America v. China: Defending our Freedom in the Twenty-First Century

by Justin Soutar

As another Independence Day has come and gone, and as a sharply divided America marches inexorably onward to her two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in 2026, I find myself reflecting on what has happened to our beloved country due to the coronavirus epidemic of the last several months. Specifically to date, the virus has infected millions of Americans, killing more than 100,000 of these; has spawned a climate of public anxiety, fear, and isolation, in turn leading to increased mental illness and various forms of abuse; has shut down millions of businesses deemed “non-essential”; has sparked unprecedented growth in the medical services and sanitation industries; has provoked authoritarian public safety measures unilaterally imposed by national and state government on individuals, voluntary associations, schools, churches, and businesses; has unrelentingly dominated mainstream media coverage; has precipitated a major economic recession resulting in double-digit unemployment and temporary shortages of essential goods; and has led to the most expensive economic stimulus law ever enacted, generating a massive increase in our already gargantuan national debt.

Taken together, the COVID-19 emergency and the broad scope of the official response from government, health care, business, the media and entertainment industry, schools, and churches has dramatically and profoundly altered the landscape of American society overnight. The individual aspects of this response to our national public health crisis—which itself has been just one small part of a worldwide health emergency—have tended to be interlocking and mutually reinforcing, forming a remarkably effective matrix of national defense against a dangerous invisible enemy. Indeed, the nationwide figures for infection and death from the coronavirus to date fall far short of the apocalyptic predictions from certain medical sources early this year.

Understandably frightened by the threat of a rapidly spreading virus that they were told had no cure, the great majority of American citizens unquestioningly accepted the litany of stringent government restrictions on their public and private lives, from social distancing and bans on gatherings to closure of schools and businesses and stay at home orders, as necessary to protect the common good in this particular situation. They were entirely willing to sacrifice certain liberties to which they were accustomed for the sake of safety and survival, and they generally trusted that government was acting in their best interests.

There is no question that strict national and state laws based on expert recommendations from the CDC and NIH have greatly limited the spread of the virus and reduced its death toll. But did the gravity and risks of the threat actually require such a sweeping, dictatorial response? Should the recommendations of a sprawling and inefficient federal bureaucracy automatically become the law of the land without discussion and consideration by the people and their congressional representatives? Did slowing the spread of the virus and reducing infections and deaths really warrant this massive government intrusion into our daily lives, infringing on our God-given and constitutionally protected rights to freedom of religion and assembly and speech and movement and commerce? Did the American public and church leaders act prudently by quietly accepting and obeying such laws? Did the public health crisis justify the nearly wholesale government shutdown of the economy and the lasting consequences that ensued, or a stimulus package that adds trillions of dollars to a crushing national debt already in excess of $20 trillion? Can select provisions of our Constitution and some semblance of fiscal responsibility be legitimately set aside in a national emergency?

The key question of how far government can rightly go to protect our national security without encroaching on our cherished civil liberties was extensively debated in the early years of the War on Terrorism. Both security and liberty are essential to the common good and to the survival and prosperity of any nation. It is the responsibility and the challenge of duly elected government both to keep us safe and to protect our freedom in such a way that security and freedom are harmoniously balanced. All of the above yes or no questions can be more or less summed up in this one: Are public safety and national security more important than human freedom and individual liberty? Those who would unhesitatingly answer “Yes” place themselves in direct opposition to our nation’s Founders, who unhesitatingly answered “No” to this same question more than two hundred years by daring to rebel against the tyrannical British Crown. As Patrick Henry famously cried out: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!” And Benjamin Franklin calmly remarked in the same vein: "Those who would surrender their cherished liberty, for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty, nor safety." The South Dakota governor's comment that people should have the freedom to get sick and die may have generated a storm of protest, but it was certainly in keeping with the Founders’ perspective. Such ardent champions of human liberty, limited government, and fiscal restraint would not have approved of the federal and state governments’ wholesale interventions against the coronavirus, complete with record-busting deficit spending to try to revive an economy consigned to limbo by their own heavy-handed policies.

Classically educated, devout Christian, and wise men that they generally were, the Framers were aware that ancient Roman law provided for a temporary dictator in times of war and crisis. They certainly foresaw that our nation would also experience various kinds of crises and emergencies in future decades and centuries. Yet they were also painfully aware from history and their own experience as British colonists of the perennial truth that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thus the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that they painstakingly crafted to guide our nation do not include any provisions allowing any part of them to be set aside during a national emergency. The purpose of this deliberate omission is clear: Americans’ God-given and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are to be respected and protected by government at all times, regardless of the circumstances in which the nation finds herself. Individual liberties may not be sacrificed on the altar of national security. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights have no expiration date.

Unfortunately, faced with the coronavirus epidemic, our government has apparently and unilaterally decided that protecting the public health is more important than preserving the individual liberties of the American people. Yet even a casual look at the draconian state and federal response to the pandemic reveals that the sinister agenda of big-government socialism is at work. Unelected federal bureaucrats, Democratic state governors and elected representatives of both parties have all taken advantage of the virus situation to enlarge the size of government far beyond its proper and reasonable bounds, in the process catering to special interest groups that run the political and media show in Washington and state capitols, running roughshod over the Constitution, and abandoning any pretense of fiscal conservatism. For example, the $2 trillion CARES Act, with its chunks of pork-barrel spending for Big Agriculture and the performing arts, is an outrageous travesty of justice because it adds further weight to our already unsustainable national debt burden. And the same governors who have shuttered thrift stores, libraries and movie theaters and severely restricted public gatherings for worship in their states have kept Planned Parenthood abortion mills running full bore and allowed massive public demonstrations in large cities to proceed unhindered. Such blatant hypocrisy is a staple of corrupt and godless socialist government, and it clearly demonstrates that such politicians cannot be trusted to guarantee public safety, let alone individual liberty.

