Dear Friends:
With the possible exception of the war on drugs and public (i.e., government) schools, it would be difficult to find a government program that is more damaging to inner-city poor people, especially blacks, than the minimum wage. Yet, liberals, who have long claimed to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, especially racial minorities, continue to steadfastly support this vicious and racist government program.
The first thing one notices whenever liberals advocate the minimum wage is their stinginess, for they always limit their calls for a minimum wage to no more than $10 an hour. Despite their supposed love for the poor, you never see liberals calling for a minimum wage of, say, $100 an hour. They always keep it down to the $10-an-hour area.
Let’s examine why it’s a good thing, at least for the poor, that liberals don’t call for a $100-an-hour minimum wage. It will help us to see how liberals attack the poor, and especially the poor who are black, with their $10 or lower minimum wage.
In every economic trade, people are giving up something they value less for something they value more. That’s why they trade. They aim to improve their economic well-being through the trade.
For example, suppose Person A has five apples and Person B has five oranges. Let’s say they enter into a trade in which Person A gives Person B four apples in return for one orange. Is Person B the winner and Person A the loser in this exchange? No. They’re both winners because they both have gained from the exchange. Each of them has given up something he values less for something he values more.
It’s no different in a labor exchange. In any consensual labor relationship, each side gives up something he values less for something he values more.
Suppose, for example, an employer hires a worker at a monthly pay of $1,000. Both sides have gained; otherwise they wouldn’t have entered into the exchange. The employer values the money less than he values the work provided by the employee. The employee values the money more than the other things he could do with his time.
What’s important to keep in mind, however, is that all these valuations are entirely subjective. That is, they are in the eyes of the beholder. A person’s subjective valuation of something, including an employee, will inevitably turn on an infinite array of factors, including the amount of wealth he happens to possess and how he prefers to allocate it.
An employer, for example, will place a subjective valuation on a prospective employee. He will subjectively determine how much in additional revenue that person is likely to bring to the firm, especially compared to how much the firm is paying him. How much to offer him will be based on such factors as availability of capital and how much other firms are offering.
Suppose one day in June, a company’s employment office encounters 10 teenagers who have just graduated from high school, all of whom are seeking a job. The company and the teenagers reach a deal in which the company agrees to pay each of them $15 an hour. All of them are hired.
What that means is that the company has made a subjective valuation of their work potential, one that makes it worthwhile for the company to pay them $15 an hour. It also means that the teenagers are happy with the deal, again from an entirely subjective standpoint.
The teenagers begin work. One week later, the liberals enact a minimum-wage law requiring companies to pay their workers $100 an hour.
Do you see the problem? While the company concluded that those teenagers are worth $15 an hour, it is quite unlikely that it is going to feel the same way about paying them $100 an hour. After some quick deliberation, the company decides that it’s just not worth it to pay the higher, mandated wage rate. Its subjective determination is that the teenagers are worth no more than $15 an hour and certainly not $100 an hour.
So the law leaves the employer with no effective choice. The company lays off the teenagers. They go in search of new jobs, but every company tells them the same thing: “It’s just not worth it to us to pay you $100 an hour. We don’t have that kind of money, your skills aren’t yet sufficient to bring in significant revenues, and we’d soon go broke if we paid you that amount of money.”
So what do those teenagers do? Well, they starve to death. Or they steal. Or they push drugs. What other alternative has the $100 minimum wage law left them? Oh, they can also go on welfare because liberals, always concerned about the plight of the poor, enact a law that taxes the company that laid them off and uses the tax money to provide a welfare dole for the teenagers. Thus, unable to break into the labor market and learn a work ethic because of the $100 minimum-wage law, the teenagers remain on the dole through adulthood and possibly through their entire lives.
You see, the $100 minimum wage has permanently locked them out of the labor market. When libertarians show up and call for the minimum wage to be repealed, liberals hoot them down with such cries as “You hate the poor! You hate welfare! You believe in exploitation!”
But nothing can change the fact that it is the liberals – with their minimum-wage law – who have locked those teenagers out of the labor market, which then causes liberals to initiate welfare-state programs that make such people helpless, dependent wards of the state.
“But the minimum wage isn’t $100,” liberals cry. “It’s only $7.25 per hour.”
