Jay W. Richards - Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before Its Too Late

To Betty and Ginny

We could not have written this book, which covers a smorgasbord of subjects, without the help and support of many friends. Were especially grateful to Jonathan Witt, who read the entire manuscript under a tight deadline and made many valuable suggestions. Thanks also to John West, Greg Forster, and Guillermo Gonzalez for reviewing portions of the manuscript and providing guidance on some tricky technical issues.

Thanks to Adrienne Ingrum, Jana Burson, and Father Joseph Fessio for valuable editorial advice.

Thanks to Ruth Triplett for reading and editing several chapters, and to Ben Hastings for chasing down many sources and obscure references. Thanks to Lance Anderson and Geoff and Tami Biehn for providing information that found its way into the book.

We would like to thank Bruce Chapman, Steve Buri, and Steve Meyer at Discovery Institute for their support of this project, and Jennifer Marshall and J. D. Foster at the Heritage Foundation, who initially provided one of us (Jay) with the impetus to pursue some of the issues in this book.

Coauthoring a book when the two authors live fifteen hundred miles apart is not easy, so were grateful to Carol Stertzer and Victoria Beckham, who mediated and coordinated our schedules, drafts, and communications.

In addition, we want to thank all the religious and media leaders who attended two very important Summit meetings in 2010 and 2011. They inspired and encouraged us. Many of the concerns they shared with us helped the content of this book.

Finally, we must thank our lovely and patient wives, Betty and Ginny, who supported us with prayers and encouragement from the day we first talked about this project, until its completion.

Though we could not have pulled off this project without the help of others, we are responsible for any glitches or errors that remain.

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It wont last forever. We must take it or leave it.

C. S. L EWIS

If there must be trouble, said American revolutionary Thomas Paine, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. Americans in every era have shared Paines sentiment. They might have suffered through a Civil War, an economic depression, or a World War, but they hoped that the next generation would be better off than their own. We, too, live in a time of trouble. If we want our children to live in peace, we must make hard choices.

Our freedom, our way of life, and our future are in peril, and not just from hostile enemies abroad. During the twentieth century, we stood against the aggression of Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union. Now we contend with militant Islamists who see the United States as the Great Satan. But they will never defeat us without help from a more dangerous enemy within: corrosive ideas and the destructive policies they inspire. If destruction be our lot, Abraham Lincoln observed, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.

Prominent intellectuals and their equally prominent fellow travelers in the media teach that every value and every culture are equally valid, that theres nothing exceptional about the American Experiment, that the right to life and the sanctity of marriage are just social constructs we are free to deconstruct and abandon, that the idea of God might be a helpful coping device for some but has no place in public life, that free enterprise causes poverty and destroys the environment, and that the solution to these and virtually every other problem you can think of is an ever more powerful state.

These ideas have a practical impact.

Government spends pathologically and incurs runaway debt. A Supreme Court with unchecked power discovers new laws and principles in the Constitution, including ones that contradict the plain meaning of the text and the stated intentions of the Founders. In effectively denying the inalienable human rights the American Experiment is based on, the Supreme Court opines, At the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

As government has waxed, our liberties have waned. The loss is often just a petty inconvenience: a new form to fill out, a new permit or regulation, a new tax. Once in a while, though, the loss is dramatic enough to get our attention. In 2010, the federal government expanded its reach into health careone-sixth of our economy. Even this power grab, staggering as it is, is incremental. The new system is a kludge of private insurance and public regulations rather than full-blown socialism like the British have, and we wont see the most dramatic changes until after the next presidential election. It cant be sustained, though, so it sets in motion a series of events that will lead, inevitably, to socialized, government-rationed health care. Unless we dismantle this monstrosity, our private medical decisions will come under the authority of government bureaucrats. Once the Feds have jurisdiction over your liver and kidneys, the American ideal of limited government will surely be an empty phrase.

Many Christians and other people of faith support these programs not because they want to grow government but because they want to help the poor and needy. Thats laudable. Social justice, however, should not mean government leveling. Dr. Tony Evans has noted that the phrase social justice is often used as a catch phrase for illegitimate forms of government that promote the redistribution of wealth as well as the collectivistic expansion of civil government. Such expansion doesnt solve problems. Instead, it creates generational cycles of poverty and pathology in communities that were once poor but socially healthy and upwardly mobile. If we want to help the poor rather than just feel bad for them, then we need to learn how poverty is eradicated and wealth is created.

As freedom retreats and government grows, our basic human institutionsthe Church, marriage, and familyare battered by forces in the media and culture. People of faith are marginalized and squeezed out of the public square. Divorce and cohabitation rates continue to rise so fast that families with a married father and mother could soon be the exception rather than the rule. And we could soon reach the day when defending conjugal marriage between a man and a woman will be denounced as bigotry and hatred, and compared with the truly unjust treatment of minorities.

Still, most Americans have decent lives. Even in a time of high unemployment, most of us have our basic needs met, with some left over for extras. Law-abiding citizens dont fear being abducted by secret police in the middle of the night. Man has eradicated diseases that killed millions of people just a few decades ago. Americans live twice as long on average as our ancestors did a few hundred years ago. Ordinary people enjoy more food, technology, leisure, and entertainment choices than the greatest kings and queens in history. Advances

Other bright spots: Violent crime is down in our major cities (after reaching a peak in the 1970s). Abortion rates have declined every year since 1990, and more Americans than ever claim to be pro-life. Though polls show that support for traditional marriage is shrinking, thirty-one states have had votes on marriage-related issues, and traditional marriage has won every time. (In New York, same-sex marriage was legalized by the legislature and the governor, not a public referendum.)

Despite these encouraging signs, you dont need the gift of prophecy to see the long-term trends. Were like tourists on a sunny beach. Weve heard news of an earthquake on the seafloor, hundreds of miles away, but everything still looks normal. People are sipping iced tea or mai tais with little umbrellas, enjoying the warm sand and the sun overhead. Many think, Weve never had it so good. And yet, when we look closely, we notice that the beach is growing wider as the tide recedes toward the horizon.