Centennial Review Jan 2013

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Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Volume 5, Number 1 • January 2013

Publisher, William L. Armstrong Editor, John Andrews

TIME TO UNLOCK THE GATES AT UNCLE SAM’S PLANTATION
By Star Parker
As a young woman, I was on welfare. But after a Christian conversion, I completed college and started a business. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, I worked on welfare reform until 1996. I then founded the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

WHY THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES ARE INDIVISIBLE
By Jay W. Richards and James Robison
Remember when we were told that the last year’s presidential race would be be about economic issues alone? Yet moral and social issues became as much a part of the contest as unemployment and tax rates.

The Health and Human Services mandate that religious CURE is a public policy think tank that organizations fund insurance for Remember our promotes market-based solutions to contraceptives, sterilization, and abortionfight poverty. It grew from my firsthand founding principles. inducing drugs raised both the abortion knowledge of how the political promises issue and religious freedom. And President of entitlements within our minority communities caused Obama himself ignited the debate over marriage. generations to become pathologically dependent on In our book, Indivisible, we had predicted as much. But social centralized planning and government programs. conservatives don’t always make arguments that appeal to CURE fights in Washington, D.C., to restore our founding principles of traditional values, limited government, free markets, and national allegiance. ■ Traditional values: Because choice loses meaning when it doesn’t matter what you choose. ■ Limited government: Because the role of government is to protect private property and personal pursuits, not exploit them or plunder them. ■ Free markets: Because profit is not only moral and good, but without profit there is no capital to invest in economic growth and create jobs. ■ National allegiance and a strong defense: Because my life story embodies American exceptionalism—the idea that here, anyone from any ethnicity or background can set a course to excel and realize their dream. Unfortunately, it took an economic collapse to get Main Street America to focus on the state of affairs in our country. I cheered when a Tea Party movement arose in our country in 2009 to talk about socialism, because I had
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those who may disagree with their theological views.

So rather than giving secular libertarians the stiff-arm, we think faith-based social conservatives ought to do more to persuade libertarians that their own convictions should lead them to embrace the pro-life and pro-marriage views. It’s simplistic to assume that economic issues aren’t moral issues. No one really believes that. What economic policy allows the most wealth to be created? What policies best help the poor? Should the federal government spend more
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Jay W. Richards is a fellow at the Discovery Institute. James Robison is host of the Life Today television program and president of Life Outreach International. They are the co-authors of Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s Too Late. This essay is adapted from their presentation at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver on June 30, 2012. Star Parker, founder and president of CURE, is one of the leading black conservative voices in America today. This essay is adapted from her speech at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver on July 1, 2012. Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation. By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776.

Parker  Uncle Sam’s Plantation  Continued

talked about American socialism years ago in my book, Uncle Sam’s Plantation. The book tells the story of what I saw while living inside the welfare state and my transformation out of it. It points out that socialism is a reality in every inner city of America, and has been since the Great Society experiment of the 1960s. It describes the vast sea of government programs that falsely promised to lift blacks out of poverty. Tragically, instead of solving the economic problems of blacks created by a history of slavery and Jim Crow, government programs created monstrous moral problems. The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional government-run schools, and broken black families. Parties Change, Washington Doesn’t After the success of welfare reform in 1996, I thought we were on the road to move socialism out of our poor black communities and replace it with wealth-producing American capitalism. So I began promoting school choice and personal retirement accounts to help break the cycle of generational poverty.

The Abandoned Blueprint Underlying America’s economic crisis is the fact that we are no longer putting up the building according to its blueprints. Our nation was designed to be a free nation under God, but we have lost our way. We have been increasingly worshipping Washington, D.C., rather than our Creator, and we now are paying the price. Those parts of American life that have remained relatively untouched by government are doing great. The problem lies in where we have let government take over our lives. The federal government now takes 25 percent of the American economy. The combination of control, debt, enslavement to government, and broken families is no formula for a great country. Conservative reforms are needed by blacks and Hispanics more than anyone. They need to get their children out of the broken public schools where they are trapped. They need to build wealth by funding a private retirement account instead of paying payroll taxes. And they need the higher-quality, lower-cost health care that can only be provided through markets. But right now they only hear from liberals. Their children are indoctrinated with left-wing lies in governmentcontrolled schools, and the adults get their news from liberal-controlled media outlets. Conservatives who care about the future of this great nation that we are losing need to start making the investments it will take to get the truth about freedom into these minority communities where it’s needed most. ■

Socialism grips our inner cities.

