This is my second article in a series (when I can get to it) on Christianity in the Age of Trump. My first article, you can read here.

Before moving away to law school, I only ever attended one church in my life, one group of friends, one church culture. I still love that church family but upon moving away to law school in New Hampshire (12 hours from home) it was a strange new task before me–finding a new church. After all, the first twenty-four years of my life were with one church and now I was setting out on my own. New people, new building, new friends, different culture but as always- the same Bible and God.

After trying a few different churches in the Concord, New Hampshire area, I found a small but loving church tucked into Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Church was just a few minutes from the New Hampshire border and pastored by two honorable men. The lead pastor, Paul, was a former engineer with grey hair and thick-black rimmed glasses. His demeanor was calm and collected, well-reasoned and calculating as you might expect an engineer to be. He could also laugh easily with you and was quick to listen and slow to speak. Coming from Western Pennsylvania, he also happened to be the first registered Democrat that I knew to be employed as a pastor. Democrat-Pastor, anathema and oxymoron to my sheltered Christian view. (Also staunchly Pro-Life in case you were wondering).

The second pastor was a humble and burly man named Jeff. Jeff was a former air traffic controller-now turned pastor who resembled Charles Spurgeon both in look and love of dead theologians. As I was attending law school, I began to question what the Bible said about law and the Christian view of governing authorities. One night, after a Bible Study at Jeff’s home, he led me into his basement-office that was bursting with books upon books. Somehow, despite his ocean of paper, he selected a rail-thin pamphlet…squeezed between two thick treatises on God knows what. The Book (if you could call the pamphlet that) was written by an All-Star list of Christian-authors …names like John Piper, R.C. Sproul, Kevin DeYoung…among others. Upon reading this book, it became apparent to me for the first time that the Bible thinks of law in a different way than most do.

The Bible refers to the Law in two senses. One is the Law of God and the second is the law of man. The Law of God is above-all else, it usurps the law of man. The Book of Romans talks extensively on this subject; God’s Law is God’s perfect and unobtainable standard. Christians (such as myself) believe that only through the perfect life of Christ and his death on the cross can we be justified with God’s Law. In other words, we are credited with Christ’s perfect obedience to the Law. Romans also makes it clear that God’s Law is the standard to be followed regardless of whether one hears it:

“All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.  For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.  (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them” – Romans 2:12-15

Put another way: God’s Law is universal whether Jew or Gentile, Christian or Muslim, Gay or Straight, Republican or Democrat, citizen or undocumented immigrant. It applies to us all. Thomas Aquinas and John Locke would refer to this as “Natural Law”. As God created nature, the natural Law that exists is the same as God’s Law. America’s credo fortunately is also based upon the concept of God’s Law, i.e. natural law. Thomas Jefferson famously said in our Declaration of Independence,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In this Jefferson was both echoing Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and Romans 2.

This brings me to the second tier of law. Man’s law. The law of man does not trump God’s Law but is rather subservient to it. Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired by the aforesaid Thomas Aquinas, said the following:

In other words, a law of man that does not square itself with God’s Law, is therefore an inherently unjust law.

Indeed, Christ himself recognized this distinction and inherent conflict when the Law of God conflicts with the laws of man. For example, in Biblical times the Sabbath was a day of rest and mandated by law. To the Jews, one was literally not permitted by law to do nearly anything on the Sabbath or they were in violation of a law of man. Picking corn or performing medicine could be considered work in violation of the Sabbath laws. Christ rightly pointed out this conflict with God’s Law as stated in the Book of Matthew:

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.”

He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests.  Or haven’t you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent? I tell you that something greater than the temple is here... For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.  But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. -Matthew 12:1-13

Christ was a law breaker!…at least when it comes to the law of man. Christ says that HE is Lord of the Sabbath…i.e….the laws of man bow to him. Indeed, elsewhere Jesus notes this distinction between the law of man and God. See e.g. Matthew 22:21 (“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”).

Accordingly, when a conflict arises between the Law of God and the law of man…one must follow the Law of God. Completing this logic, Martin Luther King, Jr. (a pastor) wrote in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail (a letter addressed to other pastors, not politicians):

“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’…

“Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. ”

So this brings me back around to Romans 13. Christians often cite this passage when a preferred politician (often President) is elected. I recall hearing this of George W. Bush… I hear this now in regard to President Trump when Christians dare criticize him. Romans 13 reads as follows:

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 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. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

So what do we make of this strange verse? Without context, one might assume this verse is blending the law of man and the Law of God. I.E. those who are governing…do so by God’s blessing and are therefore doing God’s will. However such an interpretation is out of line with Matthew 12, as stated above, where Jesus was expressly rejecting laws of man  (and therefore lawmakers of man).

