Horning’s day job is in healthcare, an industry where nearly all the rules are written, judged and enforced by unelected bureaucrats in agencies that have multiplied like rabbits since even before the New Deal. There are over 400 agencies that have the power to mandate, prohibit, imprison, reward, tax, fine, open and shutter businesses, and, significantly, shoot people. They spit out laws like machine gun bullets, and, actually, these agencies have actual machine guns and SWAT teams. Even the HHS and EPA have military assault equipment, body armor, guns and ammunition. I have to wonder if the Small Business Administration is jealous that their Glocks don’t have silencers…like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has. Among other agencies that have stockpiled hollow-point ammo banned by the Geneva Convention are the Forest Service, National Park Service, Office of Inspector General and …Bureau of Fiscal Service! Agriculture, education, even the Smithsonian is heavily armed such that these agencies are now more heavily armed than are the US Marines.
STOP! This must stop. And I have a plan to stop it. Curious? Ask me!
Other than invoking armed force against insurrection or invasion (which would be as ineffective against a virus as was Caligula’s attack on Poseidon), the Governor’s only constitutionally authorized emergency power is to call an emergency session of the General Assembly.
To be clear, the constitutions say that what the Governor did, and is still doing, is unconstitutional in both word and intent.
The Governor cited not the Indiana Constitution, but Indiana Code as his authority, specifically the statute, IC 10-14-3, the “Emergency Management and Disaster Law.”
That particular ream of legal effluvium does indeed appear to authorize every possible decree, action or mayhem, if read by itself; and if ignoring all the key principles of separation and limitations of powers in a republic.
Ironically, it’s even less-limited than the federal 40 U.S. Code § 1315 that Trump’s folks invoked against Portland protesters.
But consider what the Indiana Code says about its own authority in the hierarchy of law. What follows is IC 1-1-2 § 1-1-2-1:
“Section 1: The law governing this state is declared to be:
Second. All statutes of the general assembly of the state in force, and not inconsistent with such constitutions.
Third. All statutes of the United States in force, and relating to subjects over which congress has power to legislate for the states, and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States.
Fourth. The common law of England, and statutes of the British Parliament made in aid thereof prior to the fourth year of the reign of James the First (except the second section of the sixth chapter of forty-third Elizabeth, the eighth chapter of thirteenth Elizabeth, and the ninth chapter of thirty-seventh Henry the Eighth,) and which are of a general nature, not local to that kingdom, and not inconsistent with the first, second and third specifications of this section.”
Please note the order. Last, or fourth, is case law. This is what most USA citizens now think comes first. Supreme Court does, in fact, sound supreme. But it’s actually dead last in the legal hierarchy that determines what politicians can decree what we can do, can’t do, and must do for them.
Third is the federal code. Second, is the Indiana Code, as long as the code doesn’t contradict the constitutions, state or federal.
The Indiana Constitution’s Article I, Section 26 says very clearly says that only the General Assembly (our legislature) has any authority to suspend the laws protecting our rights from politicians under any circumstances. Article I, Section 25 very clearly says that laws cannot create any authority not already granted.
And nowhere is the legislature granted authority to delegate away it’s power and more local accountability by the stroke of a pen.
The law is clear. Why the Governor still refuses to call our legislators to work, is not. You’d think he wouldn’t want all the protests, disagreements from Sheriffs and Indiana’s Attorney General landing on him alone.
Unless, of course, he intentionally crossed this Rubicon and wants to be Caesar.
Governor Holcomb, I know you’re not a bad man. In fact I believe you’re a man who means well. I’m certain your advisors assured you that what you’ve been doing is legal. And I know that many applaud your “leadership” in closing businesses and schools, forbidding all manner of association and movement, and in general, suspending rule of law as a state-wide, one-size-fits-all rule.
But right is right and wrong is wrong. And while I know you don’t believe you’ve done wrong, you have.
I of course wish you had called an emergency session (Indiana Constitution Article 4 Section 9) so that Indiana’s General Assembly could have constitutionally authorized (by Article I, Section 26) what you have been doing …in violation of your oath of office.
