While over at The Rant (a.k.a., Sadly, No!’s source for material when we’re out of ideas) a couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a column by Alan Burkhart called “God, Government and Guarantees.” And as I read the column, I realized that it was, far and away, the stupidest thing ever written.

Seriously, this sucker has everything. We’re talkin’ botched economics. We’re talkin’ inept, Groganesque metaphors. We’re even talkin’ bizarre conspiracy theories that accuse the Republican Party of advancing Communism.

Were I to review such a monstrosity by myself, I’d be driven to complete madness, just like pianist David Helfgott when he tried to play Rachmoninoff’s 3rd concerto.

I decided to recruit a panel of bloggers to help with this Herculian task, including my totally heterosexual blog partners Gavin and Seb, and, for balance, Adam Yoshida (yes, that Adam Yoshida). Now, if you dare, click below the fold to read the terrifying wingnutty horror of Alan Burkhart’s “God, Government and Guarantees.”

God, Government and Guarantees
USA/Alan Burkhart

One of the defining principles of modern liberalism is the belief that We The People are entitled to have certain guarantees from government.

Seb: “Like the guarantee that no one will ever put on the Vagina Monologues anywhere, that our TV will be free of nipples, and that no one who is not George Bush will ever be allowed to become President.”

Brad: “Well yeah, we expect the government will guarantee our right to exercise free speech, to bear arms and to have a fair trial (among many other things). Apparently, the Founding Fathers hated freedom too.”

These guarantees generally revolve around the receipt of a monthly check. According to the Left, we should be guaranteed healthcare, a paid retirement, and a safety net in the event that we lose a job, become addicted to heroin, or grow too fat to work.

Gavin: “…Or get sick, lose a limb in a work-related injury, or… Hey wait a minute:

Looking FAT there, Alan. What a jiggling load of calories to heave to the computer every day! Why is this not surprising?”

Adam Yoshida: “He’s right that liberalism is, in essence, the ideology of ‘free stuff.’ But that isn’t out of any conscious desire to install the government as some sort of idolatrous God, it’s a development directly related to the fact that modern liberals are a dissonant and discordant group who can find the most common ground in discussions of the field of Hippinomics, that popular economic system where your feelings matter more than your bank balance.”

The Social Security system for example, guarantees us a monthly check when we reach retirement age. However, that guarantee depends upon there being money in the system to be paid out in benefits. That money comes from taxpayers. Let’s say that the economy slows and this leads to layoffs, loss of overtime, and a general lowering of wages. Since a large part of the government’s revenue is from the income tax, that means government revenue goes down. You can’t go to your boss and order him to give you a raise to compensate for lost hours, but government can raise your taxes to compensate for lost revenue.

Brad: “I dunno if you know this, Alan, but the government sells bonds to creditors to cover the lost revenue during a recession. Decreasing spending and raising taxes during a recession to match the lost revenue is a big Keynesian ‘no-no,’ which is why the U.S. government runs deficits when times are bad.”

Gavin: “Of course, if you lost your job, you don’t have to worry about paying higher taxes, because… Oh wait, he’s still burbling like a bowlful of jelly…”

What happens when you simply have no more to give? Maybe it reaches a point where government has taken so much of your wage that you can’t pay your property taxes. Uh oh…

Gavin: “I thought I just lost my job, so I didn’t have any wages. But well gee, if I’m in that high a tax bracket, then… Uh. Uck. Ok, supposing that I’m a wage-earner who made a ton of money but never saved any, then lost his job and…

Aw hell, time to declare bankruptcy.

Oh wait…”

…government also guarantees an education to every child via the public school system, and in most states the primary source of education funding is property taxes. Government will now confiscate your home and auction it off to pay the tax bill.

Gavin: “I blame the children.”

But don’t worry about being homeless; if you become too poor to afford your own home, government will provide housing for you. Guaranteed. Are you seeing some circular logic here?

Brad: “Oh, there’s circular logic here, Alan, and it’s all yours.”

Gavin: “Yes Alan. I am seeing something circular like hamburger-satellites orbiting your big rummy-tum.

If we posit an implausible situation and throw a bunch of crazy casuistry onto it, then we can round out the argument with a statement that is not true — and then people’s heads swim from the beguiling dance of the funny dancing fat man.”

A guarantor must possess adequate protected capital to provide the uninterrupted and punctual delivery of whatever is being guaranteed. Moreover, the government does not and has never possessed capital of it own because the taxpayer is the source of the government’s capital.

