Chapter Ten: Using the Law for Evil
The specter of communism did not disappear with the disintegration of the Communist Party in Eastern Europe
BY EDITORIAL TEAM OF "THE NINE COMMENTARIES ON THE COMMUNIST PARTY"
July 27, 2018 Updated: September 10, 2018
The Epoch Times is serializing a translation from the Chinese of a new book, How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, by the editorial team of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.
Table of Contents
1. Law and Faith
2. Law: An Instrument of Tyranny in Communist Regimes
a. Extralegal Policies of State Terror
b. Ever-Changing Standards of Right and Wrong
c. The Chinese Communist Party: Official Neglect of the Law
3. How Communism Warps Law in the West
a. Subverting the Moral Foundations of the Law
b. Seizing the Powers of Legislation and Promulgation
c. Passing Evil Laws
d. Restricting Law Enforcement
e. Using Foreign Laws to Weaken U.S. Sovereignty
4. Restoring the Spirit of the Law
References
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1. Law and Faith
Law is the iron force of fairness and justice that affirms good and punishes evil. What is good and what is evil must be determined by those who write the laws. From the perspective of faith, these criteria come from gods. Religious scripture provided the basis for the laws that govern human society.
The Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylon is the first written law in human history. Engraved in the stone tablet, above the code itself, is a powerful scene: Shamash, god of the sun and justice, bestows the laws to King Hammurabi. This is the depiction of a god granting a human sovereign the authority to govern his people using the rule of law.
For the Hebrews, the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament were considered to be simultaneously divine as well as secular law — a tradition that became the foundation of Western legal culture. Starting with fourth-century Roman emperors and the East Roman Justinian I and his successors and continuing to Alfred the Great, the first of Britain’s Anglo-Saxon kings, the legal system took the Ten Commandments of Moses and Christian doctrine as their inspiration. [1]
Followers of religion believe that in order to be considered legitimate, the law must accommodate divine standards of good and evil, as well as religious teachings. The thinking behind nonviolent civil disobedience in the United States can be traced back to early Christian doctrine. The Roman emperor commanded that Christians worship Roman gods and that statues of the emperor be erected before Jewish synagogues. As this meant direct violation of the first two Commandments, Christians opted to face crucifixion or be burned at the stake rather than follow them. In other words, secular law must be subordinate to divine commandment, which is sacred and inviolable.
In general, the Ten Commandments can be divided into two categories. The first four describe the relationship between man and God, that is, what constitutes the appropriate reverence for God. The other six govern relationships between people, and at their core reflect Jesus’s teaching to love others as you love yourself. Reverence for God is an imperative that enables humanity to maintain unchanged the principles of fairness and justice.
The same is true of China, where historically the law was promulgated by imperial decree. The emperor or Son of Heaven must follow providence and the principles of Heaven and earth. This is the “Tao” or Way imparted by Lao Zi and the Yellow Emperor. The Han Dynasty scholar Dong Zhongshu said: “The greatness of Tao originates from Heaven. Heaven never changes, and neither does the Tao.” [2] In ancient Chinese usage, “Heaven” is not an abstraction of the natural forces, but a supreme god. Faith in the Tao of Heaven forms the moral bedrock of Chinese culture. The Chinese legislative system derived from this belief influenced China for thousands of years.
American legal scholar Harold J. Berman believed that the role of the law coexists with compliance to overall principles of social morality and faith. Even under the separation of church and state, both are mutually dependent. In any society, the concepts of justice and legality must trace their roots to that which is considered holy and sacred. [3]
Put another way, the law must carry authority, which comes from the fairness and justice endowed by gods. Not only is the law fair and just, it is also holy. The modern legal system retains many facets of religious ceremony that strengthen its power.
2. Law: An Instrument of Tyranny in Communist Regimes
Communist parties are anti-theist cults. They will never follow the teachings of righteous gods in their legislative principles, and they aim to sever societies’ links to their ancestral culture and traditional values. From the very beginning, there was no prospect for communist parties to maintain fairness or justice.
a. Extralegal Policies of State Terror
In traditional society, Christians talked about loving others as you love yourself. Confucian teaching says that the benevolent man loves others. Here, love is not limited to the narrow concept of love between a man and a woman, or of the love that exists among family members or friends. Love also encompasses benevolence, mercy, justice, selflessness, and other virtues. With this cultural foundation, not only is the law sacred, but it embodies the spirit of love in human society.
No legal system can hope to account for any and all possible forms of conflict and provide judgments for each. Thus, laws are not only specific regulations, but they must also factor in the subjectivity of all parties. The judge must follow the spirit of the law and pass a verdict that abides by the principle of benevolence.
In the Temple of Jerusalem, Jesus admonished the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, for despite strictly adhering to the words of Moses, they ignored virtues required by the code, such as justice, mercy, truthfulness, and the like. Seeing beyond literal meaning, Jesus healed on the Sabbath and sat with gentiles, for what he cared about was the spirit of kindness within the doctrines.
