Homestead & Healthcare

Tragically, the young people of America are turning away from God in huge numbers. As our young people move away from God, many now turn to the government as their source of security and rights. This means that churches and Christians that CLA serves by the thousands each month are facing an ever-growing, rapidly encroaching government that wants to control more and more facets of American life.     

The Can-Do Spirit

To give some perspective to this dilemma, consider the difference between the Homestead Act, passed by Congress in 1862 and signed by President Abraham Lincoln, and the Healthcare Act, passed by Congress in 2010 and signed by President Barack Obama.

A great example of American exceptionalism based on the governing philosophy of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution can be found in the 19th Century. In 1800, a decade after the Constitution was ratified, America’s population was about 5 million people stretching along the Eastern Seaboard. By 1899, America had grown faster than China is growing today. Its population of 76 million had spread all the way to California.

What drove this amazing growth and prosperity? One primary factor was the Homestead Act, a short concise piece of legislation by which Congress divided up America’s western lands into 160-acre plots and offered them at nominal cost to anyone bold enough to head west, live on the land, and develop it. There was no consideration of race, color, creed, ethnicity, education, or background for these settlers; just the need for an adventuresome heart, a can-do American spirit, and a willingness to work hard and take care of one’s self and one’s family with a reliance on God, not government.

Contrast the Homestead Act with the recent Healthcare legislation. The healthcare bill was over 2,000 pages, chock full of regulations and controls. The Homestead Act was 50 pages, with merely a requirement to settle and tend whatever land any individual claimed.

While we understand that some basic land use and other regulations are now required to preserve a modern society, these two laws demonstrate the basic difference between 18th and 19th century America under presidents like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, and America in the 20th and 21st centuries under presidents like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama. These modern presidents have believed a governmental “elite” is required to care for and control ordinary Americans who cannot be expected to take care of themselves or each other. Before the 20th Century, Americans looked to God and relied on benevolent societies, churches, and neighbors to take care of them in tough times. Today’s Americans have been trained to rely on the government for basic needs.

Fundamental Truth

The Homestead Act was based on the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. That philosophy recognizes the fundamental and absolute Biblical Truth that God created all men equal with unalienable rights. It also recognizes that the Law of Nature (natural laws put in motion by our Creator) and the Law of Nature’s God (the Bible) make it unjust for some men to rule over others without their consent. America’s Founders understood the sinful human nature of both governors and the governed because they knew their Creator, knew the Bible, and understood the Biblical concept of freedom. In contrast, the governmental philosophy behind the Healthcare Act can be understood in a passage from President Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, where he claimed, “Implicit in [the Constitution’s] structure,  in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth [and] the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or ‘ism.’” Think about the differences. America’s Founders recognized that absolute Truth was to be found in the Bible. The Biblical Creator made everyone equal in value. Today’s governing philosophy rejects absolute truth for the evolving idea of a governmental “elite.” Elitists must regulate and control “lesser” citizens considered to be either unable or unwilling to control or care for themselves or others. Freedom fades for average Americans placed at the mercy of a fallible government of men they can no longer control. These men (and women) assume ever greater power to regulate the citizenry according to their own fallible ideas of what is good for the nation.

Look to God

It is time for Americans to begin looking to God again, not government, as our Source and Sovereign Ruler. It is time to reject the governing philosophy of the Healthcare Act, which takes away freedom, and return to the governing philosophy of the Homestead Act that made America great. At the Christian Law Association, we are honored to stand with local churches and Christian families in the tradition of our founding fathers. We respect and pray for our government, but we wish for our government to limit itself to the roles outlined in Scripture and understood by our founders. More government is not the answer. The God Who created government is America’s only true Hope.