Good neighbor

A response to Dr. Michael Brown's good neighbor Donald Trump illustration

By Harlan Brown
October 26, 2020

On October 5, 2020, Dr. Michael Brown published an article titled "Once Again, Why So Many Evangelical Christians Strongly Support Trump." He used an illustration that begins as follows:

Let's say that you and your spouse are committed Christian conservatives, raising your four children to honor the Lord and live by biblical principles. Included in those principles are the words of Jesus, who taught that the meek and the peacemakers would be blessed. That’s one reason that you eschew violent entertainment, from violent video games to blood and gore movies to extremely violent sports.

The illustration is set in the suburbs and contains the following sections:

Your Good Neighbor, the Fighter, Who Isn’t Always the Best Role Model
The Fighter Takes on Crazy Sam for You
Trump Fights for Us

I appreciate Dr. Brown's illustration. I think that it makes some valid comparisons. However, it omits an important factor. In the remainder of this essay I shall try to describe the missing details. Like the original article, this essay is meant as an illustration rather than a precise analogy.

The rest of the story

The good neighbor is mayor of the suburb.
1. The suburb is independent, not under a state or national government.
2. The suburb has a constitution and a supreme court.
The suburb has a cult known as the My Child My Choice Society, which practices infant sacrifice.
The suburb's constitution forbids infant sacrifice.
1. The suburb's constitution guarantees the right to life for all persons.
2. The dictionaries of common and legal usage at the time the constitution was adopted defined a person as a human being.
Subsequently, city councils in the suburb passed ordinances that treated newborn infants as nonpersons.
1. The punishment for murdering a newborn infant was not the same as for murdering an older person.
2. Infants are denied equal protection under the law.
3. This set the stage for what came next.
The city's supreme court ruled:
1. Newborn infants are nonpersons.
2. Infant sacrifice must be permitted in all parts of the city.
The mayor spoke out eloquently against infant sacrifice but accepted it as "the law of the land."
1. He sought counsel from the Personhood Later League (PLL) instead of from the Abolition Alliance. PLL told him that the court had to reverse its decision before infant sacrifice could be abolished.
2. The mayor ignored the fact that the city council, not judges, are authorized to pass laws.
3. He forgot his oath to uphold the constitution, not rulings that are contrary to the constitution.
4. Each year he and the city council gave sizeable sums of tax dollars to the My Child My Choice Society.
5. Each year he promised that he would veto such legislation next time.
6. Infants continued to be put to death.
The mayor appointed three judges to the city's supreme court:
1. The first said, "A newborn is not a person. Infant sacrifice is the law of the land."
2. The second said, "Precedent on precedent. A mother has a constitutional right to infant sacrifice."
3. The third said, "It's not right for the city council to allow infant sacrifice in all parts of the city. Voters in each neighborhood should decide what is permitted in their neighborhood.

The mayor runs for re-election

When the mayor ran for re-election, his main opponent staunchly supported infant sacrifice. The mayor continued to eloquent speeches against infant sacrifice, though that issue was not a major focus of his campaign. A third candidate was passionately committed to stopping infant sacrifice. He publicly vowed that if he were elected mayor, he would issue an executive order to abolish infant sacrifice.

Voters said that the third candidate could not win. Many voted for the incumbent without even asking him to issue an executive order to abolish infant sacrifice. Barring a spiritual revival in the suburb, it appears that infant sacrifice will continue.

Trump fights for us, but what about the preborn?

As mentioned earlier, what I detailed is meant as an illustration rather than a precise analogy. I agree with Dr. Brown that Trump fights for us. However, what about the preborn?

As a right-to-life volunteer I learned that being pro-life means different things to different people. American Right To Life's Prolife Profiles website distinguishes four pro-life tiers based on one's position on the personhood of the preborn. The tiers are:

personhood now
personhood whenever
personhood later
personhood never

Antonin Scalia was a Tier 4 pro-lifer. Donald Trump is a Tier 4 pro-lifer. He supports Planned Parenthood. Each year since Trump became President he has signed legislation giving more than $500 million to that organization. He has opposed the abolition of aborticide and has appointed anti-abolitionists Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the Trump Administration has made grants totaling nearly $2 billion in support of development of COVID-19 vaccines using fetal cell lines.

On last Tuesday's Line of Fire program, Dr. Brown hosted a debate between pro-life leader Janet Porter and abolitionist leader Tom Hoefling on the merits of fetal heartbeat legislation. Both contestants agreed that Republican pro-lifers are an obstacle to ending abortion. Porter cited National Right to Life as a specific example.

Roe v. Wade is not the law of the land; the Constitution is. Amendment 5 says, "No person shall... be deprived of life... without due process of law." Amendment 14 says, "No State shall deprive any person of life... without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Article II, Section 3 says, "The President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins, Aborticide Holocaust appears likely to continue unless our nation experiences a spiritual revival.

The Nuremberg connection

In the 2007 documentary Focus on the Strategy II, Bob Enyart, pastor of Denver Bible Church, said, "Remember half a century ago, after World War 2, American judges and our allies put on trial German officials and judges. And those judges defended themselves, saying, 'We were upholding the law.' But our judges said, 'That is not a defense when you're murdering the innocent.' Fifty years ago even Hollywood understood that point."

In the 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, German Judge Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster) said, "The reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people, I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it."

Chief Judge Dan Haywood (played by Spencer Tracy) replied, "Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."

Bob Enyart concluded, "When a judge rules to kill an innocent person, that is the beginning of a holocaust."

An unjust law is no law at all

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., defending civil disobedience, cited Augustine — "an unjust law is no law at all" — and Aquinas who defined an unjust law as "a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law." King wrote, "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

The same principle applies to a court ruling such as Roe v. Wade, which is contrary to the Constitution and clearly unjust.

Call to action

I encourage you to support the only Presidential candidate who is an abolitionist: Tom Hoefling. He is certified as a write-in candidate in most states.

I urge you to send a message to https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact:

Encourage President Trump to seek counsel from American Right to Life not National Right to Life.
Encourage President Trump to enforce the right-to-life provisions of the 5th and 14 Amendments by issuing an executive order to shut down every abortion facility in the country.