POLITICS, RELIGION, AND DEVIL WORSHIP: What voters and Christians can learn from the notorious Aleister Crowley.

So I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the other day and he said something about Obama hating kittens. Then I saw a photo of an Occupy Seattle anarchist throwing a rock through a Nike store window while wearing…wait for it…Nikes. I thought to myself: This is going to be a nasty year for an election. The Republican primary was bad. Oddly, the conservative alternative to the last Republican nominee is now considered a flaming liberal. Some “conservatives” even said they could never vote for Romney but the same was said by Hillary’s supporters about Obama in 2008.

Are we more divided than ever? More vicious? No. Abe Lincoln once insulted a man so cruelly on the floor of the Illinois senate he made him cry. Fistfights among elected officials were not uncommon in those days. Alexander Hamilton fought and was killed in a duel because he’d been…BESMIRCHED! Politics has always been rough but the passion it ignites is nothing compared to that of religion. Sensible people say you should never talk about either in polite company, hence my gutless choice to use the pseudonym Cornholio and not my real name, Bartholomew Cornelius Polkinghauser III.

And what about Devil worship? Aleister Crowley has been called the most evil man who ever lived. I wouldn’t go that far. However, being the father of modern occultism and a specialist in all sorts of perversions and bad habits, he was not exactly well behaved. Crowley was born in England in 1875 to deeply religious parents. They were strict and harsh. His father died when he was 11 and his mother’s religiosity took on a rigid, even bizarre quality. She railed against the evil of the world and cursed mankind daily. Crowley received little better treatment. He had little affection for his family and came to outright despise his mother.

As a teenager, Crowley worshipped Satan. Later, as experiments with séances, sex rituals, and other sorts of silliness progressed, he believed in neither God nor Satan. His religion, sort of a mix of Hedonism, Neitzsche-ism, and spirit worship still influences weirdos to this day.

Crowley was a world-class chess player and renowned mountain climber who set records that lasted for decades. He traveled the world and was a fairly accomplished poet. He was quite literally a genius. Yet, Crowley was also a narcissist who used people like handkerchiefs, stupidly wasted a large inheritance and then mooched the rest of his life, slept with a battalion of women and men, experimented with all manner of drugs, struggled with heroin addiction, left a man to die on a mountain top, abandoned his wife and children, and raised two other children in his care like animals. One day he asked his girlfriend how he could prove his love. She said, “eat my poo”. He did.

An interesting man, very little in Crowley’s life is actually instructive. He was good at spotting hypocrisy, however, and there was a quote in Martin Booth’s excellent biography I found rather remarkable. Crowley stated, “In a way, my mother was insane, in the sense that all people are who have watertight compartments in the brain, and hold with equal passion incompatible ideas, and hold them apart lest their meeting should destroy both.”

Psychologist and Christian James W. Fowler wrote a marginally readable but important book that explained beautifully those watertight compartments in the brain. “The Stages of Faith” is about the way humans see the world. The first two stages are in childhood. Roughly, stage three is when an adult accepts blindly without examination the values he or she was taught. Stage four is when childhood or societally dominant values are indeed challenged and maybe even rejected. Personal responsibility is taken for one’s beliefs. The problem is that contradiction or paradox is simply deflected.  Those watertight compartments still exist. Stage five is when a person becomes less self-absorbed and accepts the fact that truth is often complex and confusing. Paradox can be incorporated without inner turmoil. Not necessarily a postmodern rejection of objective truth, respect for other belief systems develops. Stage six is when one begins to understand that all humans are universally connected in a way. Truth may still exist. Good and evil may still exist but tribalist us vs. them thinking disappears. After deep examination of his thoughts and beliefs, he focuses even less on the self and actually lives the principles of absolute love, justice, and selflessness. He is willing to consistently sacrifice himself for the good of others. Sadly, the research shows these latter two stages are exceedingly rare.

