unPHILtered: The Way I See It (13 page)

Yep, there’s less pork at a Robertson family reunion than what you’ll find in Washington. Not surprisingly, the IRS, the very entity that collects our taxes, is one of the most egregious abusers of public money. In 2010, the IRS spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference in Anaheim, California, for more than 2,600 of its employees. The IRS spent $50,000 to produce videos—one of which was a
Star Trek
parody and another of which was line-dancing instruction. Are you kidding me? I’ll be sure to write off the ballroom dancing classes Miss Kay makes me go to!

Don’t even get me started about the IRS. The U.S. federal tax code would require more than five or six thousand pages of paper to print one copy, and there’s no way the average American can figure out what’s included in it. It would seem to me that if I’m being taxed by my government, I should at least be able to know why I’m paying it and where my money is going! There has to be a simpler way! I suggest moving Election Day to April 15 every year, so voters would finally hold politicians accountable for their actions. Maybe then our government would realize that there’s a serious problem with the way it collects and spends our taxes.

A flat tax would seem to be a much more equitable way of funding our government. It’s really a replica of the system of taxation
God introduced to us in the Bible. In the Old Testament, tithes were taxes the populace paid to fund Israel’s national budget. Many Christians still believe in tithing, which means giving 10 percent of our income to God’s work, in and through the ministries of the church. According to Leviticus 27:30–33,
“ ‘A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord. Whoever would redeem any of their tithe must add a fifth of the value to it. Every tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod—will be holy to the Lord. No one may pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution. If anyone does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute become holy and cannot be redeemed.’ ”

Dr. Benjamin Carson of Baltimore, one of the world’s most renowned neurosurgeons and a really smart man, suggested a tithing system for taxation during his speech at a National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013. He said it was the most equitable system because it didn’t penalize wealthy people for being successful. “You make ten billion dollars, you put in a billion,” Carson said at the time. “You make ten dollars, you put in one. Of course, you’ve got to get rid of the loopholes. . . . Where does it say you’ve got to hurt the [rich] guy? He just put a billion dollars in the pot. We don’t need to hurt him. It’s that kind of thinking that has resulted in six hundred and two banks in the Cayman Islands. That money needs to be back here building our infrastructure and creating jobs.” I agree with Dr. Carson wholeheartedly.
Only 57 percent of American households paid federal income taxes in 2013, and the top 20 percent of wage earners in our country accounted for more than 67 percent of total income taxes, according to some estimates. It isn’t fair and it isn’t right. Too many hardworking Americans are carrying too much of the weight, and there are far too many freeloaders in our country.

In a lot of ways, we have basically replaced love for God and love for each other with rules and regulations in America. Love trumps all codes, rules, and regulations. Love is the answer. If there’s no Jesus, there’s no love. Love is a fulfillment of the law. The less love you have, the more laws you will need. That is a fact. We don’t love our neighbors anymore, so we try to enforce and legislate everything. But you can’t legislate love, you see, because it’s something that has to come from the heart.

I still believe America can become the greatest nation on earth again, like it was when our founding fathers established it more than two hundred years ago. Our government has simply lost sight of what it’s supposed to be and how it’s supposed to function. It has become dysfunctional, and it’s ripe with greed, corruption, bribery, and deception. But believe it or not, any government is better than no government. Without government, rules, and regulations, there would be anarchy on every level—politically, socially, morally, economically, and domestically. First Peter 2:13–15 tells us we must submit to our government and follow
its laws:
“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.”

Sadly, faith is no longer important for too many Americans, and so we are no longer under the supervision of God’s law. It’s a great code of conduct, but unfortunately no one can keep it. Faith in Jesus is the only way out of this thing. We can only pray for our leaders in Washington and hope that God will guide them. As Franklin famously said, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.’ ”

God wants us to submit ourselves to human authority, but we are to revere no one but God. Why? All men have sinned. God is eternally holy and perfect. He’s the only one you revere while you’re on planet Earth. Honor those in authority, but don’t revere them. More than anything, though, we need to pray for them. Lord knows they sure as heck need it.

W
hen our founding fathers adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, announcing to the world that the thirteen American colonies had separated from Great Britain to become a new country, the document’s preamble introduced a passage that would become the cornerstone for democracy around the world: “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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” We best never forget that this republic, America, came into existence because of the Bible, guns, and blood. The blood that spawned our nation
came from two sources: Jesus, who died for us, and Americans who bravely gave it to turn away a brutal force, King George and his troops.

