When the teacher returned our graded papers, I was stunned – not only because she had given me an “F”, which would have been enough shock for an “A” student who loved English, but because of the note she had written on it.  She said that the previous year a student had submitted a myth very similar to mine – therefore I must have cheated and she graded me accordingly.  No questions.  No benefit of the doubt for previous work.  No investigation.  Just her summary dismissal.

I remember how devastated I was by the false accusation.  The humiliation.  The sense of betrayal.  The lack of opportunity to defend myself.  The injustice.

My feelings from this small event  – that changed my attitude toward this teacher, but not my whole life – all came rushing back today, forty-plus years later, as I watched the following video.

It’s from a celebration, of sorts, for nineteen people who spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit, but through The Innocence Project and DNA testing, have finally been exonerated.

As you watch it, I hope you’ll feel compassion for these individuals whose lives were derailed.  And I hope you’ll understand that, in many cases, innocent people are tried and convicted with false or flimsy evidence simply because we clamor to put someone – anyone – in jail when a heinous crime is committed.

We are all responsible.

A woman comes upon a snake in some kind of trouble (frozen, injured or being attacked). She rescues the snake, takes it home, and nurses it back to health. It becomes a trusted friend and pet. Then one day, she decides to go to town and picks up the snake to take it with her … and it bites her. As she dies, she asks the snake why. “Lady,” the snake says, “you knew I was a snake when you picked me up.”

Every new government outrage against all that is right and good elicits reactions of astonishment and outrage — and every time I hear those reactions, I think of The Fable of the Snake.

Folks, the guys I’m quoting here are the naive, feel-good, utopian, hippy dippy doo optimists of political history. If you want to a more level-headed, accurate assessment of the ends to which government means inevitably lead, read any well-written history of the Third Reich’s Holocaust, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields or Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

It’s time to stop kidding yourself.

It’s time to stop buying the “this time, it will be different — really!” line.

1. Prices – The most obvious difference is price.  Gas Stations have big signs advertising their prices so that you as a consumer can decide how much you are willing to pay without even slowing down along the highway.  There are federal regulations that prohibit hospitals from advertising and competing based on prices.

2. Upfront Estimates – When you need a mechanic to replace your head gasket, he will give you an upfront estimate of the price.  He will often give you a list of less expensive alternatives if they are available.  When you ask a surgeon to replace your heart, there are federal regulations and AMA rules that prevent the distribution of price estimates.

3. Competition – If someone wants to build a Gas Station across the street from a competing Gas Station, its quite alright.  If someone wants to build a hospital, they have to prove to the Federal Trade Commission that the hospital won’t lower prices in the community or cause undue competition.

4. Monopoly – In the early 20th century, the federal government broke up a monopoly on oil and gasoline distribution. [Not quite. The government actually paved the way for the current near-oligopoly through legislation and regulation. See comments below and Thomas DiLorenzo for more information.] In the mid-20th century, they created a monopoly on hospitals and doctors because the American Medical Association said there were too many doctors, too much competition, and doctor’s couldn’t earn enough money.

5. Do It Yourself – When you go to the Gas Station, you can pay someone to fix your car and fill up your tank, or you can buy what you need to do it yourself.  At a hospital or pharmacy, you can’t make any decisions on what medications you can take, dosage levels, or treatments.  You must have the “official” opinion of a state regulated doctor.

6. Choice – When shopping for mechanics, you can decide to hire your handy neighbor, or find someone with all the latest training and certifications.  When shopping for doctors, your only choice is regulated by the state.

7. Purchasing Power – When you buy gasoline, you are paying for the gasoline you actually purchase (and a little extra for the small amount of theft).  When you buy healthcare, your price includes a large government imposed subsidy for those who can’t afford it, thus making healthcare less affordable to more and more people each year.

So in the infinite wisdom of the crooks in Washington, Obamacare is adding more regulation – 111 new bureaucracies and estimates of 50,000 + new federal “jobs” – and they tell us prices will come down?

They really do think we’re all idiots.

The “Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010,” introduced by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday with little fanfare, “sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning,”

The bill does not distinguish between U.S. citizens and non-citizens, and states that “suspected belligerents” who are “considered a “high-value detainee” shall not be provided with a Miranda warning.”