What is even more shameful than this corrupt and unconstitutional government, however, is that we the people of the United States as a whole have quietly tolerated and passively accepted this new level of government tyranny and fiscal recklessness. Sadly, this is just part of an early twenty-first century trend in which we have been gradually relinquishing many of our God-given and constitutionally protected rights, especially our privacy rights, to big government and big business, the two great enemies of the common person. We’ve allowed the federal government to take over our health care through the Affordable Care Act. We’ve allowed the Supreme Court to redefine marriage and sex contrary to natural law. We’ve allowed cell phones and other electronic devices to track our location and movement and send that information to a government database. We’ve allowed websites and browsers to track our Internet habits and preferences. We’ve allowed Microsoft unrestricted access to our private emails in Outlook. We’ve allowed Apple admittance to our digital storage files. We’ve allowed state government to tax our Internet purchases. We’ve allowed eBay and PayPal to track our buying and selling habits and sell and rent that information to third parties. We’ve allowed software vendors to sign us up for unwanted automatic renewal just so we can purchase their software in the first place. We’ve allowed Congress and our President to spend tens of trillions of dollars we don’t have. And now we’ve allowed our leaders to confine us to our homes, shut down our restaurants and businesses and schools and libraries, ban unnecessary travel, forbid us to gather in a church building or anywhere else, and spend trillions more dollars we don’t have.

Apparently, our cherished human rights and fiscal responsibility are not so cherished anymore, because we are too timid and unwilling to fight for them when they are threatened or to hold our government accountable when it tramples on them. Two centuries ago, America was “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but now it seems to be the land of the chained and the home of the cowed. Like the grumbling Israelites in the desert, we seem to prefer slavery to freedom. If we now truly value safety above liberty, then we certainly deserve to be neither safe nor free.

The great pandemic of 2020 is a moment of reckoning for the American people. Will we timidly continue to allow big government and big business ever-increasing control over all aspects of our daily lives? Or will we courageously stand up and boldly demand that our leaders govern in accordance with the Constitution and fiscal sanity, thus simultaneously ensuring our security, prosperity and freedom? The choice we make will determine not only our future, but the future of the twenty-first century world.

How ironic it is that the coronavirus epidemic originated in Communist China, whose repressive anti-religious government has been trampling on the human rights of its vast people for decades and whose leaders are now positioning the country to replace the United States as the leading world superpower, thus threatening the liberty of billions of people. In a written statement published by ZENIT on April 3, Cardinal Charles Bo, the Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar and president of the Asian bishops’ conference, publicly and courageously denounced the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government for deliberately allowing the virus to spread throughout the city of Wuhan for three weeks and intimidating, arresting, and imprisoning doctors and journalists who attempted to warn the Chinese public of the threat during that period.

Indeed, it is not only possible, but likely, that the radically secularist CCP regime deliberately orchestrated the release of the virus from their state-controlled lab in Wuhan as a biological weapons experiment on their own people and the rest of humanity. If that is the case, then we have been offered a terrifying glimpse of the brave new world the Chinese Communists are planning to create within the next few decades. If their short-term goals were to sicken millions and kill hundreds of thousands, to spread fear and panic through media propaganda, to close churches and cripple voluntary associations, to restrict freedom of movement and association, to isolate and confine hundreds of millions, to promote government takeover of public and private life, and to damage thriving free-market economies, they could hardly have done a better job in all of those areas. With one tiny virus, the CCP has powerfully influenced the entire world, including its ideological arch-enemy, the United States.

The COVID-19 plague--which is actually among the smaller and less devastating epidemics of ancient and modern history--should sound the alarm to freedom-loving people everywhere that the once sleeping giant of Communist China is now awake, aggressive, and dangerous. Politically, economically, technologically, militarily and in many other ways, China has been gearing up for many years now to take over the world by the middle of this century. Given the glaring distinction between America’s traditional Judeo-Christian values and the atheistic ideology of Communism, this will have profoundly negative consequences for the entire human family, as tyranny will replace freedom around the globe.

If we do not wish this grim future to become a reality, then we must immediately take concrete steps to strengthen our own country and develop a comprehensive long-term foreign policy plan so that we can effectively fight, and win, a lengthy "Cold War" with the Chinese Communists, just as we did with the Russian Communists in the last century. To begin with, we should fiscally discipline ourselves by balancing the federal budget within four years and cutting our 14-figure national debt in half by 2030. This all-out effort will require unity, education, wisdom, determination, courage, and perseverance in order to be successful. The United States versus China will be the signature foreign policy battle of the twenty-first century. If we the people of the United States will recover the Founders’ zeal for liberty, return wholeheartedly to our Judeo-Christian founding principles and to the Constitution based on them, and place our trust in God, then we will not only enjoy the twin blessings of liberty and security in harmonious coexistence for ourselves and our children, but the rest of the world will be a more free and secure place for our brothers and sisters in the human family.

Copyright © 2020 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Reflections on the Past Twenty Years

by Justin Soutar

I wish all readers of this blog post a Happy New Year 2020 and a happy new decade as well. It's hard to believe we've just entered the "Twenties," since my maternal grandparents were born in the 1920s almost one hundred years ago. This milestone is a good time to pause and reflect on the direction of the Church, our country and our world during the first twenty years of the twenty-first century.

From the Jubilee Year 2000 to 2019, the Catholic Church generally prospered under the courageous leadership of three saintly Popes: Saint John Paul II "the Great", Benedict XVI and Francis. Despite major differences in personality, style, and emphasis arising from their different backgrounds and training, there has been a great continuity among the Polish, German, and Argentinian pontiffs in their unwavering focus on Christ and His Gospel; the clarity of their teaching on the essential doctrines of the Faith; and their efforts toward administrative and spiritual reform of the Roman Curia and the Church generally.

While disturbing revelations of sexual abuse of children and youth by some Catholic priests and cover-up by a few bishops in the second half of the twentieth century cast a shadow over the Church throughout the world, these same revelations led to the establishment of new Church policies and structures that contributed to a drastic reduction in abuse incidents in the U.S. during this period. Additionally, during the late 2010s, dissident pressure groups and the secular media ignited an unfortunate controversy within the Church in the U.S. and elsewhere over the meaning and application of certain passages in Pope Francis' beautiful apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), leading millions of faithful Catholics to erroneously believe that Francis wants to change the Church's moral teachings or is unfit for office.

Despite these problems, the Church overall has been thriving. In the U.S., the majority of bishops have been saintly men and nearly all have remained faithful to the Magisterium. We saw the beginning of the end of the chronic priest shortage as orthodox seminaries across America were packed with increasing numbers of holy young men each year and the number of priestly ordinations began to steadily increase. Faithful religious women such as the Nashville Dominicans also grew substantially in number. The number of lay faithful has continued to grow with each Easter Vigil. EWTN expanded its media apostolate by acquiring the National Catholic Register in 2011 and adding tens of millions of new radio listeners and TV viewers. Worldwide, the Church added about 300 million new members during the past twenty years, the majority of them in Africa.

