The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

I fly the American flag at my house every single day and night (lighted of course) and have ever since 911. I fully support this e-mail campaign and hope you will pass this along to as many people as possible.

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Please join us in this FLY THE FLAG campaign and PLEASE forward this email
immediately to everyone in your address book asking them to also forward
it. We have a little less than one week and counting to get the word out
all across this great land and into every community in the United States of
America. If you forward this email to least 11 people and each of those
people do the same...you get the idea.

THE PROGRAM IS THIS: !

On Monday, September 11th, 2007, an American flag should be displayed
outside every home, apartment, office, and store in the United States.

Every individual should make it their duty to display an American flag on
this sixth anniversary of our country's worst tragedy. We do this in honor
of those who lost their lives on 9/11, their families, friends and loved
ones who continue to endure the pain, and those who today are fighting at
home and abroad to preserve our cherished freedoms.

In the days, weeks and months following 9/11, our country was bathed in
American flags as citizens mourned the incredible losses and stood
shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism. Sadly, those flags have all but
disappeared. Our patriotism pulled us through some tough times and it
shouldn't take another attack to galvanize us in solidarity. Our American
flag is the fabric of our country and together we can prevail over
terrorism of all kinds.

Action Plan: So, here's what we need you to do...

(1) Forward this email to everyone you know (at least 11 people). Please
don't be the one to break this chain. Take a moment to think back to how
you felt on 9/11 and let those sentiments guide you.

(2) Fly an American flag of any size on 9/11. Honestly, Americans should
fly the flag year-round, but if you don't, then at least make it a priority
on this day.

Thank you for your participation. God Bless You and God Bless America

I believe it is very important to take advantage of the freedom we have in America and to support it whole heartedly. Whether that be by flying the American flag, or even voting, we all must support our country. God has immensly blessed us to have the opportunity to do such a thing.

It is a priviledge for us to live in this free nation, not a right. We don't deserve freedom because we are all sinners; however, God has granted us this opportunity, and it should not be taken lightly.

With this opportunity comes great responsibility to support our country. We are (not just as Americans, but as Christians as well) responsible to vote as well as display our patriatism. We need to thank God daily that we live in such a place, where these ats can be done.

We don't even know what freedom is in this country anymore. We were led to revolution from Britain for several reasons, one of them being unfair taxation. We were paying under 2 % back then and only on certain things.

This country is enslaved to the government in ways they may never extricate themselves from.

Give me freedom.

Ditto Xian. Not to mention the oligarchy the two parties have us under (for reference, Israel has at least 17 major parties and dozens of minor parties). They aren't going to change the tax code any time soon, despite both candidates promising to lower taxes. Bush said that too, and my taxes have gone up every year for 8 years. Something about the more I make, the bigger portion of my income I have to hand over to the government. Where I live I am in the second lowest tax bracket and I pay nearly 30%. Now if my wife and I were to have a couple of kids...
Nevertheless it is still the greatest nation on earth. Wow. Now there is a sobering thought.

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Στηθι εδραιος, ως ακμων τυπτομενος. - Ignatius |II Timothy 4:2| All Scripture is NKJV, unless a translation from the Greek text or otherwise noted.
M.A. Theological Studies (New Testament), Faith Seminary, Tacoma WA
Member, Evangelical Theological Society, North American Patristics Society.
Assistant Editor and contributing author of several published and forthcoming publications.

I too have the cry of the oppressed middle class in America....do away with my taxes and give me all the services free.

If I can get hold of the American flag I'd be delighted to fly it here in the UK. Europe owes whatever freedom it has to our allies across the pond.

What services Rene? Housing assistance? Food stamps? Utility subsidies? Health care? Free clothing? Free furniture? I make too much to be allowed to use those, so I don't use them anyway. Police? Fire? I pay property taxes from bond measures for those. I also pay for the community college and buses from property taxes, and I don't use either. Of course I make enough that I'd have to pay over and above my taxes to go to community college or ride the bus. Roads? I pay gasoline taxes for those but here in Oregon most of the gas taxes go toward methadone treatments for Heroin addicts and bike paths instead of roads.
Since I don't use the vast majority of services, sure, cut my taxes and I still won't use them. That would be freedom.

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Στηθι εδραιος, ως ακμων τυπτομενος. - Ignatius |II Timothy 4:2| All Scripture is NKJV, unless a translation from the Greek text or otherwise noted.
M.A. Theological Studies (New Testament), Faith Seminary, Tacoma WA
Member, Evangelical Theological Society, North American Patristics Society.
Assistant Editor and contributing author of several published and forthcoming publications.