I’m betting they’d have come up with measured, regional plans that made more sense and relieved you of total accountability for this mess.
The scared-stupid post-9/11 security blanket standing order from the legislature (IC 10-14-3) was both unconstitutional and foolish – not so different from 1973’s War Powers Act that so many regret today. Such vague, inherently corrupt delegations/ surrender of authority nullify the whole point of the separation and limitation of powers. Besides, Governor, unilaterally taking such unconstitutional authoritarianism upon yourself when it’s not only illegal, needlessly inflammatory, and raises fears about our new, dangerous form of government, is also bad politics.
No one person should wield so much power. And under our constitutions, no one person does.
I’m sure that, given the circumstance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus / COVID-19 disease, the General Assembly would have granted you specific, timely and focused authority to do what needed doing, where it needed doing …and without the suspension of laws that are in only the GA’s authority to suspend.
While I think what politicians have been doing in response to this pandemic is based more in fear and self-interest than in fact (and the corruption has become obvious, in case you’re wondering), it should still be done by constitutional rules. Anything else is unconstitutional, specifically illegal (Article I, Section 25), and contrary to the most fundamental principles of this nation’s purpose.
Please read this: https://wedeclare.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/indiana-constitution-book.pdf
You took “…an oath or affirmation, to support the Constitution of this State, and of the United States…”
I’m sure we’d all be both relieved, and favorably impressed, if in a public mea culpa, you’d recognize the chain of errors and misapplication of force, and resolve to do what’s right…and legal.
Nobody expects a politician to be perfect, you know. But we’re all looking for somebody to earn our trust in these pivotal, tumultuous times.
Going legit, and governing our government according to constitutional rule of law, would be a great start.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America couldn’t be more clear. It’s just one sentence; and it was exhaustively explained at the time it was written and made a part of this nation’s fundamental law:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
So… powers not specifically granted, are specifically denied. If the Constitution doesn’t clearly say our federal government can do something, it can’t do it.
Simple. No “penumbras” or “emanations.” No “expansive interpretations,” no cheating. What’s not clearly granted politicians is absolutely denied.
Of course, politicians hate that. It’s a leash on their power. It’s a limitation. It’s a big NO to their inevitable desire to oppress their fellow humans. It’s a restraint that makes them public servants instead of rulers. …And if actually enforced by citizens against our foolishly reelected incumbents by electing constitutionally restrained new political representatives, it would invalidate and nullify at least 90% of what we call “government” today.
And so, they’ve been fighting the 10th Amendment since the ink was wet.
But even with our first Prohibition, 126 years after the Tenth Amendment, our politicians were still restrained enough (and/or We The People were still wise and watchful enough, more likely), that they understood that in order to ban the sale of alcohol…or anything else, for that matter…they’d have to amend the constitution.
So they wrote, passed and ratified an amendment respectful of these fundamental principles and laws.
If you want to do something breathtakingly stupid, that is the correct way to do it.
But let’s be clear about this. The 18th Amendment, while composed of three sentences instead of just one, was also written clearly enough that confusion would be inexcusable:
The federal amendment would be null and void without concomitant and timely action from the states. “This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.”
Enforcement was also understood to be a shared responsibility. “The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Most importantly, this amendment was very specifically limited to only the manufacture and distribution of “intoxicating liquors.” It did not grant any level of government any authority or power to limit the manufacture/distribution of anything else…and it did NOT take away anybody’s right to consume whatever they wanted! “After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”
The 18th Amendment never granted any level of government any power or authority to tell you what you can, can’t or must consume. It never granted any level of government any power or authority to even limit the manufacture, sale, or transportation of anythingbut “intoxicating liquors.”
One of my favorite Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, was deadly wrong to call for the aggressive enforcement of the 18th Amendment, and invoke the agency that became the ATF to poison alcohol supplies and kill at least 10000 Americans. He actually violated the limitations of this amendment!
