The Amish have gotten “favoritism” because they sacrificed, stood firm in their faith, and fought for it, period. Let me tell you how one of their struggles against tyranny should be a model for us all.
As of last year, Social Security is in the red. It now takes in less money than it spends. This will continue unless there are drastic cuts in benefits (seniors will shriek) or drastic hikes in taxes. Given the history of Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (“Social Security”), the latter is more likely. There have been no fewer than twenty hikes in the SS tax rate since its inception at a meager 1 percent in 1937. It is now 6.2 percent, paid each by employer and employee (12.4 percent total).
The younger generation, however, is beginning to see the light. SS is a bad deal which is 1) imposed by government coercion and thus greatly limits individual liberties, 2) is not a savings but a wealth-redistribution scheme, 3) is a Ponzi scheme in which the early recipients get more than they paid in and late-comers get totally ripped off Bernie Madoff style (and thus my generation will likely get nothing when it later begins to retire), and 4) creates moral hazard that rewards malinvestment and waste and discourages thrift and saving, thereby rewarding deadbeats with a secure retirement and punishing productivity with socialistic burdens. Many young people are really threatened by this massive machine of cradle-to-gravism, and rightfully so.
Now, there are many who will points out that the SS “Trust Fund” is actually well-endowed to the tune of $2.6 Trillion. Jim Wallis’ group of liberals activists, Sojourners, for example, has used this figure as an argument that Social Security is good and viable, and in fact “has been running surpluses for decades.”
What activists like these don’t tell you is what more honest journalists have openly stated—writers like CBS MoneyWatch editor Eric Schurenberg. While assuring us that SS will remain viable into the future, he nevertheless admits that the alleged Trust Fund is an accounting gimmick, a joke: “By law, the trust fund has to be invested in Treasury bonds, and Treasuries are nothing more than IOUs that Uncle Sam issues to raise money for the things that government needs–like stealth helicopters, helmet cameras for Navy Seals, IRS paper clips and pensions for mail carriers. Yes, the government spent it.”
In short, the money is gone—G-O-N-E—the Trust Fund is empty. That $2.6 trillion “balance” entry on the SS ledger is not a reference to surplus cash, but to a debt that the Treasury owes to the Fund. The only asset is a promise from the Treasury. And how will it pay? Knowing that the Treasury already runs annual deficits in the trillions, it can only accrue more debt in order to pay its already outstanding IOUs to the SS Trust Fund.
In other words, the question is not, “How much money is in the Trust Fund?”, but rather, “How long and how much can the Treasury continue to borrow?”
As former Comptroller General of the U.S., David Walker, has said, “The Social Security Trust Fund is misnamed. It cannot be trusted, and it is not funded.”
So younger people are well justified in questioning the practice of racking up huge debts while their taxes are being thrown into a black hole never to be returned.
One recent reporter got to the bottom of this inter-generational problem. She asked Walker, “Is the Social Security program fair to younger workers?” He replied,
[T]he way to look at it, rather than young versus old, is really income level. The Social Security system is designed to provide a better deal for workers who make less money because the replacement ratio that you receive compared to your earnings is much higher for lower-income workers than it is for higher-income workers.
But the reporter was no dummy, and she pounced on this answer: “So it sounds unfair to both younger workers and higher-income workers.”
Then came the outright admission from Walker. He said,
Social Security is not an investment program. You shouldn’t look at it as a rate of return. It’s intended to provide a safety net of retirement income. By definition, it’s structured so lower-wage workers will get a higher relative benefit. So, by definition, there’s an element of transfer payment.
When people look at it as, “Give me the money, I’ll invest and do better,” it depends on what your income level is. Middle and upper incomes would do better because it would eliminate the subsidy to the lower income. But that’s not what the program is. I hear young people saying, “I’m not getting a good deal.” That’s technically right, but it doesn’t reflect the nature of what Social Security is.
So there, we have a major government official who oversaw the program, who is now an activist in regard to reforming the program (at the Peterson Foundation), openly admitting that the program is unfair to both younger payers and middle- and upper- income payers. It is, he says, not a retirement or savings program, but rather a wealth-transfer program. And of course, a wealth-transfer program is—for the net-losers in that transfer—just the opposite of a savings program. It is in fact a “losings” program, or an un-recuperated tax.
