Politicians have told us that giving tax money to multimillionaire athletes stimulates the economy and our otherwise lacking sense of pride.  Giving tax money to enormous multinational corporations stimulates the economy and promotes innovation.  Giving tax money to third-world dictators, erotic artists and apologetic criminals stimulates the economy, peace, art and justice.  Of course, giving tax money back to taxpayers stimulates the economy too, just as taking it in the first place did.  It’s all good, right?

With all this stimulation going on, you’d expect that our economy, technology and pride would have been stimulated past Pluto by now. 

Actually, the USA has never equaled the vigor and innovation we’d experienced before the invention of Income Tax and the so-called “Federal Programs;” and now we’re in a downward spiral of litigation, complexity, corruption, lost liberties and economic meltdown. 

Why?  Because freedom works, politics doesn’t; politicians lie, it is their nature to gobble up power; and it is our nature to think that we have to just grin and bear it all. 

Why in the world do we think that political campaigns are about candidates and their promises?  We act (and vote and pay taxes) as if Election Day is for politicians.  Do we really want this? 

I ask because political candidates often refuse unscripted public debates and direct questions, and instead control “the message” through tightly-scripted marketing and staged events. 

I ask because “winning” campaigns cost lots of money, and you know very well where some of that money comes from. 

I ask because negative campaigning usually works. 

I ask because those stupid yard signs work (think about that!). 

I ask because the good candidates would love to have ten seconds of your time, and almost surely won’t get it.

I am one of three candidates for the important job of Indiana Governor.  You are the boss.  I respectfully suggest that this time around you interview us at least to the degree that you’d interview a burger-flipper in a fast-food restaurant.  Ask real questions and expect real answers.  Don’t take no for an answer, and watch for lies and bunk.  Watch, attend, or even host a candidates’ debate.  And when you’ve gathered your facts (yes, facts really do exist) and made your decision, tell others what you’ve found.

This is a pivotal time.  In light of what’s happening to us now, in the most fearful and rapidly collapsing culture on earth, it’s time we wake up and take our roles seriously.

And no role is more important on Election Day than that of the voter. 

…That’s you.

If you’re not a Christian, turn back now.  This blog isn’t for you.  The following is for my brothers and sisters in Christ:

…Though, I do not pretend to be a great Christian.  In fact if Paul was chief among sinners, I’m his second-tier lacky’s chamberpot-scrubber’s gofer.  In fact, forget that; I’m not even that good. 

Even so, I’d love to speak to church groups all over the state because I’ve got more than just a nit to pick with my Christian family. 

I believe that my “govern government” message is, essentially, to give back to God what is God’s.  American churches have given waaaay too much to Caesar.

There was a time in this state and nation when moral instruction, health, education and welfare were the domain of the church and/or other local voluntary associations.  Politicians had nothing to do with these critical social functions, and Americans were the better for it.

If your barn burnt down, the congregation would build it back up.  If you needed healthcare, chances are you’d get it in a church-run hospital.  Churches founded colleges, ran local schools, built parks, doled out charity (to those that actually needed it!), and cared for the elderly and alone. 

And, critically, the church was a powerful social regulator in that their physical, social relevance also meant that excommunication was a big deal; not just a meaningless dismissal.

Well, we’ve delegated all this to Caesar, his bread and circuses, and his corruptions.  See the results around you?  Not so pretty.

I’m just about done with many Christians’ politician-friendly “interpretation” of the tribute penny story found in three books of the New Testament: “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” (Luke 20: 26)

Some Christians think this means that the money isn’t all that important, or that, as in Luke 18:25, you’re much better off without it anyway.  It’s true that you can’t serve two masters.

But Christ himself pointed us in an entirely different direction through Matthew 17:24-27.  The key phrases are “…so that we may not offend them…give it to them for my tax and yours.”

Why do I think that’s the key?

Because, according to just about everywhere in the Bible, human Kings represent our turn from god and toward human idols (see I Samuel: 8, Acts 12: 21-23), and everything belongs to God!

I’ll not write up a long description of proof texts, but if you get curious, consider Deut. 8:17-18, Deuteronomy 10:14, 1 Chronicles 29:11, 1 Chronicles 29: 14,  Psalm 24:1, Job 41:11,  Haggai 2:8, Psalm 50:10-12 and Psalm 100:3.

And with all the talk of money, we mustn’t forget what’s more important:

“You are not your own. You were bought at a price” - 1 Cor. 6:19-20 NIV.