When liberals blindly view the rich as enemies and conservatives as selfish and evil, when conservatives think Obama wants to ruin the economy, or that every liberal is godless, immoral, and hates America, when churchgoers think every nonbeliever is wicked and capricious*, they are holding on to those watertight compartments. Being in the mushy middle is not the answer. I have taken a side and believe it is the right and moral one. But not every fact or event can be Limbaugh-wedged into a neat little package of ideology.

So when I’m confronted with the sharp sword of truth, I hope I recognize it. I pray my mind is not made of iron or water. I pray my mind is made of clay: solid and firm, yet soft and compliant. I hope that sword sticks.

 Phillipians 1: 9, 10.

*Yes, I’m aware of Romans 3:12

Should We Bomb China?

3/15/12

Places I would like to bomb (in no particular order)

1. Iran
2. Russia
3. North Korea
4. North Sudan
5. Syria
6. Venezuela
7. Gaza Strip
8. Pakistan (“Bin Laden was our neighbor?? Whaaaaat???”)
9. France
10. Greece
11. France again.
12. Sacramento (for obvious reasons)
13. North Dakota (South Dakota should stop messing around and just take their oil)
14. Canada (Too cold. And…who would miss it?)
15. Denmark (Happiest people in the world? Screw ‘em)
16. Sweden (Too many good looking people in one place)

Should China be on the list? Liberals should support this because it would also take out their most hated enemy: Walmart. China bashing is popular. Obama is talking tough about “suing” China for holding back on rare earth minerals. Romney has all but promised a trade war if elected. And why not? They send us poison milk, poison dog food and poison drywall. They pirate our movies, steal our technology, deflate their currency to make exports cheap, persecute Christians and other religions, imprison dissenters, force abortions, and harvest the organs of prisoners. They veto nearly every sane attempt by the U.N. to stop evil in the world. And now they are building up their military like never before. Also, they eat rats and that’s just gross.

The Republican presidential candidates talk tough about China because getting tough is the Republican answer to everything. Iran? Yeah, kick its butt! Low test scores? Yeah, kick its butt! Exactly. It doesn’t always make sense. Conservatives applaud Nixon’s détente with China, and yet, today’s China is not half as evil as the Maoist regime of 1972. The tough talk that is ashamedly necessary during political campaigns always yields to the same caution from Democrats and Republicans alike. So why all the current bloviating? Well, their economy will, in fact, surpass ours, probably by 2020. Is their ascendancy signaling our own decline? If so, what do we do about it?  (Sigh) It’s complicated.

China’s military budget has exploded in the last few years. They’ve had the bomb since 1967 but spending on conventional forces is up 11.2% this year after 12.7% last year. Having moved on from the disastrous rickshaw-with-mounted-scattergun era, they are now building carriers, developing stealth fighters and nuclear submarines. They are asserting naval authority in a big way. China consistently states this is only a reaction to Obama’s new emphasis on AsiaPac and the subsequent muscle added to the region. However, the growing Chinese arsenal makes India and other neighbors like Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, which have maritime disputes with China, a bit nervous.

Chinese imperialism seems unlikely, however. Unlike Japan, it’s just not in their history or culture. Deeply concerned about harmony and unity, (see Taiwan obsession) they have always been somewhat isolationist. Other powers could not resist the urge to expand. China has. It is true that Mao had designs on the world; He once remarked that if half the world had to die for the glory of socialism that would be acceptable. Nice. But Mao is an anomaly.

Much more likely than actual war is a trade war. Some responsible voices like Robert Samuelson of Newsweek, a fantastic writer on economics, actually think this might be a fight worth picking. The U.S. may have lost about 2.8 million jobs to China in the last decade. A trade war would be devastating in the short run but the long-term danger of a 20% trade disadvantage due to currency manipulation may be too damaging.

Some say we’re already in a currency war with China. The Federal Reserve has sharply increased the supply of dollars, thereby weakening their value. It makes our imports cheaper but it also hurts anybody with a savings account. It puts us at greater risk for inflation and it is one of the primary reasons gasoline is so expensive since oil is pegged to the dollar.

