Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today I want to ask you, why is the libertarian agenda for America the wrong one for America? And why is an agenda of the Christian Republic the precise right one for America? Now, let me stipulate that there is much about the libertarian agenda with which I sympathize.

They believe, for example, in limited government, sound money, and fiscal responsibility. This is from the libertarian party platform, and I quote now, all persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service, and all federal programs and services not required under the United States Constitution. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors. Government should not incur debt, which burdens future generations without their consent.

We support the passage of a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, provided that the budget is balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures and not by raising taxes. Oh, wonderful, from the libertarian party platform. They also comment on money and financial markets too, and I quote once again from their website, we favor free market banking with unrestricted competition among banks and depository institutions of all types. Individuals engaged in voluntary exchange should be free to use as money any mutually agreeable commodity or item.

We support a halt to inflationary monetary policies and unconstitutional legal tender laws, unquote, from the libertarian party platform. And to all of this, I can say amen. If this were the sum and substance of the libertarian party, I would support it in a moment. But for me, there are several other aspects to the libertarian program that I have to critique. Kind of a poison pill for me.

What are these aspects? Well, let me cite them for you. I've been articulating, for example, in previous episodes, the absolute fundamentals for the United States of America, that we might survive and thrive into the future. And that is a return to three C's, to Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism, and how they are all intertwined and interconnected. Christ has been central to who we are as a people, fundamental to the formation of our culture, our religion, and our institutions.

The Constitution itself has been shaped and formed in the fiery forge of Christian principle and tradition. And of course, capitalism, that third C, as we have seen, especially over the last few weeks, requires a Christian moral framework and a Christian written constitution to operate at its optimum. Libertarianism, by its own admission, rejects the very thing that binds these things together. That is a strong, clear, explicitly Christian moral framework. Utterly essential.

This is my critique of the libertarian agenda. Instead, as one might expect from the name libertarian, a kind of free moral approach to social issues and to personal life choices obtained. I quote now from the libertarian party platform again. And I quote, it says, we believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we, that is the libertarian party, defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways without interference from government or any authoritarian power, unquote, from the libertarian party platform. Well, all of this is fine sounding sentiment, but it is very bad government, I'm afraid, an insipid failed public morality. There is a public morality in every single culture and society. Number one, for me, government by definition is force.

Government by definition is force. The older Webster dictionaries, for example, define government as force, compulsion. Think for a moment, dear listener, behind every law, though we expect a general willing compliance on the part of the general populace, behind every law lies the implied use of force, if voluntary compliance is not achieved. This is why government is good at and properly charged with police powers and military protection and the legislating, executing and adjudicating the laws of the land and punishing those who break the law. This is what government is meant to do.

Government is force and compulsion. Conversely, its essential nature, force and compulsion, is always why it is very bad at things like creating wealth, that is managing and running an economy, why they're so lousy at it too, or commanding compassion. That's an oxymoron. Commend compassion. Compassion by nature is voluntary and free will, right?

So for the libertarians to say that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships is just naive and wrong. The real question is what are the proper roles and spheres for government force in our human relationships, not how can we banish force altogether from them? You cannot banish what is intrinsic to a thing's very nature, forces the only improper role for government. Therefore, define it, limit it, and watch it closely. That is what our founding fathers did by crafting our constitution.

Secondly, my second critique of this aspect, the social aspect of the libertarian party platform, is not only can you legislate morality, government by definition does legislate morality. It does. How often do you hear this logical non-sequitur? That is, you can't legislate morality. Oh, it's especially used by libertarians.

How wrong this assertion is. People usually mean something like this when they say this, you can't legislate morality. They usually mean something like, so many citizens are taking drugs these days that it is futile to buck the tide. You cannot make people stop taking drugs merely by passing a law. So, legalize marijuana.

Or you may hear them say, so many citizens are patronizing prostitutes these days. That is, it is futile to buck the tide. You cannot make people stop going to prostitutes by passing a law. So, legalize prostitution. Or you may hear people say something like, so many people find abortion a convenience in place of birth control that it is futile to buck the tide.