By contrast, communism is rooted in hatred. It not only hates God, but also hates the culture, lifestyle, and all traditions that gods established for humanity. Marx did not mince words in expressing his desire to doom himself to ruin and bring the world down with him. He said, “With contempt shall I fling my glove in the world’s face, then shall I stride through the wreckage a creator!” [4]
Sergey Genadievich Nechayev, the crazed revolutionary of Czarist Russia, wrote in his pamphlet, The Revolutionary Catechism that the revolutionary “has broken all the bonds which tie him to the social order and the civilized world with all its laws, moralities, and customs, and with all its accepted conventions.” “He is their implacable enemy, and if he continues to live with them it is only in order to destroy them more speedily.” [5]
Nechayev demonstrated clear hatred of the world and saw himself beyond the authority of the law. He used the clerical term “catechism” to describe his vision of a cult that despises the world. “He is not a revolutionary if he has any sympathy for this world,” Nechayev said.
Lenin expressed a similar view: “Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.” [6]
Wielding political power to kill, torture, and mete out collective punishment in the absence of legal restraints is nothing other than state terror. This cold-blooded brutality is the first step taken under the rule of classical communist regimes.
In the month following the Bolshevik overthrow of the Russian government in 1917, hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the course of political struggle. The Bolsheviks established the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, abbreviated Cheka, and endowed it with powers of summary execution. From 1918 to 1922, the Chekists killed no less than two million people without trial. [7]
Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, former propaganda minister of the Central Committee, Soviet Politburo member, and secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), wrote in the preface of his book Bitter Cup: Russian Bolshevism and Reform Movement: “This century alone, 60 million people in Russia died as a result of war, hunger and repression.” Using public archives, Yakovlev estimated the number of people killed in Soviet campaigns of persecution at 20 million–30 million.
In 1987, the Politburo of the Soviet Union set up a committee, of which Yakovlev was a member, to review miscarriages of justice under Soviet rule. After reviewing thousands of files, Yakovlev wrote: “There’s a feeling that I’ve long been unable to shake. It seems that the perpetrators of these atrocities are a group of people who are mentally deranged, but I fear that such an explanation runs the risk of oversimplifying the problem.” [8]
To put it more plainly, Yakovlev saw that the atrocities committed in the communist era didn’t stem from ordinary human thinking or impulses—rather, they were carefully planned. These crimes were not committed for the greater good of the world, but for a deep hatred of life itself. The drivers of communism commit atrocities not out of ignorance, but out of malice.
Following the establishment of the Soviet Union, state terrorism was imposed by subsequent communist regimes, such as China, North Korea, and Cambodia.
As described in “Commentary Seven: On the Communist Party’s History of Killing” from Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) caused between 60 million and 80 million deaths prior to the period of reform and opening up—a figure that may exceed the combined death toll of both world wars. [9]
b. Ever-Changing Standards of Right and Wrong
While communism ignores all sense of legality to practice state terrorism in pursuit of its domestic goals, it puts on a show in front of Western countries by claiming it’s committed to implementing the rule of law. It does this so that it can engage, infiltrate, and subvert free societies in the name of trade and economic partnership, cultural exchange, and geopolitical cooperation.
For instance, at the onset of reform and opening up in 1979, the CCP passed a “criminal procedure law,” ostensibly to strengthen the judiciary institution. But this law has not been seriously enforced.
According to Marx, the law is a product of class contradiction and a tool that embodies the will of the ruling class. The laws of a communist party come neither from God, nor from a genuine love of the people or for the sake of maintaining a fair and just society. The interests of the ruling group, that is, the communist party, are all that matter. As the goals and interests of the party change, its laws change as well.
Naturally, once the CCP seized power, it adopted class struggle as the guideline and proceeded to rob the entire citizenry. It promulgated laws against the crime of “counter-revolutionary activity,” which applied to everyone who opposed the Party’s policies of theft. The CCP punished counter-revolutionaries with prison or shooting.
After completing the process of mass robbery to implement its public ownership, the CCP needed a way to keep what it had stolen. It shifted its priorities to making economic construction the focus and implemented laws that protected private property.
In essence, this meant little more than protecting the Party’s vested interests, as property belonging to ordinary Chinese is not, in practice, afforded the same protections. The endless compulsory demolitions of people’s homes to make way for land development illustrates the regime’s continued application of violence to infringe on the right to private property.
In early 1999, the Communist Party announced the need to “rule the country according to law.” [10] A few months later, it began the nationwide persecution of Falun Gong practitioners who follow the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The Party established the Gestapo-like 610 Office to carry out the anti-Falun Gong campaign. To fulfill its mission, the 610 Office has the authority to bypass all laws and judicial procedures. It manipulates the public security and judicial bureaucracy to suppress Falun Gong.
The Party must continuously conjure new enemies so as to intimidate the people, cover up its monstrous crimes, and achieve the goal of brutal repression for its own sake. The modes and targets of persecution are ever-changing and include the campaigns against landlords and capitalists, the 1989 massacre of students in Tiananmen Square, and the suppression of Falun Gong practitioners and human rights lawyers.
Accordingly, the law must change as well. In over sixty years of rule, the Party has promulgated four constitutions, the last of which has undergone four revisions since its introduction in 1982. Gaining experience from multiple political campaigns, the CCP has used the law to adjust and disguise its motives and actions. Sometimes it does not even bother to apply this camouflage.
c. The Chinese Communist Party: Official Neglect of the Law
The CCP fills its constitution with verbose language in an effort to show that it is committed to rule of law and civilized international norms. In practice, however, the constitution is never strictly followed, and rights such as the freedoms of speech, belief, and association are not actually protected.
