Yesterday I wrote that many of us are distracted by glorification of the past, here. We think, “What we need to do is get back to the glory days of the Reformation, or the American Revolution, or the 1950′s.”
Instead let’s stop getting into a froth about whether Thomas Jefferson was a deist or theist, see the latest kerfluffle here. Even if we discovered all of his words and actions, we can’t know his mind and heart. Christians, rather than working on getting validation by “proving” that the founders had faith, how about applying the biblical principles today that are true in the Constitution? Why shouldn’t our goal be to have a good government rather than an “original” government?
Here are five doable steps to get us on track:
1. Equality under God and under the law (creation, Gal 3:28) eliminating all the politics in the tax code. What would legislators do if there was a flat tax and they couldn’t buy votes or favors by offering tax breaks to favorite corporations, population segments, and other power brokers? I’d set a 10% personal income tax rate with the first $25,000 income excluded to help low-income workers. Then no exceptions, deductions, exemptions, credits, estate taxes, or any other nonsense that legislators use to buy votes. Corporate tax rates should also be 10% and since dividends are already taxed in the corporate taxes, dividends are exempt. Let’s lock these rates in so that individuals and companies can invest for the future with confidence. New tax code to eliminate class warfare and corrupt politicians and corporations that will allow economic growth: Done.
2. Equality under God and under the law: there should be no special classes for discrimination (e.g. racism, sexism) or protection (e.g. affirmative action). Equal means equal, there are no protected classes. Let’s immediately stop the disharmony caused by categorizing people in one race or another, stop complaining if some company board doesn’t have the “acceptable” number of women on it, and stop any measurement of people by race or gender. Let’s all immediately decline to answer questions about our race on any survey or form. Eliminating institutionalized racism: Done. I know there will still be racists, but at least the government will stop encouraging them and politicians stop using race to divide us.
3. In addition, any wise steward would have a balanced budget, (Luke 14:28, Prov. 22:7). Why all the games? Let’s balance the budget by Friday! The democrats are on a path to never balance the budget, the Republicans are on a path to say we should balance the budget and then not do it for at least a generation. We could set spending levels to 1990 and immediately have a 100 billion dollar annual surplus. Would a 1990 reset be so radical? Budget problem: Done.
4. Next, the value of life, (Ex. 20:13). We should only using the power of the military to defend attacks not use it as a police force or nation building force, (Matt. 5:7). Various military action that kills hundreds of thousands of people (just in Iraq) who have not attacked us should be stopped. Change policy to use military for defense and not offense: Done. Of course, the intentional killing of anyone at any age after conception should be illegal. Shouldn’t have to mention this but some people don’t get it.
5. The final biblical principle is the responsibility of parents and families to provide for and educate their children, (Deut. 6:7, Eph. 6:4). Maximum freedom should be given to parents to select their own schools. There should be complete freedom of education, not centralized control through tax supported government-run schools. Parents’ freedom would be restored and educational quality improved though healthy marketplace competition: Done. This concept is also true for the health care problem.
Why not?
Tim for President. You have my vote!
Regarding #1: I’ve always wondered what would happen to personal philanthropy if there was a clause (uh-oh, already going against your simplicity and moving toward pandering) written into a flat income tax model where one could forgo paying income tax if the percentage was used philanthropically. Then my mind always goes back to the fact we are by nature evil and suddenly all sorts of 501(c)3 organizations would be created to avoid the income tax and the non-profits would need to be regulated, and we’re right back to where we started.
I would like to add a 1B as reverse engineering to #1. States no longer receive federal income tax dollars which would give more local control to the states. This releases most federal mandates and controls over states and reduces large scale pandering between states for federal monies. This obviously becomes a little more complicated and would likely shut down many long established federal departments, e.g. Education, Agriculture, Housing etc. These monies could still be collected by the IRS, but would allocated back to equivalent departments controlled at the state level.
Regarding #4: I think this could easily be accomplished if we did go back to the past, or the original intent of the Constitution that Congress is to declare war. A President, though Commander in Chief, should have no power to enact military force, only to direct it once enacted by Congress. There should also be a direct affect to the citizenry by paying for military actions outside of the federal budget through bonds. Also, under your scenario for action do we defend attacks only against the United States directly, or does action occur to assist allies? (I’m envisioning a WWII scenario where the U.S. was never directly attacked by Germany, yet we declared war against both Japan and Germany after Pearl Harbor). Granted most of this would be taken care of if military actions were only the result of declared war by Congress.
Good comments, Carl.