Our country enjoyed an economic boom from 2000 to 2007 during the Bush administration which was followed by the stock market crash of 2008 and resulting Great Recession which was prolonged by the Obama administration's high taxes and increased government regulation of businesses. Lower taxes and less regulation contributed to economic growth and historically low unemployment during the first three years of the Trump administration. While the standard of living generally increased with nearly every American enjoying Internet access, a cell phone and flat screen TV, corporate greed and the failure of wages to keep pace with cost of living increases contributed to the dismemberment of the middle class, and the national debt swelled from $2 trillion to $20 trillion.

The growth of major corporations such as Dollar General, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and The Home Depot forced tens of thousands of small businesses to close by flooding the U.S. market with cheap goods imported from China and other foreign countries. However, a popular movement to support American manufacturers by buying American made products had gained steam by the end of the 2010s, with President Trump replacing NAFTA with USMCA to discourage the outsourcing of American manufacturing. And fueled by growing demand, the organic food and renewable energy industries saw significant growth during the past two decades.

Politically, our country has grown more and more divided from the contested presidential election of 2000 to the futile attempt by House Democrats to impeach President Trump in late 2019. Corrupt Republican and Democratic members of Congress have proven incapable of bipartisan collaboration on a host of pressing issues from abortion and religious freedom to healthcare and the environment to immigration and foreign policy. Unable or unwilling to peaceably discuss and work with their colleagues across the aisle, they've resorted to scoring whatever legislative or judicial victories they can scrape for their own side and either violently attacking or quietly distancing themselves from the opposition. Millions of frustrated Americans espousing traditional Judeo-Christian values created the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party in 2009, many of whose candidates were swept into state and national office in the gubernatorial, senatorial and Congressional elections of 2010 and 2014.

Religiously and morally, our country has become increasingly less Christian under the pervasive influence of militant secularism. Christians are still a large majority of the population, but their percentage has gradually declined while the percentage of nonreligious individuals has grown into double digits and Satanism and the occult have become more popular. In 2000, freedom of religion as protected by the First Amendment was sacrosanct, but just ten years later, under pressure from the abortion cartel and pharmaceutical and insurance giants, the Obama administration was requiring abortion and contraception to be part of "healthcare coverage" regardless of religious or moral objection to these anti-life practices.

During his visit to the U.S. in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI had warned that radical secularism would lead to an attack on religious liberty, and Pope Francis repeatedly highlighted the importance of religious freedom and met briefly with Kim Davis and the Little Sisters of the Poor during his own tour of the U.S. in 2015. The ObamaCare assault on our first freedom provoked a well-organized religious liberty campaign led by our bishops during the 2010s, including an annual Fortnight for Freedom, that led ultimately to the reversal of Obama's HHS mandate and many other anti-religious regulations by the Trump administration.

The confident exuberance and idealistic optimism for world peace, freedom, and prosperity that marked the beginning of the third millennium, nicely encapsulated in the Ford Millennium Anthem "Just Wave Hello," soon proved ill-founded. The shocking destruction of the World Trade Center's iconic Twin Towers by Israeli intelligence agents disguised as Arab terrorists on September 11, 2001 and subsequent terrorist attacks all over the world; the U.S. invasion of Iraq against the urgent advice of Pope John Paul II; the unabated continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the ongoing exodus of Christians from the Holy Land; the U.S. support for ISIS that led to its occupation of the Nineveh Plain in 2014 with subsequent murder and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians and Muslims and the destruction of dozens of ancient churches and monasteries; widespread drug and human trafficking in Central America; civil wars over natural resources in several African countries; brutal Communist repression in China; and North Korea's nuclear weapons tests were just a few symptoms of the pervasive lack of peace and freedom in our twenty-first century world.

Nor was global prosperity so easy to achieve as it seemed, although the spectacular advance of digital technology has led to nearly everyone on earth owning at least one cell phone and the rise of social media has interconnected us as never before. As John Paul II and other twentieth-century Popes predicted in their social encyclicals, transnational capitalism and free trade driven mainly by greed and untethered from moral and ethical considerations have led to the exploitation of cheap labor, economic instability, enormous gaps between rich and poor within the same nation, social unrest, emigration, and environmental degradation. Famine, poverty, and starvation are still common in many countries, and tens of millions of people have left the Third World in search of gainful employment here and in Europe. Benedict XVI's masterful 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) features a penetrating analysis of these problems and beautifully explains why truth and love are essential to a healthy global economy.

Meanwhile, most European countries have largely succumbed to the forces of radical secularism and hedonism, with weekly church attendance in the single digits and their native populations in dramatic decline due to widespread abortion, euthanasia, and the unpopularity of marriage and traditional family life.

Notable changes from historic climate patterns were observed around the world from 2000 to 2019, but the main source of climate change was obscured by thick clouds of "global warming" propaganda and dire warnings of an impending man-made climate emergency. By virtue of its massive size and tremendous energy output, the sun is the dominant influence on earth's weather, beside which all other influences combined, including human CO2 output, are minor. Astronomers have noticed a general decline in solar activity, including a reduced number of sunspots, during this period. And NASA climate satellites have recorded a 3/10 of a degree drop in Earth's average global temperature from 1998 to 2017. Observed changes in solar activity have been the primary cause of climatic changes during the past twenty years.

The truth about the dramatic First World honeybee die-off of the past two decades has been similarly concealed. The blame for Colony Collapse Disorder is usually pinned on a certain class of pesticides, even though their use has declined greatly with the spread of organic farming practices across North America and Europe during this period. The fact is that the proliferation of cell phones and other wireless technology has disrupted normal hive activity, killing honeybees in droves. This is painfully obvious from the fact that honeybees have remained abundant in the ever fewer and shrinking parts of our country and the world where cell phone service is still absent.

To summarize, the overall picture we see here is a mixed bag, with the Church on the whole doing well and our country and our world faring rather poorly. Yet perhaps the most significant negative aspect of the past twenty years is that many of us have been so caught up in the daily newsfeed that we've lost a sense of perspective on the bigger picture, where we've come from and where we're heading, and we're ignoring or forgetting the valuable lessons history has to teach us about our current problems. The Bible says that without a vision, the people perish. In this regard, I heartily recommend Fr. George Rutler's book Calm in Chaos: Catholic Wisdom for Anxious Times.