According to Marxist theory, law reflects the will of the ruling class and is an instrument in its governance. For a communist party, then, passing and amending laws to suppress its enemies follows as a matter of course.
Under this kind of system, anyone who dares to challenge the “will of the ruling class” — that is, anyone who opposes the interests of the communist party — can be subject to legal persecution as a class enemy, whether they are unemployed workers, demobilized soldiers, farmers whose land was expropriated, human rights lawyers, or simply those struggling to make ends meet.
To lawyers practicing in communist countries, the laws on the books always make way for practical concerns. If a lawyer tries to cite the law and argue in favor of justice, the judge and prosection will shut him down by talking about the supposed spirit of the law. They even blatantly say that the court is run by the communist party and must follow its orders. Whatever the thoughts of these individual court workers, what they say indeed reflects the spirit of law that exists under communist regimes.
In the Chinese court system, during hearings involving Falun Gong practitioners persecuted in China, the judges may say these kinds of things: Why are you bringing up the law? I care only about politics. The Party doesn’t allow defense. The leaders’ words are the law. The Communist Party leads the court, so we need to follow the Party line. No legal procedure is necessary for Falun Gong issues. Don’t talk to me about conscience. [11]
English philosopher Francis Bacon once wrote: “One foul sentence doth more hurt than many foul examples. For these do but corrupt the stream, the other corrupteth the fountain.” [12]
The laws of the Communist Party, ever-malleable and only selectively practiced, hold no sanctity from which to derive legitimate authority. Over the past century, the “spirit of law” that governs the Party’s legal system has brought about countless injustices and overseen the deaths of 100 million innocent people—a debt of blood that no representative of the communist cause can ever atone for.
“A murderer must pay with his life, just as a debtor with money,” as the common proverb goes. Were the Communist Party to truly enforce the law, it would become liable for its bloody history.
3. How Communism Warps Law in the West
In communist countries, the devil manipulates the law as an instrument for maintaining its rule, reinforcing its ideology, and suppressing the people. In free countries, its aim is to subvert traditional faith and the law’s moral foundations, to distort the standards of good and evil, seize the powers of legislation and enforcement, thus putting demonic norms into practice.
Law is closely related to politics, religion, education, and other fields. The United States has long been the mainstay of rule of law. But today, as communism extends its reach to every corner of the world, Western law cannot escape its infiltration and subversion. This section examines the multifaceted erosion of U.S. legal institutions.
a. Subverting the Moral Foundations of the Law
Law based on religion and faith is sacred. But as communist parties and their various followers around the world promoted atheism and the theory of evolution, the connection between law and God has been severed. Law has been largely reduced to an instrument of revenge, arbitration, bargaining, and allocation of benefits. With its divine nature under siege, the spirit of the law began to shift from its role of maintaining fairness and justice to being the expression of popular notions and desires. This opened the door for the communist specter, working through its mortal agents, to pass laws of its choosing in order to undermine society and come closer to its destructive aims.
In the United States, the communist influence in social justice and modern liberalism have appropriated the concepts of freedom, progress, and tolerance to alter the moral state of society and with it the moral foundations of the law. Using these causes to reject and destroy the law’s moral and religious underpinnings affects what kind of laws can be passed and how they will be interpreted by the judges.
Marriage, for example, is considered by traditional faiths to be a holy institution comprising the union of man and wife. Same-sex marriage by definition violates these teachings, and its introduction to society necessitates a shift in the legal definition and interpretation of the laws governing marriage. On the other hand, if the people abide by divine commandment and uphold the standards set by their faith, the moral state of society will not change, and secular law will remain stable, as it is based on the principles ordained by gods. If gods held a certain kind of behavior to be immoral 2,000 years ago, it should be immoral today as well.
Liberalism, however, rejects traditional belief and moral judgment. It regards morality as a secular agreement that changes according to the development of society. Marriage, therefore, is regarded as a simple contract between two people who are willing to state their commitment to each other. Recognition of same-sex marriage is based on the ostensible premise of freedom and progress, but this premise is malleable and will inevitably result in the corruption of the law.
Liberalism and progressivism have brought about the separation of traditional morality from justice. This was reflected in an abortion case that reached the Supreme Court in 1992. Three justices stated: “Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision. Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.” [13]
Put another way, what the justices meant is that the law prioritizes freedom over morality, and the values of liberty and morality are separate. But liberty, as established by the American Founding Fathers, is a “self-evident” principle, that is, it is bestowed by God—or, as the U.S. Constitution puts it, the Creator. Rejecting the universal standards set by the Creator in order to increase the range of so-called freedoms is a method the devil uses to distort the law and lead humanity to its fall.
b. Seizing the Powers of Legislation and Promulgation
Before a new law takes effect, it goes through a variety of steps, including its drafting, political endorsement, court rulings about its legality, or its implementation by law enforcement officials. During this process, individuals or groups in academia, media, legal circles, and even the entertainment industry exert influence over the legislation and enactment of law.
The communist specter found its representatives across society to take control over the legislative process. Various political lobbies made their best efforts to fill government agencies with leftists. In the judicial branch, they became judges, prosecutors, or other officials responsible for the carriage of justice.
