Right Desire, Wrong Application by Robert Socha

I think liberty and personal responsibility are critical components of a prosperous republic. I believe we all have the freedom to choose the path of greatest reward for our lives (The freedom to choose does not include whether an unborn child has the right to live or be killed in the womb. That child has a right to life! This right, ordained by God, is guaranteed in the preamble to our Constitution).

Here is an interesting aside which fits perfectly into this narrative: when God first created man, in His image, male and female, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.” Genesis 1:31a ESV.

I am fascinated by the goodness of God. That goodness crafted man out of the earth’s dust, fashioned Eve from the man’s side, and set them in a Garden to be fruitful and multiply.

Yet there is a disastrous evil that roams the earth that deceived Eve, causing Adam to sin, bringing terrible consequences lasting millennia. The good news is there is a propitiation for those consequences bequeathed at the Cross of Christ 2,000 years ago!

This evil has befallen mankind causing man’s heart to be deceitful. This deceit translates into a forked tongue, speaking softly out of one side yet preparing to administer control out of the other.

Consider the good that has tried to evolve from the governmental charity. For example, FDR’s “New Deal” created many jobs during the height of the Great Depression, but it also caused the tax rate to soar for the wealthy. What a crafty way to get manifest public support with magnanimity’s appearance only to drive producers to wane in their industry. Noteworthy, a UCLA study postulated the New Deal might have extended the duration of the Great Depression by seven years! We still have many government programs feeding at the trough of D.C. spending, which began in 1933. I am no economic scholar; it is curious though the difference our monetary policy might afford should we have implemented less invasive governmental policy and allowed the free market to correct itself.

Look at LBJ’s Great Society. The intentions were ambitious and gallant: Let us fix society’s ills by massive increases in government programs promising to deliver relief to the poor and elderly. “In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes argues that Lyndon Johnson’s bold makeover of the government was a massive failure despite the good intentions of its architects and implementers.” (1)

How do these examples correlate to the deceitfulness of the human heart? They promised to ameliorate the human condition and provide temporary relief, but these actions’ long-term consequence has created behemoth. There seems to be no end to Washington’s elected officials’ intervention in our daily lives; it is paramount to socialism.

Two more recent governmental overreach adaptations through the appearance of conscience are the Paris Accords and The Green New Deal. Both promise to fix the supposed ills we humans have brought upon ourselves through industrialization and fail to deliver without massive concessions from these United States, which will naturally land on the taxpayer’s back.

Again we have the appearance of virtue masking the elimination of sovereignty and natural rights. This display is deceitful.

Let us shift to the palpable distress we are currently engaged where the manifest edicts have leveraged strict control of most people’s daily lives. The new rules have escalated many country’s enforcement accedences to a police state, and this power has intoxicated the implementers.

It is for the public good, they say. I disagree.

We have engaged officials operating with impunity. Instead of providing us the most reliable information and suggesting the best course of action, allowing us to choose what will benefit us the most, they demand acquiescence to which most have dutifully submitted. This high minded activity is a slap in the face to reason. It is the appearance of virtue deceitfully undermining our responsibility. It has escalated with a disastrous effect, mob mentality in its destructive pattern, while the deceitful agitators excuse their riotous behavior.

What is the solution?

Just as Judah’s sin exposed their hearts in Jerimiah 17, our hearts have turned, as a culture, from the Lord. I believe this to have created a pattern where the people’s responsibility to be fruitful and multiply and manage their dominion well has collapsed into the fray of tax and spend intervention.

We can take back the charity abandoned to government programs by turning our hearts back toward Christ and giving of our treasure, both time and money, out of our spirit’s generosity to lift those needing a helping hand into the promised land. We can elect men and women who will reduce those programs designed to breed subservience. We can stand for liberty and personal responsibility.

1. https://reason.com/podcast/why-lbjs-great-society-flopped-and-what-it-means-for-the-2020-election/