28 July 2011

Overwrite? No Thanks

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I talk frequently because I work in education with people who don't much seem to like America. They like what they enjoy, but they do not like the path that made it possible. They rail against millionaires and billionaires and think people are not taxed enough. When you confront them, they change the subject. They want to overwrite our society.

I have to give the FLDS church credit. Although I find it repugnant what people like Jeffs do with young women, I find it praiseworthy that they live and let live. Unlike so many other people, they do not impose their way of living on us. The FDLS groups don't even interact with us except when they must, or if you happen to shop at Big Lots in St. George UT.

Many of these people are looking for liberty to be license. The rules forbid certain behavior. They seek to change the rules to make that behavior acceptable. Evil men try to change the rules to fit their behavior. Good men change their behavior to match the rules. If you were to design a board game where the rules always benefit you, chances are nobody would play. They use government to force us to participate.

For the last year or so I have studied in some detail the writings of William Penn. In his treatise to Protestants, he speaks of how the civil magistrate has no authority over issues of conscience. Government authority ends at your door. Instead, there are people who force themselves into our homes and into our heads where they haven't the right and attempt to meddle in our lives because they think they can force people to be better. As they focus on behavior, they ignore the role a man's nature plays in his behavior, because if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, it must be one. Nevermind that sometimes it's a swan.

Some people argue that things are a matter of perspective. I disagree. If that is the case, then anything goes when it happens to suit you. Do you honestly want to argue that murder is right just because a man claims it so to be from his perspective? Rules and our responsibility to them often hinge not on how we see them but on how we see those who pass them. Jesus' Kingdom was not of this world, and the principles he preached were neither recognized by Ceasar nor enforced by him, at least until the Crown coerced the conscience.

I declare, as did Thomas Jefferson before me, on the alter of freedom eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind and body of man.

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