An Appeal to Morality [Reader Post]

One of the things which we seem to be losing in America is a sense of morality, and morality is necessary for the function of any republic.

Recently, a Stephen Learner has been out speaking to radical groups, with the proposition that, we need to double the number of foreclosures in order to bring down the system.  Now, he teaches that, this will restore the wealth to its rightful owners by bringing down the banks.  The idea is, you cannot simply tell someone, “You need to perform this very immoral act.”  You need to present it to them so that they can justify what they are doing in their own minds.

At the same time, there is a website about how to walk away from your house, and “stick the bank with the bill.”  However, since FNMA or FHLMC probably guarantee that mortgage, and since these institutions are failed institutions, that means the loss will ultimately come out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

Let me tell you about your bank and your house: the bank did not guarantee that your home would always maintain its value or go up in value.  Taken in the long term, this nearly always happens, say, over a period of 20 years or more.  But that is not any sort of guarantee that comes with your mortgage.

Our mortgages worked for a very long time because people understood this.  FNMA offered guaranteed loans, as long as the buyer paid 3% down and their closing costs and prepaids.   It was a lot of money, especially to a first time buyer, but people took their financial obligations seriously, so this program worked for decades.  At this point in time, these kinds of mortgages may go away, because of all the bad housing loans (the government and lending institutions also played a big part here, but that is because they were immoral as well).

John Stossel did a show on this called “Freeloaders” and presented a number of ways that people play the system.  One woman has lived in her foreclosed house now for 25 years, as she is able to outsmart the bank’s lawyers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dW21VJfDOg[/youtube]

Since abortion has been made legal, all sorts of rationalizations have been offered up in order to justify aborting one’s own child, but the simple genetic fact is, that child is a real, living human being with a unique genetic code, which began on day one.  Philosophically or religiously, we could haggle about when this child in the womb becomes a real human being; but, insofar as biology goes, that happened at conception.  Yet, somehow, we have managed to abort far more babies in the United States than we have killed on he battlefield in our entire history.  And somehow, people who are very anti-war and very pro-peace seem to be able to justify the massacre of so many babies.

It is a conservative maxim that, when you tax something, you get less of it, and when you subsidize something, you get more of it.  At some point, probably very sincere people decided that, a single mother is in a precarious position and that we need to help her.   This resulted in food stamps, rental payments and welfare for these women.   What is the result.  More and more and more single mothers.  When you subsidize something, you get more of it.

Also, statistically, children raised in a fatherless home are more like to use drugs, get pregnant early, have sex at an earlier age, drop out of school and get arrested—oh, and become single mothers—more than their counterparts from homes with a mother and a father.  So, helping out single mothers essentially increases our crime rate, our incarceration numbers, and produces more single mothers, while producing fewer children with college or even a high school education.

Someone decided, we have all these poor starving children in schools, and they are not performing to their potential, and we need to feed them.   In some schools, those who are fed by the schools at taxpayer expense is between 50–100%.  And yet, do we have an epidemic of starving children every summer, when only 10% of kids go to school?  No.  Somehow, for 3 months, parents figure out how to feed their children.

Recently, some lawyers won a lawsuit about Black farmers who were denied loans, and therefore, could not farm.  However, the end result is, huge numbers of Blacks just showed up to get the $50,000 handout, even if they had never farmed a day in their life.  All they had to do was fill out the forms.   One of them reasoned that, his ancestors were not paid for their servitude, so he is simply taking what is rightfully his.

A lot of this boils down to many of us thinking that the government owes us something.  We figure, we pay taxes, here is a benefit that we can get, and so we take it.

35% of Americans live by means of a government handout, subsidy or social security.  65% of us who work, are paying for those who do not work; and, in addition to this, we pay for the government as well.

What is the cure for this?  Simple morality.  Parents teaching their children that they are responsible for their own lives; that they ought not to look to government to take care of them.

Marriage.  We face a plethora of social problems because of single mothers.  How does this happen?  Immorality.  We have more public school education and more free condoms being handed out, and more Planned Parenthood clinics; and yet, out-of-wedlock childbirths is skyrocketing.

Blacks complain that they make up a disproportionate percentage of the prison population, or that they are not doing as well in school, or that they lack all of the advantages that whites have.  The key advantage is, the huge percentage of Black children being raised by a single mother.  That is where all of this disparity comes from.  Equalize the statistical information so that we look at the same percentage of children raised by single mothers whether Black or white, and all of the negative stats either are dramatically reduced or they go away.

It boils down to simple, excuse the expression, Biblical morality.  Honor your mother and father.  Do not steal.  Do not commit adultery.  To not murder.  Do not lie.  Do not strongly desire things that do not belong to you.

This immorality is always reflected in the government.  We have politicians of both stripes promising more than they can give us, while taking as much as they can for themselves.  Government simply does not have the money to pay for everything it has promised, and all of the demonstrations in the world by people with their hands out will not change that.

Some countries have kicked the can down the road as far as they could—and now they are at the end of that road: Greece, Spain, and Portugal.  Most European countries and the United States don’t have much road left.   To fix this, it will require our politicians to be honest with us, and for us to realize, we aren’t going to get everything that government has promised us.   That’s called morality.

When Adam was formed by God in the Garden of Eden, what did he do?  He worked.  In perfect environment, he worked.  When Adam and the woman fell, God continued to mandate that he work.  In the New Testament, Paul told the Thessalonians that, “If a man does not work, then he should not eat.”  Throughout the Bible, from cover to cover, work is required of everyone—even the poor.

The first relationship in the Bible?  A relationship between one man and one woman, designed to be continued throughout their lives; and add children.  Nowhere in the Bible is this ideal contradicted.  When men in the Bible went against this ideal (like David or Solomon) there were grave consequences.  When men had sex with men, this is portrayed as wrong in both the Old and New Testaments.

Today, there are two political views which look to the formation of an international structure: communism and Islam.   Both systems have failed everywhere they are tried.  What does the Bible teach?  Nationalism.  Separate countries, each country maintaining their own borders.

These things: simple morality, the work ethic, self-reliance, a traditional family structure and nationalism—they work every time they have been tried.  These things will be the difference between us turning into Greece or us returning to an era of prosperity.  But prosperity will not come to a people who simply stand there with their hands out.

This is a fantastic slideshow from Heritage, about how marriage is America’s #1 weapon against childhood poverty.  I recommend that you email this link to everyone you know.

Here is the more detailed report:

Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty