Our Rights as Americans

So I was reading a blog entry over at Christianity Today about Mike Huckabee, where they were commenting on his recent campaign quote:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

My first reaction was complete disagreement with everything Huckabee said. That reaction was confirmed by most of the comments on the blog, but one reader ("Joe Chip") stated his opinion in a way that both reflected my own libertarian leanings, and got me thinking as well:

The Federal government has no business telling us who can and cannot marry, what drugs we are 'allowed' to take, how to raise our children or whom we can have sexual relations with. Their job is to protect us from foreign attacks and promote a sound monetary system, and little else.

Any right the government can grant it can take away. We may want folks like Huckabee in office because they're more in line with our morals, but please understand that in a generation, views on matters like this may change. For example: If the government can ban abortion, they can also demand it for 'defective' children. Please America, wake up. Love God and love your neighbor and stop ignorantly giving up your rights to people who don't have your best interest at heart.

This line of thinking really resonates with me. If we demand that the federal government make and enforce a law about some moral issue, don't we effectively surrender to the government our individual agency on that issue? We say, "We don't trust people to make good choices; we don't want to be allowed to choose." (To you LDS readers out there... whose plan does that sound like?!) Can we trust the federal government to always use that power we've given them responsibly? I certainly don't.

People will always make bad choices, and the solution is to love each other and support each other as we learn from our mistakes. That must happen on a personal/family/local level. It cannot be brought about by a federal law, or a beaurocratic program, or a police state. How many federal tax dollars get wasted trying to legislate and enforce morality? I believe there should be laws to protect our rights, but not to curtail our rights or liberties -- unless expression of our liberty violates or impinges someone else's.

Bad choices in life usually and naturally lead to undesirable consequences, both here and (I believe) hereafter. Drug possession/abuse is an easy example here: people addicted to drugs are already having a h*ll of a life. Why do we waste federal tax money, then, on a massively expensive "war on drugs", arrest people, and lock them up for making this choice? Aren't they already suffering for it? The solution is not more laws, or more draconian enforcement; it's finding a way to help your brother/sister/neighbor in dire need.

The Politics of Preemption

So I happened upon a great political website this week... the "Vote by Issue Quiz". It presents you with on-the-record opinions by candidates on several key political issues, but it does so anonymously and allows you, based purely on the issue at hand, to express agreement, disagreement, or ambivalence. When you've read all the issues and marked your feelings on them, then it "reveals" which candidates you agreed (or disagreed) with. It takes some time to get through, but I found it worthwhile.

If I could add one issue to the quiz, though, it would be to add a question like: "If you were president, and you obtained credible intelligence that Iran was very close to a breakthrough in developing nuclear (or other) weapons of mass destruction, and that they planned to deploy those weapons against U.S. interests, would you preemptively attack that country to prevent those plans?" The quiz already contains a question about whether the candidates agree with President Bush's so-called "Doctrine of Preemption," but this issue is, to me, important enough that I want to know more about where a candidate might draw that line where they believe preemption is justified.

I think the danger with pre-emption is that it could easily become (if it hasn't already) a thinly-veiled excuse for unbridled imperialism: If some nation does not kowtow to U.S. interests, we simply discover some "credible threat" coming from that country, and bomb them into submission. The interesting thing about this is, attacking another country often has the uncanny effect of (1) making people in that country not like you, and (2) stirring up retaliatory aggression. So in some twisted way, in the end, the means seem justified.

None of the leading candidates seemed to have opinions on pre-emption that seemed very "safe." This is the most important issue to me in the upcoming election: we need someone in office who will not lead us into another unfounded war of aggression. If we're really sincere about helping the downtrodden peoples of the world that can't help themselves, there are enough examples of unjust oppression in areas already being ravaged by wars. In my opinion, we don't need to go creating new ones.