A person is considered a “high value detainee” if they fulfill one of the following criteria.

(1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate.

Now that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the federal government, via the MIAC report and innumerable other leaked documents, now consider virtually anyone with a dissenting opinion against the state as “posing a threat,” millions of peaceful American citizens could be swept up by this frightening dragnet of tyranny.

However, according to the bill, an individual doesn’t even have to pose a threat to be snatched, detained and interrogated – they can merely be deemed to be of “potential intelligence value” or come under the vague and sweeping mandate of “such other matters as the President considers appropriate”.

This last designation hands Obama dictator powers to have any American citizen kidnapped, detained, and interrogated on a whim.

I found all this on the same day I learned that Hillary and the US State Department released their 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.  As she slams virtually every other country in the world, Clinton had the audacity to say in her introduction that the US has recommitted “to continue the hard work of making human rights a human reality.”

Excuse me, I need to go vomit.

For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and “wiretaps without warrants,” he said.

Feb 11, 2010 “Feds push for tracking cell phones”

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Now here’s some change we can believe in:  Obama went from an outspoken critic of privacy violations to an establishment proponent of the same, and it only took one election and a couple years.

Say goodbye to the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

After reading some of Palin’s recent remarks in a Fox interview, though, I have to wonder what God thinks about her stands.

However, there are many things that he [Obama]  is doing today that cause an uneasiness in many, many Americans, I’m one of those.

Who looks at the way that he is treating the trials of these terrorists and kind of as gosh, they’re on a crime spree right now. No, we are in war. These are acts of these war that these terrorists are committing. We need to treat them a little bit differently than an American who is worthy — an American being worthy of our U.S. constitutional rights. I don’t think the terrorists are worthy of our rights that people like my son fight and are willing to die for.

I won’t argue whether terrorists in America should face military or civilian courts.

What I will argue is that it’s not just Americans who are “worthy” of our U.S. constitutional rights.  It’s every man, woman, and child on the planet.  God loves them all, and to say that only Americans should be treated decently is the height of hypocrisy.  Our Declaration of Independence states that the rights Palin would deny to terrorists are God-given rights, not United States rights given only to Americans.

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.

Jury duty? Yes, jury duty. If you are called, don’t complain or try to get out of it. Use that opportunity to effect change where it matters most – right in your own community.

I learned with amazement about jury nullification a few years ago. They sure don’t teach it in public schools, and you won’t hear about it from a judge when he’s charging the jury. You won’t even see it on TV. But it’s the truth about our jury system, and I encourage you to learn just what it means.

The following quiz is taken directly from the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) website.  See if you’ve believed any government lies.

THE JURY QUIZ

TRUE OR FALSE?

1. The primary purpose of the jury is to prevent oppression by the government.

2. The jury is an independent arm of government.

3. The defendant is innocent of any criminal charge until proven guilty by the government.

4. The judge can require the jury to find the defendant guilty.

5. The jury can find the defendant not guilty, even if the defendant broke the law.

6. If the jury finds a defendant not guilty when he is clearly guilty, the judge can punish the jurors.

7. The judge decides all questions of law.

8. The jury is not required to reach a verdict.

9. The jurors can vote according to their consciences.

10. The jury must take the law as the Court gives it, whether they believe the law is right or wrong.

11. The jury can find the defendant not guilty, because they believe the law is unjust.

12. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

ANSWERS & EXPLANATIONS

1. TRUE: The criminal trial jury was created by the constitutions of the Federal and State governments to be a guardian of the individual’s rights.

Its purpose is to prevent oppression by the Government.. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. – Justice Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 US 145, 155 (1968)

The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power….– Justice Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 US 522, 530 (1975)

2. TRUE: The Constitution divided the government into three branches –the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial – in order to prevent an unhealthy concentration of government’s powers. And it created the Jury – the Fourth Branch of Government – in order to hold the first three branches in check. In order to fulfill its purpose, the Jury must be independent of the other branches of government.

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.– Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Paine, 1789

3. TRUE: Under our system of government, it is a sacred principle of criminal law that the government has the burden of proving every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt and that the defendant has no burden to prove his innocence. The government makes the criminal accusation and must prove its accusation to the satisfaction of the jury.