But the economic principles are no different, and this is where the racist aspects of the minimum wage come into play.
Everyone whose labor is valued by employers at less than $7.25 an hour is locked out of the labor market by the minimum wage law. It might well be fewer people than if the minimum wage were set at $100 an hour, but the fact remains: For all those people whose labor is subjectively valued in the marketplace at less than the legally established minimum, the minimum-wage law becomes a death sentence or at least one that leads to a life of crime or welfare-state dependency.
After all, don’t forget that the minimum-wage law doesn’t force any employer to hire anyone. It simply says that if you do hire someone, you must pay the mandated minimum. Thus, the law prevents those whose labor is valued by employers at less than the mandated minimum from working.
That brings us to black, inner-city teenagers, a group of people who oftentimes are extremely poor, not very well dressed, and not very well educated by the government schools they are forced to attend. Employers subjectively place a valuation on their work that is less than the government-established minimum wage.
Yet, in the absence of the minimum wage those black teenagers could find employment. They could out-compete their richer, better-dressed, better-educated, suburban white counterparts by offering to work for less. They simply would keep lowering the wage at which they’re willing to work until they met the subjectively determined valuation of an employer. That might be, say, $1 an hour. But at least the teenager could use the opportunity to learn the trade, thereby enabling him to acquire the skills that could help him start a business down the road, perhaps even competing against his employer. The $7.25 minimum wage law prevents him from ever getting that foothold. It keeps him entirely out of the labor market.
As George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams, who authored the book The State Against Blacks, wrote in a recent article, “The Cruelty of the Minimum Wage,” “One of the more insidious effects of minimum wages is that it lowers the cost of racial discrimination; in fact, minimum-wage laws are one of the most effective tools in the arsenals of racists everywhere....”
Empirical studies have long reinforced this theoretical analysis:
· “The Lost Wages of Youth” (Wall Street Journal editorial, April 2010)
· “Waging War on Black Teens” by Richard W. Rahn and Izzy Santa (March 2010)
· “Minimum Wage Teen-Age Killer” by Bruce Bartlett (May 1999)
· “50 Years of Research on the Minimum Wage” by the Joint Economic Committee (February 1995)
· “Outlawing Jobs" by Murray N. Rothbard (1995)
So why do the liberals continue to do it? Why do they continue to support a program that is so clearly an attack on the poor, and a racist one at that?
The most likely explanation – economic ignorance. When it comes to understanding economics, liberals have a blind spot. They honestly believe that all that is needed to end poverty in the world is passing laws.
Poverty in Haiti? Just pass a law forcing every employer to pay a minimum wage of $100 an hour, or at least $7.25 an hour. Voilà! Poverty is eliminated.
But as we all know, life is not so simple. If poverty could be eliminated by the enactment of minimum-wage laws and other welfare-state laws, poverty in the world would have come to an end a long time ago. After all, it doesn’t take much for a government to enact a law.
Instead, such laws always have terrible consequences for the very people liberals claim to help – the poor. When faced with such consequences, they always have a ready response: “Please judge us by our good intentions. We really do mean well.”
But why should we care about their good intentions? Why should the poor care about them? Why should inner-city blacks whom they have damaged so severely care about them?
All that matters are the consequences of government programs. The minimum-wage law has done untold damage to the poor, especially inner-city black teenagers. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to support this vicious, destructive, and racist program.
Respectfully,
Mark
Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Where Is Your Faith?
Dear Friends:
I consider myself to be a patriotic American. I believe that the United States of America is “one nation under God.” However, I also believe (and the facts clearly demonstrate) that the America we know today is not the America that our founding fathers envisioned. Moreover, it is my belief that if America continues down the path it is presently on, it will no longer be the land of the free and the brave, but rather, the land of the oppressed and the poor.
Many patriotic Americans today place a lot of faith in the ability of government to provide “everything from education to health care.” If you are one of those people, I would ask you to consider this question: Where should government secure the resources necessary to carry out such provision?
Our Creator has endowed us “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,…” [Declaration of Independence].
What is Liberty? Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines liberty as a) the quality or state of being free; b) the power to do as one pleases; c) freedom from physical restraint; d) freedom from arbitrary or despotic control; e) the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges; or f) the power of choice.