You cannot make people stop getting abortions by passing a law. So, ergo, legalize abortion. Oh, and on and on it goes, of course, the libertarian argument is just as they make it in their party platform. Once again, quoting from their party platform, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest and welcome the diversity that freedom brings, unquote.

Well, these days, that activity is so magnanimously opened to include abortion, and they say on their party platform, recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration, unquote, from their libertarian party platform. They include openly, once again, gay marriage.

And they say, once again, from their party platform, sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government's treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration, or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license, or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships, unquote, from the libertarian party platform. And they also magnanimously open the choice and so forth up to drugs from their party platform again.

We favor the repeal of all laws creating crimes without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, unquote. So libertarians advocate a neutral hands-off position to these social issues at best and an open view of the social issues facing our country. Many Americans, for example, are already at this point. They're conservative on fiscal matters and the obscene bloating of government, but they're liberal or indifferent to the social issues that we have described above.

Other citizens who think very little about any of these issues and we euphemistically tag them as low information voters, but they're really ignoramuses about these issues. Many of these might possibly be persuaded of the libertarian position when they finally pay attention after they're hit hard in their pocketbook with taxes, inflation, and job losses due to government policies. Already liberal on these social issues, they are turned off by conservative positions and would probably be repelled by sound fiscal policies unnecessarily if they're too closely associated with backward policies on abortion, gay marriage, and drugs.

So goes the libertarian rationale. Additionally, we can always hope that some of our liberal friends, family, and fellow workers might be persuaded by reason and facts as we patiently, persistently present them. How much easier it would be, goes the rationale, if we only have to convince them how to issue foolish fiscal policies and not foolish personal and moral choices?

All in all, it must be admitted by even a conservative, an advocate of a Christian republic, it must be admitted by me that the libertarian point of view has greater political appeal to a morally indifferent age like ours than a classically conservative point of view from the point of view of a Christian republic. Now, I would welcome anyone who advocates sound fiscal policies, only I would strongly admonish them that this is only half the story of America. If you buy the fallacy that you can't legislate morality, and it is a fallacy, then you will journey down the road to ruin for yourself and for your country.

Consider, I appeal to you, consider history and philosophy and religion, laws against murder thou shalt not kill, laws against theft thou shalt not steal, and crimes against one's person and property. These are all intrinsically moral. Very few people would dispute this, although there is increased advocacy recently to redefine sexual predators and pedophiles as minor attracted persons, for example. This is coming down the pike, dear listener.

Dr. Fred Berlin, for example, and others of his ilk advocated before the American Psychiatric Association a few years ago that we need to come out of the dark ages of sexual behavior and realize that those we have traditionally labeled pedophiles are in reality normal people who have an alternative sexual orientation. This is the term they use, minor attracted persons. You're going to be hearing more and more of this term of pedophiles in the future. They are merely normal people who are minor attracted persons. Therefore, age of consent laws in their minds should be abolished and the stigma of pedophilia should be discouraged.

Dr. Berlin and his ilk go so far as to assert that children are themselves sexual from birth and deserve to have sex with adults or youth. This is coming down the pike, dear listener. So, this is the very path down which the homosexual lobby traveled a generation ago, beginning in 1973. They too appeared before the American Psychiatric Association and bullied and browbeat them into doing the very same thing the pedophilia lobby is attempting. That is, remove our sin from your list.

Currently, our society has legislated morality. Sexual contact with a minor by an adult is a crime and one of the worst taboos in our culture. It is considered a violation of that minor's innocence and very person. In the Bible, it was grounds for the death penalty. Remember that there was a very similar taboo and inertia against homosexuality a generation ago.

Sodomy laws were on the books across the nation. Medicine, religion, considered it a deviation homosexuality, and a perversion of the normal sexual state of things. And parents did all within their power to discourage their children from becoming homosexuals. Morality was indeed legislated and enforced. Now, of course, not only is such behavior legal and accepted, many find it cool and exciting.