A liberal president will do everything in his power to appoint like-minded justices to the Supreme Court, where they will use their influence to warp the law, or he will use his executive powers to circumvent the legal system. Historically, liberal U.S. presidents have tended to grant more pardons. In a recent administration, the president commuted the sentences of 1,385 convicts and granted a total of 212 pardons, the greatest number since the administration of President Harry Truman. [14] In one of his final acts before leaving the White House, the president commuted the sentences of 209 individuals and granted pardons to 64 others. Most of those who received pardons were nonviolent drug offenders. One exception was a man who had been charged and found guilty of leaking 700,000 classified military documents. With presidential clemency, his sentence was reduced, and he served only four years of his 35-year sentence. [15]
While the president has the constitutionally ordained power to grant pardons, overuse of this power works against the function and purpose of the law, which is to punish wrongdoing and support upstanding citizens.
In 1954, then-senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who later served as the 36th president of the United States, introduced the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits non-profit organizations, including churches, from engaging in certain activities. Violators could have their tax exemptions revoked. Wary of this, some Christian churches instruct their priests to avoid certain political topics when speaking at the pulpit, including controversial social issues such as abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, stem cell research, and so on.
The communist specter also manipulated all political groups in an attempt to change law enforcement by prosecutors through elections. Sent to his position by progressive patrons and political groups, one district attorney fired 31 prosecutors during his first week on the job. Calling for an end to “mass incarceration,” he also ordered the rest of his office to stop prosecuting marijuana possession. There are similar situations in other states. The president of the union for prosecutors said that the effect was to call on prosecutors to pick and choose which laws they would enforce. In his opinion, it was a very risky phenomenon when the elected officials were asked to ignore laws they had sworn to uphold. [16]
Judges also have jurisdiction to cancel orders from administrative departments. For instance, U.S. immigration law gives the president the right to deny foreigners permission to enter the country in emergency situations. However, some judges influenced by liberalism considered a recent travel ban issued by the president to be religious discrimination. Their rulings delayed the ban for over four months until the executive action was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Lawyers have a great influence on court rulings. The political leanings of a legal association can have a direct impact on whether the will of the law can be executed. In one lawyers’ association that commands nationwide presence, the founder is a self-avowed socialist who believes in public ownership and says that his ultimate goal is to establish communism. [17] The association boasts tens of thousands of members around the country and an annual budget in the hundreds of millions. It files lawsuits to support causes such as same-sex marriage, the right of homosexuals to adopt children, and abortion rights, and to combat discrimination against homosexuality, bisexuality, and the like.
Liberalism and progressivism occupy key political positions across the United States and dominate academia, the media, and social movements. This has allowed the devil to wield unprecedented power over the legislative and judicial processes.
c. Passing Evil Laws
Prohibiting the Praise of God
God is everywhere in American life. The country’s motto is “In God We Trust.” This not only appears in the lyrics of the U.S. national anthem but also on the dollar bills used every day. The U.S. Declaration of Independencedescribed God as the Creator and stated that human rights are what the Creator has given us. All U.S. government officials, including the president and judges, say “So help me God” when they are sworn in. The most common ending in presidential speeches is “God bless America.” The Pledge of Allegiance recited in public schools describes the United States as “one nation under God.”
Some of these traditions have lasted for more than two hundred years, almost as long as the history of the United States since its founding. But in the past 60 years, they have been constantly challenged by communist followers.
One national lawyers association aims to remove the Ten Commandments from public display across the United States. The most famous case occurred in Montgomery, Alabama. In 2001, the association called for the removal of a slate bearing the Ten Commandments that was located in the rotunda of the state court. They found a judge appointed by the Democratic president of the time to hear the case. In a 76-page verdict, the judge ruled in favor of the lawyers association. The specifics of the ruling may sound ridiculous. For example, the judge claimed that the “solemn ambience of the rotunda,” the frescoes behind the slate, and the atmosphere created by a picture window featuring a waterfall constituted sufficient reason to have the Ten Commandments removed. The judge also said that the slate’s “sloping top” resembled an open Bible and gave viewers cause to “feel as though the State of Alabama is advancing, endorsing, favoring or preferring, Christianity.” [18]
This is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. As early as 1980, the Supreme Court had banned the Ten Commandments from being displayed in public schools. This decision catalyzed an overall movement across the country to have the Ten Commandments removed from public view. In Utah, the ACLU even offered a reward to anyone willing to report those plaques and slates that had not yet been taken down. [19]
One U.S. Circuit Court ruled on June 26, 2002, that public schools are prohibited from holding “sworn oaths” because they included the words “under God.” This decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court on June 14, 2004. [20]
This is an ongoing legal battle. The American national anthem, national motto, Pledge of Allegiance, school prayers, and the like are under siege by atheists and leftist activists.
Here, a brief explanation is necessary to clarify that “God,” as used above, was a general reference to the divine, or the “Creator” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Each religion has its own understanding and recognition of the Creator. Therefore, the word “God” itself does not promote a particular religion or violate the constitutional amendments of the United States. In a nation of deep faith, the rise of an extreme movement attempting to prohibit public praise of God reflects the extent to which the devil has penetrated the field of law.
