The Dwindling Commanments
The Commandments
If I told you that one party in the upcoming election season was going to spend $1 Billion trying to convince the American electorate to ignore one of the Ten Commandments, which one would you guess I was talking about? If that politician was Bill Clinton, then we can be pretty sure that, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” would be the top choice. But he can never again be President, so let’s Move On (.org). Since only one candidate is likely to raise $1 Billion during the upcoming cycle, you shouldn’t have any problem guessing that we are talking about President Obama and the Democrats.
For those of you who haven’t spent a lot of time keeping up with the Ten Commandments, here is a quick recap, with the requisite roman numerals, of course:
I. You shall have no other gods before me.
II. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
III. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
IV. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
V. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
VI. You shall not murder.
VII. You shall not commit adultery.
VIII. You shall not steal.
IX. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
X. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
That’s it. Every law you will ever need summed up succinctly. You could even engrave these in stone and hang them on your wall (Try doing that with the United States Federal Code of Regulations!).
But apparently, Obama and his Democrat Party object to God taking special notice of coveting donkeys because they have begun a massive campaign to demand that the American people forget the tenth commandment. They not only want people to covet their neighbor’s possessions, they want the American people to demand that the government actually seize their neighbor’s goods and redistribute them as the government sees fit. I am pretty sure that the God of mercy and justice would not wish that system on His fiercest enemies. Think about it. If God anoints someone and blesses them with the cattle from a thousand hills, President Obama and his Storm Troopers will be there to redistribute the cattle (after giving a few thousand here and there to his supporters) as he and his cronies see fit.
Some of you more conspiratorial types will say that this is more proof that Obama is not a Christian. But those of you following that path probably believe that he is a practitioner of Islam. Well, guess what, the Q'uran version of the tenth commandment is (Muslims don't group the Ten Commandments together, but they pretty much have them all):
4:32: Do not covet the bounties that God has bestowed more abundantly on some of you than on others.
If I told you that one party in the upcoming election season was going to spend $1 Billion trying to convince the American electorate to ignore one of the Ten Commandments, which one would you guess I was talking about? If that politician was Bill Clinton, then we can be pretty sure that, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” would be the top choice. But he can never again be President, so let’s Move On (.org). Since only one candidate is likely to raise $1 Billion during the upcoming cycle, you shouldn’t have any problem guessing that we are talking about President Obama and the Democrats.
For those of you who haven’t spent a lot of time keeping up with the Ten Commandments, here is a quick recap, with the requisite roman numerals, of course:
I. You shall have no other gods before me.
II. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
III. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
IV. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
V. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
VI. You shall not murder.
VII. You shall not commit adultery.
VIII. You shall not steal.
IX. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
X. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
That’s it. Every law you will ever need summed up succinctly. You could even engrave these in stone and hang them on your wall (Try doing that with the United States Federal Code of Regulations!).
But apparently, Obama and his Democrat Party object to God taking special notice of coveting donkeys because they have begun a massive campaign to demand that the American people forget the tenth commandment. They not only want people to covet their neighbor’s possessions, they want the American people to demand that the government actually seize their neighbor’s goods and redistribute them as the government sees fit. I am pretty sure that the God of mercy and justice would not wish that system on His fiercest enemies. Think about it. If God anoints someone and blesses them with the cattle from a thousand hills, President Obama and his Storm Troopers will be there to redistribute the cattle (after giving a few thousand here and there to his supporters) as he and his cronies see fit.
Some of you more conspiratorial types will say that this is more proof that Obama is not a Christian. But those of you following that path probably believe that he is a practitioner of Islam. Well, guess what, the Q'uran version of the tenth commandment is (Muslims don't group the Ten Commandments together, but they pretty much have them all):
4:32: Do not covet the bounties that God has bestowed more abundantly on some of you than on others.
While they are pressing for the full-blown repeal of number ten, Democrats are routinely breaking the ninth commandment by claiming the rich do not pay their fair share of the federal tax burden. In fact, the top 48% of American citizens by income pay all of the federal taxes. The bottom 52% do not pay anything and, in most cases, actually get money back from the federal government.
The founding fathers felt strongly enough about the government’s abuse of its powers of redistribution that it added the Taking’s Clause in the Fifth Amendment. This says that even if the government is taking possessions for the common good, the owner deserves just compensation. This, by definition, means there is no redistribution of wealth, simply a redistribution of the form of that wealth. The founding fathers could not even contemplate the idea that goods would be seized for redistribution to private individuals as has now been ruled constitutional in the 2005 Supreme Court case of Kelo vs. City of New London. They would have designated this as simple theft, even though the government perpetrated it instead of an individual, or private organization. So in reality, Obama and his compatriots are proposing to eviscerate the eighth, ninth and tenth commandments. If you add in the damage that Bill Clinton, the last Democrat President, did to the seventh commandment, you will quickly come to the realization that we are entering a brave new world where an all-powerful government can pretty much do what it pleases to anyone it wants.
