Secure Roads From Rock Terror Before Worry Over Price Tag

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni is once again putting the cart before the horse. She is making a grand display of where her heart lies and it is not with the victims of real terrorism but with a phantom crime which has yet to produce all that many solid arrests, let alone actually taken lives. The vast majority of so-called “Price Tag” crimes have never been solved while those that have produced a perpetrator were found to have been committed in a set-up by Arabs trying to place blame on neighboring Jews for a self-inflicted crime. Yet this same justice and law enforcement system which expends inordinate amounts of manpower and investigative hours chasing phantoms and detaining innocent Jewish youth from the communities in Judea and Samaria only to have to release them due to lack of evidence while not arresting those hurling deadly, life-threatening projectiles including large rocks and fire-bottle-bombs at private vehicles and government vehicles with literal abandon free of any consequences. But you are doing that which government is best at doing, turning the real priorities upside down. You choose, Minister Livni, to chase after the least criminal act in both severity and numbers while turning a blind eye in order to ignore the threat to countless lives of the innocent and challenge to the authority of the State of Israel. Let us simply compare your priorities of placing “Price Tag” crimes above rock and firebomb terror attacks for concerted legal efforts.

 

“Price Tag” crimes are an illegal act against property. Much of the “Price Tag” crimes are a committing of vandalism which in and of itself often would only even be qualified as a misdemeanor and not rise to the level of felony except that the vandalism which qualifies as a “Price Tag” crime automatically becomes classified as a crime against the State. Such an inflation of the perceived importance of “Price Tag” crimes is purely political and minimally a legal classification. Yet a “Price Tag” crime which amounts to under a thousand shekels in damages has become a critical focus for the Justice Ministry. Meanwhile, the potentially fatal barrages on our streets and in our communities targeting our children and our adults, our police and our troops, the youth and the elderly, a universal and lethal threat which is not being taken even as a criminal act yet you want to invest more enforcement assets and resources chasing after phantom criminals and false-flag crimes.

 

Meanwhile, the standing orders which for the police, the IDF, the Border Police, and any other enforcement personnel is to run away should they come under assault by rocks, bricks, or fire-bombs if retreat is at all possible. Israeli citizens have been assaulted, some, like Asher Palmer and his infant son literally days before his first birthday, have died as a result of these so-called nuisance attacks and an innocent little three years-old girl named Adelle Biton continues to lie comatose while fighting for her little life as the result of the large rock that crushed her tender skull weeks ago and still nobody has been arrested for this crime. The Palestinians behind these attacks are having a propaganda field day posting videos on You-Tube of Israel’s cowardly IDF troops running from their brave stone-throwing Palestinians. Free the arms of law enforcement to complete their assign tasks of enforcing the laws using passive, non-lethal measures and arrest the leadership and as many as continue breaking the peace after the first week’s enforcement. A show of fortitude and resolution is all that is required, that and taking the first step and it is all up to you. It could not be any simpler.

 

This is an even worse example of misplaced priorities than your interference with Minister Bennett’s efforts to find accommodations which would satisfy both the religious and the Women of the Wall ending a terrible strife in the religious fabric of the State. What could be your reason to interfere in the procedures being taken by the Minister of Religious Services attempts to reconcile a rift between two factions of Judaism except for your endless efforts to place your name in the headlines. Often your actions seem to have no other explanation beyond that you missed yesterday’s headlines and you refuse to miss them two days in a row. Make a positive headline stating that the rock and fire-bomb terrorism will no longer be tolerated and relative quiet will return to the streets and towns within two weeks; refuse to change the stand-down order against terrorism and you would start the countdown to the Third Intifada.

 

The people have petitioned the Justice Ministry for protection, troops and police on the front lines obey restrictive do-not-shoot orders against such attacks, and the government including the Prime Minister and his Cabinet kowtow to world opinion by allowing these crimes to continue unopposed. You, Justice Minister Livni, if you wish could take steps to enforce the law and provide safety for all Israelis from such attacks. Both Arab and Jew have been targeted at one time or another by these viscous attacks. Knowing that there is little you would love more than to once again be considered for the position of Prime Minister and before you is the golden ticket to that office. What is even more amusing is all you need do is enforce the law and allow whatever measures are necessary and end the attacks on motorists and other civilians. Step up and show that the rock and fore-bombing attacks will no longer be tolerated and they will soon stop because they continue solely because there is no enforcement. End the capitulation to world pressure and protect all Israeli citizens as your position requires and reap the rewards of standing up for justice. A golden opportunity stands before you Ms. Livni and all that is required is for you to grasp a situation and do the right thing by all the people of Israel.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can America Survive in a World Without G0d?