Where is liberty when it becomes a criminal act NOT to purchase health insurance? Where is liberty when it becomes a criminal act NOT to participate in the Social Security system? Where is liberty when truancy laws compel attendance at government controlled and sanctioned schools? (And don’t think that most private schools are not controlled and regulated by the government.) Where is liberty when 40% to 50% of the fruits of my labor is forcibly confiscated through unfair and tyrannical tax laws? And for what? To give to some unknown person who is most likely intentionally living off the system? Why is it NOT a law that: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” [II Thessalonians 3:10]? I dare say that if paying taxes were optional, very few taxes would be collected. (Wouldn’t this mean that the majority is AGAINST civil government’s provision of entitlements?) If we were allowed to vote with our pocketbooks, the government would be very different from what it is today.
Our Creator created three governmental institutions in order to assist us in “getting along one with another.” These institutions are 1) family government; 2) church government; and 3) civil government. Each institution is charged with certain responsibilities and granted certain authority. For example, family government (symbolized by the rod of discipline) is charged with the responsibility of education and welfare. Church government (symbolized by the keys to the kingdom) is responsible for administering the sacraments and the welfare of widows and orphans (those with no family). Civil government (symbolized by the sword of justice) is charged with punishing law breakers. This distribution of responsibilities and authorities insures a system of checks and balances so that one institution does not infringe on the authority of another institution. The best application of this three institution ordering of society is the story of the Israelites trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. Our founding fathers were intimately familiar with this story and clearly understood the relationship between the three governing institutions.
In order to insure the success of this three institution ordering of society, the individual citizen must practice self-government (or self-discipline or self-control) and insist that the individual institutions maintain the division of responsibilities. For our constitutional republic form of civil government, this self-government occurs at the ballot box. Americans voluntarily gave up individual self-government, and hence their liberty, when they discovered that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury. From that point on, the majority has always, and will always, elect the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury. They changed the eighth commandment from “You shall not steal” to “You shall not steal except by majority vote.” The result is that the federal government will collapse due to irresponsible fiscal policy.
Have you ever heard someone remark “Why should I work when the government will pay me money when I don’t work?”
Or, have you heard a teenage girl say “If I have another baby, I can get more money from the government!”
Why does the government pay a farmer to NOT grow crops, and then pay that same farmer a subsidy based upon how much his crops produce?
What about the utter failure of government’s ability to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina!!
All these examples, and more, conclusively demonstrate the inherent ineptness of government to provide for its citizens. (Incidentally, the church and other non-governmental entities were much more efficient in providing for and responding to the needs of Katrina victims.)
Furthermore, we should consider the fact that “Less than 25 percent of all the tax dollars allocated to fight poverty at every level of government reaches the poor. The other 75 percent goes to pay overhead” [See Ronald H. Nash, Why the Left is Not Right: The Religious Left – Who They Are and What They Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1996), 183]. Couple this gross inefficiency in distribution with the inherent ineptness of government to provide, and you have a recipe for certain disaster. The government must be stopped before it destroys America.
Our Creator did not grant civil government the authority to “provide.” Indeed, Paul tells us that the sole primary function of civil government is to “bring punishment on the wrongdoer” where wrong is defined by our Creator, and not by man with his self-righteous laws [See Romans 14:1-7]. When civil government usurps the responsibilities of family and church, it essentially steps into the shoes of our Creator. When civil government makes its own laws, it is in essence declaring itself to be like God determining right from wrong. (Seems like that is what Adam and Eve attempted and consequently were evicted from the Garden of Eden – there is nothing new under the sun.)
So, I guess the main issue is whether to put our faith in our Creator, or in government. But, even the liberty to choose where to put one’s faith is gradually being taken away by government and its manmade laws. Man actually believes that he can design a system of laws that are better than the system our Creator has designed. Can we be any more arrogant!
Consider that in 1980, the United States of America was the largest CREDITOR nation in the world. Thirty years later, the United States became the largest DEBTOR nation in the world.
Deuteronomy 28:1-14 sets forth the blessings our Creator promised to bestow upon a nation as a reward for obedience to His laws. In part, Moses said “The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom” (emphasis added).
Deuteronomy 28:15-68 sets forth the punishment for refusing to obey our Creator’s laws. In part, it reads “The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail” (emphasis added).