All of the above mentioned problems in the Church, our country, and the world at large can be traced back to human failure to observe the two great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor. As Pope Benedict said, when we exalt ourselves above God, when we exclude Him as irrelevant, we succumb to the dictatorship of radical secularism. And as Pope Francis said, when we exalt ourselves above our neighbor, we fall prey to the cancer of indifference.

Pundits and interested parties too often exaggerate the gravity of today's problems, forgetting or ignoring the fact that our loving God, who created us, redeems us, sanctifies us, and sustains us in existence at every moment, knows all of our problems and their root causes intimately and is ready to help us resolve them if we humbly turn to Him and request His assistance. When asked what's wrong with the world, G.K. Chesterton famously quipped, "I am!" And Saint Pio of Pietrelcina declared that the solution to all the world's problems is personal holiness. The future of the Church, our country, and our world will be brighter if many of us answer the call to daily conversion, thus radiating the light of faith, hope, and love into the darkness of doubt, despair, and hatred.


Copyright © 2020 Justin D. Soutar.

Financial and Moral Deficits

Our nation's record-breaking budget deficits are in the news lately. President Obama’s recently uncloaked budget bombshell for fiscal year 2014 includes massive and unprecedented new spending increases—largely as a consequence of the pathetically misnamed Affordable Care Act—at a time when the United States of America is still struggling to recover from the worst recession in eighty years. Under President Obama’s corrupt and irresponsible administration over the past five years, which has swollen the federal bureaucracy to double its original size and scope, our nation has been digging itself into a far deeper hole of debt, and at a far more rapid pace, than at any previous point in its 240-year history. Even the dramatic rise in the national debt from $2.1 trillion to more than $10 trillion that marked the George W. Bush administration due largely to its own massive spending and federal bureaucratic growth is quickly being eclipsed by President Obama’s boundless spending extravaganza. Whereas our country gained some $8 trillion in additional debt burden during eight years of President Bush, we have accumulated nearly $7 trillion more on top of that during just five years of President Obama. As a result, our national debt figure now stands at $17.3 trillion and counting. Unfortunately, President Obama and his loyal cronies on both sides of the aisle have abandoned all pretense of concern for rescuing our country from this inconceivable debt nightmare, with the concept of a balanced budget appearing less likely and more laughable with each passing day. If President Obama’s proposed budgetary scheme were to pass Congressional muster, gigantic spending hikes would push our national debt well above the $20 trillion mark before the final three years of his administration are up.

It is shocking to think that just thirty-three years ago when President Ronald Reagan took office, our entire national debt was "only" around $900 billion. It’s even more disturbing to realize that the federal budget deficit projected for this coming fiscal year alone eclipses our nation's total debt figure for the year 2000. Clearly, our dishonest and corrupt reigning establishment politicians in Washington have lost all sense of fiscal discipline and responsibility for the financial health of our country as they unscrupulously sacrifice control of our national financial system to the insatiable appetites of major corporate interests, thereby loading a colossal and unsustainable burden of debt onto the shoulders of future generations of average hardworking Americans and guaranteeing that American prosperity will soon be a thing of the past.

But while we must be concerned about these gargantuan runaway financial deficits and their long-term impact on our economy, we tend to forget that our country is simultaneously experiencing a more serious kind of deficit—that is, a moral deficit. These two kinds of deficits, moral and fiscal, are closely related. Our nation’s financial and economic decline over time has directly resulted from and closely paralleled its moral decline. The profound and clearly evident moral deficit in our nation's leadership and in its citizens must first be acknowledged and duly addressed if we are to have any hope of effectively halting and reversing the national debt—not to mention getting our economy on a sound footing.

Morality involves a sense of responsibility towards God and our neighbor. Religion helps to foster and inculcate this sense of responsibility. Our Founding Fathers and early national leaders were religious and moral men, and under their wise and competent administration, our country's debt incurred by the War of Independence was paid off in a timely fashion and the national debt kept very low thereafter. The Founders and their immediate successors exhibited a healthy fear of even the smallest outstanding debt. Benjamin Franklin encapsulated this early fiscal conservatism in his famous line, "It is better to go to bed supperless than to wake up in debt." President Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt down to zero in 1835. Unfortunately, in more recent times, the religious and moral character of our nation's leaders has tended to decline, with a decreased sense of responsibility to the people they govern, and the result has been a corresponding increase in the national debt. During the last century, America's outstanding debt rose from less than $1 billion in 1900 to more than $2 trillion in 2000. From the 1980s onward, the debt began to rise at a noticeably faster pace. In the last fourteen years it has grown exponentially, dwarfing the entire national debt of America’s previous 200 years combined, reflecting an increasing loss of any sense of responsibility on the part of our most recent national leaders.

What is debt? Debt is something that we owe someone else. When we get a loan or a credit card, a bank gives us a certain sum of money to borrow. Along with the right to borrow money comes the responsibility to use this money honestly and to repay it as soon as possible. When a creditor lends us money, he gives us the right to use it and expects us to pay it back in a timely fashion. Thus a financial debt is a moral responsibility towards our neighbor, because the money we are borrowing belongs to him. When we repay our debts, we are acting honestly and responsibly in accordance with the moral law.

In the world of finance, we have a responsibility to only borrow a sum of money that we reasonably expect to be able to repay and to avoid deliberately accumulating unsustainable debt. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, we may become indebted to someone and be unable to repay what we owe. In this case, it is an act of mercy and a moral thing for our creditor to voluntarily practice debt forgiveness. When he does this, he is saying that the money he lent us is now ours to keep, and we need not worry about paying it back. In the Bible, Jesus urges creditors to practice this form of forgiveness, and not to demand repayment when this is impossible.

