government’s burden, immediately privatize the NEA, NEH, ED, USDA and DHHS, except for FDA.
5.  With the money saved, immediately eliminate all estate and payroll taxes.
6.  Legally change Social Security from being an entitlement to being a real insurance so it can’t be raided.
7.  Pledge to systematically reduce the amount of business regulation law on the books by 50% in volume within the next four years, starting with OSHA.
8.  Immediate deportation of all illegal aliens and completion of the Mexico border fence.  That’s not harshness; that’s respect for the rule of law and fairness for legal citizens.
9.  Initiate limited, “no strings attached” stimulus spending, including some FDR style “make work” programs, some investments in national infrastructure and limited TARP funds for companies created by antitrust enforcement.
10.  Fireside Chats (they worked).
11.  Remove speech and political activity restrictions on religious 501(c)(3)s.  This would do more to get ordinary people involved with politics than any other action we could take as a nation; The reason 501(c)(3) prohibitions arose in the first place was to discourage average citizens from being involved with politics.
12.  Drill baby, drill!

I don’t care if anyone says we can’t get all of these things, or that they might raise the ire of the other side of the aisle.  The fact is, if we can get any of these items they would be viable alternatives to help stop a spiraling economy.

President Obama – Taking his queues from Hugo Chavez?

The latest update on what the Obama Administration has planned for businesses:

 

Obama is calling for, “increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies…”

 

Marx’s class struggle at it’s purest.  And effective government seizure of privately owned companies going on to boot.  Not to mention plans for extensive use of the military inside of the nation’s borders.

So at this point the basic difference between President Obama and Hugo Chavez is…?

Alternative Marriage: A violation of Right to Privacy

Addendum added 4-6-09

The Supreme Court case which established Right to Privacy as a legal principle was 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut.  The plaintiff was Connecticut Planned Parenthood executive director Estelle Griswold, and she won an argument that Connecticut’s laws against birth control violated the citizens’ rights to privacy.  The Supreme Court agreed with her because they felt that Connecticut’s laws violated the right to privacy implicit in the sacred and inviolate institution of marriage.

Justice Douglas’ opinion from the case:

“We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights–older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.”

Justice Goldberg’s opinion from the case, in which he is quoting an earlier opinion in Olmstead v. United States by Justice Brandeis:

“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone–the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

The sanctity and inviolate nature of marriage was used as the legal, bedrock example of where a Right to Privacy exists for citizens.  By coming in and trying to force upon private citizens a new definition of marriage, the State of Washington is in effect declaring our Right to Privacy to be null and void.

Furthermore, if the State of Washington has the right to redefine what marriage is and force that definition on private citizens and institutions, then the State of Connecticut should have had the right in 1965 to prohibit birth control. 

On the other hand, if marriage is sacred and inviolate, and therefore protected by the constitutional Right to Privacy, then in 1973 Texas should have been able – human life itself being sacred and inviolate – to continue prohibiting abortion based upon the same constitutional Right for the unborn.

 

Addendum 4/6/09 – From personal correspondence with my friend Erik Engstrom:

Justice Douglas’ determination in Griswold v. Connecticut cited the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th amendments as creating a zone of privacy.  Forcing private organizations to legally recognize Gay Marriage violates the 1st – right of association - and the 9th – rights retained by the people; because it pits the secular humanist pursuit of happiness against the Judeo Christian pursuit of happiness and legally allows the former to impose their viewpoint over the latter. 

“Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers ‘in any house’ in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the ‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.’ The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: ‘The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.’”

Note that the status quo does not impose the Judeo Christian viewpoint over the secular humanist one; secular humanists already have a legal right to develop and form associations as they please and to petition for legal acknowledgement of any new type of union they want to institute.  And they could easily do this without trying to impose their viewpoint over an existing institution. 

The reason the GBLT Lobby and liberal Democrats are pushing for Washington State SB 5688 is that they actively want legal power to force their religious views on people who hold traditional Judeo Christian beliefs.  Representative Simpson’s letter to Barbara in Black Diamond amounts to a tacit admission of this (please click on the link and read the letter if you’ve never heard of this).

Therefore this legislation is a blatant violation of the separation of church and state, because the intent of the legislation is to legally define and promulgate one establishment of religion over another.

Saving the Republican Party

I believe when the annals of this nation’s history are completed some people will hold to the belief that the Republican party of this era did more to push the country towards socialism, compell it on a path to larger government and jeopardize the personal freedoms of it’s citizens than any other entity.