Pretty soon, the federal government will start arguing that it has the power to kill American citizens without a trial. Oops. In fact, they recently did exactly that in Yemen using a missile-equipped drone to kill Anwar al-Alaki. So, they have now done away with the sixth commandment as well, but I can’t really argue with that one. If you take up arms against your own country, you can’t really expect them not to react.
I would have argued that Obama and his followers in the Democrat Party had done a very good job following the second commandment by removing idolatrous artifacts and religious symbols that might tempt people to think idolatrous thoughts, until I realized that they only removed the Judeo-Christian symbols of faith. Apparently, any other religion is free to proselytize with the government’s blessing.
And, of course, Obama’s campaign declaration that the election of Obama would cause the oceans to recede makes them pretty shaky on the first commandment. Rahm Emanuel became notorious for having blasphemed repeatedly, darkening our hopes of salvaging the third commandment, and, frankly, there hasn’t been a president in recent memory that was able to resist working on the Sabbath. The American people probably wouldn’t be pleased if they did. So, the fourth commandment is out the window as well.
President Obama’s father was a fervent practitioner of Anti-Colonialist, Marxist-Socialist beliefs. This leads, ironically enough, to the interesting contradiction where honoring his parents, as our President seems to do, and as specified in the fifth commandment, actually compels him to promote policies antithetical to traditional American mores. Although he speaks of love for country and hope for its people, his vision is of a new America, unrecognizable by its founders, that constrains individual freedom in exchange for promises of government largess.
While previous presidents, and every political party, can be accused of hypocrisy for failing to live up to the ideals contained in the Ten Commandments, no other president has ever had the temerity to actively attempt to undermine the commandments through a billion dollar ad campaign. The Ten Commandments constitute an individual’s responsibility in God’s society. Nowhere do we see an aggregate or corporate responsibility mentioned. These laws are the basis of the American Dream. Individuals struggling to improve their lot, not by relying on the Government for a handout, but by using the talents God granted them. We are not well served by an ad campaign designed to bribe and cajole the masses into trading their freedom for security, leaving them to derive pleasure only in the misfortune of those around them.
John H. Hall,Ph.D.
The founding fathers felt strongly enough about the government’s abuse of its powers of redistribution that it added the Taking’s Clause in the Fifth Amendment. This says that even if the government is taking possessions for the common good, the owner deserves just compensation. This, by definition, means there is no redistribution of wealth, simply a redistribution of the form of that wealth. The founding fathers could not even contemplate the idea that goods would be seized for redistribution to private individuals as has now been ruled constitutional in the 2005 Supreme Court case of Kelo vs. City of New London. They would have designated this as simple theft, even though the government perpetrated it instead of an individual, or private organization. So in reality, Obama and his compatriots are proposing to eviscerate the eighth, ninth and tenth commandments. If you add in the damage that Bill Clinton, the last Democrat President, did to the seventh commandment, you will quickly come to the realization that we are entering a brave new world where an all-powerful government can pretty much do what it pleases to anyone it wants.
Pretty soon, the federal government will start arguing that it has the power to kill American citizens without a trial. Oops. In fact, they recently did exactly that in Yemen using a missile-equipped drone to kill Anwar al-Alaki. So, they have now done away with the sixth commandment as well, but I can’t really argue with that one. If you take up arms against your own country, you can’t really expect them not to react.
I would have argued that Obama and his followers in the Democrat Party had done a very good job following the second commandment by removing idolatrous artifacts and religious symbols that might tempt people to think idolatrous thoughts, until I realized that they only removed the Judeo-Christian symbols of faith. Apparently, any other religion is free to proselytize with the government’s blessing.
And, of course, Obama’s campaign declaration that the election of Obama would cause the oceans to recede makes them pretty shaky on the first commandment. Rahm Emanuel became notorious for having blasphemed repeatedly, darkening our hopes of salvaging the third commandment, and, frankly, there hasn’t been a president in recent memory that was able to resist working on the Sabbath. The American people probably wouldn’t be pleased if they did. So, the fourth commandment is out the window as well.
President Obama’s father was a fervent practitioner of Anti-Colonialist, Marxist-Socialist beliefs. This leads, ironically enough, to the interesting contradiction where honoring his parents, as our President seems to do, and as specified in the fifth commandment, actually compels him to promote policies antithetical to traditional American mores. Although he speaks of love for country and hope for its people, his vision is of a new America, unrecognizable by its founders, that constrains individual freedom in exchange for promises of government largess.
While previous presidents, and every political party, can be accused of hypocrisy for failing to live up to the ideals contained in the Ten Commandments, no other president has ever had the temerity to actively attempt to undermine the commandments through a billion dollar ad campaign. The Ten Commandments constitute an individual’s responsibility in God’s society. Nowhere do we see an aggregate or corporate responsibility mentioned. These laws are the basis of the American Dream. Individuals struggling to improve their lot, not by relying on the Government for a handout, but by using the talents God granted them. We are not well served by an ad campaign designed to bribe and cajole the masses into trading their freedom for security, leaving them to derive pleasure only in the misfortune of those around them.
John H. Hall,Ph.D.