Gavin: “And gives it capital. If I give you ten bucks, Alan, then you have ten bucks which you will spend on a spaghetti dinner at Olive Garden. Aha! But once the cleaned and bread-mopped plate has been cleared from the table, you have no ten dollars! because your source of ten dollars is the me! And not the you!

Alan has never possessed capital of his own because his employer is the source of Alan’s capital. How strange it seems when turned around!”

This fact renders any government guarantee unenforceable and therefore meaningless.

Brad: “OK, Alan, we’ll come over to your house and burn all your money, since its worth hinges on a meaningless guarantee.”

Gavin: “Wuh-oh. Woo-ooh. If that were true, I’d suggest we go MURDER ALAN and make a funny Animatronic puppet from his bones, with a hicken leg-bone glued to his bare pelvis with which he continually, Animatrionically jerks off while we laugh and laugh. Fortunately there are laws, made and guaranteed by the Government, against such things, which we hold meaningful. And such we would therefore never do.”

Combine this with the Left’s ongoing attempt to purge Christianity from our society. Almost daily we hear about the ACLU or some other leftist organization suing over religious symbols, religious practices, or religious speech. We are being taught that it is archaic and wrong to depend upon God. All the while, we are also being taught to depend upon government. Does this sound familiar? It should.

Brad: It sadly does, but that’s because I read silly paranoid crap like this every day at The Rant…

The simultaneous suppression of religion and exaltation of government is common to all communist nations. It was public policy in the USSR and it is still policy in Communist China. Why? Because in a communist society the citizens are required to look to government for all needs. A citizenry that looks to God will embrace the natural human desire for freedom. Therefore, it is unavoidable that Communism and Christianity are natural enemies. Let?s make a quick comparison:

The first of the Ten Commandments is thus:

“You shall have no other gods before Me.”

Now, here are items 27 & 28 from Communist Goals:

Gavin: “Holy Toledo! We’re not rifling through the lately-opened Kremlin archives here. Rather, we’re in deepest Goldwater country with this 1963 document by Cleon Skousen, introduced into the Congressional Record by paleo-Wingnuts now lost to memory.

Also be sure to check out Skousen’s commentary on the Book of Mormon and his article on Prophecy and Modern Times. Saucers Away!”

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

Adam Yoshida: “I’m skeptical of any list of ‘Communist Goals’ which happens to match up just a little bit too closely with how the course of events in real life have moved. They remind me a great deal of the lists I am sent from time to time of the ‘defining characteristics of fascism’ which, just by coincidence, happen to ‘eerily’ mimic actions of the Bush Administration (‘Mark of Fascism #14: Repealing regulations of Arsenic level in drinking water’, etc).”

Gavin: “29. Advocate the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, citing ‘corruption,’ and the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon claiming false ‘crimes’ for which he… Oh wait, that was 10 years later.

Curse those liberals and their mind-control rays!”

By now it should be obvious what is taking place in The United States.

Seb: “In addition to what is going on in Alan’s medicine cabinet becoming even more obvious.”

We are being conquered from within just as surely as Lenin predicted that we would. It has become incorrect to rely upon God for our needs. It has become backwards to profess our faith in the God that our forefathers worshipped without question. You can draw a direct parallel between the decline of our culture and our migration away from God.

As Americans slip farther away from that which makes us strong, we continue to give more control of our lives to a government that is becoming more like the old Soviet Union every day.

Gavin: “Every day! Thanks to those Commie pinkos who control the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court!

Um, oopsie.

Activist judges! Activist judges!”

Seb: “And for the evils of the government we have no choice but to blame the party that lost control of the legislature in the 1990s and hasn’t held the executive branch since 2000.”

We are allowing this to happen because it’s being done incrementally. We’ve all heard the old story about the frog and the boiling water: Drop the frog in boiling water and he’ll instantly hop out of the pot. But put the frog in cool water, heat it gradually, and he’ll boil to death before he realizes he’s in trouble. We?re supposed to be smarter than frogs, but we’re getting ourselves into hot water. And it’s getting hotter.

Brad: “Or, as Nelly said, ‘It’s gettin’ hot in hrrre / So let’s go boil a frog / I am gettin’ so hot / I’m gonna ban school praaay-errr!'”