So let’s clear up one more thing…and it’s The Biggy:
When the 18th was repealed by the 21st Amendment, it was replaced by …nothing! There is no longer any amendment, there is no authority (see the 10th Amendment), no legal, just power to prohibit the manufacture, sale, or transportation of ANYTHING!
And there never was, and still isn’t, any constitutional authority or just power to prohibit people from consuming whatever the heck they want!
In other words, all the no-knock raids, the expanded policing powers, the incarcerations, the lives ruined by a conviction record, and of course the insane loss of life with enforcement, and the politically corrupt nature of black market trade …is all unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and otherwise totally wrong.
It’s frustrating we even use the word “decriminalize” since what we’re calling criminal was never legally made a crime.
Legally, constitutionally, none of this should be happening. And it’s really our politicians and their enforcers who are the real criminals.
The War On Drugs is not just an inconvenience. A violently corrupt, deceitful, off-the-rails and ungoverned government is a civilization-destroying monster. And a government that has the power to prevent you from putting things into your body voluntarily, is certainly powerful enough to put things into your body against your will. That’s been a Sci-Fi nightmare scenario for decades. So…
Then, if we’d like a legitimate Second Prohibition, we ought to do it in the proper way.
Until we follow the procedure for this, however, there is no legal, moral, or certainly any functional argument to keep doing what we’re doing to people, all over the world, with our illegal, immoral, costly and self-destructive “war on drugs.”
Freedom, IN – Many feel that our “Major Party” choices on Election Day have been getting worse and worse, while the general condition of our society and individual lives seems to be devolving toward calamity.
That’s true, of course.
But we could fix it if only we’d acknowledge the problem, admit who freely chose this, and realize who’s got the power to turn this around. The fix itself is simple enough, and mostly written-down already.
That’s in reverse order, unfortunately; because as congressmen I could address the first two listed only aftervoters take a stand against the recent (since the 1970’s), self-appointed and irretrievably corrupt, “Two Party System”…by electing me!
Only voters can topple the two-party-in-name-only, crony network, which has become little more than a front, distraction, protection and marketing group for the finance and militarism elites who run the world behind the Two Party Firewall.
The other 8th district candidates have no intention or ability to fix the mess they choose to represent. So, first, voters must vote against that corrupt monstrosity. Yes, it’s good to vote against what’s wrong. To say otherwise is a terrible misunderstanding of the whole point of elections; and that is for peaceful revolution. If they feel that they can vote for me, that’d be great. But first, voters must fire the Two Party System!
After voters fire that shot heard ‘round the world, we can talk about other reforms including:
Why? Because the most effective way to hide the true costs of war, tax the public without their knowledge, enrich elites, and covertly monetize the massive debts incurred by impossible political promises and a military empire and industry, is to replace naturally limited money with monopolized fiat currency*, and then devalue it by making gobs of it…
And making gobs of increasingly valueless “money” is literally what inflation is. The price of everything goes up when the value of money goes down. And we’re headed for catastrophic hockey-stick-graph inflation very soon. I don’t know when. But we’ve let this corrupt, expand and fester long enough that I’m afraid it is now inevitable.
There’s a long, repetitious history of this. In every case, from ancient Egypt to today’s Venezuela, devaluing currency represents a slide to catastrophe.
In theory, fiat currency could work fine. But every case involving humans, the short-term political gain of devaluation outweighs the catastrophic long term costs to the society.
There are no exceptions; “fiat currency” always fails. And it’s always by the same stupid pattern.
Politicians spend money they expect future generations to pay, so they have to find a way to devalue/inflate the supply of currency, and then point fingers of blame everywhere but at themselves when it all collapses.
The United States of America has occupied the catbird seat of fiat currencies since WWII, when our lend/lease arms trading sucked up 2/3rds of the global reserve currency, and almost 3/4 of the monetary gold. We immediately started spending down on that when we joined the war, and through subsequent never-ending consequences of the world wars. We spent all that gold long ago, and between the end of the Breton-Woods Agreement in ’71 and the petrodollar scheme in ’72/’73, we found a new way to further devalue what had become truly fiat currency.