This means that the entitlement you earn through payroll taxes is not a property right (in the sum you’ve paid in), but a promise from the government to tax more young people to pay you. FDR himself argued that the system would remain perpetually as long as it was based on taxation, and the SS Administration’s own website still makes this argument today, quoting FDR: “We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no d*** politician can ever scrap my social security program.”
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The greatest problem is that most of the people who realize how unfair, unsustainable, and generally immoral the system is, themselves don’t provide any good answers. Their proposals are always some form of the same system, just trimmed, modernized, repackaged, or even expanded—for example, by adding a new compulsory government savings account on top of Social Security (that was Walker’s view, at least in 2009). Personally, I fear that if a plan like this were adopted, the government would begin it by confiscating IRAs and 401(k) which are already government regulated accounts.
So the problem is that none of these people believe in freedom. None are willing even to mention the possibility of ending the basic tax-now-spend-now wealth redistribution structure of the system. Nobody—except libertarians and theonomists—is even close to willing to discuss the possibility of opting out of the system.
The Trap of “Rescue”
The mandatory nature of the “contributions” is at the heart of the problem. The contributions are nothing short of taxes—compulsory payments. These compulsory payments were originally prescribed and defended legally as a tax, and their aim was merely to rescue the vulnerable in the wake of the Great Depression.
The argument (decision) of Justice Cardozo was that unemployment was indeed an issue of general welfare, and that Congress had acted appropriately to “rescue” the helpless in a time of dire national emergency. He stated, “Rescue becomes necessary . . . to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near.”
In hindsight, with trillion-dollar sagging debts and 12.4 percent taxation (just for SS, not including the additional 2.9 percent for Medicare which has its own looming debts), this program has been a rescue and a salvation of cosmic proportions. New Deal? What a deal!
Ironically, a certain Supreme Court decision that denied parts of New Deal welfare taxation nevertheless firmed the foundation for its crown jewel of Social Security—as long as legislators could prove benefits to be for “national” welfare programs as opposed to “local” welfare programs paid for by general taxation. In U.S. v. Butler (1936), Justice Owen Roberts decided that while the particular Agricultural Adjustment Act with which he was dealing was unconstitutional, nevertheless the taxing powers of Congress remained quite broad: “the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.”
Hamilton had finally triumphed decisively over Madison: the “general welfare” clause was indeed married to the Constitutional powers of taxation, and these powers would be given the broadest interpretation possible.
While the decision struck down the Agricultural Adjustment Act, it paved the way for broad new social welfare measures that would come—that, in fact, were already prepared and passed by the time of the decision.
So when the Social Security Act was attacked and pressed in Court over its new taxes, the Supreme Court eventually upheld it in three decisive cases. The decisions in each of the two most important cases decreed that the threat of poverty due to unemployment was indeed a national problem, and thus “general welfare” versus particular. And it did not matter whether such unemployment should come due to loss of job, lack of available work, or inability to work due to old age. Thus, taxation for both Old Age and Unemployment welfare benefits was decreed constitutional. Cardozo writes,
The purge of nation-wide calamity that began in 1929 has taught us many lessons. Not the least is the solidarity of interests that may once have seemed to be divided. Unemployment spreads from state to state, the hinterland now settled that in pioneer days gave an avenue of escape. . . . Spreading from state to state, unemployment is an ill not particular but general, which may be checked, if Congress so determines, by the resources of the nation. . . . But the ill is all one or at least not greatly different whether men are thrown out of work because there is no longer work to do or because the disabilities of age make them incapable of doing it. Rescue becomes necessary irrespective of the cause. The hope behind this statute is to save men and women from the rigors of the poor house as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot awaits them when journey’s end is near.
Now, the Court cases mainly dealt with taxation, and specifically taxation for welfare benefits. The defenders of the SS plan assiduously avoided calling it “insurance” because this could have been easily challenged in a different way: the federal government cannot constitutionally force you to buy a product such as insurance. But it could, they said, tax people in order to run a social welfare program of public charity.