China is our 3rd largest importer, buying 104 billion dollars of our soybeans, aircraft, computer parts, and other products in 2011. Over the last decade, the trade deficit has actually narrowed significantly, from roughly 5.8:1 to about 3.9:1. As China’s economy grows it buys more and we are still a country that makes things. We are still the world’s top manufacturer. Also, cheap Chinese labor is not so cheap anymore. American manufacturing is actually starting to rebound a little. The minimum wage across China rose a whopping 22 percent in 2011 forcing factories that make things like sneakers and t-shirts to go to places like Bangladesh and Vietnam. And while China exports much it does, in fact, import more than it exports. China has a trade deficit?? Yes.

Also, some argue that the U.S. may be as much a culprit against free trade as China itself. Putting tariffs on China would invoke retaliation with the World Trade Organization and would expose all kinds of U.S. hypocrisy like all the tax breaks we give and our subsidies for private companies like Solyndra.

So should we bomb China? My heart says yes. I mean, if Sweden’s on the list, why not? But my head says, “Um….I don’t know. Stop bothering me. I have a headache. I’m going to bed”.

The Oreo, the Coconut, and the Banana Part II

Black on the outside, white on the inside. Brown on the outside, white on the….etc. etc. These racist terms, all from the left, are used to pressure non-whites to act non-white, but not simply to talk or dress like your ethnicity; you must take part in the struggle. You must be a leftist.

To say the left is racist is like saying Christians hate Jesus. The left is all about equality and  uplifting the downtrodden. Talk of a minority’s flaws is often shut down swiftly, the fear being that any honest discussion of problems will only breed more racism and contempt. When Bill Cosby encouraged blacks to stop blaming whites for all their problems, he was met with nothing but derision from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Acknowledging racial differences is so anathema that when it came to the fact that African Americans typically score lower on IQ tests, California simply banned them from being administered to blacks, citing the tests’ cultural bias. Thus was born the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (That’s right, the B.I.T.C.H.). It showed that if words like “honky” and “dynomite” were used (It was 1972 after all.), blacks would score better. They did. Are these IQ differences real? Maybe. Maybe not. It actually is a bit complicated. But really, who cares? Apparently, the left does.

The left is indeed all about uplifting the downtrodden. But if we strip away politics and frame racism as simply a belief in inferiority, here is where we can start some trouble.

I remember walking to a taco shop one day. A woman had a t-shirt that said, “Black Woman. Mother of the Earth”. This saddened me because Darwin’s seminal work was actually a scientific argument for racial superiority. The true title was“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. I never hear talk about evolution’s implications for race. If you are a Neo Darwinist, an atheist, you, by definition, believe that blacks are closer biologically to monkeys than are whites and other races. How many of these types are on the right? Not many. For all Richard Dawkins’ claims to enlightenment, he is a simple racist. For those who believe the universe was created, even those who believe in theistic evolution, the answer is different. Scientific Adam may have had dark African skin but the first man, black or otherwise, was made in the image of God.

Perhaps what best illustrates the left’s marriage to racism is the period known as “The Progressive Era”, 1900-1917. New ideas and political energy spawned minimum wage laws, antitrust statutes, assistance to immigrants and the poor, and women’s suffrage. Hillary Clinton compared herself to the Progressives, people like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Stanger, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Left out of the glowing tributes to the heroes of this era is the ubiquitous racism that characterized the time. This is when Jim Crow flourished and lynchings were most abundant. A firm believer in eugenics, Stanger founded Planned Parenthood "to stop the multiplication of the unfit." She called the endeavor, “The Negro Project”. Woodrow Wilson sympathized with the birth of the KKK because of the unleashing of “an ignorant and inferior race”.