4. FALSE: Not legally! The judge has no authority at all to compel the jury to find a defendant guilty. The jury is absolutely independent in this function.

If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence…If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision. – 4th Circuit Court of Appeals United States v. Moylan 417 F.2d 1006 (1969)

5. TRUE: The jury can find the defendant not guilty, regardless of what the law says, and regardless of the facts. The jury has the power to find the defendant not guilty for any reason which appeals to them. This is usually called “jury nullification” of the law. In short, the jury has a veto power over bad law and bad judges.

The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact. – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Horning v. Dist. of Columbia 249 U.S. 596 (1920)

In criminal cases, a jury is entitled to acquit the defendant because it has no sympathy for the government’s position. – U.S. v. Wilson 629 F.2d 439, 443 (1980)

6. FALSE: No one has any authority to punish a juror because of his vote. Period. This issue was resolved in 1670 in London in the case of Edward Bushell – one of the jurors in William Penn’s trial.

But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges. – Justice Robert H. Jackson Morisette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246

7. FALSE: The judge has the authority to declare to the jury what he believes the law to be. But the jury has the authority to ignore that advice, to determine for them what the law says, and to judge for themselves the justice of the law.

It is universally conceded that a verdict of acquittal, although rendered against the instructions of the judge, is final, and cannot be set aside; and consequently that the jury have the legal power to decide for themselves the law involved in the general issue of guilty or not guilty. – Justice Gray, U.S. Supreme Court, Dissenting Sparf v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 172 (1894)

8. TRUE: A verdict is the guilty or not guilty decision of a jury. All jurors must agree to the verdict. Otherwise, they must report a “hung jury.” That means that the jury was unable to agree upon a verdict. Each juror is free to vote in accordance with his or her conscience and cannot be forced to vote for conviction or acquittal just to reach a verdict. In the event of a hung jury, the government may bring the defendant to trial again in front of another jury.

9. TRUE: The jurors have not only the right, but the obligation to vote according to conscience. If the jurors believe that the law itself is unjust – for any reason – they have the power to do justice by simply voting not guilty. Every juror has a right to leave court with a clear conscience.

…it is the conscience of the jury that must pronounce the prisoner guilty or not guilty. – Lord Chief Justice Mathew Hale 2 Hale PC 312 (1665)

10. FALSE: The court has no authority to dictate the law to the jury. However, many courts will force jurors to swear an oath to accept the law as the Court dictates. Such an oath violates the Constitution. But anyone refusing to take the oath will be excluded from the jury, thereby depriving the defendant of an independent jury. Such an oath is taken under duress. And nothing agreed to or sworn to under duress is binding. It is ironic that the same judge who demands that jurors take such an oath is violating his own oath to uphold the Constitution.

The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy. – Chief Justice John Jay State of Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 DALL. 1,4

The right to trial by jury shall remain inviolate…. In criminal cases, the defendant shall have a public and speedy trial by an impartial jury; and the jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts. – Georgia Constitution Art. I, § I, Par. XI (a)

11. TRUE: To be faithful to their duty, the jurors must vote not guilty, if they think the law is unjust.

It is not only [the juror’s] right, but his duty…to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court. – John Adams (1771) Yale Law J. 74 (1964): 173

12. FALSE: “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” may have made sense centuries ago when the law confined itself to real crimes with real victims. Everyone knew that murder, rape, robbery, arson, and other such crimes were crimes. Today, with government passing thousands of new laws each year, no one can understand all his obligations under the law. If the jury does not believe that the defendant knew of his obligations under the law, it has the power to find the defendant not guilty. Ignorance of the law is an excuse if the jury says it is.

This preposterous doctrine, that “ignorance of the law excuses no one,” is asserted by courts because it is an indispensable one to the maintenance of absolute power in the government. –Lysander Spooner Massachusetts Attorney An Essay on the Trial by Jury, 1852

* * *

So, did you learn anything?  If you did, and you know other people who are ignorant of jury nullification, the FIJA website is a gold mine of information, including:

• several printable brochures, one of which includes the quiz above
• a juror’s handbook [pdf]
• advice about handing out FIJA literature around courthouses
• FIJA contacts by state

Help spread the word and maybe justice can prevail … at least in your neck of the woods.