But far from being a mere rescue program from extreme poverty of unemployment, as Cardozo described it, the bureaucrats had a much more ambitious agenda for Social Security. Once the SC decisions came down, a new propaganda campaign began and terminology was altered accordingly. An insider among the bureaucrats at the time who later defected, Marjorie Shearon, explained the calculated change of the system from “welfare” to “insurance”:
Social Security planners in 1938 were mostly concerned with changing the old-age benefits system into “Federal old-age and survivors insurance benefits.” Elated over the Supreme Court decision validating the Social Security Act, the research and legal staffs in 1937 set to work to change the entire character of the program. The word “insurance” was skillfully inserted into the language of the new law, opening up a vista of untold possibilities for deception. A Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund was created on the books of the Treasury for the first time. Such an innovation would hardly have survived Supreme Court scrutiny, but no one had the courage or foresight to carry that creation to the High Court [not for a second round, that is, not after the exhaustion they had already gone through]. What had been simple “old-age benefits” when the Act was being tested for its validity now became “old-age and survivors insurance benefits” for the first time. The Social Security high command knew that social insurance benefits had already been declared “gratuities” by the Supreme Court even before it was asked to decide on Social Security benefits. They knew that social insurance benefits were not taxed as income because they were regarded as public charity. But from that day to this the fiction has been nurtured that Social Security taxes are “contributions” and benefits are “insurance” payments, not charity.[1]
Immediately after the Supreme Court validation in 1937, Shearon writes that her boss—a skilled and ambitious bureaucrat named Isidore Falk—turned to her and said this:
I want you to study and make yourself an expert in compulsory health insurance. Old-age and unemployment insurance are now here to stay. They will be modified and expanded, but health insurance will be the great new advance in social insurance. It’s the coming thing and *we* will draft the new laws.[2]
Falk already had his eyes on a much more comprehensive welfare state. In 1946, he published a booklet in the Congressional Record called Medical Care Insurance (Senate Committee Print No. 5 of 1946; 79th Cong., 2d Sess.). Shearon says this book “must be regarded as the Mein Kampf of the nationalization of American Medicine.”[3] It contained
the most comprehensive description of the plans to capture every aspect of health and medical care in this country that has ever been published. It explained the necessity for Federal control of personal health services, the unification of preventative and curative services, medical education, medical research, hospitals, health centers—everything, all under the control of one agency and, though not stated explicitly, there was the implication that one man would be the Czar of Medicine: Isidore S. Falk.[4]
The goal was a totally socialized State. Jane Hoey, who was Director of the Social Security Board’s Bureau of Public Assistance, in 1945 published a book called Common Human Needs (“Common” as in “General Welfare”) in which she stated it plainly. She wrote, “Social security and public assistance programs are a basic essential for the attainment of the socialized state envisaged by democratic ideology, a way of life which so far has been realized only in slight measure.”[5]
From this we learn at least two things: first, the people who wrote and pushed the laws saw them plainly as measures of socialism—a “socialized state”; and second, they’re never satisfied until they’ve reached a fully socialized state. Until then, they keep working, and the end justifies the subversive, lying, elitist means.
On the back of this very arrangement of “insurance” and “rescue,” LBJ would later push through even greater social welfare programs, crowned by the addition of Old-Age Health Insurance (Medicare) in 1965.
But like young people today, not everyone has seen the “hope” in the system, and many more have seen it as both immoral and tyrannical. Justice Cardozo in his decision wrote about “the hinterland”—that is, the rural middle and western parts of the country back in the 30s, which was most of the country—as having been “now settled that in pioneer days gave an avenue of escape.” The very idea of unsettled country being “an escape” from the scourge of unemployment should inspire us to look for new ways of “escape,” from social problems. Having lived with Social Security for nearly eighty years now, and with its wicked step-child Medicare going on fifty, it is time society retired these old-timers, or lay them off—unemploy them so to speak—and began to look for non-socialized solutions of which a free country could be proud. In short, it is time for a new generation to begin looking for a new escape.
Escapes don’t have to be new paths out into unsettled country. They can be paths out of socialism and into previously untried and unsettled ideas—ideas of liberty. Is there anyone willing to try freedom? To stand firm for freedom of conscience, religion, and property?
There has been indeed.
