Biden-Harris Breaking the Ten Commandments: Part Ten - The Sin at the Center of the Equity Agenda
This is the tenth and final installment in The Western Journal’s series “Biden-Harris Breaking the Ten Commandments.” Click on this link to read the rest of the series.
If you’re a conservative and you haven’t seen the 2019 film “Mr. Jones,” you don’t know what you’re missing. When it comes to modern films, there is no other feature that better highlights the horrors of communism.
The film follows the real-life story of journalist Gareth Jones.
In 1933, hearing the news of the Soviet Union and its supposed societal innovations and booming economy, Jones felt that something wasn’t adding up.
At the time, the Soviet ruble was worth next to nothing. If the Soviet Union was broke, he reasoned, how could they be generating all this wealth? In the film (and in the real-life story), Jones traveled to Moscow to ask that question of Joseph Stalin himself.
Throughout the film, Jones uncovers the terrible truth: The Soviets were lying through their teeth. The Soviet economy wasn’t booming — its people were dying from mass starvation.
The state’s desire to seize and control all the nation’s wealth created a man-made famine, killing millions.
The film’s most poignant scene comes when Jones encounters a hollow-cheeked starving woman in a small Ukrainian village. Bewildered by the haunting images he’d seen of the starving masses, Jones asked how all of it had come to pass.
“Men came and thought they could replace the natural law,” she replied.
Communism and Marxism at their core are covetousness, the desire to take that which belongs to others.
To push and encourage covetousness on a mass political scale is to encourage the breaking of the Tenth Commandment.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s,” Exodus 20:17 reads.
Property Rights and God’s Dispensation
As mentioned in part eight of this series, scripture assumes the private ownership of property, and from that assumption flowed massive levels of economic human flourishing.
When Christendom swept through the West, so did private property rights.
This is because all property, ultimately, belongs to God. When that property comes under the ownership of another, it is because God made it so.
Who are we to challenge God’s good judgment?
Reformer John Calvin articulated this point quite well:
“We are forbidden to pant after the possessions of others, and consequently are commanded to strive faithfully to help every man to keep his own possessions. We must consider that what every man possesses has not come to him by mere chance but by the distribution of the supreme Lord of all… For this reason, we cannot by evil devices deprive anyone of his possessions without fraudulently setting aside God’s dispensation.”
When we let our covetous impulses boil into resentment, and then upset the natural law of God’s “dispensation” through political “revolution,” devastation follows.
Free markets certainly do create millionaires and billionaires. As a consequence, they also create inequality — that word socialists use to gin up covetousness among the people.
But the investments and wealth of the rich also create a rising tide that lifts all boats. They lead to innovation, falling prices and an increase in everyone’s quality of life.
Because of that rising tide, even the poorest among us have better lives than many of the richest people living just a century ago.
A report from The Heritage Foundation found that the average “poor” U.S. household in 2005 had a car, air conditioning, multiple televisions, a DVD system, a video game console, a refrigerator, a washer and many other helpful household appliances.
That’s a heck of a lot better than the starving Ukrainians of “Mr. Jones” had it.
Respecting and even honoring God’s dispensation of wealth can lift up entire nations and cultures.
The “revolutions” that seek to overturn that natural order — from Maoist China to the French Revolution — inevitably end in tyranny and destitution.
Equity Is the New Political Covetousness
The “equity” agenda touted by the Biden-Harris administration is the latest political mutation of this age-old sin.
For those who may not know, equity and equality are not synonyms.
While “equality” refers to the right to equal opportunities and treatment under the law, “equity” means that all groups should receive the same outcomes — even if that means through unequal treatment.
Just like communism, equity is a demand that we subvert what Calvin called “God’s dispensation.”
That very mission is at the core of much of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies.
Biden’s domestic policy adviser Susan Rice put it best in 2021: “[N]ever have we had a president who… has made racial justice and equity the centerpiece of his presidency… In every department and in all aspects of what we do, we need to be intentional about infusing equity and racial justice.”
Various executive orders and other initiatives launched by the Biden-Harris regime direct federal departments to prioritize equal representation in hiring, providing economic aid and in other areas.
In other words, they are utilizing discrimination to strip away opportunities from certain individuals.
If Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, she’ll no doubt look to continue this current course.
She’ll certainly increase taxes on the rich to incredible new heights, targeting even unrealized capital gains.
Just like the Soviets, Biden and Harris believe they can replace God’s natural law.
Their repeated insistence on the “unfairness” of our free-market economy only serves to engender covetousness in the masses.
As is the case with Commandments One through Nine, Biden and Harris are leading their people to break the Tenth.
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