Altering the Spirit of the Constitution: Interpretation and Case Law
In the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers established the separation of powers, with the judicial branch originally having the least power. Congress (the legislative branch) is responsible for passing laws, the President (the executive branch) is responsible for governance according to those executing and enforcing laws, and the Supreme Court (the judicial branch) has neither the power to pass laws nor to govern.
While the Supreme Court was hearing a case concerning the Pledge of Allegiance, polls indicated that 90 percent of Americans supported retaining the phrase “under God.” In the House of Representatives, there were 416 votes in favor of retention to just three against. [21] In the Senate, the result was 99 votes to zero. [22] The Congressional decision reflected the genuine opinion of the American public.
As elected representatives of the people, members of Congress and the president serve terms that range from two to six years before another election is held. As long as the public and mainstream society is guided by divine standards of morality, the extent to which the president and members of Congress can fall toward the left is limited. For example, if mainstream society is against same-sex marriage, it will be difficult for a congressman or senator to support it. If these politicians go against public opinion, they risk being voted out of office.
On the other hand, Supreme Court justices don’t need to heed public opinion, since the terms they hold are for life. Once appointed, they may work for decades. Furthermore, there are only nine justices. It is comparatively easier to influence the decisions made by these nine individuals than it is to alter the whole of mainstream opinion.
Judges rule according to the law, and laws are passed or repealed based on the Constitution. Thus in order to change society through legislation, it is imperative to change the Constitution. In the United States, amending the Constitution requires support from two-thirds of Congress, and three-quarters of the states. These strict measures make it difficult to amend the Constitution outright.
The progressives’ strategy is therefore not to amend the Constitution, but to change the original meaning of the words in the Constitution by reinterpreting them. They regard the Constitution as a “living” and continually “evolving” document, and going on precedent set by the Supreme Court, encode the views of the Left into law. In this way, they covertly exert their will over the Constitution, which is tantamount to undermining it.
Divine commandment is no longer the highest principle. The Constitution has taken a heavy beating under the gavels of liberal Supreme Court justices. Since Supreme Court rulings are final and must be respected by even the president, the judicial branch is taking an ever-increasing share of authority among the three branches established by the Founding Fathers. In practice, Supreme Court justices have acquired partial legislative and even executive powers.
Liberal Supreme Court justices have brought a number of consequences to American society that are severe and difficult to remedy. As things stand, the Supreme Court can, through case hearings, order the removal of the Ten Commandments from public schools and spaces, rewrite criminal procedures, raise taxes, recognize the right to abortion and same-sex marriage, allow the publication and display of pornography, and so on.
The growing supremacy of the judiciary combined with the ruling of liberal judges has given the specter of communism an important tool for achieving its designs.
Promoting Obscene Content in the Name of Freedom
The 1960s was an era of deep transformation across American society. Left-wing students drove the anti-war movement, rock-and-roll, hippie culture, the feminist movement, sexual liberation, and other anti-traditional currents, raising chaos throughout the country.
The chief justice of the Supreme Court in this period was the liberal Earl Warren. During Warren’s term as chief justice, the Supreme Court made very influential and far-reaching rulings. This included the prohibition of prayers in public school [23] and the allowance of publications featuring sexually explicit material. [24]
In her book The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, scholar Phyllis Schlafly provided statistics showing that from 1966 to 1970, the Supreme Court made 34 rulings that overruled lower level court decisions to prohibit obscene content. [25] The Supreme Court’s rulings were not signed, and majority consisted of just one or two lines. Put another way, even the justices themselves didn’t bother to rationalize their decisions.
In 1966, Hollywood lifted its restrictions on showing obscene content in film. A profusion of various types of pornographic works soon followed, and today they have saturated every corner of society.
The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. It was intended to mean the right to express political opinions, not to manufacture and disseminate pornography.
Legalizing Drug Abuse
As the world got ready to welcome the new year on December 31, 2017, CNN broadcast a piece of footage with multiple shots of a female reporter smoking marijuana. Visibly under the influence, she appeared disoriented and unaware of her surroundings. The broadcast received widespread criticism. [26]
In 1996, California became the first U.S. state to legalize marijuana as a prescription drug, and many states soon followed suit. By 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana for “recreational use,” that is, they legalized drug abuse. In these two states, planting, manufacturing, and selling marijuana to adults is completely legal. It has also been legalized in California. In June 2018, the Canadian government announced that marijuana use would become legal nationwide in the near future.
Aside from causing serious damage to the human body, drugs are psychologically addicting. Once dependent, people can abandon all moral inhibitions in order to obtain more of the drug. On the other hand, those who support legalizing marijuana believe as long as marijuana can be obtained legally, that would be an effective way to reduce drug trafficking. They say that legalization allows stricter regulation over the drug, and accordingly a reduction in drug-related crime.
By legalizing drugs, many governments anticipate saving billions of dollars in revenue. But it’s not hard to see that as greater numbers of people become addicts, lose their desire to work, and suffer poor health, productivity will fall, and the aggregate wealth created by society will shrink. It is self-evident that legalizing drugs cannot increase government revenue in the long term.
Furthermore, judgment of right or wrong shouldn’t be based on economic profit, but on divine standards. Traditional morality sees the human form as sacred and created in divine likeness. Western religions believe the body is the “temple of the Holy Ghost,” while in the East, it was believed that the body could improve through cultivation to become a Buddha or a Tao. Drug abuse, then, is an act of desecration.
