(b. May 9, 1942) Calling him “a man of great integrity, a man of great judgment and a man who knows the law,” President George W. Bush announced his decision to nominate John Ashcroft to serve as Attorney General of the United States on December 22, 2000. Upon confirmation by the Senate, Ashcroft pledged to renew the war on drugs, reduce the incidence of gun violence and combat discrimination so no American feels outside the protection of the law.
Ashcroft was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in Springfield, Missouri, where he attended public schools until enrolling at Yale University, where he graduated with honors in 1964. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1967. He began his career of public service in 1973 as Missouri Auditor and was later elected to two terms as the state’s Attorney General. His ability to work with leaders of both political parties prompted his colleagues in the non-partisan National Association of Attorneys General to choose him as Chairman.
Ashcroft was elected Governor of Missouri in 1984 and held that post until 1993. During his tenure, he balanced eight consecutive budgets and served as Chairman of the Education Commission of the States. Fortune magazine rated him one of the top ten education governors in the country, while Financial World and City and State magazines credited him with making Missouri one of the best financially managed states in the country. He also spearheaded the state’s efforts to reduce the use of illegal drugs. In 1991, the non-partisan National Governors Association elected him Chairman.
He was elected to the Senate in 1994 and maintained a near-perfect voting attendance record while working to combat illegal drugs, increase the quality of public education, reduce crime and safeguard the rights of crime victims. Ashcroft worked closely with Missouri law enforcement officers, developing strategies to counter the state’s methamphetamine problems. He co-sponsored the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. He fought to toughen the penalties for gun crimes by substantially increasing mandatory minimum prison sentences for the criminal misuse of firearms. During his time in the Senate, Ashcroft was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee.
Prior to entering public service, Ashcroft taught business law at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. He authored the book Lessons from a Father to His Son, a tribute to his father, and co-authored multiple editions of two college law textbooks with his wife, Janet. John and Janet Ashcroft have three children: Martha, John and Andrew, and one grandchild, Jimmy Patterson.
Attorney General Ashcroft is committed to confronting injustice by leading a professional Justice Department free from politics, defined by integrity and dedicated to upholding the rule of law. He will make certain that the Justice Department fulfills its promise and honors its heritage-not only by enforcing the rule of law, but by guaranteeing rights for the advancement of all Americans.
In an address at Washington D.C., September 1996, during a Christian Coalition Convention, Senator John Ashcroft stated:
One hundred years ago in Chicago, William Borden, heir to the Borden dairy fortune, graduated from high school. His father wanted his son to see the world so he sent William off with a servant, with money, and with a new Bible.
After a month of traveling across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, William had seen a world of pain, a world of need, a world of suffering. In a letter home he reported that he intended to give his life to begin to prepare to serve hurting people on the mission field. He suffered from no delusion. He knew the challenges he would face, but the calling of Christ was more pressing than the lure of the world, and he reflected on that thought as he wrote in the back of his Bible two words: “NO RESERVES.”
Returning to the U.S., William enrolled in Yale University where he pursued his calling. Graduating with honors, he was inundated with offers. Wall Street courted him; the family business needed him; law school beckoned him. But William Borden’s soul had been captured by Christ and the Holy Spirit would not let him waver.
When he applied and was accepted into Princeton Seminary, he wrote in the back of his Bible two more words: “NO RETREATS.” Three years later upon graduating from the seminary and accepting a mission assignment to China, William set out to fulfill his calling to serve those in need. In route to China he stopped in Egypt to further prepare and became ill. A month later he died. Dead at 25—the flame of life extinguished before it had fully flourished.
While going through his son’s possessions, William’s father thumbed through the now worn Bible that he had given his son years before. In the back of the book the senior Borden found two additional words written by William on his deathbed: “NO REGRETS.”
No reserves, no retreats, no regrets. Six words written in a Bible given by a father to a son. Six words that encompass three principles of our faith. Six words that signal three opportunities for our hope and our future.
No reserves, no retreat, no regrets. Six words that are nothing less than the call of our faith and the challenge of our time.