Child endangerment.  That must be serious, because the story was married to another about a woman who was giving alcohol to minors, two of whom had to be treated at a local hospital.

So what did these Cressy criminals do that they were arrested and their mugshots broadcast to the world?  What was the danger to their children?  Were they drugged or abused?  Were they locked in a back room, cut off from the world?  Are they illiterate?

No.  There have been no allegations that the children have suffered in any way, but given Montgomery County’s history of high-handed interference with parental rights, it’s no surprise that the parents were arrested anyhow – on an anonymous tip, of course.

The evil and nefarious crime that these parents committed was a failure to submit paperwork, emphasis on submit.  The superintendent of the Fonda-Fultonville Central School (FFCS), which I reluctantly and repugnantly confess is my alma mater, Dr. Richard Hoffman, told the same TV station that, “We follow the law.”  And the law, of course, states that parents who have the audacity to reject the public school system in favor of educating and raising their own children must submit a curriculum for the superintendent’s approval.  Hoffman said this has now been done and the Cressy’s curriculum has been approved – but the parents were still arrested.

This demand for blind adherence to the letter of the law is eerily reminiscent of the story of Matthew Whalen , the Troy Eagle Scout who was suspended for keeping a survival kit with a 2″ pocketknife locked in his car on school grounds.  As Whalen’s father so eloquently stated:

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for some intelligence on the part of administrators to use discretion and judgment in their daily decisions,” said Bryan Whalen. “Otherwise, what are we paying them for?

“You could have a trained monkey or a computer sitting there just spitting out right and wrong and never any gray areas. That’s just not the way the world works,” he told Foxnews.com.

I’d wager that discretion and judgment are not in the curriculum to train school superintendents.  They’re probably not in the FFCS curriculum, either, but that’s to be expected.  They’re much too busy developing the popular Participation in Government class (PIG), where the kids learn how to apply for welfare and food stamps.

And then, of course, the administration has to develop and document policies for doing strip searches:

Strip searches may only be conducted by an authorized school official of the same sex as the student being searched and in the presence of another district professional employee who is also of the same sex as the student.

[Note to Hoffman:  You might want to re-think this same sex requirement in fairness to your homosexual teachers and/or students.]

If [sic] every case, the school official conducting a strip search may [sic] have probably [sic] cause – not simply reasonable cause – to believe the student is concealing evidence of a violation of law or the district code.

[Note 2 to Hoffman:  You might also want to run these policies by the English department before posting them.  A couple years ago I sent an email pointing out multiple typographical and grammatical errors on your website, but this situation has obviously not improved.]

Proper English aside, the real issue underlying this whole arrest scenario and the complete disruption of the Cressy family, of course, is power.

Whose Kids Are They?

Do they belong to the state?  The state obviously thinks so, just like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Treaty proposal, which would “give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.”

This mindset conforms with the Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, the socialist agenda behind church transformation, health care reform, education reform, and welfare reform – in short, the long-planned  “transformation” of our free society.

Rest assured that if you challenge this mindset, you might be arrested just like the Cressy’s.

Whose Kids Are They?

Did you sign on as short-term parents? Do your responsibilities end when the kids are five and you can turn them over to the state babysitter?

Whose Kids Are They?

I applaud Richard and Margie Cressy for doing what most parents are too fearful, selfish, or brainwashed to even attempt.

I deplore the actions of Dr. Hoffman, the Fonda-Fultonville Central School, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, and  Montgomery County Child Protective Services for flexing their muscles to make an example of the Cressy’s.  All have over-stepped the bounds of their authority, demonstrating everything abhorrent in power-hungry, egotistical bureaucrats.

Whose Kids Are They?

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
(Psalms 127:3)

• Our economy cannot help but collapse at some point under the weight of a national debt over $12 trillion, or almost $40,000 for every man, woman, and child.  This number continues to increase at an average of $3.81 billion per day, and someday the Chinese will either quit investing in a losing proposition – or they’ll own it outright.
• Al Quaeda has won the war on terror.  You won’t see that headline on the nightly news, but you can read an excellent article on the subject by Fred Reed.  Granted, the man is more than a little crude, but he’s honest in pointing out that the goal of a terrorist is to terrorize.  On that point alone, they have won hands down. [HT to Jim.]