I encourage you to read and ponder over Deuteronomy 28. Clearly, America has been the recipient of many blessings because of our obedience to our Creator’s laws. However, it is also clear that in recent years America has begun to evict our Creator from our land. As a nation, we have rejected our Creator and His commands. Deuteronomy 28:15-68 paints a vivid picture of our future. We must heed the words of II Chronicles 7:13-14 – “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Where do you stand? Who’s side are you on? You cannot straddle the fence. “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” [Matthew 6:24; see also Luke 16:13].
The words of Joshua are applicable, “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” [Joshua 24:14-15].
Respectfully,
Mark
I consider myself to be a patriotic American. I believe that the United States of America is “one nation under God.” However, I also believe (and the facts clearly demonstrate) that the America we know today is not the America that our founding fathers envisioned. Moreover, it is my belief that if America continues down the path it is presently on, it will no longer be the land of the free and the brave, but rather, the land of the oppressed and the poor.
Many patriotic Americans today place a lot of faith in the ability of government to provide “everything from education to health care.” If you are one of those people, I would ask you to consider this question: Where should government secure the resources necessary to carry out such provision?
Our Creator has endowed us “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,…” [Declaration of Independence].
What is Liberty? Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines liberty as a) the quality or state of being free; b) the power to do as one pleases; c) freedom from physical restraint; d) freedom from arbitrary or despotic control; e) the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges; or f) the power of choice.
Where is liberty when it becomes a criminal act NOT to purchase health insurance? Where is liberty when it becomes a criminal act NOT to participate in the Social Security system? Where is liberty when truancy laws compel attendance at government controlled and sanctioned schools? (And don’t think that most private schools are not controlled and regulated by the government.) Where is liberty when 40% to 50% of the fruits of my labor is forcibly confiscated through unfair and tyrannical tax laws? And for what? To give to some unknown person who is most likely intentionally living off the system? Why is it NOT a law that: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” [II Thessalonians 3:10]? I dare say that if paying taxes were optional, very few taxes would be collected. (Wouldn’t this mean that the majority is AGAINST civil government’s provision of entitlements?) If we were allowed to vote with our pocketbooks, the government would be very different from what it is today.
Our Creator created three governmental institutions in order to assist us in “getting along one with another.” These institutions are 1) family government; 2) church government; and 3) civil government. Each institution is charged with certain responsibilities and granted certain authority. For example, family government (symbolized by the rod of discipline) is charged with the responsibility of education and welfare. Church government (symbolized by the keys to the kingdom) is responsible for administering the sacraments and the welfare of widows and orphans (those with no family). Civil government (symbolized by the sword of justice) is charged with punishing law breakers. This distribution of responsibilities and authorities insures a system of checks and balances so that one institution does not infringe on the authority of another institution. The best application of this three institution ordering of society is the story of the Israelites trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. Our founding fathers were intimately familiar with this story and clearly understood the relationship between the three governing institutions.
In order to insure the success of this three institution ordering of society, the individual citizen must practice self-government (or self-discipline or self-control) and insist that the individual institutions maintain the division of responsibilities. For our constitutional republic form of civil government, this self-government occurs at the ballot box. Americans voluntarily gave up individual self-government, and hence their liberty, when they discovered that they can vote themselves benefits from the public treasury. From that point on, the majority has always, and will always, elect the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury. They changed the eighth commandment from “You shall not steal” to “You shall not steal except by majority vote.” The result is that the federal government will collapse due to irresponsible fiscal policy.
Have you ever heard someone remark “Why should I work when the government will pay me money when I don’t work?”
Or, have you heard a teenage girl say “If I have another baby, I can get more money from the government!”
Why does the government pay a farmer to NOT grow crops, and then pay that same farmer a subsidy based upon how much his crops produce?
What about the utter failure of government’s ability to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina!!
All these examples, and more, conclusively demonstrate the inherent ineptness of government to provide for its citizens. (Incidentally, the church and other non-governmental entities were much more efficient in providing for and responding to the needs of Katrina victims.)
