The New Day of Infamy

December 7th, 2003 was the 62nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. One of the worst tragedies in American history, we will never forget the heroes murdered that day on our home soil. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dubbed December 7th the "Day of Infamy" because of the unimaginable loss of life in the surprise attack on our country. Visiting Pearl Harbor was one of the most sobering experiences of my young life. Standing over the hull of the USS Arizona, I cried at the memory of the brave men who died for our country. It is the memory of those who have given their lives for my country that motivates me to protect that for which they shed their blood. And when I see the freedoms they fought so hard to defend being stripped away from the American people, it angers me.

Today, Wednesday, December 10, 2003 is the New Day of Infamy. The Supreme Court has decided in McConnell v. FEC that the First Amendment and the protections our Founders carefully included therein are not important enough to maintain. Citing the corrupting influence of money in politics, the Court upheld the so-called "soft money ban" that prohibits unlimited donations to political parties. The only way I can explain this decision is that the Court has no understanding of man. We are reaping the consequences of our humanistic worldview. To believe that money, not men, are the source of corruption is a misunderstanding of the true nature of man. There is an ancient proverb that money is the root of all evil. This is actually a misquote. A right understanding of man and his sin nature reveals that the love of money is the root of all evil. Money itself is not evil, the men who lust after it are the source of corruption; just as the Ring in Lord of the Rings is not evil, the men who seeks it are corrupted by their lust for its power.

Our country was established on the belief that only just and moral men could fulfill the high standards established for governance. Government is based on self-governance. Once the people are immoral and can no longer govern themselves, our civil government is forced into despotism to combat the corruption from within. The Supreme Court has declared itself the arbiter of right and wrong in our society. It sees the corruption in politics and decides that the source of this decadence can be obviated by cutting off the donation of money. This is the misunderstanding of man's sinful nature taken to its illogical extreme.

The Court also upheld restrictions on political ads in the weeks before an election thus terminating Americans' freedom to speak out about political issues in the crucial week just prior to an election. All you can ask is "what part of the First Amendment doesn't the Supreme Court understand?" Obviously all of it since they have systematically disassembled all of its protections. In the process they have so bastardized the First Amendment freedoms that a pornographer has more Constitutional protections than the pastor of a church.

It may be a violation of Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment to never speak ill of a fellow Republican, but I believe President Bush is guilty of dereliction of duty in this case. His failure to veto the atrocious bill that allowed for this decision is an abominable mistake. Regardless of his success in foreign policy, President Bush's legacy will be an administration that aided the evisceration of the First Amendment. His failure to stand up for our freedoms forces us to question his vision for this country.

Rush is right when he reflects on the current Supreme Court session: We know that sodomy is now a protected Constitutional right. We know that a candidate's free speech is abridged in the weeks before an election. The next question is whether a candidate has the right to sodomy in the weeks before an election.

Rush is highly adept at showing absurdity by being absurd. But in this case, his question is incredibly, and unfortunately, plausible.