According to the Declaration of Independence, I have an unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, and what makes me happy, happy, happy is blowing a mallard duck’s head smooth off. Yes, it is biblically sanctioned by God. Shooting ducks obviously requires me to have a gun, and no one is going to tell me that I don’t have an unalienable right to do so, whether it’s animal rights groups or gun control advocates. Furthermore, the second amendment to the United States Constitution states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The second amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791, as part of the Bill of Rights, which also protects Americans’ freedom of religion, speech, and the press, as well as the right to a fair trial and not having the government unlawfully search and seize your property, among other things.

I’ve been around guns my entire life and use them to hunt and protect myself. Obviously, people who hunt with guns are the consumers buying my duck calls and other Duck Commander products, so I naturally have a vested interest in the gun debate. It’s tragic any time someone dies, either maliciously or accidentally, when a gun is fired. One lost life is one too many. But America doesn’t have a gun problem—it has a sin and self-control problem. Guns aren’t the problem; it’s the people pulling
the triggers. The people killing their neighbors and themselves with guns are under the control of the Evil One, along with the terrorists who crash jets into buildings, killing hundreds of people. Trust me, the murder rate in this country would drop dramatically if we started to love God and love one another. It is the solution to all of our country’s ailments, as well as the ailments of the entire world. If foreign and domestic terrorists embraced Jesus, our Lord, their murdering would end as well. Satan is leading them—all of them. It is a spiritual problem worldwide. Money and politics are not going to solve our murder problem. Gun control and more rules and regulations are not going to fix it. We’re going to have to repent, love God, love our neighbor, and get Jesus back into the equation, and then the murder rate will go down around the world. God doesn’t only love America; He loves the whole world.

The arguments for stricter gun laws in this country simply don’t add up. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual uniform crime reports, the nation’s total violent crime rate hit an all-time high in 1991. But then it declined in eighteen of the next twenty years, 49 percent overall, to a forty-one-year low in 2011. Forcible rapes were down 36 percent and robberies decreased by 59 percent. At the same time, gun ownership and the number of privately owned guns rose to all-time highs.

In 2012, there were 8,855 homicides committed in the U.S. with firearms, according to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice. Another 1,589 people were murdered with knives or cutting instruments. Are we going to ban pocketknives, scissors, and box cutters? An additional 518 people were killed with blunt objects like clubs and hammers. Are we going to take hammers away from carpenters and baseball bats away from kids because some deranged lunatic might use one to beat somebody to death? Is the problem actually the weapons or the hearts of men committing the crimes? The reason people murder is because they don’t have a healthy fear of God in their hearts. They don’t love God and don’t love their neighbor.

Here is an important fact you need to know about gun control: mankind has been murdering for thousands of years. The Law of Moses was introduced around 1500 BC. In the Ten Commandments, God told man,
“You shall not kill.”
If God had to instruct people not to murder, they must have been killing each other back then. Firearms weren’t invented until the fourteenth century AD, so the Law of Moses was around for at least 2,700 years before guns were introduced. So mankind was murdering with something other than guns. Murder is sin, a violation of the Law. You can’t blame sin on the device one uses; you blame the person committing the sin. Where you have no love for Jesus, you have evil and violence. It’s as simple as that. Satan has trapped murderers and controls them; he works in them,
and he takes them prisoner to do his will. That is why Jesus came to earth—to set us free from Satan. Divine power changes a person’s heart. It is the only way to change a heart from hate to love. That’s why Jesus is the “the way.”

History shows that murder has never been a gun problem. If guns are the problem, then why was there a slaughterhouse happening before guns were invented? People were murdering one another long before pistols and rifles came around. It was never about the weapons. Was it a spear problem when tribes were slaughtering one another? Was it a sword problem back in medieval times? When kings and queens were having public hangings every afternoon at the gallows, was it a rope problem? Would there have been fewer hangings if rope had never been invented? Since the beginning, evil men who did not have love for God and their neighbors killed with spears, rocks, clubs, swords, or anything else they could get their hands on.

It was a love problem when the law was written—do not murder—not a weapons problem. It is a love problem now. We need sin control and self-control. We need a spiritual fix. If you pick any problem plaguing America today, loving God and loving your neighbor are the solutions. If we stop sinning and start doing what’s right and loving each other, the murder rate will go down. We need to become spiritual men and women. We need to marry our mates, bring our families back together, and teach our children about fearing God at a very young age so they will love one another and won’t shoot each other.

The founding fathers believed every American has a God-given right to liberty and freedom. They also believed every citizen has a right to bear arms to protect themselves and the republic. Samuel Adams, one of the leaders of the American Revolution, said that “the . . . Constitution [shall] never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, wrote, “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” He was trying to safeguard our right to keep our guns, and George Washington, the first U.S. president, agreed with him. In Washington’s first message to Congress on the State of the Union on January 8, 1790, he said, “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.” Folks, never, ever give up your guns. If you do, you will be at the mercy of the ones you gave them to.