And did we Christians somehow miss that the early Christians were killed in droves and in horrible ways for defying Caesar and spreading the Word of God? 

I don’t believe Christians are called to be garnishes on Caesar’s dinner plate.  We are to be beacons to God’s Covenant and Kingdom.  We’re supposed to exemplify and point to the truth, not act like doormats.

This is the sovereign state of Indiana (Article 4, Section 16 of the Indiana Constitution), a member state of the United States of America, where we have the authority to choose our leaders, and by extension, our way of life.  Christians have, like the ever-stiff-necked ancient Israelites, rejected God’s Word, His laws, His example and His Blessings.  Do I need to remind you how nations are judged for such things?

There is a corollary to “In God We Trust.”  It’s “In Politicians We Do NOT Trust.” 

If I get my way, churches will stop fussing over their precious tax status, and start doing here in the USA what they know they must do in missions abroad: Spread the Good News, while rolling up shirt sleeves and serving their fellow sinners in ways that matter in every day life.

One way or another, by wise pre-planning, or by grim necessity with our economy collapsing around us, you’d better get ready…

Again I say bravo to Oklahoma politicians for pushing back against our “federal government” usurpers.  Walter Williams wrote a very good related piece, and I’ve seen many others that, to one degree or another, correctly describe the constitutional breach evident in just about everything the various levels of government do to us each day.

But the problem with almost everything I’ve read on the topic of ungoverned government, is that too much emphasis is placed upon politicians and their wicked ways, and far too little blame is directed at the real troublemakers.

There’s only one class of humanity that causes all the abuse of power, corruption, theft and death that’s stinking and growing all around us, and it ain’t politicians.

Politicians do exactly what they can get away with - no more and certainly no less.  We get exactly the oppression, slavery, genocide and war we can stand.  In the USA, there’s nobody more accountable for all the sins of our nation than …voters.

It’s entirely our fault.  If not you personally, then at least your neighbors are entirely to blame.  And, to be more direct, unless you’re reaching into your personal wallet, time and energy to correct our lawless lawmakers and their proliferating anarchy, then you’re to blame just as much as is anybody else.

Are you doing what you can to restore liberty and justice?

If not, how much more time do you think you’ve got before it gets a whole lot harder to do?

Think about that number.  Imagine how you’d feel if you’d just lost over half of everything you own.  Half your business, half your investments, half your income.  Imagine how you’d feel if a group of dangerous criminals, breaking every law that applies to them, took half of all you possess, or even want to possess.

Well, according to the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, you don’t have to imagine very hard.  You just have to think about how you feel right now.  Because they’ve calculated the current cost of government, by taxation and direct regulation (but omitting the horrendous cost of the Fed’s devaluation of currency), at 53.9 percent; and the Cost Of Government Day (or Tax Freedom Day) is today, July 16.

Welcome to the USA, where government takes well-OVER HALF OF EVERYTHING!

Sheesh.  In the Old Testament’s I Samuel 8, they thought it a horror that the King would take ten percent!

Oh, and if all this isn’t bad enough, the EPA has done a little calculating, and they’ve decided that the value of a human life has dropped almost a million dollars, to 6.9 million dollars. 

As the value of each dollar plummets, that is not very good news at all…

It’s culturally fashionable to think of your parents as friends and equals.  Try as I might, I’ve never been able to do that.  There has always been a sacrosanct wall of privacy, duty and proper role between my parents and me.  My father in particular, as my first and most powerful example of manhood, held a singular stature, an insuperable position in my life to which I could aspire, but would always have to defer to the man who still occupied it. 

Well, heroes die; what happens next is up to the survivors. 

Dad was always enigmatic to me.  He had no patience with his own errors or failing eyesight, but I remember his hands guiding my first attempts to plane wood, and to play Duke Ellington on the piano.  His hand was on my shoulder through Indian Guides, Webelos, Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.  He never said very much that I ever heard, though he was a member of Toastmasters.  I’d heard hushed stories that he was some sort of war hero, but never from him.

I also remember a man who was frustrated with the 1960’s and 70’s.  The era of Vietnam protesters, Godless churches, LSD and women’s lib was hard for a man who had the same buzz cut and Errol Flynn mustache he had in 1945.  On the other hand, the engineer couldn’t resist gadgets and flashy cars.  He bought one of the first rotary engine-powered sports cars, though it was useless to a six-kid family, and his love of toy trains was perhaps obsessive.