There has been a slowly rising crescendo for half a century from a growing group of conservatives who are religious and hold their faith in the L0rd as dearly as they hold to the rights as delineated in the founding documents, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and increasingly the Declaration of Independence. It is in the Declaration of Independence that these religious conservatives find their strongest arguments that they are uniquely positioned to more fully understand the ideas and ideals behind the founders and what they viewed as the origins of the nation they wished to found. They also take to heart many of the arguments made between the different founders which many were fortunately preserved in the letters of correspondence. The likely most famous coming from John Adams who wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” But even this quote falls short of the delineation of the manners for power distribution which was the backbone of the Declaration of Independence. Despite the watering down of the reference in order to pacify a select group of founders who feared placing too strong a reference to things religious as they feared relating too close an interdependence between the Almighty and the governance of the country they were to found. Still, the distribution of power is given a direct flow from the Creator to the individual people and from them to government. The government was relinquished to accepting only those powers permitted by the people and the people retained all other powers and rights not relegated to government. And taking things one step further, the power which was relinquished to the purview of government was to be most powerful at the most local level and from their powers would be relented upwards until the Federal Government would receive the least power and only those powers which were furthest from the citizens as those powers were to be retained at the governance closest to the people and most readily monitored and corralled by the citizens. The Constitution went even further in limiting the powers of the Federal Government in that it spent more words forbidding powers to the Federal Government than granting it powers.

 

It would be an impossible argument to try and claim that as time has passed that the Americans as a peoples have strayed from their strict religious beliefs and are now at best evenly divided between religiously observant and largely secular. If one were to query a plurality of Americans as to where their rights originate, they would likely say they were granted by the government and likely the Federal Government. This is exactly the opposite of the ideas that were the underpinning of the intentions and inspirations of the Founding Fathers. This belief has become so widespread that the Federal Government does not even pretend to follow the restriction on their powers as delineated in the Constitution. This has been a growing problem which found its origins in the humanist movement which really gained steam at the turn of the twentieth century. The prominence of the humanist, secular humanist in particular, was given a huge impetus with the writings of two men of science, the first being Charles Darwin and the second Sigmund Freud. Between these two gentlemen much of what had been wonder and the purview of the Creator were now reassigned to the purviews of science and given Earthly explanations. This drove the movement that culminated in <a href=http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am17.html?ModPagespeed=noscript>Amendment 17</a> to the Constitution which stripped the States of their representation at the Federal Level thus removing the power to limit the powers stolen from the States by the Federal Government which over time allowed the Federal Government to gather far superior power over that of the States and other local governances. This inverted the power curve from G0d – People – Local Governments – State Governments – Federal Government to the new divisions of power which now appears to closely resemble Federal Government – State Governments – Local Governments – People. When the followers of secular humanism rearranged the structures of power in the governance of the United States they not only inverted the entire power curve, they removed the Creator from the picture completely and placed the Federal Government as the originator of all powers, rights, and grantor of all privilege. The same year that Amendment 17 was ratified there was another, namely Amendment 16. This permitted the Federal Government to collect an income tax from the people which further placed the peoples under the thumb of the Federal Government as the governance now had a direct access to one’s wealth.

 

Once the Federal Government inverted the entire power structure which had been implemented under the system designed by the Founding Fathers it began to take over those areas which had been relegated to religion and seen as the place where religion and thus G0d was responsible. Such areas included assisting those who were in need, those unable to care for themselves, feeding the hungry, assisting those who were unemployed, the homeless, providing for the education of the people, providing health care, childcare of orphans, and all distribution of charity. One by one the government took control of these areas with the concept that the government would provide such care without subjecting those who were in need with sermons and other pressures which religious institutions were presumably guilty of forcing upon those they helped. The fact that a church run soup kitchen might impinge upon those receiving their food that they say a prayer and listen to hymns while they ate was cast as being an unnecessary victimization on those who were needy. Why should anybody have to put up with such an imposition of their sensibilities just to receive a meal. Government was going to save these needy people from such an imposition. Government took over the care for children in orphanages with the reasoning that the government would be more suitable and particular when choosing adoptive parents and this would free those seeking to adopt from the possibility for meeting unnecessary religious requirements. The result was that the main determination for adopting a child became more aligned with wealth or who one knows than more humanistic qualities. Unemployment, charity, you name it and the government crept in and usurped responsibility replacing religion in every sector of our society. By the end of this year the government will be well on their way to replacing religion in its last bastion, hospital and health care. The death knell for religious provided health care is known as Obama Care which will slowly morph health care in ways that will wrest it from the hands of religious institutions eventually making government the sole provider for health care just as they have taken over every other area in society which once was provided by religious institutions. This was not done by accident as government was seeking to replace religion and replace G0d as the originator and guarantor of rights and freedoms. Let us pray that when we find that we the people can no longer suffer the overreach and domination of government over the individual that we can find the strength of character and the power of faith and trusting in our Creator take back from government those rights and privileges it has stolen from us the people and return the balance of power such that the people are under the protection of G0d and not the vassals under government.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Sane Solution to Same Sex Marriage

