Two Steps Back, One Forward

- The Hobby Lobby Victory -
Post 328

While this is not the next Post in my linear progression of thought, it is a current-events issue as I warm back up to my work in progress after the delay of editing for the book. Consider this a post-publication “Part 2” update attachment to Post 321 "The Misleading Deception" (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-misleading-deception.html).

The recent victory in the Burnwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. Supreme Court case (http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/sebelius-v-hobby-lobby-stores-inc/) is yet another slight-of-hand example of the misleading-deception magic-trick while Christians erupt with exuberant celebrations in the face of bitter complaints by the “women’s rights” groups who feel cheated.
To throw cold water on this Christian victory at this point is to be labeled a naysayer unable to see the good in anything, but to neglect the truth in the events is to succumb to the deception that makes the magic show successful in its purpose.
So let’s explore a little of the details and expose the misleading of the deception:
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The Misleading:
In the recent victory Hobby Lobby, a Christian company, won their argument on religious grounds as the Supreme Court upheld-- not their First Amendment Rights but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act-- not to provide abortion inducing contraceptives in their mandated Obamacare program.
“Women’s rights” groups and the supporting public have hit the roof, stunned that the Supreme Court would permit such a thing. How dare an employer be allowed to deny a woman employee the right to women’s health products! (*1).
“What is this nation coming to?” is a phrase I have seen as a caption regarding the compliant. It seems that the “conservative Christian rights” have finally been given an unexpected great victory in our nation, and many, many Christians see this as a positive sign of better things to come. America will recover!

But arguments are springing up all over the social internet: the left and the right both jousting the facts of the case while rarely having the facts in their possession. The ignorant emotional argument is simplified between contraceptives or no contraceptives, and the left is demanding their rights to “women’s health” products while the right is trying to educate the left in the knowledge that the function of contraceptives is technically abortion and abortion is murder of the unborn. Then the left responds with more scientific knowledge that most contraceptives keep the egg from being fertilized so no abortion takes place and therefore Hobby Lobby has no real religious case and the usually Leftist leaning Supreme Court had their head in the sand on this one for this very unexpected support of the Right, apparently because it is a male dominated bench.
The unyielding battle further separates our nation into declared sides of a war that is still brewing to the boiling point.

The Cup-Drop:
Hopefully the truth of the facts will soon become known to both sides of the argument, and with the facts understood, each can agree that this was in fact a good ruling amicable to most everyone… exclusive of course to the woman who really does want her employer to pay for abortion pills, that she can purchase over-the-counter herself at any pharmacy for less than the price of lunch.
As most irreconcilable arguments today, the actual facts of the case revolve around the specifics. In our age of advanced technology we must distinguish between contraceptives that prohibit fertilization, from Birth Control that prohibit a fertilized egg from reaching viability. Thus; not “Fertilization Control” but “Birth Control.” Hobby Lobby won the right to refuse providing Birth Control, which apparently turns out to be 4 of the 20 contraceptive options currently available. Per the Obamacare mandate, even after the victory, Hobby Lobby still provides the 16 contraceptives that don’t kill a fertilized egg and are therefore not scientifically abortion, and so not a clear and direct violation of the Christian faith on those grounds.

Contrary to the ignorant hysteria of emotional opinions on both sides; Hobby Lobby is not denying their women employees access to women’s “health products” but in fact pays for them per Obamacare mandates, and blind-faith Christians learn that science has made a very important distinction that they need to wake up to. Both the left and the right can find mutual peace in the ground of informed knowledge. See? Peace between opposing religious sides can be had!

The Empty Cup:
While the audience applauds the great results of mutual peace we have to ask why the extremely leftist and unconstitutionally-rewriting-congressional-law Supreme Court would suddenly and uncharacteristically rule in the favor of Christians. Until the cup is revealed empty we are convinced that we see the truth in the cup-drop deception of the contending arguments. But after the truth is explored and publicly accepted on both sides, what have we got? We have an empty cup.

The secondary slight-of-hand trick and far greater issue at play is the fact that in the recent victory of our appeal we have fully established the jurisdiction of ObamaCare, which we started off fighting as fully unconstitutional-- for one, it is not compatible with an ARTICLE 4, Section 4, Republican form of Government, for another, it was forced on us by congressionally approved executive order against our votes. Remember putting down HillaryCare decisively? Remember slamming down ObamaCare? (See Post 155 “Healthcare” http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2011/01/healthcare.html).

But now, without even knowing it, by contesting finepoints in the unlawful Act, we gave all the ground except abortion. Like the 1913 16th Amendment Income Tax (*2) and Roosevelt’s Social Security program (*3), the Socialist style Obamacare is now likewise established in America while Christians are pleased to have won their anti-abortion case… until it comes up again, as we know it will, in a land where law is now emotionally based on shifting ground. But when it does come up again we will no longer be battling for our rights in “the land of the free,” but for privileges granted or denied in a Socialist State.
The Supreme Court gave Christians their specific contest… to shut them up while Socialism in the United States wins the day uncontested. To continue fighting Obamacare after this victory would make Christians seem uncharitable and unwilling to work out a “peace agreement” (*4) with the opposition… who stole their human Liberty endued by their Creator as an inalienable right, and made it unlawful to Live without paying the “health lords” a tax for the privilege.

For a review of how this happens Fabian style, please see Post 299 “America’s Abomination” (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2013/08/americas-abomination.html).
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(*1) “What is missing from the Hobby Lobby decision altogether—beyond the economic disparity and public health arguments I mention above—is the very notion of the woman herself as moral circuit breaker, as an agent of her own ethical choices and preferences, whose decision to obtain an IUD, or a condom, or a morning-after pill is a fully autonomous moral choice that supplants the spiritual choices of her employer.” - Dahlia Lithwick for Doublex, accessed July 9, 2014, bold emphasis added (http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/07/after_hobby_lobby_mucullen_and_harris_v_quinn_the_men_of_the_supreme_court.html).

(*2) Income Tax: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” - The 16th Amendment, an addition to the Bill of Rights, “adopted” February 3, 1913.

This questionably-ratified Amendment overturning landmark decisions in cases such as the 1895 Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., diminished the Constitutional rights retained by the people, but was nonetheless added to the original “Bill of Rights” and is in full contradiction to both the letter and principle laid out in part by Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution as follows:

ARTICLE 1, Section 2, Clause 3:
“Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers...”

ARTICLE 1, Section 9, Clause 4:
“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken.”

It is quite a rabbit-trail we will not cover here, but the 1895 Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co. was a case won in the Supreme Court regarding property tax unlawfully attempted before the 16th Amendment overturned the Court’s Constitutional findings. Meaning that the Government at the time had every intention of taxing the people regardless of the foundational Law, and the 16th Amendment had every intention of changing the original intent so that they could finally do it.
Maybe until now there was ground in the argument that the growing government needed the additional funds to operate, but the blatant foolishness and open corruption has become so great that funding: slackers, bankrupt private companies, abortions, terrorists, illegal aliens, and enemy nations, etc., are all reasons to repeal the 16th Amendment and return the Government to its original minimal purposes that would function just fine absent all the “Government Programs” now destroying America by spending us to death.
It seems the framers understood all this and wrote specific laws to keep it from happening. We don’t even need to write new laws to fix it; simply repeal the 16th Amendment and then live accordingly. What do we do with all the needy? The Church suddenly has a new and valuable role again-- discerning those in need vs. those who should be instructed to provide for themselves (Galatians 2:10, James 1:27 vs. II Thessalonians 3:10-12).

(*3) Social Security: “The Social Security Act was drafted under FDR’s first term, passed Congress as part of the New Deal, and was signed by FDR on August 14, 1935” - (http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/what-social-security-act).

“This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.
We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness… If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.” - Roosevelt at signing, Aug. 14, 1935, (http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.html#signing line item #7).

I have no problem with a rich and successful community choosing to implement such a benevolent program for its people out of their abundance. But isn’t it interesting that only a single generation received the great benefits of the government’s mandated Social Security system as promised, before the program began to fail dramatically. Today, the second generation and the ones who paid the bills for the benefits given to others, has paid into the program all their lives but will receive little to none of the benefits promised. The Social Security program is functionally bankrupt, and it didn’t succeed in protecting the future, lessening the force of depressions, or protect the present Administration from the necessity of going deeply in debt to furnish relief to the needy, it didn’t flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and inflation as promised. In fact, Roosevelt’s empty promises come up fully short only a single generation later. One generation simply received the distributed wealth of the following generation who could ill afford it. Roosevelt is dead and it seemed to work well for his generation, so what does he care about the impoverishment he left behind?

(*4) Glenn Beck’s sponsored compromised-solution example:
Government approved healthcare for Christians - (https://medi-share.org/ms/lp/medical-bill-sharing_11-1.aspx).

Perhaps not a bad idea… if it’s a choice you can and want to make from your abundance, rather than being forced as a surf by a tyrant feudal lord.

Feudal: adj. of or pertaining to a feud or state of hostility.

Feudal: adj. 1. Of, relating to, or of the nature of, feuds, fiefs, or fees. 2. Of or pertaining to the feudal system; as, feudal law.

Feud, feod: noun. A fee, or feudal benefice; a fief.

Fief: noun. Law. A feudal estate; a fee.

Feudal system: The system of polity which prevailed in Europe in the Middle Ages, based upon the relation of lord to vassal, with the holdings of land in feud. The principal incidents [i.e. fees: tax for the land’s use] of the feudal system were homage, service of the tenants, wardship, marriage, reliefs, aids, escheat, and forfeiture - all the above definitions from Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 1948 Fifth Edition.

The Pilgrims did not reform England; they fled it. To let our liberty slip from our hands while we can still correct it is to soon find ourselves in a place that can no longer be fixed. Where will we flee then?

Already today:
• You buy your land and home but nonetheless pay feudal “rent” to the government who can evict you for non-payment of the principle incident, which at this time is restricted to money only. They call it Property Tax.
• You work hard for your money but gift nearly 30% to the government for the privilege of working. They call it Income Tax.
• You use of the remainder to buy food and sustenance, which you pay the government a fee for the privilege of buying. They call it Sales Tax.
• And now you pay the Health Lords a regular fee just to live, whether you’re working or not. They call it Health Care Tax.

Most of these ideas were utterly repugnant to the Constitution of this once great Nation of free men. If now is not the time, then when will it be time to fix the problem? especially since there is nowhere left to flee.

The problem is not a faulty Government; it is a visionless, Christless people governed:

"If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country. I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be: if God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end." - Daniel Webster 1823.

Christian America was once the sanctuary that the oppressed world fled to for liberty… Liberty: in America it was a governmentally recognized and protected inalienable right, endowed to all men by their Creator. But what is America today if not a machine of vassals-with-guns?
While having the power and the right to resist, they nonetheless comply; willingly padding the pockets of the very rich governing club at growing expense and discomfort to themselves. This contented slavish mentality is a result of abandoning the Lord of Liberty!

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, but became vain in their (virtual reality) imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” Romans 1:21-22.
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