There’s over 6900 languages worldwide. One should at least “read the language,” of our culture. As ordinary citizens, we’re no less than “cultural physicians,” diagnosing our Republic, often finding ourselves combating the symptoms, rarely getting at the underlying root problem when it comes to lawlessness, which is often expressed in subtle or subliminal ways-versus the blatant. Last week’s massacre shooting in Rosebud, Oregon was lawless, followed by President Obama’s coterie call to undermine our Second Amendment, pouncing on the tragedy “like a vulture on a three-legged dog.” The day of the shooting, absent any details, he inveighed Americans, not the shooter. We’ve been indicted for what? The same President who refused to enforce the DOMA Act, signed into law by President Clinton.
This current “fog of moral relativism” has predictable and catastrophic results. We’re accustomed to hearing soaring and empty rhetoric on every front. The tendency to ignore words and language is understandable-but deadly. It doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Absolving our role in recognizing the language of lawlessness made it easy to blame the media, politicians, or anyone else, rendering us vulnerable. Most liberty minded constitutionalist agree ignoring our Constitution leads to lawlessness.
In 1984, the Christian Monitor wrote, regarding the bicentennial celebrations, “Amid the planning for festivals and finery, pomp and ceremony…The bicentennial gives an opportunity for a rededication to the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and for some careful thought about the wisdom of constitutional revision.” McGregor Burns, an avowed advocate of constitutional revision wrote, in 1984, “If we are to ‘turn the founders upside down’-to put together what they put asunder-we must directly confront the constitutional structure they erected.” Drastic proposals have been made to destruct what our Founders constructed. Would lawlessness ensue? The language had begun.
It’s not always the spoken or written word. The “language” may “speak,” couched in fiduciary language. Conservatives love to vilify Democrats. By 2004, the last Clinton surplus of $236 billion had vanished into a $521 billion deficit, and President Bush 43’ hadn’t vetoed a single bill. The adumbration of lawlessness masquerades as unsustainable federal debt. Our current debt, nearly $20 trillion, eclipses all other prior administrations combined. The weight of that crushing debt’s the rationale for numerous “lawless executive orders.”
The Weimar Republic’s crippling debt and national unemployment, in part, ushered in the NSDAP, and the appointment in 1933, of Adolph Hitler, as Chancellor, with a nation obsequiously relinquishing freedom for order, was the dagger through the heart of the Weimar Republic. Hitler insisted that Christianity, and its notion of charity should be “replaced by the ethic of strength over weakness.” Short memories are fertile ground for lawlessness.
There’s lawlessness in legislation. Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, CEO’s who file inaccurate financial statements, may be imprisoned for criminal negligence. However, our government commits similar violations and accounting misfeasance of scores of billions of dollars. A corporation that “dips into pension funds” are criminalized, yet our government has been “dipping” for decades. Isn’t that lawless?
In 1971, President Nixon shocked conservatives and liberals simultaneously, declaring, “We are all Keynesians now.” We know that means rejecting laissez-faire, championing government intervention, and deficit spending to “restore prosperity” to nations in economic depression. Did that lead to lawlessness? At the nadir of Bush 43’s administration, his policies failed to marginalize Nixon’s declaration. The “arsenic’s” in the water. Subsequent administrations still drink from that polluted stream.
Many are convinced we’ve created a “tertium quid” conservative. The GOP has shifted from the “party of the people” to the “party of the privileged, profligate plunderers,” at our expense. An abandonment of principle. Is that a recipe for lawlessness? With GOP control of both houses, and a craven capitulation to our rouge President, our liberties are still hobbled by a current trade policy that out-sources American sovereignty and independence, dwindling economic influence, and removing long-time moral edifices.
Eclipsing the concerns of legislative and executive branch over-reach, the most onerous agency is the EPA, which most liberty minded are convinced it is unconstitutional and lawless. Agriculture groups are reacting to the EPA’s final revisions to the Work Protection Standard. The American Farm Bureau Federation worries the government is removed from a science-based approach in guarding against risk. Paul Schlegel, director of AFBF environment and energy policy stated, “Farm Bureau shares the agency’s desire to protect workers, but we are concerned that the agency is piling regulatory costs on farmers and ranchers that bear little, if any, relation to actual safety issues.” AFBF filed extensive comments on the proposal more than a year ago. They maintained the EPA itself couldn’t justify regulation it was proposing. They’re hopeful, the agencies final rule, will reflect their concerns and protect farmers’ and ranchers’ ability to promote a “safe and productive environment.” Self-delusion? Most Wyoming ranchers are far less optimistic that this lawless “multiple headed beast” can be tamed.
In 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” following a murder by an abolitionist mob, in Alton, Illinois. He said, in part, “Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others.” Evangelicals know “universal lawlessness” is future. Yet, the “spirit of lawlessness” was at work in the days of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul used the word “iniquity,” which can be translated as lawlessness.
This lawlessness isn’t simply rebellion against civil authority or men’s rule, which we’ve witnessed for years, from Detroit in 1967, to Ferguson and Baltimore in 2015. Lawlessness lurks behind legislation and miscreant activists who attempt to banish God’s laws from our culture, attempting to eradicate the last vestiges of decency and shame. We’ve yet to see the worst. It manifests itself now as a culture that “winks at sin,” denies its existence, then invents their own standard-none at all. What do you think?
Mike Pyatt’s a Natrona County resident. His email is roderickstj@yahoo.com