We have written about this solution that addresses the recognition of same sex couples under the law while also maintaining the traditional definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman that should satisfy both sides of the argument. It preserves marriage while granting same sex couples with the legal rights they claim to seek and does so by reducing the intrusion of government into what should be a religious matter decided by each individual house of worship. The answer is to allow houses of worship to issue marriage certificates and hold marriage ceremonies while for those couples who wish the benefits and responsibilities the state applies to couples can receive a civil union contract from the state which will allow their pairing to have all the legal rights which currently are restricted to married couples. The marriage the houses of worship would perform would not allow the couple to claim any of the benefits of those who have a civil union contract unless the married couple also satisfied the state requirements and received a civil union contract. This separates the institution of marriage from any entanglement within the legal workings of the state thus freeing the individual state governments to decide what will be acceptable as a couple in the eyes of the law while the religious institutions decide what defines a married couple. The two are separate from each other and though any couple married by a religious ceremony would very likely also qualify for receiving a civil union contract, not every recipient of a civil union contract would be eligible to be necessarily married by every religious institution. There are also other advantages and options which become available in defining marriage which is currently disallowed due to the state being the issuing body of marriage certificates.

The main advantage is that each house of worship would be enabled to define marriage in whatever manner their congregation decides it should be defined. If the house of worship only wishes to recognize marriages between people of their religion and refuses to allow mixed religion marriages, which would be that house of worship’s right and the state would have no problems as the state has no jurisdiction over any religious service or definition as per the First Amendment. On the other side, if a couple can locate a house of worship willing to marry them, then they can have a marriage license and be considered married. Also, if a couple wishes to be married but does not deem it necessary to have state sanctioning their marriage, they would not be forced to receive a civil union contract but by not receiving the state’s issuance of a civil union contract would negate them of the benefits of being a couple in the eyes of the state and in all state functions. They would not be able to file a joint tax return or necessarily be allowed to visit each other in a state run hospital or have numerous other benefits. They would still be able to be the benefactor in their wills but would face the taxes upon one’s death as if they were not a legally joined couple.

The reason we like this solution is not because it enables same sex unions as much as it removes the government from what should be a purely religious institution, marriage. The further the government can be removed from defining terms in our lives and society, the more free the society will become. It is necessary to have the government define legal contracts as those are enforced in the courts of the state. It is not necessary to have the state define anything that does not require a legal contract. Marriage was originally not a legal contract but was a moral contract issued by the religious culture. The interest of the state in marriage has been as a financial interest, a social interest, a contractual interest, and a left over remainder from when the state and church coexisted almost as one entity through much of human history. By granting the state the issuance of the civil union contract the state continues to have all the jurisdictional constraints which it currently possesses but allows for marriage to be returned to the religious sector of our society. This is something which is desirable as it is fitting to have marriage and civil union contract both exist as the state and religion have been divorced from their previous relationship and thus should have separate interests in the whole idea of marriage. The religious institutions would have their historic interest of defining the basic structure of family and all that entails. The state would have their rightful fee for the contractual legal aspect which has been the main interests of the state as well as defining family for tax and other considerations.

There is one more benefit with this solution. We have heard time and time again that all those wishing to legalize same sex marriages desire is to have the same legal rights as do heterosexual couples. By relegating marriage to religious institutions and removing it from legal and public jurisdiction and in the legal and public forum having the contractual part of marriage relegated to civil union contracts, then all who are accepted by the state, which would likely include same sex couples as the state should not have any legal reason to deny such and moral reasons are not the state’s purview, would have the same identical rights while religious institutions could define marriage in any manner they wish. Religious institutions which allow polygamy or polyandry could allow such and it would then be up to the state on whether such could receive a civil union contract and with what limitations or provisions. Since the state licenses separate from religious institutions such discrepancies should not make for the problems we are currently facing as each would define their own definitions. This is just another application of a kind of separation of powers where the state has its set of considerations, legalizations and limitations while the religious institutions have their definitions and preferences and the two do not necessarily have to match.

Beyond the Cusp