The Amish Escape
While I am not a full advocate of the Amish way of life, I must say that their stand against tyranny in the Social Security scheme, and their endurance of persecution until they had secured their liberties, is one of the most inspiring tales of courage, faith, and real social progress in the 20th century.
The story of Valentine Byler and the Amish fight against the IRS begins in 1954. It was in that year that Congress amended the Social Security Act to require certain types of workers that were previously exempt, including all agricultural workers. This included the Amish.
While the Amish would endure rendering unto Caesar what was in fact Caesar’s, they had heretofore lived in such a way as to remain independent from anything that was Caesar’s. So taxation was not a problem. But this new imposition of Social Security taxes was new, for it struck against two core Amish beliefs. The first was against insurance in general. Commercial insurance was seen as a way of trying to cheat God’s providence. Right or wrong in this particular belief, they had rightly seen all of the leftist propaganda and by then official literature detailing the program as “Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance.” Thus they would refuse to pay taxes for such an entitlement.
The second belief was a strict separation of church and state—the state should not cross the line into wealth redistribution and welfare. The Amish powerfully upheld their own welfare community independently of any government coercion:
Perhaps most importantly, the care of the elderly is seen as the responsibility of the family and community, not the government. Whether it be additions built onto the main house where grandparents “retire,” benefit sales to pay large medical bills, or the community effort of a barn-raising, the Amish truly try to “take care of their own.”
Where almost all other Christians were either oblivious or cowered, the Amish stood firm in their beliefs. Thus, even after special meetings with IRS agents, many Amish engaged in godly civil disobedience and refused to pay, and they sent a 14,000-signature petition to Congress, stating “We do not want to be burdensome, but we do not want to lose our birthright to everlasting glory, therefore we must do all we can to live our faith!”
The representative figure turned out to be one simple Amish farmer named Valentine Byler. By 1959 he owed four years in back-taxes to the IRS. Since Byler maintained no bank accounts, the IRS goons swept in and confiscated the most salable of his property: his horses. To recoup $308.96 ($2,323.98 today), on May 1, 1961, the IRS auctioned off three of his horses, totally oblivious (or insensitive) to the fact that May was plowing and planting season. The IRS collection agent would later respond, “Plowing never occurred to me. I live in an apartment.”
But as Ghandi once said, the action is the reaction. The IRS had openly confiscated a simple farmer’s means of making a living in order to enforce an obviously poorly thought-out government program. It would become a PR mistake for the IRS. There was indeed a public outcry.
The Herald Statesman of Yonkers, NY wrote, “Many of us resent central government insistence that it must impose on us all the costs of cradle-to-grave care as defined by bureaucrats. Yet we pay and pay and pay the taxes demanded because we have not yet been able to devise a sound way of escape.”
The paper nailed we: because we have not yet been able to devise a sound way of escape. We need one.
Another paper seconded the sentiment: “What kind of ‘welfare’ is it that takes a farmer’s horses away at spring plowing time in order to dragoon a whole community into a ‘benefit’ scheme it neither needs nor wants, and which offends its deeply held religious scruples?”
Letters poured into Mr. Byler’s mailbox from across the country, some containing money. In one case, a college undergrad sent $5 (about $40 today)—not a small sacrifice for a college student’s budget. Several writers decried the tyranny and effects of the Welfare State. One said, “I hope that your example may serve to point out to some of us just how far our benevolent Government will go to reach its goal of making dependents of us all. There seems to be no place for a person who asks merely to be left alone, and to provide for himself and his family.”
The public reaction and support of the Amish cause lasted through 1964, right up until Johnson’s amendments to the Social Security Act which expanded it into Medicare. But with that expansion the Amish stand found a pay off. Deep in the legislation was a new “opt out” for conscientious objectors to the system.
The sacrifices of standing for one’s convictions, enduring harassment and persecution from the IRS, of being the brunt of official propaganda—all found payoff when their cause was heard and respected. The courage of all of those people who would rather be jailed and fined than bow to government dominance for the alleged benefits of government-mandated welfare stands as an example to all of us who would have freedom.
Freedom will come only to those who truly want it, will sacrifice for it, can handle it, and are willing to stand firm until they get it.