He never missed a day of work and he never missed a campout, or a chance to make the Pinewood Derby car a little faster, a little shinier, a little bit better than the other kids’ cars…

When my dad said, “I’m going to go blow my brains out,” I knew that all the neighborhood kids would be in for a treat.  He’d pull out his clarinet and do amazing, impossible, delightful things with the levers and valves and a spitty reed.  I knew that he’d once made records with famous people, and that he’d had bands throughout the years.  I also knew that he played in places I shouldn’t ever visit.

I knew that a lot of people blamed his generation, and men in extreme particular, for all manner of evil, and that he never said a thing in response.  I didn’t know why he didn’t respond in kind to all the rage and righteous indignation leveled at him. 

As a teenager I had presumed that he was a wonderful father, but a woman old enough to know better once told me, “yes, but you couldn’t know any better, could you, dear?”

I did know that my dad, a man with a great sense of humor, just couldn’t stand the sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes.”  It was only about 15 years ago that I learned why.

As it turns out, my father, as a young pilot, was shot down and taken to Stalag Luft 13.  The place became notorious.  But there was no ditzy Sargent Schultz, and there were no tunnels.  My dad was there only a few months, but weighed 94 pounds by the time he left.  I can scarcely imagine what he saw, smelled and felt.  He’d killed, he’d seen death, and he almost died.  I can’t blame him for wanting the memories to go away.

But his sense of duty, honor and fearful respect stayed with him until the very end.

He died a couple of years ago.  His last days were embarrassing, terrifying and painful, but all I heard was that he was sorry for causing us so much worry and trouble.  He knew that he was dying, but he feared the medical bills my mother would face.  Some of his last words were about me, my farm, my family.

He fought for his country, he lived for his family and he died with as little fuss as he could manage.  My dad wasn’t perfect, but I’m now considering his footsteps in awe.

If all boys were to grow up to be like Donald M. Horning, we wouldn’t need government.  Our legions of bureaucrats and politicians would find something better to do.  The big, costly and dangerous mechanism we call government would wither like a parched weed, and the guns of war would be disassembled to make toy trains.

I’ve often been asked, “Andy, things have gotten too far out of control.  How can just the Governor enforce the constitution?”

Well, it’s not only the Governor’s job to enforce the constitution; it is even more significant that it is nobody else’s job.  And while it’s true that politicians have stolen power that doesn’t belong to them, the Governor has far more legal, appropriate power than you’ve been lead to believe.

A good part of what the Indiana Governor does these days (taking people’s homes, deciding which businesses thrive, and which die) is unconstitutional, of course. Here is an excellent description of the economics of the problem. And I’ve already written about several breaches of the Indiana Constitution (requires free signup; article starts on page 17). But I bet a lot of people would be surprised by what actually is constitutional.  

Indiana Constitution:

ARTICLE 3., Section 12. The Governor shall be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and may call out such forces, to execute the laws, or to suppress insurrection, or to repel invasion.

ARTICLE 12., Section 2. The Governor is Commander-in-Chief of the militia and other military forces of this state.

That, fellow citizens, is the law; as amended in 1974 and not changed since. It was amended to include “other military forces of this state,” because there didn’t used to be anything but the militia. And what is the militia? The Indiana National Guard, you may think? No, it is not:

ARTICLE 12., Section 1. A militia shall be provided and shall consist of all persons over the age of seventeen (17) years, except those persons who may be exempted by the laws of the United States or of this state. The militia may be divided into active and inactive classes and consist of such military organizations as may be provided by law.

This was amended in 1974 and not changed since. It is the law. The National Guard, or indeed the national standing army, does not exist by any constitutional authority. Our founders were bitterly opposed to standing, professional armies, as they are the root and seed of foreign war and authoritarian rule.

But so badly and far have we departed from the law, that it now seems inconceivable that a state could have so much sovereign power that we now ascribe only to the “federal” (hardly federal; actually, it’s unitary) government. Now it must seem perfectly fine that the President can “federalize” the state militias and deny Governors authority even in state emergencies (e.g., constitutional disasters such as happened in Waco, Texas).  

This was supposed to be a nation that wouldn’t go to war at the drop of a pin. We were to be a defensive fighting force, not a global aggressor. Of course, we were to be a nation of free citizens, not a nation of serfs.

Oh my how times have changed…

Well, it’s up to you.  What do you want?  Do you want failure, or the constitutions that proved to work better than anything else ever tried?

The LaPorte County Libertarians are on the ball.  They published a better write up of my press conference than I did.  Good, key facts.