• So little is necessary to terrorize the world’s hyperpower. A free-lance dingaling secretes a bomb of sorts in his shoe, whereupon the US goes into convulsions and long lines of Americans stand comically barefoot in airports. Dingaling Two popularizes liquid explosives, and so Washington frenziedly confiscates toothpaste. Yes, the world’s hyperpower is afraid of Colgate, with fluoride. Dinglaling Three hides the infernal machine in his skivvies, so Obama makes Firm Pronouncements, and we will now have to undergo examination by panty scanners. Always, over and over, the terrorists have the iniative. The country reacts hugely and predictably.

• We routinely kill and maim innocent men, women, and children all over the world, and can’t even be bothered to keep a tally, because as General Tommy Franks said, “We don’t do body counts.”
• We have murdered over 50 million innocent, unborn babies in this country calling it choice, when in actuality it’s a result of the demand for freedom from the consequences of our personal actions.
• The Bill of Rights is swiss cheese.  We willingly submit to arbitrary searches at airports, train stations, and driving anywhere within 100 miles of an external border – which includes more than 2/3 of the population; we have politically-correct hate laws to prevent Christians from speaking the truth of scripture; our every electronic transmission from private phone calls to internet searches are arbitrarily monitored and sold to the government; we need “permits” to gather in protest of the latest government outrage;  habeus corpus and the Posse Comitatus Act have become quaint historical traditions; and the list goes on.
• Government officials at every level have run amok.  They ram every imaginable law down the throats of an unwilling populace; they defend bribery, blackmail, and coercion as normal political practice; and their personal, financial, and sexual “scandals” have become commonplace.

So how did this happen?  Why is America dying?

We can blame the public school system that is hell-bent on indoctrinating our children with feel-good, anything-goes secular humanism, but neglects the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the historical significance of these documents.

We can blame big business, who courts corrupt politicians to pass laws to give them an unfair advantage over the competition.

Or we can blame the power-hungry politicians, who care not about the people they are elected to represent, but only about their own positions.

Or … we can look a little deeper and recognize that the above are just symptoms of a much deeper problem, one that we have been warned about from the beginning:

… there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained; George Washington, his first inaugural address, 1789

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, speech to the military, 1798

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America . . . America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835, 1840

Above all, I know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently seek His powerful aid. Grover Cleveland, Second Inaugural Address, 1893

We do not need more national development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. Calvin Coolidge, President 1923-1929

The basis of those ideals and principles is a commitment to freedom and personal liberty that, itself, is grounded in the much deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted. Ronald Reagan, speech 1983

This sampling of wisdom is based, of course, on the Bible – that same Bible that is largely rejected or ignored in today’s America.  The latest evidence of this fact, and the one that prompted this post, comes from a recent Rasmussen poll.  These answers cannot come from Christians who put their faith in God.

National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
Conducted December 30, 2009

By Rasmussen Reports

1*Some people say that there is a natural tension between protecting individual rights and national security. In the United States today, does our legal system worry too much about protecting individual rights, too much about protecting national security, or is the balance about right?

43% Legal system worries too much about protecting individual rights
17% Legal system worries too much about protecting national security
28% Balance is about right
12% Not sure

2* In light of the recent attempt to blow up an airliner as it was landing in Detroit, should the United States take full control of security measures at foreign airports so that anyone flying to the U.S. would have to go through U.S. security?

54% Yes
29% No
16% Not sure

3* Should the attempt to blow up the airliner be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act or by civilian authorities as a criminal act?

71% By the military as a terrorist act
22% By civilian authorities as a criminal act
7% Not sure

4* Should waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques be used to gain information from the suspected bomber?

58% Yes
30% No
12% Not sure

5* How do you rate the U.S. government’s response to the attempted airline bombing – excellent, good, fair or poor?

5% Excellent
29% Good
27% Fair
35% Poor
4% Not sure

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

Whether you agree or disagree with the majority, understand that these attitudes do not reflect Christianity.  They do not reflect the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.  And ultimately, God will give us what we ask for.

If you will fear the LORD and serve Him, and listen to His voice and not rebel against the command of the LORD, then both you and also the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God. If you will not listen to the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the command of the LORD, then the hand of the LORD will be against you, as it was against your fathers. (1 Samuel 12:14-15)