Indeed, this verse should be read in light of Jesus’ assertion to “…give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” in Matthew 22. In other words, the Law of God and the law of man are distinct and separate. As we are citizens here, we should respect our rulers as we would anyone else. See Luke 6:31 (“Do to others as you would have them do to you.”). However, in instances where the Law of God conflicts with the law of man…Christians should speak up as Christ did. As Thomas Jefferson did. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. did.

Christians must evaluate laws of man under these precepts…as many have done before. (For example Slavery (though legal under the law of man) was in violation of the Law of God.) Christians must evaluate abortion laws, immigration laws, health care laws, whether to hold leaders to account for their actions, and many other issues under this hierarchy. In the age of Trump, Christians must recognize Romans 13 in the proper context. Trump is not Cyrus but a man under God’s Law and the law of man. We must hold ourselves and our leaders to the applicable standards.

Drawing of the Mignonette by Tom Dudley

November 8, 2016. I woke up at 2 am, restless, thoughts racing, wondering about my future. My kids’ future. Unsure, upset, bewildered, confused, scared, angry, betrayed, a litany of emotions all swirling. Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States. Since that time, I have been trying to place my finger on why his election was so unsettling. Was it his temperament? His policy? His character? Or what it said about the character of our country? About me? About his voters? Most importantly, what does this say about my faith in Jesus Christ? Truth is that its a myriad of reasons but I think it boils down to a few principles and central beliefs.

No doubt if you’ve follow me on Facebook or Twitter you’ve already discovered that I am no fan of the man currently occupying the White House, however, I’d like to describe why I find his election and Presidency so disturbing. Before you click away, I ask that you hear me out, if you leave a message I will try to return the courtesy. If you’d rather not, that’s fine too. Now that I’ve had over a year to contemplate the various reasons I find his election disturbing, I’ve boiled it down to a few. I plan on doing a series of posts as I have the time to write on these topics. The first is this: Voting the “Lesser of Two Evils” is an unbiblical and worldly view that is has infiltrated the church. I know that sounds harsh, and maybe it is… but please read until the end and let me know if you still disagree.

May 19, 1884.  A small British yacht named Mignonette set sail with a crew of four off the coast of Sydney, Australia with its final destination as Southampton, England. On board were three men and a 17-year old boy named Richard Parker.  In early July of 1884, the crew hit a terrible gale off the coast of South Africa sinking their ship. The crew abandoned ship seeking refuge in a small lifeboat approximately 700 miles from shore. Without a realistic means to reach the shore, the crew waited for their rescuers to arrive. It’s supplies were used quickly, though slightly aided through eating a passing sea turtle. After weeks, with only saltwater to drink, the crew resorted to drinking their own urine. Desperation set in.

After about three weeks at sea, Richard Parker- the 17 year-old succumbed to temptation and drank the saltwater, he immediately grew ill and lost consciousness. Growing increasing desperate, the crew drew straws to determine who they would kill and eat. With Richard Parker already sick and unconscious and likely to die first, the crew decided to do the unthinkable–they sliced the boy’s jugular vein and ate the grotesque meal. The boat’s captain, Tom Dudley, later described the scene, “I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal we all was like mad wolfs who should get the most and for men fathers of children to commit such a deed we could not have our right reason.” On July 29, 1884, a boat passing by spotted the crew and brought them to remaining crew to safety. The three remaining sailors were ultimately turned over to the British Courts on charges of murder.

The case The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens was ultimately appealed to the British high court to decide whether the killing of Richard Parker was murder or one of self-preservation and necessity. The Court upon considering the facts held as follows:

To preserve one’s life is generally speaking a duty, but it may be the plainest and the highest duty to sacrifice it. War is full of instances in which it is a man’s duty not to live, but to die. The duty, in case of shipwreck, of a captain to his crew, of the crew to the passengers, of soldiers to women and children, as in the noble case of the Birkenhead; these duties impose on men the moral necessity, not of the preservation, but of the sacrifice of their lives for others, from which in no country, least of all, it is to be hoped, in England, will men ever shrink, as indeed, they have not shrunk.

It would be a very easy and cheap display of commonplace learning to quote from Greek and Latin authors, from Horace, from Juvenal, from Cicero, from Euripides, passage after passage, in which the duty of dying for others has been laid down in glowing and emphatic language as resulting from the principles of heathen ethics; it is enough in a Christian country to remind ourselves of the Great Example [Jesus Christ] whom we profess to follow.

