Texas Governor Greg Abbott last Wednesday, January 24, cited the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 as the legal source and argument for not following the U.S. Supreme Court [SCOTUS] Border decree issued on Monday, January 22, which sent the Left into an apoplectic frenzy.1
A SCOTUS ruling of last June that President Biden “didn’t have the authority to cancel student debt for millions of Americans,” the tone-deaf president, needless to say, let fall on deaf ears, persisting in his reelection ploy for 2024 to unilaterally forgive student loans, i.e., pandering for the youth vote.2
And just last Friday the president announced an additional $5B student loan forgiveness plan taken from the American taxpayers, who didn’t commit to underwrite student loans, but instead sacrificed and worked their way through college.3 A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon it’s real money.
Add in the double standards from New York, Chicago, and the District of Columbia in continuing to enforce anti-gun laws, in violation of the U.S. Supreme Court 6-3 ruling in June 2022.4 SCOTUS ruled that New York’s gun prohibition is unconstitutional and that citizens have a constitutional right to carry a weapon guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
This is yet another case in point of how the Left’s deliberate deceptiveness belies their cries for judicial deference on the Texas border.
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is one set of principles for well-connected liberals and radicals who burn, loot, and destroy American cities, and another quite different, more rigorous set of rules for conservatives, particularly those with strong Christian leanings. For example, last Tuesday in Nashville, January 30, six pro-life Christians were found guilty after the Biden Administration charged them over a peaceful protest at a Tennessee abortion facility in 2021. They each face up to 11 years in prison.
The pro-life activists were accused by the Biden Department of Justice of violating the FACE Act [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances], which stipulates that individuals cannot block the entrance to abortion clinics or prevent individuals from accessing them.5
What was their crime? The so-called “demonstrators” gathered to pray, sing hymns, and urge women arriving at the clinic to consider a better way than abortion.
Former Arkansas Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee argued the valid point that the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department “absolutely hates the pro-life movement. Think about how frightening it is that people who believe that we ought to protect unborn life and sing and pray to that end …
“It’s not like they broke into the abortion clinic and grabbed a young lady and took her out of the clinic while she was about to have an abortion; they were singing and praying. And the result of that is they were charged with violating the so-called FACE Act, and they could face 11 years in prison … I mean it’s just a head-scratcher.
“What happened to America? I remember when we were a free country and there was a sense of justice and equal application of the law. But as you [Todd Starnes] so adequately pointed out, when you have people who can burn a police car, invade and set fire to a federal courthouse, violently protest, and threaten to assassinate U.S. Supreme Court Justices … [and] nothing happens to these people.
“They burn Crisis Pregnancy Center clinics and vandalize them [receiving] no punishment, but if you sing and pray, 11 years in federal prison. It’s just incomprehensible. I think it demonstrates and illustrates the idea that the government has been weaponized against conservatives, against people of faith, against pro-lifers, against the Catholic Church, [and] no one’s been held accountable for that.
“The flat invasion of our country [Border crisis] and you wonder what the ultimate game for all of this is. Our Constitution is being shredded by a Justice Department that is out of control but is being directed by Joe Biden. Let’s not kid ourselves, this is the same Joe Biden whose White House met with Fani Willis down in Georgia to try to make sure they go after Donald Trump.
“This election year [2024] is not a left-right election, but an up-down election. It’s whether or not we keep the Republic, or whether we surrender it to people who would use every power of its police agency authority” to destroy voices of dissent and voices of disagreement.6
All evidence points out that we are on the verge of losing America as a free country to totalitarian fascism coming from and fuelled by the Democratic Left.
Russell Ronald Reno III [born 1959; DPhil., Yale] is the editor of First Things magazine. The theologian notes in his Series Preface to the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible that European and North American intellectual culture has been de-Christianized. The effect, he writes, has not been a cessation of Christian activity, with theological work continuing, sermons being preached, biblical scholars producing monographs, and church leaders having meetings. But each dimension of a formally unified Christian practice now tends to function independently. It’s as if a weakened army has been fragmented and various platoons have retreated to isolated fortresses in order to survive.
Thus, the sad commentary on American Christendom.
John Owen [1616-1683; B.A. 1632, M.A. 1635, D.D. 1653] was an English Nonconformist church leader, theologian, and academic administrator at the University of Oxford. Besides his academic and literary concerns, Dr. Owen routinely involved himself in the affairs of the state, where in 1651 he delivered the thanksgiving sermon before Parliament.
A.W. Pink quoted Dr. Owen in his An Exposition of Hebrews:
“In the Christian’s armor, Hope is called ‘the helmet’ [1 Thess. 5:8] because it wards off the sharp blows or bears the weight of those strokes that befall the saint in trials and afflictions.
“If we are really walking in the path of God’s appointment, there will be oppositions to meet, fierce persecutions to be endured, grievous troubles to be borne. Yet, if our valuation of God’s promises be real, if our anticipation of their fulfillment be genuine, the comfort and joy they afford will more than offset and over-balance the effects of our trials.
“If we faint or grow negligent in our duty, if careless or slothful, we shall never hold out unto the end; or if we do continue in such a formal course as will consist with this sloth, we shall never come unto the blessed end that we expect or look for. The oppositions and difficulties that we shall assuredly meet with, from within and without, will not give way unto feeble and languid endeavors.”
Thankfully, as Gideons and Rahabs are entering the public square, they ackownledge that Canaan was a free gift unto Israel, “which they entered by grace alone; and on the other hand that they had to fight for every inch of it!”7
David Lane
American Renewal Project
1. gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-issues-statement-on-texas-constitutional-right-to-self-defense
2. www.cnbc.com/2024/01/24/despite-supreme-court-ruling-biden-has-forgiven-student-debt-for-millions.html
3. www.pbs.org/newshour/show/after-supreme-court-ruling-biden-cancels-student-loan-debt-for-millions-of-borrowers
4. shorturl.at/efLRT
5. www.lifenews.com/2024/01/30/six-pro-life-advocates-face-11-years-in-prison-for-protesting-abortion-after-joe-biden-targets-them/
6. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDVizfj2h4Y
7. A.W. Pink, Gleanings in Joshua.