The Way Forward
The Amish victory should have been a victory for all believers, but tyrannies—such as our version of the socialized state—do not relinquish power voluntarily. Even when trapped and pressured into a forfeiture of power such as was relinquished to the Amish, governments will only give what tiny bit they must in order to say they’ve done the good deed.
In the case of the Amish opt-out, it was not given for religious exception to taxation per se—that would have been way too wide a hole to open for other interested groups. So the law was written very strictly:
Members of certain religious groups may qualify for an exemption from the Social Security tax. To do so, they must:
Waive their rights to all benefits under the Social Security Act, including hospital insurance benefits; and
Meet the following requirements:
- Be a member of a recognized religious sect conscientiously opposed to accepting benefits;.
- Be a member of a religious sect that makes a reasonable provision for its dependent members and has done so continuously since December 31, 1950.
- Have never received or been entitled to any benefits payable under Social Security programs;
In other words, individual believers can be exempted only if the whole group to which they belong conscientiously objects—not just the individual themselves. And, that group must have been established and have held that objecting view since before 1950, and that group must have a viable system of dependent care in place already and since that date. In other words, the Amish, some Mennonites, and a few like groups, and that’s it.
Under this law, if for example the PCA wished to provide an exemption, it would not qualify since it was founded in 1973. Neither would my denomination—the CREC—since it was founded in 1998. In fact, neither would the Southern Baptist Convention since, although it was founded in 1845, it has not had its own welfare program in place for its members.
Further, the IRS exemption application form (4029) makes it clear that the conscientious objection must be to both public and private insurance. Thus, were you somehow to qualify otherwise, you would also be legally binding yourself to refuse auto, life, home, and health insurance—something only those Amish-type groups do today. So, how do you feel about a horse and buggy?
(All ministers—not believers in general—are also exempt if they make the decision within two years of ordination, and are recognized as self-employed (form 4361); and their objection need only be to public insurance.)
But . . .
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The good part is that these strictures are totally arbitrary measures designed only to exempt those who had tremendous public support, strong religious beliefs, and a viable means of self-support so as never to be a threat to draw from the government system. And these elements of the Amish story can be a guide for other religious groups today. Indeed, the Amish fight shows us the very means of that “sound way of escape” we need.
Since those new rules were entirely arbitrary to meet a social pressure, we must believe that they remain flexible in the face of similar pressures from other groups today. All of the following measures are arbitrary:
1) The 1950 deadline requirement
2) The limitation of the religious objection to only insurance
3) The implication that the objection be to all insurance
4) The requirement that the insurance objection be to both public and private
5) The application of the exemption only to religious groups
6) The application of the exemption only to the whole group and not individuals
Indeed, there is absolutely no reason why the same reasoning should not apply to modern groups or individuals, those who conscientiously object to taxation, those who object only to mandatory old age or health insurance, those who object only to public insurance, any group that desires to collectively object, or even individuals who wish to object outside of the community of any group religious or otherwise.
And while it would obviously be wise to be able to prove yourself to have a viable private safety net or old-age funding system in place besides the SS system, this should not be a legal requirement to freely opt out of the system. Individuals should be free to live with the consequences of their own decisions.
In short, anyone at any time should be able to opt out of the system entirely—to be exempted from the taxes and simultaneously refuse any entitlement to any future pay out.
But securing such freedom will certainly be a long hard fight. Not only do the oldsters believe they are entitled to a certain sum, government officials are terrified of changing the system, and the government generally adores it as a massive system of social control and wealth transfer—which it is. These are the forces against which freedom must stand.
Indeed, even the Amish victory was not total, unfortunately. In U.S. v. Lee (1982) (not to be confused with U.S. v Lee in 1882), Justice Burger decided that the exemption applied only to self-employed Amish workers, not to those employed by others, even if by other Amish. Employers or employees are not exempt. Thus at least one Amish carpenter who hired two others as aids was forced by the Court to pay payroll taxes on their behalf. Burger’s lame excuse for this exaction implied that there could possibly be a case where an Amish employer employed non-Amish, and thus to refuse the employees contributions would be to impose the Amish faith on the employees:
When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity. Granting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.