Similarly, in the realm of morality, we are given the right to make free choices, and along with this freedom comes the responsibility to act in accord with the moral law. When we abuse our freedom by committing sin, we incur a moral debt towards God and towards our neighbor. We can pay off such a debt by repenting of our sin and making reparation for it by prayer, fasting, and works of charity. Nonetheless, it is a fact of fallen human nature that most of us are walking around with some level of debt to God due to our sins. However, God is merciful and has made an arrangement known as Purgatory to take care of any remaining moral debt we may owe Him at the time of our death. Jesus himself connected the moral debts we owe to God with the moral debts owed to us by our neighbor in the Our Father, which in St. Mark's gospel reads, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

Now, in the financial world, there is (or ought to be) a difference between an honest, responsible person who accidentally falls into a situation of unsustainable debt through no fault of his own, and a dishonest, irresponsible person who runs up many debts and wishes to continue running them up with no intention of ever repaying them. In the first case, mercy (financial assistance) is appropriate; in the second case, there can be only justice (collection agencies). In the moral life, there is a similar distinction between a person who sins and then repents and makes restitution for his sin, and a person who sins freely and wishes to continue sinning with no intention of ever repenting. In the first case, God is merciful and bestows a heavenly reward; in the second, He is just and metes out the punishment of Hell. Just as it is the fiscally irresponsible person’s own fault that he loses his credit card and whatever he purchased with it and must pay what he owes with extra penalties and interest, it is the morally irresponsible person’s own fault that he ends up in Hell for all eternity.

Beneath the economic and financial collapse of 2008 that led to the current recession lay a crisis of personal moral responsibility. It’s easy and partly correct to blame irresponsible lending policies of the banks or unwise housing policies of the federal government for this disaster, but the fact is that all of us Americans contributed to this national financial crisis by our immoral individual personal decisions which helped drive the preceding artificial boom. We chose to borrow irresponsibly, to spend more and save less, to live beyond our means, to take on more and more debt, to buy that nice house and new car and all kinds of gadgets we wanted but really couldn’t afford. In other words, we chose to live dishonestly because we were selfish, greedy, materialistic and corrupt. And these immoral personal decisions of ours contributed to the ballooning growth of our national debt during the Bush administration. As Pope Benedict XVI eloquently demonstrated in his great social encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), you cannot build a sustainable economy on immorality and selfishness. Fidelity to the moral law on the part of everyone involved, i.e., personal moral responsibility, is a prerequisite for a sound economic and financial system.

The word "deficit" comes from the Latin word deficere, which means "emptiness." Benedict XVI pointed out in Caritas in Veritate that financial deficits and moral deficits go hand in hand. When individuals in a society succumb to a loss of personal moral responsibility, one of the natural consequences is a loss of fiscal responsibility that negatively impacts the whole society. Our skyrocketing fourteen-figure national debt with its twelve zeroes is merely a symbol and a symptom of the yawning moral emptiness of our nation’s leaders and citizens in recent years. Without a general and profound moral reform of American society beginning with each individual American, no financial reform project will succeed or bear lasting fruit. Only through a timely return and re-commitment to personal moral responsibility—aided by devout religious faith and the wisdom and example of the Founders—on the part of America’s citizens and leaders alike can our nation yet hope to pull away from the giant black hole of financial self-destruction toward which it is now hurtling at breakneck speed.

Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Article Heritage Series #2: "The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure"

Continuing with my "Article Heritage" series begun last fall, installments of which appear every few months or so, I here present a second article from my early days as a writer. This one, originally written and published in 2007 and entitled "The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure," became my most popular article published that year. It was accepted for publication on five different websites (some "conservative," some "liberal") and generated dozens of reader comments, most of which were positive, a few of which were negative. Furthermore, it was reprinted in its entirety without my permission on a website called "Nigeria Village Square" by a certain Dr. Gary K. Busch, who in addition inadvertently neglected to credit me as the author. When I contacted him to complain about this, he apologized for failing to properly credit me and put my name at the top of the webpage where he ran the article. He added that my article was well written and informative, and that he had re-published it to give it additional exposure. That mollified me somewhat, so I did not insist he remove it from the website. However, this experience did highlight my predicament as a starving writer (which I still am today), since I never received a penny for this article (ditto for most of my other articles).

This article expresses my honest opinions regarding the American two-party political system. In it, I contend that this system has inflicted and is continuing to inflict great harm on our nation by dividing the American people over fundamental moral issues on which our nation is built and on which we should be in agreement; by hampering clear and objective discourse on national issues through the excitement of emotional partisan fervor; and by corrupting politicians of both parties to support big business interests that have nothing to do with the common good of our nation. I point out that our nation's Founders objected with good reason to the establishment of a partisan political system, and argue that the two-party system must be abolished for the good of our country. Reading this article today, I find it still pertinent to our country's current situation, and even (if I may say so) a bit prophetic. Below is the article as originally written, albeit slightly revised to incorporate the emergence of the Tea Party and polished a bit to bring the style more in line with my current authorship standards. Your civil and constructive comments are most welcome.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure

by Justin Soutar May 23, 2007

For a number of years now, respected pundits have lauded the American two-party political system as an excellent balance between the dictatorship of a one-party system and the instability of a multiparty system. Yet the two-party system has done and continues to do our country great harm. The Republican and Democratic parties have divided the American people over fundamental moral values; they have failed to rectify longstanding national problems; and their existence chiefly benefits special interest groups, politicians, and mega-corporate executives. Most unfortunately of all, however, the two-party setup does not represent the people of the United States.

Many people believe that political parties are essential in a democracy such as the United States. These individuals claim that since a democracy encourages dissent and disagreement, it is only natural that such differences of opinion will find expression in organized factions. But this strain of thought clashes with the judgment of our nation’s founders. In his Observations on History, Benjamin Franklin wrote that parties engender confusion. In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay warned against the evils to the general public that a “spirit of faction” would cause. And George Washington refused allegiance to any political party during his eight-year service as first president of the United States.

Despite this initial rejection of partisanship, opposing factions emerged at the end of the 1700s representing two different opinions about the role of the federal government. The emergence of these factions marked the beginning of a two-party system that would dominate American politics for the next two hundred-plus years. The Federalists urged a strong central administration that would dominate the states and ensure national unity, while the Republicans believed that the individual states should have more power than the central government. In fact, the form of government officially established by the Constitution was a federal republic, so these parties were emphasizing the importance of either national or state power. Alexander Hamilton became the leader of the Federalist camp, whereas Thomas Jefferson sided with the Republicans—although neither prominent national founder held the rigidly partisan or doctrinaire outlook typical of many American politicians today. Moreover, the chief disagreement of these early parties was over the distribution of power within the United States government. Members of both camps initially saw eye to eye on most moral, economic, social, and foreign policy matters such as slavery, domestic trade, traditional family values, and isolationism.

