Gary Varvel: The New Senate Dress Code

Remembering George Washington's Farewell Address

Sep 20, 2023

The Senator has no clothes. Illustrating absurdity with the absurd. The Senate lowered its standards by changing its dress code to accommodate Sen. John Fetterman who prefers to wear hoodies and shorts to work. What’s next? Clothes optional?

Sen. Susan Collins blasted Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s new dress code directive, which she said “debases the institution.” This may be the first time I agree with Collins. She jokingly said she could technically show up in a bikini if she wanted to. Yikes. I don’t want to imagine that.

What would George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson think of a come-as-you-are Senate?

George Washington’s advice to America

Yesterday, September 19th was the 227th anniversary of the day newspapers published President George Washington’s Farewell Address. In it he gave us some advice that we should have heeded.

Case in point: Last night on Fox News’ ‘The Five’ the hosts discussed the rise is senseless violence. A man died after getting beaten up at a New England Patriots game by a fan of the opposing team. In Las Vegas, a 17-year-old recorded the moment the car he was riding in intentionally hit and killed a retired police chief riding a bicycle along the side of the road.

Jesse Watters claimed that we don’t know how to act in public since the Covid shutdown. Greg Gutfeld said no one intervenes to stop fights because they’d rather record it on their phone and upload it to the internet to get hits. Judge Jeanine Pirro called it the “devolution of society” because we have “no law and order anymore.”

Then Harold Ford Jr. said, “We’re drowning in anger in the country for some reason. We’re drowning in incivility. We’re drowning in a lack of decency…Something is wrong in society when this is happening.”

Harold, I can tell you the “reason” this is happening. I know what is “wrong in society” and Judge, I know what has caused the “devolution of society.”

And I’m not alone. George Washington taught us 227 years ago, how to avoid this immoral behavior we’re witnessing today. Just read what he said:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

He was prophetic. As America has become more secular (meaning godless) we have become more and more immoral. Today, everyone does what is right in their own eyes and the result has seen an increase in violent crime, out of wedlock births, fatherless homes, human trafficking and the list goes on and on.

America rejected and removed God and the Bible from the public square. Without God, we become our own god and there is no fear of judgment or punishment for immoral behavior. We are witnessing the results of a godless society. The secularization of America is nearly complete and the results are ugly.

What the people on the The Five don't understand is that humans have a heart problem.

The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Jesus said, “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23).

The reason society has gotten more immoral is because America didn’t heed Washington’s warning. We removed the pillar of religion that supported and trained moral behavior in our citizens.

Our Sixth President John Quincy Adams explained morality this way, “There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy.”

Simply put, if God doesn’t exist then there are no consequences for immoral behavior. But the Bible clearly teaches that God is eternal and He will judge the living and the dead.

The answer to the problem of violence and immorality is a relationship with the God who made us. An eternal perspective has a purifying affect on a society. But this heart change only happens through the good news of salvation (the gospel). “For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. First for the Jew and then for the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16).

Jesus said we must be born again spiritually which takes place in the heart of man.

When these Bible truths were taught in American classrooms, Americans’ moral values were informed by God’s standards. Without Biblical teaching, we devolved into broken homes, disrespect for authority and ultimately violence and crime. All because we didn’t adhere to Washington’s warning: “…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Coming Friday I will write about a subject that preachers rarely mention but Jesus talked a lot about — hell.

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