Not only have we threatened personal freedom through the Patriot Act, increased the national debt.  Our poor communication and leadership during the war on terror and the market crash have also contributed strongly towards ushering in a Democratic congress and a President Elect who are talking openly of moving our nation towards socialism.  We have deliverd the nation into their hands.  And as often as not when one of us speaks publicly to try to counter this tide we find ourselves trying to defend practices like wire tapping, water boarding, suspension of habeas corpus and creation of sweeping government agencies that have the ability to do Orwellian monitoring of private citizens.

How did we get to this point?

I recently asked myself that as I was pondering my own political journey this election season. 

As a 20 year supporter of the Republican party I had defended the Bush administration and its actions in the war on terror for most of the past five years.  It was only when the Republican presidential candidates started campaigning that I started to, for the first time in years, take a cold hard look at what the people in my party were saying and doing.  None of them were truly conservative fiscally and socially.  None shared a clear vision of where the party and the country should be lead in the future. 

The experience left me so disillusioned and confused I started taking a look at the Democratic candidates to see what they stood for.  The one who displayed the most conviction in his ideals, and the eloquence to relate them clearly as a leader, was the man who is now our President Elect - Barack Obama.  At one point I even considered voting for Obama because of his stance on lobbying ethics, pork barrel spending and stimulating the economy.  But that idea got dropped quickly when I learned of his role in blocking the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Illinois.  A leader who could support leaving a living child to die of neglect in a dark and dirty hospital closet is a leader who has neither the moral compass nor the sound judgement to make decisions about human life at a national level, however brilliant he may be in other areas.

It was only recently in the midst of this confusion that I happened to hear a speech being played on the Mark Levin radio show.  It turned out to be Ronald Reagan’s famous message, “A Time to Choose”, which he delivered at the 1964 Republican National Convention.  As I listened, I started to see again with clarity the reason why I became a Republican as a young man, and the reason why as Republicans we need desperately to return to our core values.

Right now the European style of socialism is becoming a popular idea in our nation.  Nothing could be further from the vision of our founding fathers.  America was intended to be the land of the free, and there can’t be freedom when the government is controlling all of its nation’s checkbooks and businesses. 

The following clips of Reagan speaking are long (40 minutes combined) and they perfectly describe what our nation is faced with today.  As you listen to them I hope that you will see what I see:  That a return to the conservative values of personal freedom and limited government is the only way of truly reconsolidating – and saving – the Republican party.

Week 18 Ultrasound: It’s a girl!

Beautiful profile shot of our little one.  18 weeks.  8 ounces.  She was moving all around, sucking her thumb, placing her hands over her ears.  A little bundle of life.  A small person.  Every finger in place.  Little toes.  Wrists.  Ribs.  A beating heart.  A miracle.

Did I mention she was sucking her thumb?

This is the miracle shot.  It’s the most amazing ultrasound image I’ve ever seen in my life.  This is the face of my daughter at 18 weeks.  How could anyone say she’s just a tissue mass?  She moves.  She reacts.  Her heart beats.  I’m not saying if someone has had an abortion they should be judged or there isn’t grace for them.  I’m just saying they should stop and realize this is a life, a person.  The choice was made four months ago.  The child is a blessing.  Always.  Period.

Politics: Was leaning toward’s Mike Huckabee but he lost me

I was leaning towards supporting Mike Huckabee as the Republican Presidential nominee, but he’s lost me over the course of the past couple of weeks and I’ve swung toward’s Fred Thompson, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve seen my facebook profile.

Here are the two things I’ve noticed about Huckabee that should scare every Evangelical:

 1.  Huckabee, when confronted with his positions, evades by telling jokes and giving very general statements which seem good but don’t have much substance.

2.  Huckabee’s campaign has been doing some really diabolical things.  First there were random calls made in South Carolina spreading an untruth that Fred Thompson supports partial birth abortion, and Huckabee himself responded in effect that, sorry, I can’t tell my supporters not to do that.  Then there was Ed Rollins, Huckabee’s campaign manager, telling the Washington Post that Thompson is just trying to take away votes from Huckabee so that he can bow out and give the votes to McCain.  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011703440_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008011800105)

 Yikes!  This is such a dismissive and disrespectful falsehood that it makes me think Rollins is also probably behind the deceptive calls in South Carolina.

OK, Here’s what I believe:  As a man’s administration is run, so is the man’s character.  There is no way Huckabee can be an on the level guy and have a campaign that is so devious.

 Do this.  Go to the different candidates’ web sites and read the white papers on thier positions, if they even have them.  I know Fred Thompson is the one that aligns most closely with what I believe.  You can come to your own conclusions.

But for goodness’ sake, look beyond the surface!