According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, one of the important figures lobbying for the legalization of marijuana in the United States is a wealthy progressive. [27] In March 2017, six senators wrote letters to the U.S. State Department requesting that this individual be investigated for using his foundation to promote progressivism abroad and subvert conservative governments. [28]
The legalization of drugs is an additional step in making people lose their inhibitions and cut them off them from the divine. As society experiences turmoil and economic downturns, conditions arise for communists to establish political power.
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage
The book of Genesis describes the destruction of Sodom. One of the crimes the doomed city’s residents committed was homosexuality. This is the origin of the term “sodomy,” meaning sexual relations between men. Those with basic knowledge of the Bible would know that homosexuality goes against the will of God.
In June 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that same-sex marriage is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. [29] When the ruling was passed, the U.S. president at the time changed the banner on the White House’s official Twitter account to the rainbow flag in support of LGBT rights. The Supreme Court’s ruling prohibited the 14 states that banned same-sex marriage from enforcing these laws.
In August 2015, a Rowan County clerk refused to issue marriage certificates for same-sex couples due to her beliefs. She was later jailed for five days since she had defied a U.S. federal court order to issue the documents. [30] In fact, the court had violated her constitutional right to freedom of belief.
When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, former governor of Arkansas and former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called it “judicial tyranny.” [31]
Constitutional lawyer and scholar Phyllis Schlafly listed nine methods judges use to undermine social morality. They rewrite the Constitution, censor acknowledgment of God, redefine marriage, undermine U.S. sovereignty, promote pornography, support feminism, handicap law enforcement, interfere with elections, and impose taxes. [32]
As of 2017, 25 countries and territories have officially acknowledged or accepted same-sex marriage, including developed Western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. This is a disturbing development. The law has the power to reinforce morality or influence its movement in a new direction. To legalize behavior that deviates from traditional moral values is the same as having the government and laws train the people to betray morality and disobey God’s commandments.
Under the influence of political correctness, criticism of the chaos that our society finds itself in—whether from the people, civil associations, or religious groups in particular—can be easily escalated to the level of politics or law, and result in restrictions on free speech or other punishments. Following the legalization of immoral behavior, any comments or criticisms on related issues are often accused of violating laws, such as those concerning gender discrimination. The law has been twisted into a means of strangling people’s ability to make moral judgments. It is essentially promoting homosexuality and encouraging people to give themselves to endless desire and degeneracy.
Doing Away With Personal Responsibility
Traditional religions emphasize the importance of personal accountability. In the Bible, the book of Ezekiel uses father and son as a parable to depict good and bad examples. Though they are father and son, they bear the consequences of their respective conduct and are not personally responsible for each other’s actions. As the Bible says, “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The Chinese believe that goodness begets goodness and that evil will be punished, which states the same principle.
Liberty means responsibility. A person has the right and freedom to choose his ideas, speech, and actions. He also needs to be responsible for his own choices. Once a person has committed a crime, he should be punished accordingly. This is the principle of justice. Liberal judges, however, encourage people to shirk their responsibilities and shift accountability to prevailing social conditions, such as their economic or racial background, physical and mental health, education, and other demographic parameters, allowing criminals to escape legal punishment.
d. Restricting Law Enforcement
Under liberal influence, many judges or legislative agencies deliberately curtail the legitimate power of law enforcement, effectively turning a blind eye to crime. The communist specter’s aim in doing this is to paralyze the state apparatus in order to stir up social turmoil, which in turn creates excuses either for the expansion of government, or the necessary conditions for a coup or revolution.
Many states have passed far-left laws, a typical example being the “sanctuary state” act. Among other provisions, a sanctuary state prohibits federal officials from arresting illegal immigrants in local prisons, including those with outstanding warrants for their arrest. Local police are barred from cooperating with federal agents to enforce immigration laws.
This poses a serious security risk for the public. In July 2015, illegal immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate shot and killed a young woman who was walking along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Zarate had a history of crime: He had been charged with seven felonies involving drugs and robbery, and possession of weaponry, and had been deported five times. When San Francisco passed its sanctuary city law, Zarate was released from custody and evaded the federal immigration authorities who had been demanding his sixth deportation.
When a criminal stands trial, extremely strict standards are placed on the prosecution. This is ostensibly to protect the legitimate rights of the suspect, but often the result is that criminals are able to take advantage of loopholes in the law. Cunning suspects, or those who enjoy status or privileges, those who understand the law and regulations, or those who hire capable attorneys, can drag out the legal process at great cost to the judicial system. Even guilty suspects can be very hard to bring to justice.
Influenced by the spread of “sexual liberation,” verdicts in cases involving sex crimes often cite findings in recent research to argue that the damage caused by the abuse is little or nonexistent. Many cases have been resolved by reducing the sentences of sexual predators. [33]
Many ordinary criminals have had their original sentences reduced as well, owing to budget shortages or on account of prisoners’ rights. The real motivation, though, is political correctness—to weaken the power of the law, disturb social order, and pave the road for further expansion of government.
For the law to be fair, it must administer strict punishment to those who commit unpardonable crimes. Since antiquity, murder was punishable by death. But today, some countries and territories have abolished capital punishment on such the grounds of humanity, tolerance, or a supposed respect for life.