Furthermore, we should consider the fact that “Less than 25 percent of all the tax dollars allocated to fight poverty at every level of government reaches the poor. The other 75 percent goes to pay overhead” [See Ronald H. Nash, Why the Left is Not Right: The Religious Left – Who They Are and What They Believe (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1996), 183]. Couple this gross inefficiency in distribution with the inherent ineptness of government to provide, and you have a recipe for certain disaster. The government must be stopped before it destroys America.
Our Creator did not grant civil government the authority to “provide.” Indeed, Paul tells us that the sole primary function of civil government is to “bring punishment on the wrongdoer” where wrong is defined by our Creator, and not by man with his self-righteous laws [See Romans 14:1-7]. When civil government usurps the responsibilities of family and church, it essentially steps into the shoes of our Creator. When civil government makes its own laws, it is in essence declaring itself to be like God determining right from wrong. (Seems like that is what Adam and Eve attempted and consequently were evicted from the Garden of Eden – there is nothing new under the sun.)
So, I guess the main issue is whether to put our faith in our Creator, or in government. But, even the liberty to choose where to put one’s faith is gradually being taken away by government and its manmade laws. Man actually believes that he can design a system of laws that are better than the system our Creator has designed. Can we be any more arrogant!
Consider that in 1980, the United States of America was the largest CREDITOR nation in the world. Thirty years later, the United States became the largest DEBTOR nation in the world.
Deuteronomy 28:1-14 sets forth the blessings our Creator promised to bestow upon a nation as a reward for obedience to His laws. In part, Moses said “The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom” (emphasis added).
Deuteronomy 28:15-68 sets forth the punishment for refusing to obey our Creator’s laws. In part, it reads “The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail” (emphasis added).
I encourage you to read and ponder over Deuteronomy 28. Clearly, America has been the recipient of many blessings because of our obedience to our Creator’s laws. However, it is also clear that in recent years America has begun to evict our Creator from our land. As a nation, we have rejected our Creator and His commands. Deuteronomy 28:15-68 paints a vivid picture of our future. We must heed the words of II Chronicles 7:13-14 – “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Where do you stand? Who’s side are you on? You cannot straddle the fence. “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” [Matthew 6:24; see also Luke 16:13].
The words of Joshua are applicable, “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” [Joshua 24:14-15].
Respectfully,
Mark
Friday, May 14, 2010
Too Many Criminal Laws
Dear Friends:
America is in the throes of “overcriminalization.” We are making and enforcing far too many criminal laws that create traps for the innocent but unwary – and threaten to turn otherwise respectable, law-abiding citizens into criminals.
Consider a few examples from the book “One Nation Under Arrest”:
· A 14-year old girl arrested and handcuffed for eating a single french fry on the Washington, D.C., subway system.
· A cancer-ridden grandmother arrested and criminally charged for refusing to trim her hedges the way officials in Palo Alto, Calif., were trying to force her to.
· A former high-school science whiz kid sent to prison after initially being arrested by FBI agents clad in SWAT gear for failing to affix a federally mandated sticker to his otherwise legal UPS package.
· A 67-year-old retired husband and grandfather imprisoned because some of the paperwork for his home-based orchid business did not satisfy an international treaty.
I could go on, but all these stories share one thing in common – they are about average Americans. Most involve a man or woman who works hard and pays taxes, cares for family members and is a good neighbor. Perhaps above all, this person strives to stay on the right side of the law. This average American holds deep and often intuitive beliefs in basic principles about American government, including a belief that, if you do what’s right, you have nothing to fear from your own government, and certainly not from the criminal justice system.
But the average American’s deeply held beliefs about the freedoms he cherishes and the fundamental principles of his government are no longer as well-founded as they once were. Today, he is far more vulnerable than ever before to being caught up in a criminal investigation and prosecution – and to actually being convicted and punished as a criminal – for having done something he did not even suspect was illegal.
Criminal law has changed in the last 50 years. Once criminal law was about criminal acts that everyone knew were inherently unlawful (like murder, rape and robbery). Limiting criminal punishment to conduct that is inherently wrongful restricted governmental power in two important ways.
First, and most important, it kept the range of governmental power small. Having few criminal laws and a short list of things not to be done limited the scope within which government can exercise its authority.
Second, a limited criminal law served a teaching function. It reflected the beliefs and understandings common to the vast majority of our citizens – the very citizens who were subject to the criminal law.