During the 1800s, the parties evolved and grew further apart, especially over the issue of slavery. Federalists changed their name to Republicans and opposed slavery and the secession of the South, while the heretofore Republicans became Democratic-Republicans and declared support for both slavery and secession. At this stage, one party was championing a grave injustice which most Americans instinctively understood was evil. The Democratic-Republicans received backing primarily from wealthy Southern landowners, who insisted on keeping Negro slaves for cheap labor. After Republican president Abraham Lincoln waged the Civil War, declared emancipation, and brought the South back into the Union, the Democratic Party remained the faction of Southern landlords’ continued rebellion against the North and repression of Black political rights. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Democrats also gained membership from blue-collar workers in Northern cities as the Industrial Revolution created a new underclass. Meanwhile, Republicans attracted backing from the new class of wealthy Northern capitalists and from supporters of African-American civil rights nationwide.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the importance of economic and foreign policy issues increased. The Republican Party came to stand for Northern farmers, retention of the gold standard, fiscally disciplined government, and isolationism, while the Democratic Party represented Southern landowners and Northern industrial laborers, a flexible money supply, growth of the federal government, and foreign engagement. During the Cold War, the two parties achieved a significant level of bipartisanship, agreeing on the necessity of confronting Communism and promoting freedom abroad. Another major change occurred in the 1960s, when Democratic president Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. From then onward the Democratic Party took up the “liberal” causes of civil rights and urban workers, leading the “conservative” faction of farmers, limited government and big business—the Republican Party—to dominate the South.

Another element was added to the American political landscape with the social upheavals of the 1960s and the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion in 1973. When a number of Democrats who had favored the abandonment of traditional social and moral values came to realize the bitter failure of those upheavals, they converted into social “conservatives” and found a new home in the Republican Party. President Ronald Reagan emerged as the standard-bearer of these new Republicans, who established their party on the firm foundation of God’s Law and strove to restore our nation’s identity as a Christian country.

The end of the Cold War signaled the arrival of two more simultaneous factional changes. One was President Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats”, who championed unrestricted globalization and free market economics alongside social spending. The other change had been planted during the Reagan administration, hibernated under the Clinton administration, and blossomed fully after the events of September 11, 2001: the ascendancy of neoconservatives within the Republican Party. Led by President Bush, these individuals likewise championed unrestricted globalization and free market economics, but they also demanded an aggressive military response to “Islamic” terrorism with vast increases in military spending and in the size of the federal government, as well as cuts in social spending and foreign economic aid.

Towards the end of the Bush administration, public disapproval of neoconservative excesses and corruption fueled the rise of the Tea Party movement within Republican ranks. This no-holds-barred populist movement, led by Ron Paul and Sarah Palin, earnestly strove to return America to the Judeo-Christian religious and moral principles that made her great. Its platform, solidly grounded in those principles, included strict Constitutional government in line with the intent of the Framers; reversal of Roe v. Wade; drastic reduction in federal government size and spending; elimination of federal budget deficits and reduction of the overall national debt; abolition of the Federal Reserve and income taxes; and opposition to costly foreign wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. With its staunch Christian, pro-life and family values combined with an ethos of limited government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility, and a balanced budget, the Tea Party movement was essentially a reincarnation of the Reagan Republican Party of the 1980s, albeit adapted to the particular challenges facing a new generation of Americans. Tea Party Republicanism gained widespread support and respect from Republican and Democratic Americans alike due to the consistency of its political philosophy, the soundness of its clearly articulated positions, and above all the character and integrity of its leaders. In 2010, a growing wave of public discontent and anger with the recently elected Obama administration and corrupt Washington politicians in both parties swept more than a hundred Tea Party candidates to power in state governorships as well as in the U.S. House and Senate. However, despite strong public support, the Tea Party movement lost its bids for the presidency in both 2008 and 2012 because it allowed the corrupt Republican establishment to dictate the choice of its presidential nominee.

We can learn some important lessons from this condensed review of American partisan history. One reason for the pendulum dynamic of swinging back and forth between the parties is that the country has different needs at different times. After Democratic-Republican President James Buchanan (1857-1861), the American people swung to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860 because of his firm stand against slavery and his leadership abilities during a critical time in the nation’s history. In 1932, after four years of Republican President Herbert Hoover, American voters swung to Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, opting for increased government spending and control of the economy to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression. In 1980, the voters swung from Democratic President Jimmy Carter to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in reaction to economic stagnation and other domestic and foreign problems. In 1992, following twelve years of Republican presidential rule, economic recession influenced voters to swing to Democratic contender Bill Clinton. And in 2008, after eight years of Republican President George W. Bush, American voters swung to Democratic President Barack Obama to address the financial crisis as well as health care and immigration reform issues that the Bush administration had not adequately dealt with.

But though our country has different needs at different times, the two major political parties are not the proper instruments to satisfy these needs. According to George Washington, the constant alternation of two parties in the federal government would be a “frightful despotism.” The main reason for this pendulum dynamic, especially in the past few decades, is that neither party is adequately solving the key problems America faces.

Two factors explain this failure. First, each party stands for some of the values and policies America needs. For example, the Republican Party traditionally stands for the right to life of each human person from conception to natural death; a free market economy; limited government; low taxes; a balanced budget; a strong national defense; secure borders; and strict interpretation of the Constitution. The Democratic Party traditionally stands for the rights of the poor, disabled, and elderly to health care and financial assistance; the rights of ethnic and religious minorities to an equal place in our society; abolition of the death penalty and reform of our prison system; fair wages and decent working conditions for employees; common-sense regulation of the economy for the sake of the common good; protection of the environment; the development of clean renewable energy resources; increased economic aid to impoverished countries; and multilateral nuclear disarmament. However, the U.S. really needs both sets of values and policies. We need pro-life laws and prison reform, lower taxes and renewable energy, a free market economy with common-sense regulations—not one or the other.

The second factor explaining the failure of the two-party system is corruption. When a new president is elected, people anticipate that he will get things done. When he fails to meet even reasonable expectations and his administration becomes plagued by scandal (as has happened all too often in recent decades), people turn with hope to the other party, which generally does not improve matters much. This is because most members of both parties have been corrupted by special interests. Our last three presidents have been mega-corporate moguls whose ownership of major industries presented flagrant conflicts of interest. In addition, wealthy and vocal lobby groups have bullied our senators, representatives and president into enacting policies that benefit a few large companies at the expense of the average American citizen.