There is a supposed though yet undiscovered gay gene that makes one gay. Even the taboo has been reversed. It is now considered discriminatory and uncool to be anti-homosexual. So, behold the trajectory, dear listener. How long will it be before the Libertarian Party has a neutral or advocacy position for the minor attracted person?

You can legislate morality. You must legislate morality. You must legislate morality, dear listener. Government by definition legislates morality. You can take the measure of a society, as a matter of fact, by what morality it legislates or does not legislate.

Every country has a social morality. We advocate a Christian republic social morality. It is the foundation for all culture. This is why it is so foolish to mouth the cliche. You can't legislate morality.

The foundation and framework for America has always been a Christian moral framework. Now, as I have made a point of emphasis here, the Christian faith has informed both the development of our constitution, for example, take Bishop Stephen Langton and his role in shaping the Magna Carta. And Christian faith and social morality has also been foundational in the development of capitalism, like the individual right to private property. That's a Christian principle. Both of these are put in jeopardy if you remove an explicit Christian social morality founded in a Christian republic.

So I assert in the strongest terms that so far are we from the maxim, you can't legislate morality, then instead we must legislate morality and explicit Christian morality. As I have observed for you over the past few weeks, our constitution was made only for a virtuous and religious people. It is entirely unsuited to any other. John Adams said this. All of our founding fathers agreed with this.

This is precisely because they understood that our constitution reversed the power relationship between government and the governed. Whereas government in the past had complete liberty to act as it saw fit for its own interests and placed the greatest limits upon the governed. That's what we have today, I'm afraid, under secularism, statism, and socialism. Under the constitution of the United States of America, it was the governed, that is the people, who had the greatest liberty to act as they saw fit, and it was the government that had the severest limits placed upon it.

History is replete with what it means when immoral government rules with unchecked impunity. Complete tyranny they have then over the people. Oh dear listener, our founders understood as well what it would mean if an immoral people pursued its interests. And this is what will degenerate under a libertarian government, under a libertarian agenda, you will have an immoral people pursuing its interests completely unchecked, and anarchy will soon rule the day. And since our nature is wired for order, history also demonstrates that tyranny follows right on the heels of anarchy time and time again.

It is difficult to overemphasize how crucial it is to a free constitutional republic to have operative at all times and explicitly Christian social morality. The libertarian experiment, I submit to you, let's look at history for a moment, the libertarian experiment of a free, open your history book to the Gilded Age. For example, the second industrial revolution swept over the advanced nations in the latter half of the 19th century, including us. The United States of America was poised to benefit in ways no other nation could.

We were in the forefront of inventions and improvements, the steam engine, railroads, utilities, inventions of all kinds, and also the invention of the financial instruments to benefit with profits, that is patents, and the invention of the corporation and stock, all of these things pioneered in the United States of America. Plus, we had before us a seemingly endless supply of natural resources in the West, in the untamed wilderness that stretched before us on our continent. Economically, financially, and personal freedom-wise, the United States of America of the 19th century was a libertarian dream. It was a libertarian dream.

So what happens when you give libertarianism a free, unchecked way to go? Well, we saw the libertarian ideal of a hands-off morality, deepened during this period. A libertarian hands-off morality has already been tried and experimented upon in the United States during this period of the Gilded Age, the latter 19th century. And it would culminate, of course, in the roaring 20s following World War I, when booze and loose women, they were called flappers then, and unchecked wealth, motion pictures, all these things made everyone forget religion and morals and virtue. But I submit to you that the roaring 20s began in the period of the Gilded Age.

And it also demonstrates for all to see what happens when capitalism operates at a full head of steam without a Christian social morality. We have already had a libertarian agenda before us in history during this period. And we can also trace two of the most pernicious philosophies of the modern age through this period, too. That is, atheistic Darwinism and godless Marxism. Both of these developed during the Gilded Age.