Under the influence of twisted liberalism and progressivism, some people give undue weight to prisoners’ rights—no matter the severity of the crime—while remaining strangely silent regarding the victims. If a murderer is fed and housed by taxpayer money, his loss of freedom is hardly a fair trade for the death of the victim and the trauma it causes to loved ones.
Many researchers in the United States have found that capital punishment is effective in deterring crime. David Muhlhausen, senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation, testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007 that capital punishment has a deterrent effect and can save lives.
In the 1990s, three professors, including Paul Rubin at Emory University, examined 20 years of crime statistics from 3,000 cities and towns across the United States and concluded that “each execution results, on average, in eighteen fewer murders.” [34]
Even scholars who are against capital punishment must concede that it has a deterrent effect.
By pushing the concepts of freedom and legality to extremes, the devil has distorted the law and robbed it of its sanctity.
e. Using Foreign Laws to Weaken US Sovereignty
When liberal judges can’t find wording in the U.S. Constitution to support their personal opinions, they use laws passed in other countries to sustain their arguments.
For instance, in the case of Lawrence v. Texas (2003), a judge wanted to repeal a Texas statute “banning consenting homosexual adults from engaging in sexual acts,” but could not find anything from the Constitution to support his case. He then quoted an “authoritative agency” outside of the United States as saying that homosexuality was “an integral part of human freedom in many other countries,” and successfully repealed the law. This case resulted in repeals of similar statutes in 13 other states.
Communist thought has spread around the world in different forms. The socialist trend throughout Asia and Europe is plain to see, and it has great influence in Africa and Latin America as well. Countries such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela are socialist countries in all but name. Even Canada is not free of its influence.
Commerce and globalization have brought the United States into closer connection with other countries. In order to introduce elements of socialism domestically, liberal judges leverage the excuse of conforming to international convention and then use case law to alter the spirit of the Constitution. As leader of the free world, if even the United States cannot maintain basic traditional standards, the entire globe will be lost to communism.
4. Restoring the Spirit of the Law
Today, the law has been turned against the divine teachings that originally inspired it. Legality has become the method the devil uses to trample upon the moral foundation of human society, bringing it to the brink of destruction.
Anti-traditional and immoral legislation has weakened the ability of the law to maintain social order, leaving the expansion of state power as the only “solution” to the malaise.
De Tocqueville, the French thinker, cautioned that dictatorship was the only means of government that could bring people together in a society devoid of faith. Today’s perversion of the law is eroding traditional beliefs and driving society toward tyranny.
Should the devil succeed in obtaining full control of the law, it would prove a powerful weapon in the corruption of humanity. Under such circumstances, people would be left with only two options: either to refuse to follow the authorities, or to betray their morality in order to comply with the degenerate laws. The former would mean the destruction of law in practice, for as jurist Harold Berman put it, “The law must be believed in; otherwise, it exists in name only.” The latter option entails a slippery slope of moral decline, creating a downward cycle in which the law and the state of society compete in a race to reach rock bottom. In either case, society at large would have no way out of this demonic vortex.
The 1958 book The Naked Communist lists 45 goals pursued by the Communist Party to infiltrate and undermine the United States. Seven of them concern the legal system. [37]
The 16th goal consists of using the court’s technical decisions to weaken important U.S. institutions by claiming that their conduct infringes upon public rights.
The 24th goal is to abolish all laws restricting indecent content by portraying them as censorship that violates free speech and expression.
The 29th is to challenge the Constitution as flawed, obsolete, or incompatible with international practice.
The 33rd is to abolish all laws and legislations that interfere with Communist Party operations.
The 38th goal is to make it legal for non-police agents to carry out arrests. All behavioral problems are to be delegated to mental health workers.
The 39th is to wrest control over the field of psychiatry and impose mental health laws to control individuals who don’t accept communist aims.
The 45th goal is to abolish the Connally Reservation, also known as the Connally Amendment. This regulation gives the United States the right to favor domestic jurisdiction over rulings by international courts. The purpose of this goal is to prevent the United States from protecting its domestic sovereignty and instead to have international bodies such as the World Court overrule the U.S. judiciary.
Comparing the goals listed above with what has already been implemented, it is apparent that communism is well-placed to continue undermining U.S. law and justice.
Be it state-sponsored policies of hatred in countries controlled by communist regimes, or regulation in Western countries where communist ideology has eroded the legislative and judicial institutions, in both cases the target is the spirit of the law—that is, reverence for the divine and traditional morality.
If we are unable to maintain the moral standards dictated by divine commandment as our criterion for recognizing ultimate good and evil, then we are doomed to lose our judicial independence to the communist specter. Agents under the influence of communism will use the law to suppress the righteous and promote the wicked—unwittingly executing the specter’splans to exterminate humanity. There is little time left to reverse this trend.
References
[1] Harold J. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974), 51–55.
[2] Ban Gu, The Book of Han: Chronicle of Dong Zhongshu [班固，《漢書·董仲舒傳》]
[3] Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion.
[4] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 1958, 2014).
[5] Sergey Nechayev, The Revolutionary Catechism, 1869. https://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/nechayev/catechism.htm.
[6] Vladimir Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/common_liberal.htm.