Today, the criminal law has grown as broad as the regulatory state in its sheer size and scope. In 1998, an American Bar Association task force estimated that there were more than 3,000 federal criminal offenses scattered throughout the 50 titles of the United States Code. Just six years later, a leading expert on the overcriminalization problem, Professor John S. Baker, Jr., published a study estimating that the number exceeded 4,000. As the ABA task force reported, the body of federal criminal law is “[s]o large… that there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of federal crimes.” If “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” then every American citizen – literally, every single one – is ignorant and in peril, for nobody can know all the laws that govern their behavior.
A just criminal justice system, in the best sense of the word “just,” has a twofold goal. One is to see that criminals are prosecuted, convicted and appropriately punished. The other is to ensure that those who are innocent are either not prosecuted in the first instance or, if mistakenly prosecuted, are not convicted.
Today, our system fails the second of those goals.
Much is at stake for our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. The problem of overcriminalization merits extensive study and debate by legal experts and policymakers, as well as average Americans, whose fundamental liberty is most at stake.
Many constructive changes could make our justice system fairer and more just, and improve its ability to deter wrongdoing and punish real criminals. Taking the steps necessary to ensure that American criminal law once again routinely exemplifies the right principles and purposes will require much work, but the alternative is to distort the American criminal justice system, and jeopardize the American people.
Respectfully,
Mark
America is in the throes of “overcriminalization.” We are making and enforcing far too many criminal laws that create traps for the innocent but unwary – and threaten to turn otherwise respectable, law-abiding citizens into criminals.
Consider a few examples from the book “One Nation Under Arrest”:
· A 14-year old girl arrested and handcuffed for eating a single french fry on the Washington, D.C., subway system.
· A cancer-ridden grandmother arrested and criminally charged for refusing to trim her hedges the way officials in Palo Alto, Calif., were trying to force her to.
· A former high-school science whiz kid sent to prison after initially being arrested by FBI agents clad in SWAT gear for failing to affix a federally mandated sticker to his otherwise legal UPS package.
· A 67-year-old retired husband and grandfather imprisoned because some of the paperwork for his home-based orchid business did not satisfy an international treaty.
I could go on, but all these stories share one thing in common – they are about average Americans. Most involve a man or woman who works hard and pays taxes, cares for family members and is a good neighbor. Perhaps above all, this person strives to stay on the right side of the law. This average American holds deep and often intuitive beliefs in basic principles about American government, including a belief that, if you do what’s right, you have nothing to fear from your own government, and certainly not from the criminal justice system.
But the average American’s deeply held beliefs about the freedoms he cherishes and the fundamental principles of his government are no longer as well-founded as they once were. Today, he is far more vulnerable than ever before to being caught up in a criminal investigation and prosecution – and to actually being convicted and punished as a criminal – for having done something he did not even suspect was illegal.
Criminal law has changed in the last 50 years. Once criminal law was about criminal acts that everyone knew were inherently unlawful (like murder, rape and robbery). Limiting criminal punishment to conduct that is inherently wrongful restricted governmental power in two important ways.
First, and most important, it kept the range of governmental power small. Having few criminal laws and a short list of things not to be done limited the scope within which government can exercise its authority.
Second, a limited criminal law served a teaching function. It reflected the beliefs and understandings common to the vast majority of our citizens – the very citizens who were subject to the criminal law.
Today, the criminal law has grown as broad as the regulatory state in its sheer size and scope. In 1998, an American Bar Association task force estimated that there were more than 3,000 federal criminal offenses scattered throughout the 50 titles of the United States Code. Just six years later, a leading expert on the overcriminalization problem, Professor John S. Baker, Jr., published a study estimating that the number exceeded 4,000. As the ABA task force reported, the body of federal criminal law is “[s]o large… that there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of federal crimes.” If “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” then every American citizen – literally, every single one – is ignorant and in peril, for nobody can know all the laws that govern their behavior.
A just criminal justice system, in the best sense of the word “just,” has a twofold goal. One is to see that criminals are prosecuted, convicted and appropriately punished. The other is to ensure that those who are innocent are either not prosecuted in the first instance or, if mistakenly prosecuted, are not convicted.
Today, our system fails the second of those goals.