For example, President Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 on a platform that featured tax cuts, economic growth for everyone, and an ambitious social welfare program. Although the economy did grow, Clinton broke other promises by instituting the largest tax raise in American history, keeping social spending to a minimum, and permitting corporations such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and McDonalds to reap the lion’s share of gains. Then in 2000 President George W. Bush was elected on a platform that featured the right to life, tax cuts, free-market economics, secure borders, and fiscal discipline. Although Bush has generally held to his pro-life pledge and did sign into law some token tax cuts, in September of 2006 he declared support for the Plan B contraceptive pills for minors. Furthermore, President Bush has allowed big businesses such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, McDonalds, Halliburton, Boeing, Verizon Wireless, and News Corporation to choke the “free” market; has pandered to illegal aliens; and ran up the largest federal budget deficits and national debt in American history. Both presidents ended up serving the interests of mega-corporations first and foremost.

The two-party political system does not accurately represent opposing viewpoints of the role of the federal government as it did in the young United States. Though it was a bad idea to begin with, since the latter part of the last century the system has become decrepit with corruption and has fallen sadly out of touch with the average American. Most of the Republican and Democratic candidates allege certain principles and make attractive promises during their campaigns, but upon entering office compromise overtakes principle like a weed and promises are thrown to the wind. Unfortunately, the current corrupt political climate is hostile to honest, traditionally-minded candidates with unwavering principles from Middle America such as Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. In general, only those individuals who habitually cater to—or are susceptible to manipulation by—hawkish pressure groups have a chance at federal public office.

Despite the manifest failure of the modern Republican and Democratic parties to deliver, however, most American voters across the map of the United States continue to choose congressional and presidential candidates along major party lines because no viable alternatives are in sight. They feel it is useless to vote for a third party or independent candidate because such a candidate has no real chance of making it into office. These dedicated factional adherents are stuck in the rut of the two-party system. Economics has long vied with fundamental moral convictions as a major factor determining political affiliation. In the US today, richer individuals (who generally dominate rural areas) tend to vote Republican, while poorer individuals (who generally dominate cities) tend to vote Democratic. These choices are based largely on the economic policies and moral positions that the parties stand for and on the hope that new candidates will do a better job than their predecessors. Some Republican and Democratic senators and representatives actually keep their campaign promises and work hard to protect innocent unborn children or help financially struggling Americans, or both, and it is those few exceptions that keep alive what little hope is left in the reigning system.

On the other hand, contented middle-class individuals (who generally dominate suburbs and small towns and comprise a significant minority of the American people) tend to hold a more independent, traditionally-minded outlook and are more likely to spread their votes around based on fundamental moral convictions as well as their common-sense perception of local and national needs. These are the “swing voters” to which enterprising candidates of both parties direct so much of their campaigning energy.

The degree of distinction between the two parties is a matter of controversy. To figure this out, it is helpful to distinguish between theory and practice. In theory, the Republican and Democratic factions are ideological opposites, with Republicans focusing on traditional values and responsibility while Democrats are grounded in progressive values and opportunity. But in practice, thanks to the endemic corruption of the system, there is little difference between parties. Republicans turn out to be not really Republican, and Democrats turn out to be not really Democrats: both sets of politicians operate together in a hazy and confused middle ground defined by special interest groups. This has been clearly demonstrated on a number of occasions, such as the overwhelming Congressional approval for war in Iraq in 2002, the Republicans’ passage of a bill that would have provided federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research involving abortions in 2006, and the refusal of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to consider impeaching President Bush. All of these decisions were driven by mega-corporations, which stood to profit immensely from them. Even though President Bush vetoed the embryonic stem-cell act, soon afterward he accepted limited access to contraceptive pills for minors in order to mollify the big business executives.

Some might point to these occasions of crossing party lines as examples of bipartisanship. However, selling one’s fundamental principles to money-hungry American firms does not make for true bipartisanship. Real bipartisanship involves consistent agreement on fundamental, non-negotiable moral values such as the right to life and frequent compromise on the wide range of negotiable issues such as national security, economic policy, environmental protection, domestic poverty relief, and foreign aid. But instead of the way things should be, the pressure of the unrestricted free-market ideology has inverted values. Republicans and Democrats treat the negotiable issues as the most crucial of all and generally are absolutely unbending on them, whereas the fundamental moral values elicit disgraceful compromises and persistent disagreement. After all, big business tycoons do not like to have their enormous profits curtailed by the Ten Commandments, and they demand a totally unregulated market in order to reap those profits.

The two-party setup in the United States has severely divided our nation. Having names and labels for different political persuasions can be helpful, but they have too often led to pigeonholing and name-calling which hampers a free exchange of ideas. “Republican” and “Democrat”, “conservative” and “liberal”, “right” and “left” have degenerated into terms used to ostracize and vilify the opposition and to stifle discussion of topics deemed politically incorrect. A private citizen or political candidate who opposes US involvement in foreign wars should not be dubbed a “radical leftist” any more than a private citizen or political candidate who advocates illegalizing abortion should be denounced as a “right-winger”.

Moreover, the true meanings of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have been obscured. In modern parlance, a “conservative” is someone who defends fundamental moral values and wishes to preserve traditional national ideals, and a “liberal” is someone who disputes fundamental moral values and wishes to radically change our country around. But these meanings are inadequate. The words originally referred to political approaches, not to a person’s moral values or lack thereof. “Conservative” basically means someone who applauds the status quo, while “liberal” means someone who wishes to effect change. Neither conservatism not liberalism is good or evil per se; it depends on what specific policy you wish to maintain or to alter. Continuing a bad policy such as torture of terrorist suspects is just as detrimental to our national well-being as changing a good policy such as the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research involving abortion would be. Beneficial policies need to be maintained and harmful policies need to be changed. Thus in the original sense of the words, few if any human beings could be described as completely conservative or completely liberal.