The Court ultimately noted the irony that had the men not killed and ate Richard Parker, they themselves would very likely have died as well and not be subject to the trial for murder. Nonetheless, the Court concluded:

It must not be supposed that in refusing to admit temptation to be an excuse for crime it is forgotten how terrible the temptation was; how awful the suffering; how hard in such trials to keep the judgment straight and the conduct pure. We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and to lay down rules which we could not ourselves satisfy. But a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he might himself have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime. It is therefore our duty to declare that the prisoners’ act in this case was willful murder…

In other words, like Christ, it was the crew’s duty to die. Put another way, sometimes when faced with two bad options, the answer is to pick neither and sacrifice.

The Principle is that we should do the right thing always…not when it is merely convenient but always, always, always. Jesus directed us in the red letters to “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14. 

Similarly, C.S. Lewis made the observation that we should always make the right decision and not pick merely the lesser of two evils, he said:

I feel a strong desire to tell you – and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me – which of these two errors is the worse… That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern that that with either of them.

To be clear, the Bible separates right from wrong, not wrong and slightly less wrong. To put it plainly, choosing the lesser of two evils is not a biblical principle. In fact the Bible expressly rejects it. Presented with two evils, the Bible is clear we are to choose neither. As in the case of The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, sometimes it is our duty to die.

In the 2016 election, Christians were tasked with choosing between two evils. Most Christians understandably refused to vote for Hillary Clinton based on her pro-choice views. I am with you and I understand that. I think that was a perfectly acceptable Christian view. On the Republican ticket was of course Donald Trump. Trump while professing to be pro-life was also morally destitute. John Piper said of our President, “Donald Trump’s immoral behavior in the past, and his ongoing unwillingness to renounce it as evil, show that he is morally unfit to lead our nation.” Our President bragged about grabbing women inappropriately in which he only apologized under public pressure. Trump also bragged that he has never asked God for forgiveness. These were things known just before the election and does not even consider the many deep character flaws I could list since his inauguration (which I am actively refraining).

To me, many Christians who looked the other way were endorsing the unbiblical virtue of voting for the lesser of two evils (I note the irony that if Christians had held together it could have exerted political pressure to select a candidate with better character). Whether Christians want to say that they voted for Trump because he is Pro-Life must at least realize to the rest of the world you are also voting for groping women (as Trump bragged to Billy Bush), for lack of forgiveness, for lack of character, for disdain of the truth. When we vote for the lesser of two evils we end up endorsing, and even elevating, views we might not otherwise hold. We must realize this as Christians that while we may have voted for the pro-life candidate we also voted for a man who never asks God for forgiveness. We must reject “lesser of two evils” as unbiblical. We must on occasion vote for neither evil option. “Neither” sometimes is the narrow road we must choose.

It has been almost two years since my last blog post. At the time, the US Supreme Court was about to hand down their landmark ruling on DOMA in U.S. v. Windsor; thereby invalidating federal discrimination against homosexuals. Back then I wrote a blog post on how Christians needed to embrace a tolerant view of the legality of homosexuality. However, I also encouraged Christians to stick to their beliefs while simultaneously loving their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. In other words, legislating morality by force is a repeated historical blunder and also you can disagree with someone while still loving them.

Flash forward to today. Laws against homosexuality are back in the news. The US Supreme Court decision on Obergefell v. Hodges will likely be handed down within the next few weeks. Based upon Virginia v. Loving, Romer v. Evans, and the aforesaid U.S. v. Windsor, the SCOTUS will find that state sexual orientation discrimination is also unconstitutional. A ruling based on these decisions will likely create a new protected class of citizens based on sexual orientation (though Justice Roberts floated the idea at oral argument that this may actually be a form of gender discrimination, thereby alleviating the need to create a new protected class…Justice Roberts has been known to split the proverbial baby before…). In either case, it appears that states will likely be estopped from banning gay marriage. In my opinion this is the correct legal decision.

However, this is not why I am writing this article now. The country has yet to answer the difficult decision as to whether private discrimination of homosexual is constitutional. This issue of course was brought to Facebook level fervor with the recent Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The headlines we are constantly sold are that Christians wish to return to the pre-1964 South that refused to sell hamburgers and shakes to blacks; only now flavor of the discrimination month consists of homosexuals. (Is it relevant that the famous 1960 Walgreens sit-in was actually in response to government Jim Crow laws and not restaurant owners who stupidly refused business?)    Beyond the fact the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is actually based on a federal law passed by Bill Clinton (and has been on the books in most states for over two decades, including Pennsylvania, with little incident); should it be legal for a Christian to refuse service to a gay couple on the basis of religious objections?

