What Do the Constitution and Bible Say About National Defense

Before Tea Party Christians should argue that our country requires a strong military, we should first understand what the Constitution of the United States and the Bible says about national defense. Read on to find out.

What the Constitution says about national defense

As Ernest Istook explains in his America at Risk Memo₁, Article 1 Section 8 of the United States Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress. It begins:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;…

America’s priorities, according to the Constitution, is to first provide for the common defense and then generally for the nation’s welfare.

Regarding the common defense, the Constitution devotes six of seventeen clauses specifically to national defense. These include raising and supporting armies and the Navy, making the rules that govern the Armed Forces, and organizing, arming, and disciplining the state-level militia as well as the Army and Navy:

Clause 10: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
Clause 11: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
Clause 12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Clause 13: To provide and maintain a Navy;
Clause 14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
Clause 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Clause 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

Clearly, the Constitution considers the national defense a high priority for government.

What the Bible says about national defense

Wayne Grudem in his book, Politics According to the Bible₂, argues that the Bible also places a high priority for national defense.  He cites 1 Peter 2:14 “or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right,” as support for civil government to use force to punish those who do evil.

Grudem also cites Romans 13:1-4:

¹Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. … ⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

In this passage Grudem explains that governments are authorized to “bear the sword.”  They do so, commanded by God, to protect citizens inside the country from evildoers.  As a consequence, the government certainly has an obligation to protect the citizens from threats outside of the country. Grudem provides the following examples from the Old Testament, in which the nation of Israel repeatedly had to defend itself against other nations (Philistines, Assyrians and Babylonians) .

Judges 2: 16-18 ¹⁶ Then the LORD raised up judges,who saved them out of the hands of these raiders….¹⁸ Whenever the LORD raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the LORD relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them

2 Samuel 5: 17-25 ¹⁷ When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, they went up in full force to search for him, but David heard about it and went down to the stronghold. ¹⁸ Now the Philistines had come and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim; ¹⁹ so David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you deliver them into my hands?”
The LORD answered him, “Go, for I will surely deliver the Philistines into your hands.” …²⁵ So David did as the LORD commanded him, and he struck down the Philistines all the way from Gibeon to Gezer.

Pacifists claim that the 6th Commandment in Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder,” means that we should not go to war and kill. However Grudem explains that, “The Hebrew word translated murder in Exodus 20:13 is ratsakh, a word used forty-nine times in the Old Testament. It is never used to refer to killing in war (other Hebrew words are used for this). Rather, the word refers to what we would call “murder” in English today (the unlawful killing of another human being)….”₃

In Acts 10:1 “At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment.”  Cornelius, a Romans centurion in command of 100 soldiers, accepted Christ and was baptized as a believer with no mention that his occupation as soldier was undesirable. In Luke 14:31 Jesus speaks matter-of-factly about war without condemning it to make another point: “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?.”

Pacifists often claim that Matthew 5:39 “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also,” provides support for Jesus’ opposition to war. However, Jesus’ teaching applies to individual conduct not to civil government conduct. In fact Romans 13: 1-4 teaches that God authorizes governments to use deadly force if necessary to oppose evil.₄

Furthermore, Jesus implies the use of deadly force for self-defense in Luke 22:36, where “He said to them, ‘But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’”

Regarding non-interventionism, Grudem says there is no Biblical support. He cites Obadiah 1:11 “On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.” In this passage God rebukes the nation of Edom for failing to provide Israel military support when attacked by the Babylonians.₅

Clearly the Constitution and Bible provide strong support for national defense. To purposely weaken our military as a unilateral showing of pacifism is not only illogical but unsupported by either the Constitution or Bible.

To Read More

Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible; A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2010).

References

1. Ernest Istook, The Constitutional Charge to Defend America (The Heritage Foundation, America at Risk Memo #AR 11-05, May 31st 2011) Available at: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/the-constitutional-charge-to-defend-america (May 30, 2012).
2. Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2010), 388.
3. Ibid, 389.
4. Ibid, 391.
5. Ibid, 398-399.

Should We Soak the Rich?

The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs is one of the most famous of Aesop’s fables. The cottager and his wife kill the goose to get the great lump of gold they think is inside. However, they find it is no different than any other goose. Their greed deprived them of a future steady income. So it is with the notion that we must tax the rich to pay for our out-of-control spending.

Raising tax rates on the rich will kill the golden goose. Increasing tax rates will discourage investment, cause total tax revenues to fall, and will increase, not decrease, the deficit. Here are three reasons why:

• More progressive tax rates are not fair
• We end up taxing people who are not really rich
• History has proven that increasing tax rates causes revenues to fall

More progressive tax rates are not fair

According to the Patriot Update₁ , “The top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes, and the top 10% pays as much as 70% in total. Conversely, the bottom 40% pays close to nothing.” How are the rich not paying their “fair share”? Why should we tax them more? Answer: because we can. They only have 1% of the votes.

The United States already soaks the rich, more so than any other developed country. As the following Newsmax magazine chart₂ shows , the tax burden of our 1% is higher than every other developed nation. The 1% in the United States supply 45.1% of all taxes, whereas in socialistic Sweden, the 1% only supply 26.7% How are the rich in our country not paying their fair share?