The left worships education and intelligence. Barack Obama was a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. The left swooned. The right yawned. For a lefty, the highest goal is enlightenment, which cannot exist without education. To be valued and special is to be enlightened. The right, however, values wisdom. A man with a 5^th grade education can be wise. Wisdom needs only experience and openness. Self reliance, loyalty, honesty and reliability are the values of the right. So, inherent in the left’s worship of knowledge is the obvious: a condescending, patronizing view of those who don’t graduate high school or worse, those who attend mediocre universities like Idaho State (See Palin, S.).

The sinister side of the left’s care and concern for minorities (which is often genuine) is a paradox: freedom to do and say the ugliest things. Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called white Supreme Court justice Scalia "one smart guy” while proclaiming the black Thomas "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court," adding, "I think that his opinions are poorly written." A number of cartoons portrayed Condaleeza Rice, PhD., as Aunt Jemima, Butterfly McQueen from "Gone With the Wind," a fat-lipped Bush parrot and other racist clichés. She was branded as inexperienced and incompetent. When former Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, ran for senator in Maryland in 2006, he was depicted in black face with huge red lips by liberal blogger Steve Gilliard. Oreo cookies were rolled down the aisle at Steele during a gubernatorial debate in 2002.

So when Newt Gingrich got snarky with Fox News’ black liberal commentator Juan Williams asking typical leftist tripe in a debate, liberals instantly saw it as evidence he was racist. How? When you’re a racist, race is just the first thing that comes to mind. Simple as that.

The Oreo, the Coconut, and the Banana Part 1

or

Race in the Age of the Tea Party and the First Black President

Herman Cain. My initial impression was that he was a novelty. I liked him but he had no chance. And when he interviewed with Chris Wallace on Fox News and didn’t even know what the Palestinian right of return was I thought he had no business being president. I loved his straight talk but he sounded a little rough and maybe the elitist in me didn’t like him for the same reason Sarah Palin makes me nauseous. Still, every time I heard him speak, I liked him more and more.

Jeanine Garafolo suspects the whole thing is astroturfed and that Herman Cain is being paid to run by the Koch brothers or Karl Rove just to try to disprove the “inherent” racism of the Tea Party. OMG.

Cain has knocked the last two debates out of the park and, according to some polls, is the new frontrunner. He is frequently asked if he is just the new political flavor of the month. His response? “Haagen-Dazs black walnut tastes good all the time.”

Conservatives keep saying we’re not racist and liberals keep saying, “Yes you are”. Are we? I think my own father is a good case study. He is the kind of man the left loves to hate, the quintessential white devil. He is deeply religious, a creationist, staunchly pro life, pro second amendment, has some good things to say about George Bush, fewer good things to say about Jane Fonda, and is a proud Republican. The only thing worse would be if he was rich. Too bad on that one. He is not savvy about race and is unapologetically un-PC. He still calls black people “colored”. I scolded him about this recently, not because I thought he was being condescending but because I was worried someone, maybe one of the six black people in South Dakota, might get the wrong idea. I remember the 1996 presidential primary. Who was my dad’s choice? Black man/frog Alan Keyes (Seriously, listen to his voice. It’s weird). Keyes simply aligned with my father’s values and he thought he was a good debater. He also likes Herman Cain. I think my dad is truly color blind. Like a lot of conservatives, he doesn’t really care about race and the whole issue seems to befuddle him. He’s old fashioned but is he a racist? Ridiculous.

The liberal paradigm says that the world is divided into three kinds of people, the sheep, the shepherds, and the wolves. The sheep are largely good, hard working people who are often ignorant of their true self interest. The shepherds are the “educated and enlightened liberals who understand what is really going on and want to help the members of the first group to live a better and more satisfying life”. Who are the wolves? Conservatives, of course: smart, ruthless business types, capitalists, the rich, and all who support them in their lust for selfish gain.