Much is at stake for our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. The problem of overcriminalization merits extensive study and debate by legal experts and policymakers, as well as average Americans, whose fundamental liberty is most at stake.
Many constructive changes could make our justice system fairer and more just, and improve its ability to deter wrongdoing and punish real criminals. Taking the steps necessary to ensure that American criminal law once again routinely exemplifies the right principles and purposes will require much work, but the alternative is to distort the American criminal justice system, and jeopardize the American people.
Respectfully,
Mark
Friday, May 7, 2010
Bleaching Out Historical Religious Expression
Dear Friends:
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). Secularists and strict separationists like to point to this verse to show that even Jesus opposed mixing religion and politics. We don’t live under Caesar, and even if we did, Caesar would be bound to follow God’s limitations on his civil office because God’s image is stamped on him. Jesus would have told Caesar, “Render unto God the things that are God’s.”
Many modern civil governments contend that they rule at no one’s discretion. Their legitimacy is self-imposed. It’s no wonder that secularists attack any suggestion that might lead to the truth that civil government is under God’s sovereign rule and the freedoms of citizens are God-ordained and not a gift from the State. In a 1982 message, Francis Schaeffer made the following point:
We must understand something very thoroughly. If the state gives the rights, it can take them away – they’re not inalienable. If the states give the rights, they can change them and manipulate them. But this was not the view of the founding fathers of this country. They believed, although not all of them were individual Christians, that there was a Creator and that this Creator gave the inalienable rights – this upon which our country was founded and which has given us the freedoms which we still have – even the freedoms which are being used now to destroy the freedoms.1
Here’s a recent example of what Schaeffer saw in 1982. “Bradley Johnson had banners hanging in his classroom at Westview High School in San Diego, Calif., for more than 17 years with phrases like ‘In God We Trust’ and ‘All Men Are Created Equal, They Are Endowed by Their Creator,’ only to have the principal order them torn down during the 2007 school year.” Another sign that had been hanging in his classroom for 25 years “contained the words ‘In God We Trust,’ ‘One Nation Under God,’ ‘God Bless America’ and ‘God Shed His Grace On Thee.’”2 Each of these postings is part of America’s religious history. “In God We Trust” is our nation’s official motto and appears prominently in the House of Representatives. That Americans are “endowed by their Creator” is found in the Declaration of Independence. “One Nation under God” is from the Pledge of Allegiance. The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance on June 14, 1954, by a joint resolution of Congress. “God Bless America” is a patriotic song originally written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938 because of the rise of Adolf Hitler. Here are the words from the stanza that include the words “God Bless America”:
God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night3 with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.
“God Shed His Grace on Thee” is a line from the patriotic song “America the Beautiful.” In all these examples, America’s religious heritage is evident. The principal of Westview High School did not see it this way. He considered their posting in a government school to be a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….” United States District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez objected using historical, legal, and logical arguments, methods of inquiry that should be taught in all schools:
May a school district censor a high school teacher’s expression because it refers to Judeo-Christian views, while allowing other teachers to express views on a number of controversial subjects, including religion and anti-religion? On undisputed evidence, this court holds that it may not…. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God. “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”4 As the Supreme Court has acknowledged, “[t]here is an unbroken history of official acknowledgment by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life from at least 1789.”5
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Fostering diversity, however, does not mean bleaching out historical religious expression or mainstream morality. By squelching only Johnson’s patriotic and religious classroom banners, while permitting other diverse religious and anti-religious classroom displays, the school district does a disservice to the students of Westview High School and the federal and state constitutions do not permit this one-sided censorship.6
It was this type of arbitrary edict based on a purging of the historical record that led a number of our nation’s Founders to insist on a national government with strict limitations.
SOURCES:
1 Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer (in his message entitled “A Christian Manifesto” given in 1982 at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in FL).
2 “Teacher wins major victory for God in school” WorldNetDaily (March 1, 2010).
3 In the 1918 version, the word was “right.”
4 Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952).
5 Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 686 (2005) (quoting Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 674 [1984]).
6 Bradley Johnson vs. Poway Unified School District, et al. (2010), Case No. 07cv783 BEN (NLS). Also see Article 1, Section 2(a) of the California Constitution which reads: “Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. A law may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech or press.”
Respectfully,
Mark
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