The State of New Mexico made an emphatic “no” when a Christian photographer refused to photograph a gay couple’s wedding. The State fined the Christian photographer and declared that we “are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives…it is the price of citizenship.” The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Christian photographer’s case. More recently, and perhaps famously, there have been multiple bakeries who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding ceremony. Never mind that the plaintiffs in these cases were seeking to make a point rather than truly lacking options. Also never mind the fact that it makes all the sense in the world to force someone who doesn’t want to serve you to be instrumental in the supposed “happiest day of your life”.

Patrick Stewart and his friend Sir Ian McKellen

Despite all of this, while 6 out of 10 Americans support an individual’s right to gay marriage, 85% also believe that “Christian Photographers have the right to turn down same-sex wedding jobs”. So what are pro-gay rights activists missing that allows for this seemingly counter-duplicitous result? How can individuals both be supportive of gay rights but also for that of the baker who refuses service based on conscientious objections (See Sir Patrick Stewart explains his reasoning)? In the same way that the Christian Photographer or Christian Baker may not interfere with the social contract of marriage between two consenting adults; a gay couple may not seek to force a contract with a non-consenting adult. To put it another way, while it is not the Christian’s business to stop a gay couple from marrying; it is also not the gay couple’s business to force a Christian into their service. Indeed it is the business solely of the Christian proprietor, both literally and figuratively. The same right for a gay couple to live their life in their own designated way should also protect the same for the Christian. Freedom means the ability to live your life in the way that you see fit, as long as you do not infringe on someone else’s same right.

In sum, I’d like to offer this rebuttal to the New Mexico Supreme Court:

Let us never believe that the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some responsibility to run from our convictions – let us instead respect one another’s faith. – President William Jefferson Clinton, November 16, 1993. 

Freedom of Religion is the freedom of conscience to live our lives in the way we determine. Without Freedom of Religion we have no “pursuit of happiness” famously seared into the American psyche. Freedom of Religion is the first protected right within the first amendment. Therefore, the freedom of religion is also the first protected right in all of the Bill of Rights. Without the freedom of conscience, the “why” we live; the rights to speech, assembly, and all other rights have no meaning. As the gay rights movement knew just a few years ago, the right to live your life in the manner you choose is of the utmost importance.

April 12, 2013, it was 4:04 and I was sitting on a bar stool at Dunkin Donuts, tucked in the corner of Pittsburgh’s Market Square. I had a medium carmel coffee that I bought merely as a ticket so I could borrow a seat for a little while. The world seemed to be moving around me at normal speed while each tick of the second hand seemed like an agonizing purgatory. I refreshed the webpage on my phone screen…4:06. Still nothing. My phone just then vibrated with a text message from my dad saying “no matter what I’m proud of you, did you find out yet?” I ignored his text and went back to refreshing my phone. 4:07…still quiet. I decided to cast up one more prayer just to make sure God heard me. 4:08. Names flashed upon the screen. Several hundred names I didn’t know or care really to know…except for one. Just mine. I frantically clicked the “B” for Brown scrolled alphabetically….Borowitz…Broune…Brown! Joshua D. Brown! The name listed on the Pennsylvania Bar Exam website indicated publicly who had passed. I had passed the Pennsylvania Bar Exam. I was now an attorney in the State of Pennsylvania. Now came the hard part, getting a job as an attorney in Pennsylvania.

If you didn’t know, the attorney market across the country has basically dried up like every other job during this recession. I had geared my law school education towards criminal law and immigration law thinking I would use my libertarian passion to help others. However as they say, crime doesn’t pay. And immigration doesn’t typically pay super well either. After turning down a couple of low paying attorney positions, one which would have required me to move to Philadelphia. I knew I needed to retool or drown in document review jobs. But what?

NPR podcasts filled my mind during otherwise mindless and menial document review jobs. I came across a certain “This American Life” podcast where they explored the natural gas boom in my own backyard of Western Pennsylvania. The podcast of course discussed the controversial nature of “fracking” and the incredible rewards that it could bring to Pennsylvania. It was also around this time I happened to be working with former Pittsburgh Republican Mayoral candidate Joe Weinroth. Joe regaled me daily about his failed campaign for mayor of Pittsburgh and his past as a real estate attorney. He championed his ideas for municipal policy changes that could help invigorate poor areas of Pittsburgh (which I still think are fantastic ideas). Most importantly, Joe pointed me in the direction of oil and gas law, which thanks to NPR, I had been thinking about anyway. Under Joe’s guidance I went to the Allegheny County Recorder of Deed’s Office on my lunch breaks and began researching my grandparent’s property, from 2014 back to William Penn (they live just outside of the Pittsburgh in Bethel Park). I learned to research oil and gas leases and began discovering oil and gas legal blogs.