And a libertarian hands-off morality ruled the day. Conditions in factories and mines and industrial cities were shameful. Men and women and children labored in these places 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week, for less than subsistence wages. Children grew up ignorant and sick and they died young. Disease and injury and death stalked the awful tenements of places like the Garment District and Hell's Kitchen in New York City.

And in great despair, working men turned to suicide and alcohol and prostitution for relief from their plight, a libertarian dream. In fact, alcoholism in major cities like New York and Pittsburgh and Chicago became as high as ever in history in these places during this time. In some quarters, there were calls for reform and improvement. Many of the social reform movements we now know today began in this period. The women's temperance movement began during this period, for example, in response to alcoholism, later morphed into the women's liberation movement.

Also, the union movement began in this period, too. But mostly, all of this was excused as the mere consequence of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. From Darwin, the newest philosophy to explain why these were historical necessities. Oh, dear listener, Darwin's explanation for the evolution of biological species, which was ensconced in the origin of species, published in 1859, right during this period, his explanation had been adapted to explain also the evolution of man as a social animal. And it was tagged social Darwinism.

And here was the perfect libertarian excuse for all of the conditions at hand. Now, not only could the robber barons mercilessly use the vast store of human capital at their disposal to build industrial empires for themselves and then view themselves as the fittest for survival, according to Darwin, but they could also use Darwinism to excuse the suffering of the masses as the natural result of biological social evolution.

It was not them as a morally responsible agent in God's world, as the Christian would say, as the Christian social morality would say, that it was you, dear robber baron, as a morally responsible agent in God's world, that you're responsible for these beings' conditions. No. But rather, they could say under a libertarian agenda that the result of a godless amoral universe in which the strong survive and the weak die off. So they were only behaving as they naturally ought in such a Darwinian universe. This was the social gospel at this time.

These were the implications for the ideal libertarian world for social Darwinism. That is, in the natural world, there was no explicitly Christian morality. That was merely the artificial construct of one society. In the real godless universe of Darwin and his devotees, there was no mandated social morality, only that which best suited the survival of the species. And under the philosophy of libertarianism, there would and could be no solution to this situation.

But that does not mean that no solutions were offered. There were also godless solutions offered. In the Library of London at this time, one troubled soul looked out upon the industrial revolution taking place in England, smokestacks billowing, a miserable poverty gripping his fellow man, suffering, being the only foreseeable lot for the future. And this man, sitting in that library, did something about it. He concocted an entire philosophy and economic system that would provide a solution.

Of course, his name was Karl Marx in his book Das Kapital, published in 1867. And he accepted two crucial assumptions of Darwin, that is, the evolution of humanity and its circumstances first, and then secondly, he also accepted the atheistic, godless nature of the universe. But what Marx distinguished was the ultimate end of mankind. That is, mankind would evolve from feudalism to capitalism, and then finally to communism, which would blossom into the workers' paradise. Oh, dear listener, for Marx, the only social morality that mattered was that which advanced the socialist state.

As you peruse the communist manifesto, for example, you see that he advocates, for example, the destruction of the family, as we know it, such that children become wards of the state. Libertarianism offers no counter to this in the libertarian agenda, dear listener. Economics, by its nature, I submit to you, capitalism demands a Christian social morality, not a libertarian a morality, or else we will descend once again into what we saw during the gilded age, a misery for humanity.

What we need instead is a reformation, an entire spiritual reformation where Christ becomes the center of our social morality, where Christ becomes the center of our constitution, where Christ once again becomes the center of our economic system. That is our practice of a free market economy, a free exchange of goods and ideas. That is a capitalist economy guided by a Christian social morality. Without this, you will see us descending into a libertarian amoral society again, as we saw in the gilded age.

So, dear listener, though I agree with so much in the libertarian agenda on the economic side, I must say that what we need rather is a Christian republic with a Christian social morality with Christ at its very center. I urge you to apply these things, to live these things in your own life, dear listener. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva Meets for Holy Worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard, and you can call us at 523-0196.