Indeed police, fire, and the military is not needed. Water, gas, and electrical infrastructure is unnecessary. Social security, workers comp, medicare/medicaid are all unnecessary. TV, radio, internet, and telephone services are all unnecessary. Basic research in medical and technology are all unnecessary. I do suppose psychoboicus that once we get rid of taxes all of these unnecessary support, protection, and infrastructure services will be simply be donated....indeed the self-made man will enjoy 19th century amenities once again. The point? Taxes pay for our civilization at its foundation perhaps the dismantling of such services is what is necessary to once again remind us what it's like not to be coddled by over indulgent society that caters to our every whim. Sometime I do wish that American society goes back to the good old days when children worked in the factories 10 hours a day for little money so that we could start over with fewer whiners.

I believe you have misunderstood me. I have no problem paying for police, fire, etc. My problem is paying for services I can't get because I make too much money. I make enough to pay for them, but too much to use them. And I know all about child labor, I grew up on a farm!

If govt. was a Baskin-Robins franchise then I suppose individual preferences for how govt. should be run could be accommodated. However, individuals as yet cannot ala cart the policy and programs they prefer to support which is the essence of the on going consumerism that has reduced public policy debate into a mindless soap opera of personality. After listening to these two conventions I think America has finally got the level of incompetence in govt leadership that we truly deserve. The collapse of a sense of community and mutual responsibility, especially by "christian" politicians, has become the basis for a type of free market ideology that will eventually promote a new Gilded Age. Slow job growth, breaking of the housing market, on going financial crisis, exporting of American jobs, open ended immigration, huge budget deficits that can lead to stagflation, multi-generational war, crisis in Georgia, and forced withdrawal from Iraq are at our door step and our politicians are making personality the most important factor in leadership...indeed the middle class whine of more services with no taxes conveniently delivered to my doorstep is indeed been a success for those who want our minds on nothing more complicated than the definition of what a community organizer is.

What exactly is a community organizer??


I could agree with that!! Allow me to take my SSN tax and invest it and I'll do just fine! Should the market crash, well I'll still get along just fine. Gov't was never intended to be a safety net. At least not in my understanding of the constitution. I can get really good medical insurance for the amount I pay to Medicare & Medicaid and with it I don't really have to worry about the Gov't making medical decisions for me!



Aren't all these supplied by private businesses? I would be in favor of greatly reducing or even eliminating the Gov't subsidies of these researches! If a business needs it I think it can research it without my (tax) support being coersed.



Well said!!! Our society is over indulgent and those indulgences shouldn't come out of the tax-payer pocket! I'm happy to help the single-mother get back on her feet. I'm frustrated by our support, with taxes, of many who stay on the couch! Surely there is a better way!


I won't speak for others but I don't want more services. I just want less taxes! I'll bet that we look at any federal budget and we can easily cut 10 to 20 billion of pork-barrell spending. The problem IMO is not party specific and there does need to be change.

Whether anyone likes it or not personality has always been involved in elections. To make hey of it is to simply deny the simple historical fact that most will vote for who they like and often over what the candidate stands for. IMO change is needed but how that change happens and what is changed is greatly important.

I also think that experience is an important factor as well as decisiveness. But, I again digress from the origional point.

Blessings,
Randy.

Doesn't matter what one is unless u need one. Indeed I've ran into several hardcore free market fortune 500 leaders while working in a nursing home on the dementia unit that relied solely on their company stock to get them by in their senile old age...except when the stock split and the market dropped then they had to go onto social security. Business's rely upon the license from the federal govt. along with community based infrastructure to run their "private" business's. Indeed the very notion that one can just do away with taxes is itself part of the self-indulgent class that has arisen in this culture free from the constraints of paying the price for making mistakes. This attitude reflects (as i have pointed out several times) almost a regression to the Social Darwinist of the 19th and early 20th century that had the same lazziez faire attitude toward the markets and letting the immoral poor starve to death...ironic that some "christians" would embrace Darwinism in one form while fighting it in another. The death of a sense of community and mutual support in the last 25 years (yes the "Reagan Revolution) has/is leading to a society based upon a rather interesting mix of Ayn Rand and Nietzsche where each lone superman fights it out for leadership of the market...except of course when cancer hits and they stop flying.