Joe Weinroth, former Republican Mayoral Candidate for Pittsburgh (Photo Credit: Martha Rial, Pittsburgh Post)

At the suggestion of Joe and another individual I heard about an abstracting company called Purple Land Management just south of the city. I was told they were looking for attorneys to learn to abstract oil and gas properties. All I knew about oil and gas was what NPR and Joe Weinroth told me about it but I figured I would give it a shot. A few weeks later, I was offered a position. As a result I was driving all over Eastern Ohio, West Virginia and Southwest Pennsylvania researching oil and gas properties for oil and gas companies and soaking in every little piece of information I could. To kick my learning into high gear I ordered an Oil and Gas Law textbook online, of which I began to bury my nose in each evening with a bottle of Sam Adams. This one opportunity led to my next. I was hired as In House Counsel with a relatively small oil and gas production company in Western PA. My oil and gas legal education was in hyperdrive.

As In House Counsel, I learned the ins and the outs of the industry. Frequently meeting with company engineers, landman, and other company executives. I learned about different Pennsylvania legal doctrines like “implied covenants to produce” and saw generally how the sausage was made. I studied Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases regarding oil and gas law and read up on Pennsylvania’s controversial Act 13. After about 6 months working as In House Counsel, I landed a job with a large Pittsburgh law firm doing oil and gas law.

It really has been a whirlwind of a year but I think I landed in one of the most fascinating and rapidly expanding legal disciplines in Pennsylvania. I went to law school so that I can serve my community. I have now realized that there are enough criminal law lawyers out there doing a fantastic job. Oil and Gas Law is the new wild west in the legal frontier. The decisions that are being made now by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the laws that are being passed now by the Pennsylvania legislature will affect generations of Pennsylvanians to come. I hope to make sure it helps everyone, both farmers and company executives. To help both the business man and the family man who gets his water from a nearby spring. Over the next couple of months or so I’m going to comment on some of the big legal issues in the Oil and Gas legal field that are rapidly affecting each Pennsylvanian citizen.

It is 10:07 pm on Febuary 22, 2014 and I am a Pennsylvanian Oil and Gas Attorney. Stay tuned.

Home from work as an Oil and Gas attorney

Before I get rolling with this post I want to make a few points clear. I have never abused illegal drugs not even marijuana. I have no desire to abuse drugs. I think drugs are stupid. Drug abuse is irresponsible and drugs tend to lead to poor life outcomes. With all that said and out of the way, I think we as Christians need to reevaluate our stance on the government prohibition on drugs.

Above I’ve posted a video of Pastor John Piper talking about his evolving views on marijuana (the video is from 2009). If you don’t know who John Piper is, he is one of the leading Christian minds in the country on a variety of spiritual issues. I’ll wager that John and I disagree on quite a few things and to the extent that we would legalize things like marijuana, but I applaud John for breaking through the simple-minded approach we’ve taken to drugs for the past 40 years. I think for a long time we’ve decided “drugs=bad” therefore the government should restrict all drugs. I think that mentality does not consider the various different aspects that occur when you take a broad swipe at a complicated issue.

I’ve written here before on the multiple different legal steps we’ve taken to drug prohibition. Like the Single Convention of 1961 for instance. But largely America’s War on Drugs began in 1971 under President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s goal was to change the American acceptance of drugs and create a distaste for it. Instead our usage over the past several decades has increased despite more and more rigorous enforcement. Here is a gallup poll of those who have used Marijuana from the 1960s to the present.

America’s admitted Marijuana usage

Furthermore, here is the incarceration rate in the United States during that same period of time.

I should also note that most of those arrests are drug related too. Looks like this heavy-handed approach is clearly working right? Anyway, I could hit you with graph after graph and number after number but I do not think I will convince you by these means. In any case, who I want to appeal to here are Christians.

I think we Christians need to remember what is totally crucial to the human condition. It is all about the heart. God is not interested in outward expressions but inward love and the actual struggle to pursue God. C.S. Lewis, one of the most influential Christians of the past century (and one of my personal heroes), said this about outward and inward actions:

“Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.”

