worldview

Can You Take Your Faith to Work? Ask Dan Cathy

According to John Maxwell, “Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” Dan Cathy’s example of principled leadership in the face of vitriolic attacks has certainly influenced my outlook on life. He’s shown me how a dedicated Christian can not only build a successful business, but also maintain a Christian witness during a time of intense testing.

That’s why I was so excited to see that Mr. Cathy will be coming to Indiana this fall! He will be speaking at this year’s America’s Best Hope: Building Godly Leaders conference.

This conference will run from 8AM to 3PM on Friday, November 14th, 2014 at Northview Church (12900 Hazel Dell Pkwy., Carmel). Registration is $49.

Speakers:

Here’s the description from the event website:

OUR CAREERS DO NOT DEFINE US.
But our work does give us a great platform for serving God and serving others.
This annual event is about cultivating godly leaders in the marketplace – men and women hungry to grow and lead spiritually, professionally and personally. Our line-up of world class speakers will address what defines a godly leader and how to practically integrate faith and vocation. Come ready to be inspired and catalyzed to join a movement of marketplace leaders leveraging their platforms for the advancement of the Kingdom.

I’m looking forward to hearing these speakers, and meeting others who want to live out their faith at work! When I registered this morning, the ground floor tickets had already sold out! For more information or to reserve your seat, visit the event website today!

A World Split Apart

Having survived the Soviet gulag, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn knew what it was to be a prisoner. His seminal work The Gulag Archipelago chronicles the development of the gulag and the men, women, and children killed or maimed there. When his homeland exiled him, he found the West imprisoned in a different kind of cage–a gilded one. This bondage was the theme of the commencement speech he delivered at Harvard University on June 8, 1978. After reading the following quote I knew I had to post the entire speech:

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The Root of Law

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

When a small band of American colonists took on the world superpower of their day, they didn’t speak from a position of military superiority. They also didn’t cite a Rasmussen poll or make an emotional appeal. They presented the facts: King George III’s actions assaulted God’s laws.

Their actions weren’t based on a moral majority; they were based on a moral authority. This appeal to a higher law is not to be underestimated. The Founders were deeply motivated by a Judeo-Christian worldview which showed that the unchanging God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the definition of all that was good, and that He had revealed absolute truth by embedding it in each person’s soul, and providing a written, unchanging account of His Word. The Founders freely acknowledged the role that Judeo-Christianity played in the framing of this new nation’s laws. As John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” James Wilson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Constitution, said, “Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine… Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”

According to Judeo-Christianity, each person has inherent worth because he is created in God’s image. But because man is fallen, he is not perfectible in this life. God is the ultimate authority, and no man is “above the law.” Anyone’s actions can be weighed against the ideal that God provided. The Founders established a system where all laws were compared to the Constitution, and, ultimately, to the absolute law of God. Americans could pursue a “more perfect” union by studying the ideal God provided for their nature and human systems and work to more closely approach the ideal. The Founders’ understanding of this and their first-hand experience with a tyrant allowed them to build a system that affirmed personal freedom and provided a limited government with separated powers. They gave us something they had not inherited from the Crown: a Constitution.

The words of our Declaration and Constitution were not intended to molder behind glass; they were intended to be read and understood by every American citizen. They can stand up to detailed legal scrutiny, but they can also be grasped by someone who wants to understand the Founders’ original intent. Interpreting the Constitution isn’t a privilege reserved for nine men in black robes; it’s something each of us should do. How else can the policeman, soldier, judge, or President’s oath to uphold the Constitution have any meaning? How can any of us obey a law we don’t understand?

The genius of the Founders’ system is evident, even as we see it crumbling through misuse. A person did not have to be a Jew or a Christian to survive and thrive in America, but he did need to respect the principles that governed the nation’s founding: principles such as the equality of all people before the law, the right to own private property, and the requirement for multiple witnesses to testify in criminal proceedings.