Political factions tend to be driven by ideologies that, in their members’ pursuit of particular goals, obscure rather than clarify the truth. Indeed, truth itself has been politicized. Inconvenient truths (such as the inability of embryonic stem-cells to cure diseases) are derided as falsehood, while falsehoods that make a few people rich (such as the impossibility of conducting a dialogue with terrorists) are glorified as absolute truth. Nowhere are these destructive elements of partisan politics more evident than in the meteoric rise of the neoconservative ideology following the terrorist attacks of September 11. This intolerant, extremist, and totalitarian belief system seems to have become a religion for many people, yet it is a deception that worships the false gods of national security and an unfettered free market. It was cunningly crafted by a handful of rich American tycoons to justify an aggressive foreign policy that enables them to engage in the age-old practice of war profiteering, to expand their globalized business operations across the world, and to exploit more and more human beings without hindrance. In contravention of history, it insists that terrorism is an act of war rather than a criminal tactic employed to draw a government’s attention to real grievances, and that only all-out armed force can “defeat” terrorism. Its view of the terrorist threat is based on mistaken assumptions, numerous fallacies, and blanket denials of many important facts that contradict their view.

Although it masquerades as patriotic, the neoconservative ideology and its loyal adherents have done tremendous harm to the American political landscape. Neoconservatives have viciously attacked their opponents, twisted moral values, and used false guilt to silence opposition. They are utilizing the ancient strategy of divide and conquer to destroy American public debate and ultimately to dominate the world. Their ability to find common ground with Americans of other opinions on negotiable issues is nil. In the pursuit of greed and power, they are willing to exacerbate partisan divisions among the American people and make them forget their nonpartisan heritage.

According to our nation’s founders, it would be better to have no political parties at all. Individuals should form their opinion on each individual negotiable matter through a careful review of all the relevant facts and without pressure from a corporate-controlled media, comfortable politicians, wealthy pundits, celebrities, or mega-corporate leaders. If that were to happen, if Americans were to discard ideologies and agree on the fundamental moral values, they would find much common ground on the negotiable issues. Instead of constant bickering and division, we would begin to experience true reconciliation and unity.

With each Congressional partisan victory and each new presidential administration, the newly elected have vowed to make a fresh start precisely because the previous faction led America to a dead end. The Democratic Party is now taking advantage of the myriad failures of the Bush administration and of Congressional Republicans to shore up their image as the faction that America desperately needs, the party that will rescue Americans from the clutches of right-wing insanity and deliver than a brighter future in 2009. For Americans weary of Republican mistakes and desirous of substantial changes in many political areas, the carrot held out by Democratic candidates looks tempting. It would be easy to accept this carrot and elect Democrats to Congress and the presidency alike. But if Americans choose this easy route next year, they will find that it leads to a dead end. A Democratic triumph next year will simply turn out to be a repetition of recent political history. How long will Americans dance to the tune of this dishonest and corrupt two-party scheme? Choosing the easy route will not get us anywhere. Instead, we should make known loudly and clearly our intense desire for candidates whose integrity is unsullied by a web of political connections and whose records are unsullied by corruption (such as “Average Joe” Schriner, Mick Huckabee or Sam Brownback for president), and then write the name of one of those candidates on the ballot in state primary elections and again in the November 2008 election. Otherwise, Americans eight years from now will again be whining about the dishonesty, corruption and ineffectiveness of Washington, D.C.

The “frightful dictatorship” and corrupt farce that is our two-party system should be dismantled. Parties give us temptations to attack opponents, become demagogues, and garner followers, distracting us from seeking the true good of the country. If we nevertheless wish to belong to a particular group of Americans with a clear identity, let us unite with all Americans of good will. Instead of saying, “I am a Republican” or “I am a Democrat”, let us rediscover the heritage bequeathed to us by our wise and farsighted national founders and try to grasp what it really means to say, “I am an American.” The United States was established by our founders as a nation that is too great to be defined by just two colors. Interestingly, the American flag contains some red and some blue, but the color most evenly spread throughout the flag is white. White can be thought of as a mixture of all political shades, and thus as a symbol of unity. Unity on the basis of the fundamental, universal moral truths enshrined in the hearts of all Americans and willingness to compromise on negotiable issues is what America needs now more than ever.

Copyright © 2007 by Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Americans Unhappy with Dems on Economy

With midterm Congress- ional elections just over three months away, American dissatisfaction with the triple-blue Democratic administration they elected to Washington in 2008 persists and continues to grow. On Tuesday, July 27, Reuters-Ipsos released a survey showing significant disapproval of Democrats' efforts to revive the troubled economy. Americans rightly consider the economy an issue of major importance and believe that the administration of President Barack Obama has not adequately addressed it. According to the survey, 67 percent of respondents said that President Obama hasn't done enough to create jobs.

The reason why this administration has not adequately addressed our nation's economic woes is that President Obama and many of the Democrats in Congress are the pawns of special interests. They only pretend to care about the American people. That's why they spent $868 billion dollars to bail out the big banks instead of punishing them for irresponsible lending. That's why we have a war in Afghanistan still going on nine years later. That's why we have a vast new government bureaucracy including abortion "coverage" to help take care of our health, and new taxes for those who don't want to be a part of it. That's also why we don't have real tax cuts for working families and small businesses and major cuts in federal spending--measures that would help the American people to rebuild the economy on a solid foundation. The corruption runs deep. It is also why Americans are unhappy with the Dems on almost every issue, not just the economy.

As Democrats in D.C. continue losing support and momentum, Republicans are gaining it. The Reuters-Ipsos poll indicated that 46 percent of Americans plan to vote Republican this November, compared to 44 percent who intend to vote Democratic. Furthermore, nearly three-fourths of Republicans (72 percent) said they are certain to vote in November, compared to less than half of Democrats.

Republican candidates for U.S. House and Senate seats appear increasingly likely to score major victories this fall. May those who win election go on to win the trust, respect and approval of their constituents through faithful public service for many years to come.

Financial and Moral Deficits

Our nation's record budget deficits are in the news lately. President Obama has projected an unheard-of $1.56 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2010, and the United States of America is now dragging with it a total national debt in excess of $12 trillion dollars. It is amazing to think that just thirty years ago, in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan took office, the entire national debt stood at "only" $900 billion. The whole debt amount currently projected for this year alone, $1.56 trillion, is equivalent to our nation's total debt figure in 1984.

But while we should be concerned about these financial deficits, we may tend to forget that our country is also experiencing a more serious kind of deficit--a moral deficit in its leadership. Moreover, these two kinds of deficits are closely related. The moral deficit in our nation's leadership will have to be remedied before the financial deficits can be brought under control.