As a social worker, I have learned a thing or two about race. On CNN, Herman Cain said blacks are so unified for Democrats because they are brainwashed. Impolitic as that was, I think it’s somewhat true. The liberal gospel about race says that blacks and others have less opportunity than whites. If they make it out of high school or college, they face a world that doesn’t want them to succeed. If I was a young black man with a hard life, what would I think? Work my butt off and still get screwed by the haters? Nah. Might as well hustle. In my social work classes, I was frequently told that the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality was unrealistic. They don’t seem to understand that their “compassionate” liberal message is a deeply disempowering one.

In a well received speech to CPAC in 2009 (Watch the first two minutes and see how conservatives really view race), Rush Limbaugh explained the real conservative agenda: “We want everyone to succeed!” To which someone in the audience shouted, “Well, except blacks and Mexicans, right?” To which Limbaugh replied, “Oh, of course. That goes without saying”. No, of course that didn’t happen. Everyone cheered when Rush said that. And if you are so certain that Rush hates gays, he had Elton John sing at his wedding.

Herman Cain recently made another giant gaffe and his numbers might tank. But will the fact that a black man is the most popular man in the Republican Party change the left’s mind about the “inherent” racism on the right? Not likely. Janean Garafolo ran logic over with her Prius and didn’t seem to notice. Conservatives are racist like the sky is blue.

So what are the Oreo, the Coconut, and the Banana? You’ll have to read Part II.

RON PAUL: POLITICAL VISIONARY, TRUTH TELLER, FRIGGIN’ IDIOT.

9/12/11

The Mad Doctor. He was a Republican, then a Libertarian, then a Republican again. There is somewhat of an overlap between conservative thinking and libertarianism. When libertarians talk about abolishing this department or that, many Republicans get verklempt, even tear up a little. We shouldn’t.

Why? Libertarians aren’t conservative. Their core message only sounds identical to ours. The problem is that our core message isn’t really our core message. Conservatives only want to cut central government. Libertarians want to obliterate it. Here is a lame-brilliant metaphor for political philosophies. The big three are like Starbucks. Liberals love mocha coconut frappes with extra whip cream, extra coconut, extra sprinkles. The loons would add some sugar. Conservatives like regular coffee with sugar and cream. George Will might like a French Press. Sarah Palin might like Folgers Instant. It’s still the same product. Libertarians just want a spoonful of raw coffee grounds. To them, anything less would be unmanly.

Libertarian philosophical roots are actually closer to Marx’s than to Reagan’s. The utopian libertarian believes that if government goes away and man is left alone, all will be well. This is every bit as radical as the communist’s belief that if all are forced to be equal, all will be happy. Both believe in the goodness of man. Both obsess over power: One over the self, one over others. The conservative rejects both.

Our founders knew the danger of weak government and many of the Federalist Papers described the evils of the feeble Confederacy. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “…the vigour of government is essential to liberty”[1]. He and Madison laid out brilliantly how the lack of centralized power would turn bitter faction into outright war. He also wrote, “Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint”[2]. Indeed.

Libertarians believe there is no problem that can’t be solved by an individual, a family, or a company. Well, modern life is safe, clean, and well organized. It was not always so and regulation is partly responsible for this. A century ago, our country was energetic but also dirty, chaotic, and dangerous. Arguably, private railroads did more than anything to foster expansion and development. However, poor tracks, faulty trestles, broken signals, and exploding boilers were commonplace, causing untold numbers of accidents. By 1890, railroads were causing 10,000 deaths and 80,000 injuries a year[3]. In the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, 146 people were burned alive or jumped from the top floors because managers had locked the exits. This led to legislation requiring improved safety standards. While OSHA surely would have slowed the growth of the west, we don’t know how many countless lives basic standards could have saved. Are we really willing to go back to the days of Typhoid Mary?

