During the all but forgotten IRS targeting scandal, I demonstrated the government obtained that power to target conservative groups in their effort to gain a monopoly on social welfare. But what does one have to do with the other?
If you were to ask Debbie Nall of Lawrence, Kansas, why practicing social welfare was a crime, she would tell you the city has an ordinance that says residents in a single-family zoned neighborhood cannot have more than three unrelated guests in their home over a 90-day period.
For almost three decades, Ms. Nall has opened her 8-bedroom home to around 90 of her fellow-citizens who were in need. And who were those unfortunate citizens?
“Usually it’s abused women, displaced women or people who have gotten out of the hospital who don’t want to die in the hospital,” she said in a media interview. “If people only knew the blessing that comes out of it.”
In other words, “usually” it is your typical Democratic voter, or rather those who are dependent on government assistance programs. And sadly, respecting her latter comment, “people” do know “the blessing that comes out of it.” In fact, they know all too well, which is why they do not want Debbie Nall or any other citizen or civil society organization threatening their social welfare monopoly.
The IRS was granted power that made the recent scandal possible only after progressives like Lyndon Johnson — and those who shared his “Great Society” vision — used 501[c] statutes to weaken faith-based social welfare programs. Their motives are simple, despicable, and multidimensional.
First, and most obvious, they want a monopoly on social welfare, because the more We citizens help each other, then the less “necessary and proper” it becomes to have Them — or, government — intervene in intimate areas of our lives. That may sound overly cynical, but just look at the case of Debbie Nall.
Nall has pled her case to government officials, but city officials say if she doesn’t stop that they are going to smack her with hefty fines. “These are her guests. The house is not overflowing. If you have eight bedrooms, own your home, how can the city impose fines for opening your home to guests?” Nall’s daughter wrote to KCTV. “Not renters. She takes no money. She asks for no help. She has worked her whole life to pay her house off and now the city fines her heavily for opening her doors.”
Even before Johnson and the “Great Society” reforms, progressives had been on the attack against faith-based social welfare, particularly Protestant social welfare, because the ideology of empowerment it professes is dangerous to the nanny state. It isn’t a fear of established religion that prompted big government progressives to oppose Bush’s faith-based initiatives, or Jack Kemp’s “empowerment agenda,” it was their ability to reduce the need for government.
Unlike government social welfare, receiving assistance from these groups instills in citizens an obligation toward their fellow-citizens, communities, and God-forbid in the case of a faith-based group, God (to provide further evidence for my argument, I included the entire first section of chapter 3 in Our Virtuous Republic, entitled “Decapitation of Church And State”).
Nevertheless, it is the stubbornly resilient tendency of the American national identity to strive for autonomy, demanded by the Christian ethic, which progressives have long sought and are still seeking to eliminate. There is no doubt they have had an enormous amount of success. Yet stubborn is our American way of life and desire for close relationships in a community, thus laws that punish those who practice social welfare are needed to weaken those relationships and increase dependency.
In a recent article I highlighted a few relevant polls. In a Fox Poll, a whopping 74 percent of all registered voters said they “think Americans rely too much on the government and not enough on themselves.” In a follow-up question, 50 percent said “to rely on friends, family, their church or other charitable organizations” for fulfillment of needs “is the better way to get families who fall on hard times back on their feet again.”
Only 35 percent said that a reliance on “government programs such as food stamps and welfare” was the way to go, and by a 52 percent – 35 percent margin, Americans would rather friends and family in need ask them for a place to stay instead of relying upon government assistance.
Rasmussen recently found that beyond their family, 35 percent said their personal allegiance was to their church and community, while 31 percent said the nation comes first – which mirrors the same stubborn, yet natural preference of Americans to choose community over big government also shown in the Fox Poll.
I will leave you with the link to her interview, and you can ask yourself why Debbie Nall carrying out her Christian duty would be a problem for the state. Then, I would encourage you to click here and take the small amount of time to read “Decapitation of Church and State” taken from Our Virtuous Republic, after which, you will see that the modern interpretation of a “separation of church and state is the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people regarding their national identity.”