Since when does government=community and mutual support? Should the feeling of "community and mutual" support be forced onto only those who pay taxes?
I agree with Randy,

I'll take it a step further, I want less services and less taxes. Again, why is it government's responsibility to feed, house, and cloth everyone who makes less than a predetermined ammount of money?
To bring it back to freedom, it was Adam Smith who warned that whoever controls the handouts also controls the freedom. The more entitlements the governement gives out, the more the government controls the lives of those who are dependent on the handouts. I don't want handouts thank you. And as Randy said, I don't want to pay for handouts for those who "sit on the couch" either. As I said earlier, I don't want to pay for Heroine addicts to get thier fix.
I work at a job where I see first hand how people on government assistance live. I was in an apartment that was 100% subsidized. They guy had a 42" HD TV, a surround sound theater system and a brand new laptop. I've been in other subsidized housing where six guys were all working full time, but because they aren't citizens and were working for cash, they recieved subsidies. There were three brand-new cars out front. Why am I paying for all this? I am certain there are some people out there who actually need assistance, but the system is built around not working, so it encourages people to sit at home and enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Another thing, Social Darwinism is in no way related to fewer social programs and lower taxes. It is a term that eugenicists used to describe selective breeding of members of one's race to achieve racial purity. The "stronger" of the race were to be encouraged to breed while the "infirm" and "weak" were discouraged. Do not confuse it with free-market capitalism, they have nothing to do with one another.

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Στηθι εδραιος, ως ακμων τυπτομενος. - Ignatius |II Timothy 4:2| All Scripture is NKJV, unless a translation from the Greek text or otherwise noted.
M.A. Theological Studies (New Testament), Faith Seminary, Tacoma WA
Member, Evangelical Theological Society, North American Patristics Society.
Assistant Editor and contributing author of several published and forthcoming publications.

Community and mutual support is both a characteristic of OT Israel tribalism and NT Kingdom of God. It is hard to believe that some who would argue over the most obscure parts of the Biblical text ignore the use of such over arching moral motifs concerning holy community. Indeed the moral imperative for community was so strong in the early church they divided up their goods (on at least one occasion) and the helping of the homeless and ill were constant aspects of the Incarnation and early church ministries. Not only is the demand for less taxes and less govt. services anti-biblical but also another uniquely American love for ignoring basic historical circumstances that drove the development of such governmental interventions. Indeed even a lack of knowledge about what Social Darwinism itself was and how it applies to this circumstance shows the level of propaganda has reached in American political discourse..

"Social Darwinism is a theory that competition among all individuals, groups, nations or ideas drives social evolution in human societies.[1] The term draws upon the common use of the term Darwinism to refer to various evolutionary ideas and ideas of "survival of the fittest", regardless of whether or not they are related to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection which explains speciation in populations as the outcome of competition between individual organisms for limited resources.

The term first appeared in Europe in 1879 and was popularized in the United States in 1944 by the American historian Richard Hofstadter, and has generally been used by critics rather than advocates of what the term is supposed to represent.[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

"Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die. The theory was chiefly expounded by Herbert Spencer, whose ethical philosophies always held an elitist view and received a boost from the application of Darwinian ideas such as adaptation and natural selection."

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/eh4.shtml

Indeed the whole less govt and taxes (Supply Side) is itself an unbiblical sets of propaganda assertions that guarantee the survival of the fittest in a free market Capitalist system.

So apparently you think we are living in the Kingdom right now? If not, then your argument is moot, because our government does not run under biblical law.
Personally, I believe I am supposed to be charitable because God tells me to do so, and I should be free to give where I want, not because governement is holding a gun to my head demanding that I give so they can disperse it as they see fit. I reject the notion "...from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." That isn't the way the Constitution is written, and actually is antithetical to Christianity. Paul said,


At risk of straying too far from the OP, if one objectively studies the rise of this "Social Darwinism" one will see that it is at heart antithetical to the unique American system of government. It is one of the core tenants of Fascism. It is really social engineering rooted in the racism of the nineteenth century. The reason it is linked with Darwinism is that Darwin himself proposed that the "white race" was the furthest evolved form of humanity. Eugenicists took this idea and proposed that the state should regulate breeding (including forced sterilization) of people so that the "white race" could continue to evolve without being tainted by "inferior races" the "infirm" or the "weak-minded." What that has to do with "supply side" economics, let alone what we have been talking about here I cannot fathom. May we now move on from this?
I am arguing that government provides many unneeded "services" at the expense of taxpayers. I would like to see less government control over our lives, not more. Because our government is thoroughly secular, any attempt to link what it does with biblical teaching is misguided. I don't want the government deciding what God wants.

_________________
Στηθι εδραιος, ως ακμων τυπτομενος. - Ignatius |II Timothy 4:2| All Scripture is NKJV, unless a translation from the Greek text or otherwise noted.
M.A. Theological Studies (New Testament), Faith Seminary, Tacoma WA
Member, Evangelical Theological Society, North American Patristics Society.
Assistant Editor and contributing author of several published and forthcoming publications.