Back when the Republican Party was synonymous with Conservatism, Republicans could be counted upon to fight the march of Communism. Nowadays the Republican Party is little different from the Democrats. Each grows the government in its own way. Each robs us of our rights, little by little. The only real difference between the two is that most Republicans still take a proper stance on moral issues…

Brad: “Shorter Alan: ‘Sure, the Republicans are moving America towards a brutal Communist dictatorship, but as long as they stop gays from marrying and don’t teach my daughter about birth control, they’ve got my vote.'”

Gavin: “Way-way-way-wait. Let’s go back a bit — to where guarantees by the government were called ‘worthless’ and we said that if that were true, Alan, we might think of murdering you and making an Animatronic comedy-machine out of your de-fatted skeleton.

Where do these ‘rights’ come from? For in the state of nature, the only ‘right’ is the right of the strongest. Who or what guarantees hat in America, nobody would ever seriously consider murdering Alan and making a masturbating automaton from his bones?

It starts with a ‘C,’ and has the initials, “Onstitution.” It was written by, not God, but men. A record of the debates and ontroversies involved in creating this document is called the ‘Federalist Papers.’ Copies of this are available for roughly five dollars at any decent bookstore.

Alan, I am not angry at you, but so disappointed. Brad is angry at you. I wouldn’t want to have Brad and you alone without me there. I’m just saying.”

…while Democrats tend to have an “anything goes” mentality reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah before the sky fell in.

Brad: “Hey, that reminds me, guys: we’re still down for that Sodomy Party next week, right?”

Gavin: “Old Sodom isn’t doing so bad these days, apparently…”

Note item #15 from Communist Goals:

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

Brad: “Yeah, that’s totally happened. Everyone’s a commie except Alan, Pastor Swank and Terri Schiavo.”

As stated above, guarantees can only come from someone who has an unending supply of whatever is being guaranteed.

Seb: “The new Sadly, No! Guarantee: Conservative Wingnuts mocked for the rest of our lives.”

Government cannot guarantee anything because it has finite resources, and yet the Left wants you to set God aside and trust The Almighty Government for all of your needs. The impending collapse of Social Security is a perfect example of what happens when we become overly dependent upon a government that must rob Peter to pay Paul in order to operate. Redistributing wealth does not equal the creation of new wealth. It is instead a continual spreading of the aforementioned finite resources. And those resources are being spread more thinly by the day.

Only God can guarantee anything to anyone because only He can create by sheer force of will. But God doesn’t always make it easy.

Brad: “No, sometimes He sends us morons like Alan to test our faith.”

God expects us to go out and work for what we have. True freedom can only be had if we take responsibility for ourselves. God gives us the tools, but it is up to each of us to use those tools. He even gave us an instruction book for the tools He provided. There are several versions of that instruction book. I personally use the King James Version.

Seb: “We prefer Inside the Playboy Mansion by Gretchen Edgren and Hugh M. Hefner.”

As a nation we are at a crossroads. It is the fact of our Christian heritage that makes us great, and it is the decline of American Christianity that is destroying us. If we allow the powerful and vocal leftist minority to have its way we will travel a path that leads to the end of our sovereignty, and certainly the end of our freedom. If we take a stand now, we can place our nation back upon the path that our Founding Fathers blazed for us. We don’t have to shed blood or destroy property to do this.

Brad: “Well gee, ain’t that comforting!”

We must, however, speak out via the vote, the media, and peaceful protest to unseat those in power who seek to take away what God has given us. America is our nation. If we lose her, it’s our fault.

Brad: “OK, I have a massive headache at this point, so I’m gonna let Adam have the last word.”

Adam Yoshida: “So far as I can understand it, the basic premise of the essay is that liberals seek to displace the God of the heavens with the Lord of the Exchequer. In other words, that the left has set up the government to take the place of God.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I cash my chips. In recent months, as I’ve expressed to more than a few people, I’ve developed an overriding concern that a developing culture of paranoia, on both the left and the right (though, at the moment, seemingly more prominent on the left, probably due simply to the fact that George W. Bush is in the White House) poses a real danger to the future of America. This strikes me as a good example of what I’ve been talking about.”

Brad: “Congratulations, Alan. You’ve managed to achieve the near-impossible task of being too right-wing for Adam Yoshida. Thanks to all our panelists for their help! I should also point out that Gavin asked Jeff Gannon to join our panel, but he declined:

Gavin:

Great site! I am travelling for the next 10 days and probably won’t be able to participate. But thanks for asking.

Best of luck to you,

Jeff