Pro-life strike (abortion boycott) mission: To purify our prayers and other pro-life efforts, and to make a concrete difference, we refuse to fund the abortion industry. We boycott corporate abortion funding, and hold back abortion taxes. We pray for life; we will not pay for death!
At the outset of his message, the prophet proclaims this simple command, which must surely be the very beginning of any moral life.
Before any moral progress can be made, there must be a turning aside from wrongdoing, or at least from the most deadly and serious sins. Prior to any attempt to help others, more important than any intercessory prayer or fasting or sacrifice, one must stop doing harm. In order to promote and defend life, one must first stop murdering.
The pro-life strike in not any more ambitious than that. A simple equation. Abortion is murder, a heinous crime. To fund it is to partake in the crime. In order to pray, fast, vote, write letters, sign petitions, display signs, hold seminars, and all the other worthy pro-life activities - before all that, we must first stop partaking in the crime ourselves.
I have submitted the following suggestion to the "Contact" page of The Manhattan Declaration:
This amazing ground swell is a grace from on high, and may be the answer to our prayers and fasting. Please do not allow this to become just another feel-good symbolic gesture. Please offer some concrete things that folks can do beyond the usual advice to "pray, fast and spread the word". People are awaking; we need to do something, and not just be content to be awake.
Again, please consider this possibility for at least some of the signers of the The Manhattan Declaration: join together in a general tax strike until our government stops compelling us via our taxes to violate our consciences. Realizing that many would not find this agreeable, yet if a small fraction of your signers were to join this effort, it would be of tremendous impact, and would likely snowball, Lord willing.
As stated there, if anyone on your team wants to adopt this idea as his own, I would gladly turn the reins of this site over to someone with better credentials than myself.
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.
Since this so closely reflects the principles of the Pro-life strike, I am hereby including it on the Links page, and am inclined to consider it a sister site.
This younger sister has attracted an tremendous amount of traffic and an enviable number of signers in a very short time, while ProLifeStrike.org remains, by comparison, virtually unknown. But envy is uncalled for. Upon launching this Pro-life strike website 10 months ago, I lamented within the Manifesto page that no one was already doing this:
The concept of a pro-life tax strike is not new, but this website appears to be unique in seeking a concerted grass-roots effort.
and looked forward to the possibility of someone with better credentials picking up the baton:
If you're a recognized pro-life leader, you might offer to make this idea your own. Be our guest; assuming these general principles are followed, we willingly defer to someone with better credentials and an established following.
With 152 religious leaders and over 88,000 (at last count) signers, The Manhattan Declaration may be the answer to my plea, or at least a beginning. Although it falls short of actually calling for a tax strike, I heartily recommend this website, and pray that it will stir folks up to conscientious civil disobedience.
Suppose you surprise a burglar one night as you enter your home. The place is ransacked, he's carting off your most precious possessions,
and when he sees you, he pulls a gun and orders you to drop to the floor. "Just do what I say," he snarls, "and no one will get hurt."
Do you obey?
Probably you do. You obey the criminal, not because you want to obey, nor because you have a duty to obey, but because you're afraid of him. He has a gun, and you don't. So you obey.
Our government has turned criminal. Our government orders us to fund the slaughter of the innocents, which is against God's Law.
Some Christians would say that we ought to obey our government out of patriotic loyalty, and that we have a moral duty to pay our taxes. But is it ever a duty to obey a criminal?
Be honest. Is it not rather that you are afraid? The government has all the power, and so you obey. Not because you want to, nor because of a duty, but because you're afraid of what they will do to you if you don't obey. Just do as they say, and no one will get hurt.
But people are already being hurt. The babies are being slaughtered, with your tax dollars. Mothers are being maimed for life. Our religious freedom and our consciences are being trampled upon.
At least a few folks should resist the criminal. Please consider joining the strike.
As noted almost 2 months ago, David Little lost his New Brunswick appeal case, and was preparing to try to appeal to the Canadian Supreme Court. That possibility is becoming nearer.
As a friend of David, I have been privileged to see a copy of his "Application for Leave to Appeal" to the Supreme Court, and can tell you I am quite impressed. David finally has a good lawyer working with him on this important case, and this document shows that.
One of the points made in this application, and which has not been made heretofore, is the distinction between freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. Prior decisions have muddled this distinction, stupidly observing that Mr. Little's freedom of religion was not being denied by taxpayer funding for abortion. Evidently, what was meant was that David was still free to go to church on Sunday and pray to God, just so long as he didn't let his religious beliefs get in the way of his civic duty to fund the slaughter.
OK, says the present argument, perhaps Mr. Little's freedom of religion has not been explicitly denied. But his freedom of conscience has been trampled upon, and that, too, is a violation of human rights. Now, I'm not sure that this distinction should be pivotal. Last time I checked, religion and conscience were pretty solidly connected. But then again, I'm no lawyer.