As the Newsmax article explains, the rich should not be targeted for higher taxes. It’s not just the rich who are getting richer in the U.S. The poor are getting richer too. Plus, the rich aren’t all born rich, and don’t all stay rich. Of the 400 richest people listed in the 2007 issue of Forbes magazine, only 32 were included when the list began in 1982. “Only 18% inherited their whole fortune, while about 70%—people like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Dell computer founder Michael Dell—amassed fortunes by giving the rest of us products we want.” ₃

We end up taxing people who are not really rich

The Democrats propose raising taxes on families making $250,000 a year and up. As Thomas Sowell points out:

Rich means having a lot of wealth. But income taxes don’t touch wealth. No wonder some billionaires are saying it’s OK to raise income taxes. They would still be billionaires if taxes took 100% of their current income.

What those who are arguing against “tax cuts for the rich” are promoting is raising the tax rates on families making $250,000 a year and up. A husband and wife making $125,000 a year each are not rich. If they have a kid going to one of the many colleges charging $30,000 a year (in after-tax money) for tuition alone, they are not likely to feel anywhere close to being rich. ₄

History has proven that increasing tax rates causes revenues to fall

As Thomas Sowell points out, in 1921 the tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73%! Here was the consequence of those high tax rates, “The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year and up—equivalent to far more than a million dollars in today’s money—declined from more than a thousand people in 1916 to less than three hundred in 1921.” ₅ What happened? Did all those rich people go broke? The answer was of course not. They merely took the money they had invested in the economy (in businesses creating jobs) and invested it in tax-exempt securities, such as municipal bonds (in government creating red tape).

As the late Chuck Colson explains, the government’s role is not to reduce income inequality through progessive tax rates. “At the most basic level, government’s job is to preserve order, do justice, and restrain evil.”₆  Equality in the U.S. means legal and political equality. Each person has one vote and the rules are the same for everybody, no matter how much they make. The incentive behind taxing the rich is really no more than class envy.

References

1. Nathaniel Davidson, Taxing the “rich”? No, ruining America! (Patriot Update, December 7, 2010) Available at: http://patriotupdate.com/oldsite/exclusives/read/288/Taxing-the-rich?-No-ruining-America(May 1, 2012)
2. Stephen Moore, The Lie Behind Obama’s Class Warfare (Newmax, May, 2012), 56.
3. Ibid, 57.
4. As cited in Nathaniel Davidson, Taxing the “Rich” – Part 2 (Patriot Update, December 21, 2010) Available at: http://patriotupdate.com/articles/taxing-the-rich-part-2(May 1, 2012)
5. Thomas Sowell, Back to the Future: Part III (Townhall, September 15, 2011) Available at: http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/09/15/back_to_the_future_part_iii/page/full/(May 1, 2012)
6. Chuck Colson, Equality and Envy: The Proper Role of Government (BreakPoint, November 15, 2011) Available at: http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/18229(May 1, 2012)

Our tax system is a monstrosity that began as a 4-page form for individuals to complete in 1913 and has grown to 176 pages, if you count today’s 1040 with instructions. For corporations, it’s even worse. The National Taxpayers Union reports that General Electric in 2006 set a record by filing a 24,000 page tax return! We waste 7.64 billion hours costing $227 billion trying to comply with the byzantine rules formulated over the years in response to special interest groups₍₁₎

The flat tax saves money because it is simple

A flat tax would save time and money that could be spent on growing businesses and creating jobs. Here are the best reasons Tea Party Christians should favor a flat tax.

The current tax code contains 3.8 million words and takes a total of 7.6 billion hours and $227 billion to process/prepare tax returns₍₂₎. Now consider the flat-tax 10-line postage-card tax return above, where you basically enter your wages, subtract a couple of allowances, multiply the amount times 17%, subtract your withholding tax, and that’s it. Ten minutes tops.

Compare 10 minutes with the 24 hours it takes to process a typical 77-line 1040 form, not counting schedules. With the present 1040, to merely determine your income you must consider, wages, salaries, tips, taxable interest, tax-exempt interest, ordinary dividends, qualified dividends, taxable refunds, credits, or offsets of state and local income taxes, alimony received, business income or less, capital gain or loss, other gains or losses, IRA distributions, pensions and annuities, rental real estate, royalties, partnerships, S corporations, trusts, farm income or loss, unemployment compensation, social security benefits, other income. This is a joke!

According to the National Taxpayers Union, “The United States now ranks an embarrassing 124th out of 183 countries worldwide in total tax rate. Additionally, the U.S. ranked 66th worldwide for time spent complying with corporate tax filings, according to ‘Paying Taxes 2011,’ a study jointly published by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Bank Group” ₍₃₎. We need to make the U.S. business friendly, attracting entrepreneurs from around the world not making it more burdensome.

The National Taxpayers Union states, “The Tax code is so convoluted that no one inside or outside the IRS understands it.” ₍₄₎ They cite the 2007 USA Today story that asked five tax professionals to calculate a family’s tax bill and received five different answers. The National Taxpayers Union adds, “The IRS reported that taxpayers made an astounding 10.6 million math errors last year, up from 1.3 million the previous year” ₍₅₎

It need not be so. A flat tax would be simple, accurate, and efficient. We could collect the same total revenues, save time and money in the process, attract business entreprenuers and create jobs.

To Read More

David Keating, A Taxing Trend: The Rise in Complexity, Forms, and Paperwork Burdens (National Taxpayers Union, April 18, 2011) Available at: http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/taxes/tax-reform/complexity.html (April 15, 2012)

References

1. David Keating, A Taxing Trend: The Rise in Complexity, Forms, and Paperwork Burdens (National Taxpayers Union, April 18, 2011) Available at: http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/taxes/tax-reform/complexity.html (April 15, 2012)
2. Ibid, 1-2.
3. Ibid, 5.
4. Ibid, 14.
5. Ibid, 2.