[7] Li Yuzhen, Work of Inssurection: 20th-Century Russian History, (Yanhuang Chunqiu, Tenth edition of 2010 ) [ 李玉貞， 〈一部顛覆性著作：《二十世紀俄國史》〉，《炎黃春秋》2010年第十期。]
[8] A. N. Yakovlev, “To Chinese Readers (Preface to the Chinese Edition),” Bitter Cup: Russian Bolshevism and Reform Movement, trans. Xu Kui et. al., (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1999), 10.
[9] “Commentary Seven: On the Communist Party’s History of Killing,” Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, The Epoch Times, http://www.ninecommentaries.com/english-7.
[10] On March 15, 1999, the “Amendment of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China” adopted at the Second Session of the Ninth National People’s Congress inserted in Article 5 of the Constitution: “The People’s Republic of China implements the rule of law and builds a socialist country ruled by law.” See An Linxian, “Constitutional Principles and Governing the Country by Law,” www.people.com.cn, November 2, 2006, http://legal.people.com.cn/GB/43027/73487/73490/4990833.html.
[11] Ouyang Fei, “Red Nonsense”, Minghui.org, January 8, 2015 [歐陽非：〈紅色荒唐言論〉，明慧網，2015年1月8日，http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2015/1/8/302850.html.]
[12] Francis Bacon, “Of Judicature,” Essays, Civil and Moral, http://www.notable-quotes.com/b/bacon_francis_viii.html.
[13] Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (Nos. 91–744, 91–902).
Quoted in “The Supreme Court; Excerpts From the Justices’ Decision in the Pennsylvania Case,” The New York Times, June 30, 1992,
[14] Tom Murse, “Number of Pardons by President,” ThoughtCo, March 09, 2018, https://www.thoughtco.com/number-of-pardons-by-president-3367600.
[15] Gregory Korte, “Obama Commutes Sentence of Chelsea Manning in Last-Minute Clemency Push,” USA TODAY, January 17, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/17/obama-commutes-sentence-chelsea-manning/96678814/.
[16] Paige St. John and Abbie Vansickle, “Here’s Why George Soros, Liberal Groups Are Spending Big to Help Decide Who’s Your Next D.A.,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-prosecutor-campaign-20180523-story.html.
[17] Affidavit of Roger N. Baldwin, December 31, 1938, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States. Hearings before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, 75th–78th Congress, 3081–3082.
[18] Phyllis Schlafly, The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It (Minneapolis, MN: Richard Vigilante Books, 2006), 26–27.
[19] Phyllis Schlafly, “Pots of Gold Behind Crosses and Ten Commandments,” The Eagle Forum Report, June 4, 2004, http://eagleforum.org/column/2004/june04/04-06-23.html.
[20] “The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance: Circuit Court Decision, Reactions, etc.,” Religious Tolerance, http://www.religioustolerance.org/nat_pled3.htm.
[21] Passed/agreed to in House: On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Agree to the Resolution Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required): 416 – 3, 11 Present (Roll no. 273) https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-resolution/459.
[22] Submitted in the Senate, Considered, and Agreed to without Amendment by Yea–Nay, 99–0, June 26, 2002, https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/senate-resolution/292.
[23] Schlafly, The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, 30.
[24] Ibid., 58.
[25] Ibid., 60–61.
[26] “CNN Revels in Pot Smoke during New Year’s Eve Report from Denver,” Fox News, January 1, 2018, http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2018/01/01/cnn-revels-in-pot-smoke-during-new-years-eve-report-from-denver.html.
[27] Patrick McGreevy, “Billionaire Activists like Sean Parker and George Soros Are Fueling the Campaign to Legalize Pot,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-proposition64-cash-snap-20161102-story.html.
[28] Adam Shaw, “GOP Senators Ask Tillerson to Probe US Funding of Soros Groups abroad,” Fox News, March 15, 2017, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/15/gop-senators-ask-tillerson-to-probe-us-funding-soros-groups-abroad.html.
[29] Ariane de Vogue and Jeremy Diamond, “Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Same-sex Marriage Nationwide,” CNN News, June 27, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-ruling/index.html.
[30] Todd Starnes, “Kentucky Clerk: ‘This is a fight worth fighting,” Fox News, September 3, 2015, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/09/03/kentucky-clerk-am-prepared-to-go-to-jail.html.
[31] “Attorney for Kim Davis Speaks out, Huckabee Blasts ‘Judicial Overreach’ in Case,” Fox News, September 8, 2015, http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/09/08/attorney-for-kim-davis-speaks-out-huckabee-blasts-judicial-overreach-in-case.html.
[32] Schlafly, The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It(Minneapolis, MN: Richard Vigilante Books, 2006).
[33] The Stop the Kinsey Institute Coalition, “Kinsey Helped Undermine Laws Protecting Women & Children,” http://stopthekinseyinstitute.org/more/undermining-laws/.
[34] Cao Changqing, “Capital Punishment Should Absolutely Not Be Abolished”, China Report Weekly, June 7, 2015 [曹長青：〈絕不應廢除死刑〉，《中國報導周刊》，2015年6月7日， http://www.china-week.com/html/6405.htm。]
[35] Schlafly, The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, 49.
[36] Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion.
[37] Skousen, The Naked Communist.