Libertarians, like conservatives, love the free market. They say if a company doesn’t perform, customers will leave for a better, faster, safer one. Largely, this is true. Largely but not completely. Like everyone, businessmen often take short term gain over long term stability. Case in point: the recent economic collapse. Government policy is to blame but so is deregulation. After parts of the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, some companies began borrowing over 30 times their own value. Also, executives from Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and other firms created investment products they aggressively sold to clients while simultaneously betting against them. Capitalism works but businessmen lie and cheat like everybody else. Yes, regulations hurt economic growth (see my last blog). But the founders recognized the need for checks and balances. Companies need them too.

Our federal government is a bloated, incompetent mess. Yes, some federal agencies should be abolished. But weak government can be worse. It can even lead to mass murder and rape. Virtually the whole continent of Africa is a prime example of the horrors of weak government*. What conservatives really want is strong government but with severely limited and enumerated powers.

Do you still like Ron Paul? He wants to legalize heroin, cocaine, and prostitution. He voted against requiring internet providers to report child porn and his foreign policy is indistinguishable from Code Pink. He thinks Iran getting nuclear bombs would be just fine.

Ron Paul: Crazy like a fox? No. Just crazy.

* Read Michael Gerson’s fantastic Washington Post column on the Congo.

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[1] Federalist Paper #1

[2] Federalist Paper #15

[3] Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Again, pg. 13.

California Dreamin'

Lately, state legislators from California have been going to emergency rooms at an alarming rate. Why? Repetitive motion injuries for patting themselves on the back. They finally passed a balanced budget on time. Of course, a new voter-passed law requiring the forfeiture of their pay for tardiness surely had something to do with it. The budget still has some accounting gimmicks and laughable revenue projections but it’s considered a victory for the perennial masochist Republicans as it indeed did not include any tax increases. This outrages many Democrats who say California’s whole problem is because some people just don’t want to pay their fair share.

What they don’t understand is how devastating this mindset is to the very economy they are so desperate to save. Critics say California’s taxes and regulatory environment are driving people out of the state in record numbers. Critics of the critics say, “pfff”. Who’s right? Let’s compare the Golden State to Texas.

California has an unemployment rate of 11.7%. Texas’ is 8%. In fact, 45% of all non farm jobs created in the U.S. during the recent recovery are in that one state. In comparing the overall tax burden, California is ranked 6^th at 10.6%. Texas is 45^th at 7.9%. Taxfoundation.org ranked California’s overall business climate at #49. Texas is ranked 13^th. Before the recession, both states greatly increased the number of jobs. When recession hit, Texas’ # of jobs leveled off while California lost approximately 1.2 million.

The economy has hit this nation hard but business is booming for Joe Vranic, a business relocation coach from Irvine, CA. A frequent guest on major networks, cable news, and NPR, Joe explains how he shows businesses how to leave CA. The top five destinations are Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Utah. Why would anyone in their right mind want to leave such natural beauty and perfect weather for Texas’ miles of tumbleweeds and ridiculous heat? Texas has low taxes overall, no income tax, and a less burdensome regulatory system. “…California is such fertile ground that representatives for economic development agencies are visiting companies to dissect our high taxes, extreme regulatory environment and other expenses to show annual savings of between 20 and 40 percent after an out-of-state move….California may suffer more than 1,000 disinvestment events this year. The capital directed to out-of-state or out-of-country, while difficult to calculate, is nonetheless in the billions of dollars”. Who’s leaving? How about companies like Toyota, Nissan, Facebook, McAfee, and SAIC?

And it’s not just the crassness of money that drives people away. Joe says it is “death by a thousand cuts”. He points to quality of life issues such as bad schools, bad traffic, powerful unions and restrictive labor laws, and policies that create boom and bust housing cycles.

California is just difficult to do business in. Ask Rick Newcomb. He started Creators Syndicate to protect cartoonists and syndicated columnists. “A form of tax madness has taken over Sacramento”, he said. He encountered hostility from the city of Los Angeles who wanted to arbitrarily move them into a higher tax rate. They ruled for him and then changed their mind and made the decision retroactive. They owe $400,000 in back taxes and if they pay it, they will have to lay off ten employees.