Audit the Fed.* We are past-broke, and it’s time to go through an orderly and just restructuring of debts, nullifications, and dismantlings.
Replace the current Federal Reserve System with a truly private banking system that is not only subject to audits, reporting and SOP as with other incorporated institutions, but also has NO power to monetize political debts or create currency.
However, people must be free to use whatever form of money or currency suits their needs. “Cryptocurrency” (which is really a form of market fiat currency that I’m seeing as an eventual problem in itself), foreign coins, even conch shells or knotted strings are not the government’s business. Our government’s only legitimate role in interpersonal transactions is when there is force or fraud involved.
In other words, I propose we stop lying, stealing, making promises we can’t keep, and clean our accounts for the promotion of peace, prosperity, security …and freedom.
Liberty or Bust!
Andrew Horning
*One could debate the meaning of the words and concepts “money” and “currency” forever. But for the purposes here, currency is an “official” (mandated or agreed upon) trade instrument that has no intrinsic value. Money is a pretty abstract concept, since value is still applied by humans, but it’s generally a scarce/limited/difficult-to-reproduce thing that therefore has by itself been granted some relative value (gold, silver, rare shells, libertarians).
*The Fed gets “audited” already, but only with many glaring exclusions and only by internal government and Fed processes. You can look up the details. But pretty much everything significant (like actions with foreign governments and international banking groups, internal communications and discount window operations, and monetary policy itself) is excluded from GAO audits, and all “independent” auditors are hired by…(wait for it)…the Fed’s Board of Governors.
The Orwellian “Bank Secrecy Act” of 1970 forces banks to report large financial transactions to federal agents. As with all “federal” laws, since its passage, requirements have gotten tougher, more expansive, and secretive. For example, the “Suspicious Activity Report” invokes a gag order, and nullifies the already-lowered dollar limit such that any financial activity at all may be secretly monitored by federal agents.
Some might think increasing secrecy, power and spying is good; that it keeps us safe.
But voters make decisions on information that is increasingly missing or proven false. It’s foolish to believe that politicians we claim we don’t trust are honest with us when it comes to programs that actually fund their cronyism; like “civil asset forfeiture” programs.
While few know it, police forces now take more money and property from USA citizens by “civil asset forfeiture” (as opposed to “criminal asset forfeiture,” which requires a conviction) than do all other criminals, combined.
This “forfeiture” at gunpoint doesn’t require charges of any crime, or any warrant. Increasingly, this is done with foreknowledge of money movement, and taken with devices like the “Electronic Recovery and Access to Data” or ERAD (as in eradicate?) machine.
While all this was initially intended to fight drug trade and terrorism, it is in practice irrelevant to either, and is encouraged to fund police departments.
It is literally armed highway robbery. This “policing for profit” must be stopped, not expanded.
ETATTA did not go through regular order, and was rushed to the floor under suspension of the rules. No amendments were considered, debate was limited, and, as usual, few representatives actually read the bill before voting on it.
This carelessness is apparent in the practical force of the law proposed – that in violation of the USA Constitution’s Article I Section I, Article II Section I, Article III Section I, and Amendment IV, bureaucrats in executive agencies are granted even more power to write rules, judge their efficacy and infractions, and at least recommend, and ultimately execute, new actions as already imposed upon Americans as by “civil asset forfeiture,” without warrant, probable cause, or conviction of any crime. Furthermore, ETATTA expands the role of the Treasury’s power of spying and enforcement to non-monetary assets – essentially encompassing all property.
Politicians have blurred the lines between good-guy and bad-guy, dividing us by class and race, imprisoning a higher percentage of citizens than any other nation, and making us less secure and prosperous to boot.
In other words, ourgovernment has become what it’s supposed to protect us from.
I have a written plan to restore respect for the badge and restore faith in all our important institutions. It’s an already well-respected plan to not only police the police and govern government, but also to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
That’s called crime when any of the rest of us do it. When it’s done abusing power in violation of oaths of office and causing economic distress and pointless death it really ought to be called treason.