But incredibly, by 2001, we began going in the opposite direction. Even after power switched political parties, control stayed in Washington. Government expanded in many areas, but the biggest affront to me was the so-called faith-based initiative. I regard this as nothing more than a government spending plan to put America’s churches on welfare. Parties then switched again—and by 2009, instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich America on capitalism, rich America on capitalism became more like poor America on socialism. Major industries were either being bailed out or gobbled up by government. Today, many Americans are finally realizing that the political elite in Washington has contributed greatly to the social and economic chaos in our country. Uncle Sam’s plantation didn’t work for blacks, and it won’t work for our middle class. In just 50 years, blacks went from 70 percent of children being raised by married parents to 70 percent of children being raised by a single parent today. In just 30 years, the United States as a whole has gone from 18 percent of births occurring outside of marriage to out-ofmarriage births standing at 40 percent today.

CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The authors’ views are not necessarily those of CCU. Designer, Danielle Hull. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel. Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at www.CentennialCCU.org. Please join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us restore America’s moral core and prepare tomorrow’s leaders. Your gift is tax-deductible. Please use the envelope provided. Thank you for your support. - John Andrews, Director
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Richards and Robison  Social and Economic Issues Indivisible  Continued

than it takes in? How much should the government take in taxes? Should we redistribute income from richer to poorer Americans? These and a thousand other questions are profoundly moral. The supposedly sharp distinction between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives or libertarians is artificial. Though intellectuals and the media set it up as a straw man, politicians and the public recognize substantial overlap between the two viewpoints. There is a common-sense awareness that the libertarian or fiscal-conservative commitment to free markets and limited government is best preserved within a broader social-conservative context that Edmund values life, marriage, and religious liberty.

the elderly, and the infirm, and should prohibit scientific procedures that destroy human embryos. “Human life cannot be measured,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey in a 1995 speech at Notre Dame. “It is the measure itself. The value of everything else is weighed against it.” Most libertarians support a limited government, not an absence of government. The central role of government is to maintain the conditions in which individual initiative, personal freedoms, and private property are protected under the rule of law. This necessarily excludes “freedom” of some to violate the basic rights of others.

Protecting innocent, pre-born, human life, Burke, then, is not only consistent with economic freedom; as Congressman Ron Paul has meet Ayn Rand. insisted, it is one of the prerequisites of In Indivisible, we spell out 10 basic principles freedom. That is why libertarians committed that ground this practical conservative to freedom should be pro-life. fusionism (as the late Frank Meyer called it). And we explain why these principles ought to appeal to the “everyman libertarian” who values limited government, individual rights, and free markets but is not otherwise committed to doctrinaire libertarianism. Love Limited Government? Then Defend Marriage It’s less obvious, however, why those who believe in limited government should also believe that the government should favor conjugal marriage. Shouldn’t the state get out of the marriage business altogether and just treat us all as individuals? If two men want to get “married,” we’re told, where does Big Brother get off telling them they can’t? The problem with this line of reasoning is that it ignores what marriage is. Marriage is a public institution with public consequences. We’re having this debate because marriage is about public recognition and approval, not private feelings and vows. “Including homosexuals within marriage,” observes Andrew Sullivan, a supporter of same-sex marriage, “would be a means of conferring the highest form of social approval imaginable.” Politics Can’t Repeal Reality Ironically, however, redefining marriage would strike at the foundation of individual rights. As individuals, we get our rights from God. Our government doesn’t bestow them on us. A just and limited state simply acknowledges and protects the rights that already exist. A government attempting to redefine reality itself, as the Orwellian governments of the 20th century did, would become virtually unlimited and, as such, not a protector of individuals but a threat to them. Marriage, like the individual, is a pre-political reality. It transcends every political system. Even cultures that have taken homosexual acts in stride, such as the ancient Greeks, still knew that marriage was for a man and woman. The question is not what people would like to do, but what marriage is. Because only a man and woman can mate, marriage always has a special relationship to bearing and raising children.
Centennial Review, January 2013 ▪ 3