I know C.S. Lewis did not smoke marijuana but it was too good of a picture to pass on

C.S. Lewis then plunges in the sword to many Christians’ high regard for themselves over others by saying:

“It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.”

I am tempted to go further in this post and on how truly inept the government is in stopping the drug problem and how it actually makes the problems worse. But I’ll refrain here and save it for another time. The government is not God, the government is us. Therefore, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, we cannot judge each individual’s decisions and their intentions for its usage. For certain there will be some who will abuse this choice but to do otherwise would be to stop those who might have the correct ambition. As long as the individual does not infringe on another’s right to make a choice, who is the government to decide right and wrong for an individual?

To bring this full circle and complete my point, please take five minutes and watch the video below.

A little youtube video on student loan debt

I’m gonna come clean. I have a lot of student debt. I mean a lot. I have $150,000 in student loan debt. That hurts to type. Thats how much a law school education will run you now a days if you’re white male middle class graduating cum laude from an undergraduate school. My grades were good enough to get me into law school but not so good to get a fat scholarship. My parents made enough money that I have lived a pretty comfortable life but not enough to pay for school for me. And they made too much so that I wouldn’t classify for many different grants and scholarships for families of lesser means. I’ll put my debt more into perspective, if I paid all my debt straight up for 10 years, it would be almost $2000 a month. That really hurts to type. Its actually embarrassing.

Now I have to admit, if I could do it all over again I would still do it. Though my job prospects since graduating and passing the bar haven’t been out of this world, in all honesty they haven’t been wretched either. Since graduating I’ve had several job offers including working in a firm as an attorney that I’ve passed up. There have also been some jobs that I hoped to get that I didn’t but overall my law school education, though ridiculously expensive, has created opportunities for me. Oh by the way I am not paying the $2000 a month. There are programs initiated by the government to help students pay. Basically I am paying about 15% of my income for the next 25 years. Income based repayment its called. If there is anything left after 25 years the government will forgive the debt. At the end I might have some debt forgiven but not too much. But herein lies the problem, I’ll explain.

In the 1978, the Federal Government, under the patron saint Milton Friedman’s advice, began to fund student loans in the attempt to better educate the population. The idea was an intelligent populace was good for the economy by being able to perform advanced skills only obtainable through a higher education. Thus the economy would grow because everyone had skills to offer. Sounds like a fantastic idea and who would ever be against education? Just like who would be against homes for every American?

This kind of thinking is always in a politicians interest and thus for almost 4 decades now we have poured more and more money into higher education until now that the federal government backs 95% of all student debt. The odd thing was for every dollar that was poured into education the schools could raise their price.

Here’s the amount of student loans the government has offered:

Here’s what college tuition prices have done since the 1980s:

Notice a pattern there? What the government has done was unintentionally brake the pricing system in the college market. In economics the price of something is determined by the value society collectively decides it is. Basics of supply and demand. The more people buy of something the more valuable or cherished it is to society. Thats why you can get a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball ticket for $14 (been lousy for 21 years…but this is the year!!!) while Red Sox tickets will run you $60. More people competing for the same goods. What the government has essentially done is say, “well we think everyone should go to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates play because we feel so terrible for them, therefore we will pay for everyone’s ticket (oh and you have to pay us back later over a long period of time).” This would create a false illusion that the Pirates are in demand while in reality everyone is only going because their ticket is paid for when otherwise they might have not. But while everyone’s tickets are paid for, the Pirates could then raise ticket prices little by little every year…because people will still go because they aren’t paying for it….until later. Therefore the Pirates have absolutely no incentive to lower prices because the money keeps pouring in no matter how poorly they play. Now imagine that went on for decades. Thats the student loan crisis.

While that may not be the best illustration I hope you see what I am saying. I am also not saying that schools are worthless or a degree isn’t valuable to your own prospects for a job or to society at large. Clearly education is a good thing just as clearly a home is a good thing. Just because there was a housing bubble and bust doesn’t mean that homes are worthless it just meant they were priced too high. So what I’m saying is school is valuable it has just out-priced itself.

So how do we fix it? There has been lots of proposals for a bailout for all student loans but that clearly would make the problem worse and not better as it would be a bonanza for schools putting up shiny new stadiums and professors’ pensions. And in the long run would just make college colossally expensive for the next generation…or even more so. President Obama has been pushing for more student loan income based repayment. However while I’m taking advantage of it I recognize that I am making the system worse in the long run. This will also allow schools to charge whatever they want. A school could charge you $500,000 and it wouldn’t matter as long as you paid 15% for 25 years and the rest would be forgiven by the government. This will quickly lead to elevated school tuitions and a large government deficit. So yes I am a hypocrite.