And that treasonous ruling class is mostly not the people you see on the ballot, or numbly pontificating on C-SPAN. Heck no. Follow the money that we’ve been voting for. You’ll see the people who pull strings from behind a curtain.
There isn’t anybody alive who can’t be threatened, blackmailed or otherwise manipulated by the dark and twisted forces that control our “intelligence” agencies, for example.
1. Stop voting for it! And by “it,” I of course mean the global crony network whose puppets we call The Two Party System. No, I don’t mean just Democrats and Republicans. I mean the system of cronies and unfair legal advantages that’s more corporate than it is political. Don’t give this monstrous mob your approval on Election Day. And do NOT, by default, grant its wishes by staying home on Election Day. Anybody left alone and unchallenged with unchecked power for too long becomes corrupt, and almost all of us have been blowing electoral kisses to the same Powers That Be for over a hundred years nonstop. STOP THAT!!
2. Vote against it. Yes, we’re supposed to vote against people. Remember, this is revolt with your vote! When your house is on fire, you need to kill the fire, not swap it for another. So first, fire the crooks! Vote for anything or anybody but the puppet show you know to be corrupt!
Remember, even the very best Ds and Rs (and there are some great people in those parties – like Thomas Massie, or Justin Amash, for example) are powerless against this mess without more allies, and your help. They cannot fix their party, or the people who control it. YOU must vote against all of that!
Our nation’s founders understood that elections are messy, corrupt and problematic in themselves; so elections’ purpose is very focused – they’re for peaceful revolution. That’s why we vote; so we don’t have to shoot politicians the way our founders did.
3. Use your vote as a weapon, or somebody else might. Seriously. It actually happens that people who don’t vote often show up voting…even after they’re dead. If you think staying home is a protest, you don’t understand how bad things have gotten.
4. Then, and only then, is a discussion of ideology and ‘isms something better than a time and energy wasting distraction.
In summary: Vote as though it’s war! Because, of course, it is.
USA wonks nodded their smug comprehension, apparently thinking that at least we elect our lawmakers on this side of the pond. At least our lawmakers can be fired.
But we don’t fire them. Nor can we; because most of our laws aren’t written by people authorized to write laws. And we didn’t elect them.
You see, while the “lawmakers” in the US Congress are of course overpaid, arrogant, and almost completely corrupt, they’re practically irrelevant now.
Unelected bureaucratsin innumerable federal agencies (DOE, FDA, FCC, USDA, IRS…) and even private organizations with governing powers like “The Federal Reserve System,”make thirty times as many regulations as does the US Congress, though Article I Section I of the Constitution for the USA restricts all legislative powers to only congress. Even if counting only those regulations that affect USA citizens directly, bureaucrats wrote sixteen times as many laws as did the US Congress.
Some say the rapidly growing regulatory burden amounts to around$15K per year for every USA household. Whatever the actual cost, unregulated regulation is literally criminal, and very destructive to our prosperity, independence, opportunity and of course, freedom.
What’s worse is that these agencies are also, quite unlike our US Congress, heavily armed against us.
They have been granted legislative, judicial, and executive powers (armed with SWAT teams and military gear…the USDA has machine guns! Even the federal DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION is armed now!!!) without checks and balances, without an electoral accountability, and without any constitutional authority.
I propose a sunset rule or constitutional amendment – a 10-year expiration date for all non-constitutionally specified agencies, laws, powers and programs to gracefully remove, or at least review for reinstatement, everything that’s not specifically written into the constitution.
I propose a Rule of Law reboot, to affirm that politicians must obey laws too…at last.
I propose we stand down our global military “whack-a-mole” machine, and concentrate on defending our homeland instead of browbeating and manipulating the world.