Who: Andy Horning, Honk 4 Kids and several victims of CPS 

What: Press Conference on the crimes of CPS (called DCS here in Indiana)

When: Friday, 11 July, 2008 at 3pm

Where: 920 Laurel street, Indianapolis

www.HorningForGovernor.com

A Horrible Wrong

The genius of our nations’ founders was that they understood the danger of politics, and kept it on a leash.  They devised a power-limiting scheme of divided and opposed powers, with legislative, executive and judicial powers clearly written into constitutions – with all other powers excluded. 

Key to the powers denied was that political violence may not be unleashed without due process, warrant and properly defined powers.

Modern bureaucracies, like ancient criminal gangs or minor kingdoms, operate by their own rules.  And CPS, or the euphemistically named Child Protective Services, is among the most barbaric.

Sold as an agency of protection for children, it is anything but.  It is, in fact, a lucrative bounty scheme that not only gets tax dollars for each child stolen, but has it’s own judicial, executive and legislative agents.

No due process.  No warrants.  Nothing but the thinnest justification for sucking children into a system with horrible statistics in sexual and physical abuse as well as very high death rates.

Several victims will be on hand, and the facts will be laid bare.  It’s not just polygamists who’ve been wronged by the hundreds…

###

Andrew Horning, Libertarian for Governor

Freedom, IN 47431

andrewhorning@hotmail.com

http://www.horningforgovernor.com/

With prices, crime and debts going through the roof, and with liberties and opportunities swirling down political drainpipes, do you still think the so-called “tax protests” are just about taxes?  Why do politicians propose to amend constitutions they violate?  My fellow citizens, there is no “dumbed-down” solution; we must read our constitutions and demand an end to the anarchy of ungoverned government.  We’ve done everything but that.

Literally millions of people voraciously devour 1000-page romance novels, one after the other.  Millions can tell you the vertical jump-height of their favorite basketball stars.  Millions of people can perform whole scenes from obscure movies.  But only a “fringe” few have read the four-page Constitution of the United States.  Until fairly recently, I had met only one person (other than me) who had read the much longer Indiana Constitution.

In other words, people spend their time with all sorts of detailed, complex blather, and yet do not know their rights, the rules by which we’re to live, or the legacy so many patriotic Americans fought and died to protect.

If there’s anything that makes me different, it’s certainly not that I’m running for Governor of Indiana as a Libertarian; it’s that I’ve read the constitutions, and I’m mad enough to get off my duff to bring them back.

While citizens put their hand on the hearts and pledge to obey a flag, all politicians, police, soldiers and new citizens swear an oath to constitutions.  Why?  Because constitutions are a leash on political power, not on citizen rights.  How could I get mad about this?  Well:

• Most political spending is unconstitutional.
• Most political actions and agencies are unconstitutional.
• Most political power is unconstitutional.
• Most taxation is unconstitutional.
• Politicians null their powers by violating their oaths to these constitutions.
• Another word for “unconstitutional,” is “treasonous.”

Yet voters, not the politicians they hire, are to blame for all the troubles around us.  Over the past hundred years we’ve paid and voted for all sorts of unconstitutional abuse, and we got it good and hard.

And so now we fail.  Nations do fall, you know.  It’s happening.

We can fix this, but not by delegating it to the power-drunk.  We must read the best social contracts ever devised, and demand their enforcement.  The good news is that they’re much shorter and easier to read than the instructions that came with your cell phone.  The bad news is that reading these documents as written will make you mad.  Hopefully, mad enough to get off your duff.

Here’re some tips to reading constitutions:

• Ignore what politicians tell you about them.  Read them yourself.
• Start with the Constitution of the United States.  It’s not at all what you’ve been told.
• Imagine that the words mean what they say, because they do.  Really.
• Read the 9^th and 10^th Amendments first.  Read the 10^th three times before proceeding.
• The current Indiana Constitution was written by people who violated the previous one and bankrupted the state.  I suggest you read a copy that has some notes with it, such as you’ll find as my Platform at www.horningforgovernor.com.   

Human history details the certainty of failure in human politics.  Success is precious rare.  I believe that real political success is rooted in just three things: property ownership, governed government (Rule of Law), and free market economics.  The degree to which politicians allow these virtues determines the degree of any culture’s success.  Most of our constitutions’ framers knew this.  That’s why constitutions are to be obeyed as written, and why politicians are required, by constitutions, to swear an oath to uphold them.

Now if only we would replace our oath to a flag with one to the constitutions; to uphold and defend them against all enemies, foreign …and domestic.