For a brief illustration of these principles, let’s apply them to the two issues that stir the most conflict between secular libertarians and faith-based conservatives: abortion and the definition of marriage. Love Freedom? Then Defend Life Pro-choice libertarians argue that limited government shouldn’t legislate what happens in the uterus of a woman. While this sounds superficially plausible, they are striking at the foundation of their own beliefs, since the case for economic freedom is also a moral one. “Free trade,” wrote Edmund Burke, “is not based on utility but on justice.” While you might expect Burke, as a Christian, to say something like that, consider also the pro-choice atheist Ayn Rand. “Man—every man—is an end in himself,” she insisted, “not the means to the ends of others.” The moral case for economic freedom is invariably rooted in the idea that every human being, whatever his or her race, age, or social status, has inherent dignity. Even at the Randian extreme, the notion persists, though hanging in mid-air, that a human being is valuable and should be free because of what he or she is apart from whether he or she is useful to anyone else. (Rand maintained her own prochoice stance only by denying, implausibly, the humanity of the unborn.) The intrinsic value of the individual is the foundation of the pro-life position, too. It is why pro-lifers argue that the government should protect the life of the unborn,

Centennial Review
January 2013

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Double Issue: Back to Basics, America

With the election year behind us, Jay Richards and James Robison urge freedom advocates to stay united, while Star Parker summons Americans back to the founders’ blueprint. As plans take shape for Western Conservative Summit 2013, here are two more ringing messages from Summit 2012.

Since so many different cultures and religions have recognized and protected marriage, we should conclude that it’s based on human nature and is not merely a social convention that we’re free to change once progressives capture the Supreme Court, the state legislature, or voters in a referendum.

Appealing to nature and nature’s God to defend individual rights and equality, which most cultures have not recognized, while ignoring the universal testimony of nature and culture on marriage, is like sawing off the branch you’re sitting on. You can’t make war on the source of our natural rights and then appeal to it for help.

Our very biology testifies to this. Every healthy may redefine Beware the So just asasgovernment it has not authority individual has biological systems that are our rights individuals, no totalitarian to redefine marriage. Communism was complete in themselves. Only our individual sexual organs are intrinsically incomplete. totalitarian because it tried to redefine the impulse. They can only achieve their primary purpose individual, to create a new “Communist Man.” when joined with another human being of the opposite (It also tried and failed to redefine marriage.) sex. No doubt this is why few cultures, until recently, ever Americans now confront another totalitarian impulse to had a widespread debate about the nature of marriage. It redefine reality. If the state, working hand in glove with was obvious. most of the media, can redefine a universal institution Our Most Basic Relationship? rooted in human nature, what can’t it redefine? Marriage is, in fact, far more universally recognized than are our ideals concerning individual rights and equality. Each of us is, by nature, a person in relationship. We’re inherently social. And marriage, this unique union of a man and woman, is one of our most basic human relationships. Neither the secular economic libertarian nor the faith-based social conservative wants to live under such a nightmare regime. Shouldn’t they be making common cause? ■

Register Now • 4th Annual Rally on the Right Western Conservative Summit 2013 • “Founding Principles Forever” Hyatt Regency Denver • July 26-28, 2013 • westernconservativesummit.com
20 INVITED SPEAKERS, INCLUDING:

Centennial Institute

Founding Principles Forever

Gov. Susana Martinez | Sen. Marco Rubio | MEP Daniel Hannan | Gov. Bobby Jindal | Monica Crowley | Jeff Foxworthy

Centennial Review, January 2013 ▪ 4

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