Let’s get something straight about the 2nd Amendment that has little to do with personal protection or fighting off an ungoverned government:
The second amendment is about citizens taking PERSONAL responsibility for violence!Citizen militias are much, much less likely to reelect warmongers and meddle with other people’s countries. And we willingly, anti-constitutionally, surrendered our militia system in 1903 to build a professional, global, war machine. …Just what our founders warned us to never, ever do.
The USA Constitution‘s Article I, Section 8:15 does grant Congress the rather scary authority, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Politicians (including judges) apparently stop reading here, thinking this grants the federal government essentially total military power and authority over everything, including you; you uppity citizen.
Article I, Section 8:16 further grants Congress authority “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
This is considerable power over militias, but look at the delimiter, “…governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States…” (bold is my added emphasis)
That should make us think about what the state constitutions say about the “Part of them” not governed by the feds, but we’ll get to that shortly.
Article I, Section 10:3 provides enough confusion in today’s context that, without the state constitutions, you might get the wrong idea about militias: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress… keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace …or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” If you can’t “keep Troops” in peace time, how could a state respond to invasion or other imminent danger?
Article II Section 2 should provoke some thought, though: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
So, the POTUS is NOT the CIC of the militias until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress. The militias aren’t “federalized” until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress. And an actual declaration of war by the US Congress hasn’t happened since WWII.
Again, this won’t make proper sense without state constitution context.
So, for Indiana, for example, the Indiana Constitution’s Article 5, Section 12 is where things ought to start coming together: “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.” (again, boldface is my emphasis, but you really ought to be raising your eyebrows now. This is even as amended in 1984. This is still law!)
Here’s Article 12, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution, which was amended as recently as 1974:
“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.”
OK, there it is, Hoosiers. I’m supposed to be in the militia, arthritis and all. So are you. Anybody over 17, unless a conscientious objector or otherwise excluded by law, is the militia. We are constitutionally to be more like Switzerland, where kids learn gun safety early on, and everybody plays a part in the defense of the Canton/County, state and nation. And we used to be until around 1903. Even more recently, kids still learned gun safety…in public schools!
So, now, still, by law, you are supposed to be trained in the use of weapons, as a militia member, including the sort of weapons that’d make Nancy Pelosi scream, as in Indiana’s Article I Section 32, “…for the defense of themselves and the State.”
(This is why, dammit, you have to read both your state and federal constitutions to get the whole picture when it comes to anything having to do with politics.)
There’s more, of course, but I need to get to the point: We’re not doing any of this at all, and we need to. Pronto.
Without going into how, why or when we became a global empire of fear and aggression, I want to as quickly as possible, and by big steps, nullify this self-destructive mess, and enforce/invoke/do the constitutions, as written; to restore our freedom, prosperity, opportunity, justice and security, for all.
I want to stand down our professional, global, permanent war industry. That would not only reduce the obvious blowback of constantly blowing up other people’s countries and people and wedding parties, it would make us more secure here at home.
And a lot richer!
We could afford to actually keep the promises we make to our soldiers in both regular and “National Guard” ranks. We’ve currently no way to keep up with the escalating costs of medical care and pensions. Not until we massively cut our global monstrosity of destruction, and return our military to its proper role and structure in national defense. Real national defense.
I want kids to learn about both the danger and proper use of weapons. That would not only raise up a nation better able to defend itself, it would also greatly reduce the irresponsible, stupid accidents, and unchecked violence in places like Chicago (where guns are essentially illegal and therefore ubiquitous in all the wrong hands) we now suffer.
And I want our armies out of the control of all the wrong people. You know that our government sold out. If you’re reading this, you probably know a good part of our global weaponry is unleashed in service to our financial sector’s fiat currency scams, the “petrodollar” scheme, the CIA (which I’d like to kill, gut and mount on the wall as a warning to future generations that we must never allow such a thing again) and the military industrialists we were warned about by a dozen USA Presidents.
There’s nothing civilized about delegating away all our violence and acting like it’s right. The damage we do to our own children’s lives, minds, bodies, careers and family lives, just to soothe our trembling nerves, is both embarrassing, and sin.