Justice Stevens, in a concurring addition, gave a more general principle for this opinion: “there is virtually no room for a ‘constitutionally required exemption’ on religious grounds from a valid tax law that is entirely neutral in its general application.” In other words, as long as a tax hits everyone the same way, then there can be no constitutional objection to it even on religious grounds.
In a footnote, Stevens explains why: “if tax exemptions were dispensed on religious grounds, every citizen would have an economic motivation to join the favored sects.”
And we can’t have everyone just running out and joining a church, now can we?! At least not just to duck a tax. Churches, after all, are havens from sin, not taxes.
But why not? Why not, especially if those same people legally refuse any future entitlement from the program? There can be only one reason: because there would be a mass exodus from the unjust system of wealth transfer, and thus the government would lose a master-grip on the cradle-to-grave dominance of our lives.
This means, by the way, that if Justice Stevens is right, the Constitution is not just neutral in regard to religion, but anti-religion in some cases. But that’s for another day.
But in all reality, there is no reason why every church in this nation could not set up their own welfare communities as the Amish have done—and as the Bible explicitly commands them to do (see, for example, 1 Timothy 5:3–16)—and take care of all of the truly needy among them in all scenarios, whether it be old-age, health, unemployment, disability, etc. Doing so is only a matter of faithfulness to the Word and priorities among church leaders.
Once in place, any or all of these systems could and should become the basis for a powerful attempt at a more general Christian exemption from the federally-mandated monstrosity of Social Security.
Then, once exempted from Social Security taxes, we could use the extra 7 to 15 percent of our income further to invest in the future as we see fit.
An attempt like this has already prevailed in regard to health care. Efforts on the part of certain health care sharing ministries—such as Samaritan Ministries—were rewarded with specific exemptions from the Obamacare mandates for all health care sharing ministries that meet certain criteria (which could certainly be improved, by the way).
The Amish won their freedom because they sacrificed, stood firm in their faith, and fought for it, period. There is no reason why churches could not pool their resources to provide similar funds, and then use those funds as a basis for broadening the exemptions from Social Security. It would be a much smaller sacrifice than the Amish endured, and we would have a much larger and stronger base from which to demand freedom.
Doing so would represent a massive step forward in faithfulness to Scripture, the law of God, and liberty for mankind.
Endnotes:
Joel McDurmon, M.Div., Reformed Episcopal Theological Seminary, is the Director of Research for American Vision. He has authored four books and also serves as a lecturer and regular contributor to the American Vision website. He joined American Vision's staff in the June of 2008. Joel and his wife and four sons live in Dallas, Georgia.
In only one instance in the New Testament (that I am aware of) did the church in the book of Acts set up its own mini-welfare-system. (In the Jerusalem Church they had “all things in common.” …but that was probably because they were expecting to flee & weren’t expecting to get to keep their land!) If any form of corporate-led charity were to be very effective in the church, you would think that church-led food pantries would be a success, all across the united states. They aren’t. Even the successful ones, tend to have more than a hint of the predominant public-welfare-mentality that already saturates our culture. I am suspicious of all institutionalized systems of ‘charity.’ I believe that we should keep acts of giving and charity as family-oriented and personal-oriented as possible.
And what of all of the hospitals that christians have set up? These corporate entities become obsessed with matters of maintenance…and then subsistence (where is the money going to come from)…and then they begin to take money from anything, regardless of whether it’s statist funding or not. Christian hospitals still cling loosely to their roots…but let’s face it: they are a business.
I hear it said that we should do more… I agree: we should be adopting orphans and taking care of widows, beginning with our own immediate christian friends, family, and neighborhood. But we should do so personally…not as a form of steady-stream of income from a corporatized system. Lets be careful not to mimic the style of impersonalizing abuse that we are trying to escape.