Law was not arbitrary, but purposeful. Laws could be found to be good or bad based on how they compared to the highest law of the land, and the Law of God. Even after many of our leaders ceased to be personally guided by Judeo-Christianity, a latent memory of this worldview maintained the original design of our nation.

All that is changing. Clay and iron are being mixed, and the amalgam is brittle. Various worldviews overlap to a point, but some of their core properties are completely incompatible. One must gain the ascendancy. A battle of worldviews is taking place in America, and it’s unclear which will dominate. Six of the major players are Biblical Judeo-Christianity, Secular Humanism (“liberalism”), Marxism-Leninism (“Leftism”), Cosmic Humanism (“New Age”), Postmodernism, and Islam.

All offer very different approaches to ethics, history, law, theology, and other aspects of a worldview. If Judeo-Christianity offers a bounded sandbox for statecraft, Marxism-Leninism stokes animosities between sandcarriers and sandcrafters, Islam demands a pre-fab home, and Postmodernism questions the existence of sand. Since many of the worldviews deny the very existence of God, they lift up man to the throne of absolute judgment. They see truth not as a fixed ideal, but as an evolving mass, which the more ambitious seek to shape. All have different answers to the question “What is the basic nature of man?” which is why they differ so completely on questions such as the ethics of taxation and redistribution, union lobbies, abortion, and homosexuality. Many worldviews do not see the Constitution as a guide to understand ultimate reality or a protective barrier that applies the truth discovered in a triumph over tyranny, but shackles on human development.

Several key battlegrounds between the worldviews are the education, culture, and politics. The trend in these institutions is not for a person to critically evaluate ideas on their merits, but to find the consensus and conform to it. Our educational system could be a location for the free interchange of ideas, but more often it radically transforms a person’s worldview by making full use of authority structures. The process that began inside the classroom can continue outside, if a person does not critically evaluate the messages of worldviews blazing to them through films, celebrities, and the news feed. Finally, as Sharia Law’s codified dhimmitude so eloquently demonstrates, a person does not have to convert to be manipulated and subjugated. A worldview can dominate others by occupying positions of power, even if its adherents are in the minority. Because the laws of our nation reflect our lawmakers, as the elected officials go, so goes the nation.

If we are to reclaim our nation, we must do what our Founders did. We must compare our laws and our leaders to the ultimate standard, draw our own conclusions, and take action. This country is too precious to surrender.

Nine Lives: The U.S. Supreme Court Justices

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

With its wide range of ideologies, the Court has heroes for progressives, libertarians, and conservatives. And in the boxing ring of the Supreme Court chambers these justices engage in some of the highest-stake intellectual fisticuffs ever carried out.

Who are the nine people that decided the fate of Obamacare? It’s worth the time to examine the lives and characteristics of the members of the highest court in the land.

Two justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) greeted the world in Trenton, New Jersey, and other justices hail from as far south as Pin Point, Georgia (Clarence Thomas), and as far west as San Francisco (Stephen Breyer). Interestingly, none of the justices were born in the Midwest.

The US Supreme Court

Though some were born into humble circumstances and others enjoyed a wealthy upbringing, all justices obtained their law degrees from Ivy League institutions, with five attending Harvard, three attending Yale, and one attending Columbia.

This uniformity in choice of schools is not reflected in the justices’ ideologies, however. Given the amount of time many justices spend on the Court and the scope of cases they consider, there is a wealth of information about the political views of most of the Supreme Court justices. Two measures commonly used to compare justices’ ideologies are the Martin-Quinn score and the percent or fraction of conservative votes cast by a justice in non-unanimous decisions.

The Martin-Quinn score describes a justice’s political ideology for a given year by assigning more negative values to more liberal ideologies and more positive values to more conservative ideologies. In this way, the evolution of a given justice can be tracked over time, and justices can rapidly be compared to one another. For 2010, the court’s ideology as indicated by their Martin-Quinn scores ranged from 0.024 (Stephen Breyer) to 5.689 (Clarence Thomas). The median score was 2.071 (Anthony Kennedy’s, the most common swing vote). The justices range from casting a more conservative vote about 37.2% of the time (Stephen Breyer) to 82.2% of the time (Clarence Thomas).