What really grabbed my attention in this document was the argument that I have to believe is the pivotal legal argument: the primacy of natural law over positive law. A statement in the document says this:
As a matter of academic jurisprudence, the practical application of the founding principles means that positive law (such as legislation permitting the killing of innocent human beings) must yield to natural law (which stands on a higher law that forbids the legal killing of innocent human beings) in circumstances where there is a conflict.
In my opinion, it's high time this principle was invoked in a court of law, and I am delighted to finally see a lawyer who is willing to make this point.
I would love to learn from a lawyer if what I have heard is true: Didn't natural law used to be taught in law school as the basis for all human law?
Well, anyway, that's the news from the Canadian front. Stay tuned. And please keep David, his family, and this important case in your prayers.
A few years ago, my sister spoke of a conversation she had with a young lady from Vietnam. My sister asked what it was like to live under such an oppressive government. The young lady smiled and said
something to this effect:
"O, it's not so bad, really. Our government is kind of like a big rock in the middle of the road. It's there, and we can't pretend that it's not there, but we mostly just walk around it and go about our business."
Now, isn't that a beautiful attitude? We Americans can certainly take a lesson here, and I would like to propose just such an attitude adjustment for ourselves. This may be an essential prerequisite for any tax resistance effort. Scuttle the hat-in-hand servile posture of weaklings praying for mercy. And perhaps discard as well the shrill demands of anger. Let the bureaucrats be damned if their intent is to be damned. We may and must pray for their souls, but God will sort that out. Let us be about our business, and largely just ignore the pitiful fools and their unjust taxes and expenditures. We must take care of our own business and be careful not to be found paying for the slaughter of the innocents. We must simply find ways to walk around the damned rock.
In its denial of conscientious tax resistance, the muddled legal opinion cited in the previous post contains this pivotal statement:
Otherwise, everyone who disagrees with government policies and the expenditure of public monies in furtherance of those policies would be entitled to abandon their obligation to bear their proportionate share of the national debt while continuing to receive no-cost public benefits such as Medicare.
While this reasoning is rather infantile, there is something in its logic for us to be wary of. In his entire statement, Justice Robertson never questions the no-cost public benefits; their necessity is a foregone conclusion.
From there he reasons that we ought to be humble, grateful and compliant taxpayers before such governmental largesse and beneficence. The lesson for us is this: The Socialist road - and government aid is Socialist - may lead inexorably to a deadly and tyrannical end.
For example, a frequent complaint from pro-aborts is that they don't want to be burdened with supporting more welfare babies. Better that the taxpayer pay for their murder than to pay for their expensive little lives. Given a Socialist premise, their dour pessimism and murderous sympathies contain a certain sad logic. In sharp contrast, pro-lifers want to be more generous toward both mother and child, and see the new baby as a priceless resource, not a burden. But if both camps accept without challenge that the government (i.e. taxpayers) must fund and control the expenditures, it will just be a tug-o-war over money.
Or take the recent saccharin eulogies for the late Edward Kennedy coming from the mouths and pens of Christian leaders. After all, the good Senator worked hard to open the public spigot and fill the public trough. Yes, there was his unfortunate blindness toward the pre-born, but generally, he helped poor people, and surely that is the Christian thing to do, right? It's a balancing act - some good, some not so good. But consider that government aid programs and tax-funded abortion most usually have the same champions. Perhaps this is no anomaly; perhaps it's not a balancing act at all, but two threads in the same ungodly tapestry.
The confusion for Christians may begin in equating government programs with Christian charity. Rather than the Church or individual Christians giving from their own pockets, the deep pockets of government are tapped. This is so much neater, and seems so generous. The docile Christian taxpayer can now excuse his share in tax-funded abortion by noting that his taxes also help the poor. It's the balancing act again. How neat.
When the state becomes god, it becomes Moloch.
It's also neater for the recipient of government aid, who needn't humble himself before his neighbor. In the process, he, too becomes docile toward the government, afraid to challenge the hand that gives.
Ascribing such paternalistic power to the state is not a good thing, even when the results seem to be beneficial. Looking to the state to meet our needs, we become its slave. The state becomes our master, perhaps even our god. But when the state becomes god, it becomes Moloch. Or, at best, an incompetent god. The state that feeds you will eventually exhaust its food supply and starve you. The state that provides medical care will end up taking your life. The state that cares for you will soon ask for your soul. And will you, grown wan and dependent, acquiesce?
On April 29, David Little appeared before the New Brunswick Court of Appeal (roughly equivalent to a State Supreme Court in the U.S.) for the latest chapter in his legal case to establish that tax-funded abortion violates one's right of conscience and therefore one's freedom of religion. For more details on this important case, read David's own summary account here.
On August 20, the three-judge panel rendered their judgment against David, and has recommended that he be denied the right to appeal. The opinion, written by The Honourable Mr. Justice Joseph T. Robertson, an alleged Catholic, can be read (in PDF format) here.
David has repeatedly vowed that he will go to jail rather than obey the unjust human authorities in this matter. He has one more opportunity before fulfilling that vow, and is now preparing an appeal to the Canadian Supreme Court.