(I don’t know what your position is on ‘tithing.’ But as you can gather from what I said above: I do not believe that our ‘tithe’ is owed to the ‘storehouse’…if by ‘storehouse’ you mean some kind of heirarchy of saints…or building that requires pew-sitters. We are the church. And we are to give to the least of these, beginning with our own brethren. Having done it to the least of these, we have done it to Christ Himself. It is also usually better if it is usually not a steady stream of income, unless that person has been sort-of adopted into your family unit. And sometimes when we have nothing to give, we may (at some point) be like Peter: “”I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”)
I agree with your very thoughtful comment. Until we decide that personally responsibility before God and man is paramount in our thoughts, it will not be paramount in our actions, and yes we are likely to only emulate the ‘old system of tyranny’ at best. I tithe to the needs I see in front of me. In this way, I am offering what is His, to do what He sets before me. While not wealthy by the world’s standards, I have never been faced with a shortfall in meeting my own obligations. And I have been able to address many needs around me. What if we all dared to listen and believe the system God has given regarding His provision? Thank you for your great comment, and I appreciate this article on the current quagmire!
The sad part about all this is that Social Security & Medicare (although they get a high level of attention) aren’t the only freedoms Christians have lost & are losing.
The battle seems overwhelming…but there must be a starting point.
The states have to move away from conforming to the Federal govt bullying. The states need to be transformed county by county. Counties will only be changed by citizens rising up & engaging in politics who’ve been taught it’s not ungodly to do so & how to do it. Therin lies much of the problem. Churches for the most part teach their people that true godliness means staying out of public affairs & living a quiet pietist life.
That’s where change needs to start…with the shepherds & what they are teaching their sheep. Until this happens…the majority of Christians will continue to live & look like the world.
Fascinating article. Thank you. Two thoughts:
RE: “Be a member of a recognized religious sect conscientiously opposed to accepting benefits;.” — Why has no one brought a First Amendment challenge against this? I would say that the whole point of the First Amendment was to prevent – on the national level, not the state level, of course – the government from being to recognize any sect more than any other.
RE: “When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice…” — This quotation makes it patently clear, of course, that the purpose of governmental activity is to make slaves of us all to each other, to instigate class warfare and make us all informers against each other. An Amish man who wishes to freely contract with voluntary non-Amish workers, and keep his own money for himself, is classified as imposing his own religion on others! By that logic, when I, as an Orthodox Jew, keep kosher and refuse to eat unkosher meat, I am imposing my religion on the producers of unkosher meat, who are being denied my money the same as the non-Amish worker was being denied Social Security payments on his behalf. (In fact, there are actually crackpots out there who accuse Orthodox Jews of tyrannically using their overwhelming power and influence to boycott unkosher food and refuse to eat it unless it becomes certified as kosher. The devils! How dare they?) The intention, clearly, is to make us all slaves to each other. The same way that the elderly will refuse the request of the young to opt-out of Social Security, saying, “I paid in all these years for the benefit of my elders, on the basis of a promise that eventually, you would pay in my my benefit”, thus enslaving one generation to the other, so too, the object is clearly to instigate warfare amongst us all, in which a mere desire to live independently and self-sufficiently is classified as religious coercion. Your money belongs to the State, and an attempt to keep it for yourself is an attempt to impose your religion on others.
It’s like that recent case, about the people who wanted to keep their own money to use for private schools. No, your money belongs to the State, and if you want to keep your money for use for private, religious schools, then you are imposing your religion on everyone else. When the government has declared that we are one Organism who are all mutually enslaved, then merely trying to be independent is to impose your view on everyone else. Everyone else has a right to enslave you, and you are their property. To secede is to steal their property – viz. yourself – from them.
Awesome article Joel! Its clear that social security came in to being not because of benevolent politicians, but as a direct socialist(dare I say communist) agenda. To jp1, I agree that no politician is ever going to bring about the needed changes. It is going to come from a bold and courageous denomination that pools its own resources and gets a churchwide “safety net” together and then will kindly say to the federal government “no thank you on all of your programs…we have our own” THAT will be the beginning of the change.
wishful thinking, when President Bush proposed a movement towards more privatized systems over a totally controlled system. He was demonized immediately, it was Dead on arrival in Congress and supposed “libertarians” joined the statist in opposing the incremental movement away from total govt. control.
basically its politicaly impossible.
Some very good points have been made in the foregoing comments, so I will not re-iterate what you all have already said. However, in response to jp1, I don’t think it’s TOTALLY impossible to achieve independence from the tentacles of government, short of revolt, secession or outright rebellion.