How much time said heroes have spent on the Court or can expect to stay there varies widely. The average number of years the justices on this court have served is 13 years, but this disguises a bimodal distribution, with four justices having served six or less years, and five justices finishing 17-25 years on the bench. Liberal justices have spent 1-18 years on the Court, while conservative justices have spent 6-25 years there.

The fact that justices can exert their influence for a quarter century and more shows the breadth of influence a given administration can have years after the Oval Office has been redecorated. Five presidents can claim the current justices as their enduring legacy, with two current justices appointed by Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama, with the exception of H. W. Bush, who has only one appointee remaining. Notably, this appointee is Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice currently serving on the Court.

The long-term influence of each justice explains the full vetting that each candidate should undergo, and the verbal flayings that some candidates have endured. Still, the confirmation process and final vote varies widely. Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were unanimously confirmed (98-0 and 97-0), while the Senate was most divided on Clarence Thomas (52-48), followed closely by Samuel Alito (58-42). Of the liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced the least opposition (96-3), and Elena Kagan faced the most (63-37). And, of course, we’re speaking only of those candidates who survived the potential borking.

The heterogeneity of the court extends further than ideology or vetting intensity. The justices range in age from 52 to 79, with an average age of 66. The most recent addition to the Court is also the youngest of all time: Elena Kagan, who is 52 years old. The two most elderly justices are Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, from the further ends of the ideological divide.

Another distinguishing factor are the justices’ religious views. The current justices are either Roman Catholic or Jewish, with a 6-3 split. Three of the four liberal justices are Jewish, and all of the more conservative justices in addition to Sonia Sotomayor are Roman Catholic.

All of the individual traits and choices of the justices—their upbringing, ideologies, etc.—impact their decisions in small and large ways. Hearing their interpretations of the Constitution as it pertains to some of the most pressing issues of our day is nerve-racking because we know every human, regardless of how well-educated, well-informed, or well-intentioned, is fallible.

We champion some justices and question others. We wonder just how flexible or forthright each justice will prove to be. In the midst of it all we can see the wisdom of our Founders in entrusting this power to a panel of justices instead of a single, omnipotent Supreme Court Justice. May this Court and every ensuing Court recognize and uphold the letter and the spirit of our highest law.

Meet IR Intern Hannah Ihms

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

When I read the obituary of the mainstream media, I won’t shed a tear. If you ask me, it’s high time. Even on life-support, huddled in its self-spun shroud of objectivity, the mainstream media is wheezing out lies about those it hates. Those counting on its institutionalized libel are panicking, but I’m excited.They may embalm the mainstream media, Lenin-style, but we conservatives won’t be visiting the casket. We’ve already celebrated the christening of the New Media.

Illinois Review is on this action, and I’m excited to be interning with IR this summer!

Conservatism grounded on Judeo-Christianity stands as a pillar among the intellectual ruins of its alternatives. It offers a framework to build upon, instead of scorched earth to sift through. It also liberates. Instead of teaching us to accept or even celebrate skyrocketing debt, the erosion of the family, and flammable Chevy Volts, conservatism proves that these are cruel parodies of the way things ought to be.

While I’ve been a Republican since I was in utero, it wasn’t until I read Goldwater’s book “The Conscience of a Conservative” that I realized I was a conservative. He put what I knew to be true into words, and started me on a journey to trace the roots of conservatism. Bill Buckley, Jr., Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the Founders have been invaluable friends along the way.

This all took place while I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I joined the Illini Conservative Union, and was incredibly blessed to find other students intent on upholding the Constitution and standing up for the rights and responsibilities of every person. Through campus activism, we met Leftism head to head, and had fun doing it.

Through this internship with Illinois Review, I’m ready to continue the proud tradition of taking conservative ideas to the streets.