The left is not good at creating wealth. It just wants to spread it around. More infuriating is that they don’t seem to care to even try to understand how it all works. California politics is dominated by this anti rich, anti business mindset. It may feel good to hate the rich but it doesn’t help the poor. Given the political dominance of unions and environmental activists, will adults ever be able to step in and make this right? I’m not holding my breath.

Sons of Revolution Part II

5/24/11

The Arab Spring is in full bloom. The Street is trying to shake off their oppressors. Yet, as discussed in “Tahrir Square and Andy Dick”, there must be positive values that displace the tyranny. Otherwise, the flowers of the Arab Spring will die and be thrown on the compost heap of history.

In S.O.R. Part I, the values of the Enlightenment: science, reason, and equality, did not help the French create a Great Society. Yet who would discard these values completely? The Enlightenment did, in fact, enlighten. But are these values incomplete? Our own founders would say yes.

Robespierre said, “Vox populari est vox dei” (The voice of the people is the voice of God). However, many of the American founders would more likely say “vox populari est vox idiotes” (at least sometimes). They were not elitists but they believed a pure democracy would lead to tyranny of the majority, a mobocracy. There were partial exceptions, of course. The more utopian minded Thomas Jefferson disagreed sharply with John Adams about the French Revolution. Adams, both a deeply religious man and a man of science who saw no contradiction between the two said, “I know not what to make of a nation of thirty million atheists”. After the French experiment ended in blood and chaos, Jefferson eventually acknowledged the failure.

Though the American founders certainly were influenced by Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, (little known fact is that he was a rather enthusiastic and orthodox Christian) it could also be argued that the most influential figure of the American Revolution was actually John Calvin. Fully two thirds of early American settlers were trained in this doctrine that was deeply distrustful of human nature. Humanity was seen as duplicitous and ambitious, selfish to the core. In the book of Romans, Paul stated that no one seeks after God. “No one does good, not one”. Early Calvinists did not view this as hyperbole.

Though the founders were slightly more charitable towards humanity, the record is filled with quotes about the problems of human nature. James Madison viewed man as “wicked and capricious”. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “The passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice”. He believed that all bodies politik will be mingled with the poison of faction and by men who love power. While the founders read the same philosophers and thinkers as the French Jacobins, they also were influenced by Scottish philosophers Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, who viewed reason and emotion as inseparable. It is not that our founders disbelieved in reason, but that, given man’s fallibility, purity of reason was not only elusive, but impossible.

The American Founders were quite religious compared to the French. An oft repeated lie is that most were deist. According to M.E. Bradford of the University of Dallas, of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, only two, maybe three were deist. He includes Benjamin Franklin but during the constitutional convention, Franklin pleaded for paid clergy to pray daily over the convention, saying, “God governs in the affairs of men” and, “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain…” Franklin never fully embraced orthodox Christianity but in his old age, a deist he was not.

Religious as they were, they certainly did not set out to make a theocracy. And with the exception of maybe John Jay, Samuel Adams, and a few others, the founders were not the equivalent of modern day born again evangelicals. However, as a group, they did respect Christianity greatly and had a distinctly different view of separation of church and state than our modern ACLU. Jefferson signed into law funds for Christian missionaries to the Indians. The halls of congress doubled as a chapel. Even that dirty atheist Thomas Payne advocated government funded religious education.

So while equality and liberty were hallmarks of the Enlightenment, our constitution was also founded on the values of the Bible. While France believed that pure democracy would lead to happiness, our forefathers believed in checks and balances, not only for the branches of government but for the people as well. Thus was born republicanism.

What is government but the extension of your view of man? Thomas Sowell’s “Constrained Man” and “Unconstrained Man” and Steven Pinker’s “Tragic Man” and “Utopian Man” both describe the competing views of every political experiment in history: One is that man is unchanging and selfish. The other is that man is malleable and perfectible. The French and the Americans were the first to fully put these ideas in their purity to the test. One failed miserably. The other became the greatest nation in history.