The real solution here however is to let students default. Student loans are the only type of debt that cannot be extinguished in bankruptcy. You can declare bankruptcy for credit card debt, you can walk away from a mortgage, but student loans are a ball and chain that can never be extinguished under current law. A friend of mine who works in the banking industry pointed out to me that a default is not a panacea for a defaulter. Your credit is destroyed and it will make your life very difficult to navigate in the future. I agree and thats the point. It is not in the students interest to default unless they are so hopelessly in debt that just spending what you make is a better option. If students are allowed to default the government will not be on the hook for a bailout and schools will be forced to come to the table to negotiate. Under current law in order for schools to qualify their students for federal aid their previous students have to be making at least some kind of payment. So therefore under current law if you pay 15% of your income for 25 years and then the government pays the rest, makes no difference to the school. So by defaulting, schools will be forced to negotiate lower payments directly with the students otherwise the students could walk away. This would lower tuition prices in the future and for current students making payments. Even if a student never actually defaults, the threat is enough. The schools will be forced to cut back building that new basketball stadium its true but thats just the price of an education. That felt good to write.

I don’t mean to defer responsibility from people like myself. Clearly I am responsible in some degree. However so are the schools who take advantage of the system and so too is the government who makes it possible. Oh and not only are schools getting more expensive because they have no incentive to change, the education is getting less in tune with current market demands for the same reason. That why you can graduate with an anthropology degree and work as a bank teller. Good thing you took the courses on Native-American History. Lets fix this problem so the next generation can afford college.

Rockwell and Michael Jackson feel like their privacy is invaded

In 1949 George Orwell wrote 1984. The book was set in a future England that was totally dominated by the state. “Big Brother” was coined in the book as the government had cameras everywhere. Then again in the real 1984, the one hit wonder Rockwell teamed up with the more famous Michael Jackson to write a song in the book’s spirit, Somebody’s Watching Me. Today with the advent of Google Street View, Facebook, Twitter, www.pleaserobme.com, and the ego-centric Kim Kardashian attitude we all possess; privacy is a self-imposed forgotten art form. Oh yeah and if you want to hang on to that shred of privacy you might otherwise have, the Federal Government is there to make sure there are no crumbs left. As government scandal after government scandal keeps beating the shores of it’s citizen’s trust, a few days ago a leak revealed that the government now crawls every corner and dark alley of the internet, scouring over both the innocent and the guilty in one swoop.

The line I have often heard growing up is, “if you have nothing to hide then why do you care?” This occurs in traffic stops, police frisks, and now apparently applies to my facebook account. As if I could break into Mike Tomlin’s house looking for a hint of his closet Raven’s fandom and when he asks what I’m doing there I could simply retort, “if you got nothing to hide why do you care?” Or what if a guy who worked at the NSA broke into top secret government files that showed that the government was lurking behind every Google search. That guy could then say to the government, “if you got nothing to hide then why do you care?” The principal is the same. Privacy is absolutely essential to our right to practice our religion, to free speech, to freely assemble, and our pursuit of happiness. These rights were not created so we could politely talk to each other about the weather but to create and innovate and even have radical ideas.

Don’t get me wrong. We also need to stop crime, we need to ensure safety for individuals. Fortunately our Constitution has a built in safety valve. Its called the 4th Amendment and it requires probable cause for any search and seizure of an individual. A police officer cannot stop you on a whim (or shouldn’t) but needs a really good reason. In the recent NSA case, the government is exploiting a loophole in this Constitutional issue (yes I’m admitting that what they are doing is scarily legal…technically). In the Supreme Court case, Kratz v. United States, the court held that you only have privacy (i.e. Constitutionally protected) where you have a reasonable expectation of it. In other words, your home is a place you can expect the most privacy while walking on sidewalk downtown you have less. This doctrine means that if you talk to a third person you have no expectation that the third party won’t talk to some else or even turn you into the government (or perhaps the 3rd party itself is the government). You don’t have an expectation of privacy after you write something or say something to someone else.

Therefore, because the internet works by sending messages back and forth you are communicating with a third party when you use Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc… Therefore the government comes with its heavy hand to these companies and basically says, “you wouldn’t mind if we had a little look under the hood would you?” (After all you got nothing to hide right?) So this bring us to today. The government then extends this logic so that you have no expectation of privacy of your facebook account as long as facebook consents to the government.

In 2012, a Supreme Court Justice caught whiff of this new disturbing 1984 direction we were headed. In U.S v. Jones, Justice Sotomayor wrote in a concurring opinion about how modern technology could erode previously hard fought privacy rights if not correctly applied, stating,

“Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse…I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.”

Furthermore, Justice Scalia in a recent scathing dissent on the use of swabbing DNA from someone who was arrested (not convicted) of a crime without a warrant, said,

“At the end of the day, logic will out. When there comes before us the taking of DNA from an arrestee for a traffic violation, the Court will predictably (and quite rightly) say, “We can find no significant difference between this case and [a felony case].” Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason…I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection. I therefore dissent, and hope that today’s incursion upon the Fourth Amendment, like an earlier one will some day be repudiated.”

While we are not George Orwell’s cold society as of yet, a continued slide toward government efficacy and away from individual rights will destroy our society over time.

“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”- Benjamin Franklin

Libertarians are as divided on the issue of abortion as the rest of America. There are those who say the rights of the individual mandate that the baby must be counted as a human being and given all rights. While others think that the rights of the individual mandate that we protect the women’s body. In the light of the Gosnell Trial, the abortion issue is coming back into view of the American conscious after a long slumber. This video is long but worth the watch. I hope you consider the different view points presented by the panelists and clarifies the issue to you.

Ron Paul on Abortion in 1997

My friend David discussing his film 3801 Lancaster with Anderson Cooper (click to watch)

My childhood friend David Altrogge (shown above) has been adamant for a long time in his stance against abortion. Accordingly, David, along with his crew have put together the story of humanity (or the lack thereof) in the Case of Kermit Gosnell. This Friday, David went on Anderson Cooper 360 to discuss his film, I’m really proud of my friend. Anyway, 3 months ago I wrote the following column in support of David’s film for policymic.com. You may have already read this article over at policymic.com but I thought I would repost it here.  

An online documentary, 3801 Lancaster, on the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, was released this week. The documentary reveals the horrific acts of an abortion clinic that went far beyond the typical boundaries of law or reason. Gosnell repeatedly performed illegal third trimester abortions and silenced breathing infants with a clip of the spinal column, then stored the remains like Hannibal Lecter. What made matters worse was government agencies tasked with supervising such treatment centers turned a blind eye to the horror. An insightful comment, delivered by one of the prosecuting attorneys in the documentary, asked “How is it that we have more oversight in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania of women’s hair salons and nail salons than we do over abortion clinics?”

The documentary, while decidely slanted in favor of the pro-life movement, reveals something disturbing about ourselves.

One of the problems in the abortion debate today is that both sides are screaming past one another. Neither side considers the other’s point of view. Pro-life advocates often forget the trauma that can occur to a woman’s body during pregnancy and how the government regulating a woman’s use of her own body is a severe government intrusion akin to slavery. Likewise, the pro-choice movement often fails to consider that potentially they are taking away not only another life, but also the life-contingent right of liberty from the infant that they ironically seek to protect for the mother.

Few would argue against the fact that all humans deserve the same rights all other humans are entitled to; among them, most famously, are , life, liberty (choice), and the pursuit of happiness. No one would say with a serious face that a senior on a breathing device, though not able to live on his or her own, is not human, and therefore not entitled to all human rights. So the real question is when are we considered humans, and therefore entitled to each right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

This is the main point of contention. In pursuing this truth, pro-choice advocates defense slants toward the high priority of liberty of the mother, and pro-life advocates zealously defend the right, that all other rights hinge upon as precedent, life. So we shouldn’t be surprised when the two sides defending such noble positions forget to consider the other’s point of view.

In the case of Dr. Gosnell, our society did just that. We forgot to be honest with ourselves. We fail to defend something so simple and obvious as a living, breathing, viable, human being their most basic right: life itself. People often oppose such hideous images as shown in the documentary on the stance that such images unnaturally slant the debate. I would ask them, in a society that pursues truth, why are we so willfully blind?

You can view the 20 minute documentary below:

Jim Rickards, economist and author of “Currency Wars”, which currently is the no.2 book on Amazon’s Money and Monetary Book List (Ben Bernanke’s book is no.3), responded to my tweet in regards to one of California’s biggest cities filing for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy. Below is my question to Jim Rickards followed by his response:

Anyways, I thought it was cool I got a tweet back from one of the economists I follow but maybe the real news here is his answer which is a tad scarier given the Euro-zone’s well documented follies in wonderland. 

Bernanke’s Nightmare