No reserves. We are called to live a life of total commitment. I believe that this is true not only as its relates to our faith but in every aspect of our existence. God’s word makes it clear that God abhors the tepid and the middling: “I know your deeds, that you are lukewarm, so I am about to spew you out of my mouth.” (Revelation 3:15, 16) No half measures, no reserves.
The world our children are inheriting demands repair so desperately that we can hold no reserve. I do not seek from government and from politics any type of national salvation, nor do I desire to impose my religion on anyone.
God respects the dignity of our freedom so profoundly that He allows us even to choose against Him.
As Christians, we are involved in the political realm because we seek to counteract a governmental system that actively mocks and undermines our values; the values of our heritage. Values like honesty and responsibility, courage and dignity, hard work and perseverance, dedication to country, to life and to faith in God.
As involved Christians we simply share a common vision and serve an uncommon Savior. While we do not seek national salvation, we do demand a return of national sanity. This is one of the great challenges of our times. To achieve it in the face of the odds that we have encountered requires that we give our all, that we have: no reserves.
No reserves, no retreats.
America needs leadership that calls her to her highest and best rather than accommodate her in her lowest and least. America needs leadership that demands that America defend itself on the front line, rather than satisfy itself in the back seat. If we retreat from that which we know to be true, if we retreat from our faith and our principles, we will have gained nothing. With our culture under siege today there are many so-called leaders who believe that discussing cultural issues is too politically divisive. I believe that confronting our culture is the true test of courage, and a true measure of our leadership.
From absolute truths such as the inalienable right to life, from its earliest stages in the womb to its final shimmering days, there is no retreat. From the belief that the family originated by God should be honored by public policy and guarded as our most vital social institution, there is no retreat. From the conviction that the family is where the basic rules of civilization are taught and nurtured—from this truth there can be no retreat. We do not yield to the state the responsibility to teach our children right from wrong. From these truths: no retreats.
We believe that God calls us to minister to the poor among us. The Bible is as clear about our responsibility to care for the poor as it is on any other matter. I do not believe however, that the best care for the poor comes from government. We have learned that, when government becomes the keeper of the poor, it keeps them poor.
We stand in peril because such principles as this have been compromised. We cannot expect to rescue ourselves by retreating from fundamental truths and principles: no retreats.
No reserves, no retreats, no regrets. We must be totally committed to the task at hand. We most never retreat from that which we know to be true.
Finally, this point of “no regrets.” If we want to experience no regrets, we must remember that we could achieve political victory and still find ourselves having lost the battle, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26)
What we seek cannot be measured in terms of political victories, be they electoral or legislative. As Christian citizens we must be as humble in spirit as we are noble in aspirations.
The way we love our neighbors and the fact that we love our enemies must be two hallmarks of our existence. Then: no regrets.
A hundred years after William Borden’s father gave him his Bible another father accompanied his newly elected son to Washington where he we to be sworn in as a United States Senator. The father was eager that his son serve with no reserves, work with no retreats and live with no regrets. In a prayerful time of dedication, consecration, commitment and devotion on the morning of the swearing-in ceremony, the elderly father told his son that “the spirit of Washington is the spirit of arrogance, but the spirit of Christ is the spirit of humility.”
He looked his son directly in the eye and admonished him with a clarity which went beyond speaking: “Nothing of lasting value in the world has ever been accomplished in the spirit of arrogance.”
As the group of friends and family assembled around the son to pray, the newly-elected senator noticed his frail father struggling to get out of the sofa to join with the group in prayer. Noticing the father’s struggle the son turned to his dad and said “Dad, you don’t have to struggle to stand.” His father with weakness but clarity said, “Son, I’m not struggling to stand, I’m struggling to kneel.”
And he knelt by his son and prayed that the Spirit of Christ would be a mantle which would cover his son in humility so that he would have no regrets. That day was the last day of my father’s life. He died on his way returning home to Missouri.
If you can freeze that frame for a moment—an ailing, aged father not struggling to stand, but struggling to kneel and pray beside his kneeling son—you can observe a picture of what will help save America.
We need fathers and mothers praying with their children, willing to consume their last ounce of energy: no reserves.
We need clear-eyed statesmen who will admonish with ungarnished truth: no retreats.
The spirit of the world is arrogance. The spirit of Christ is humility. We need as families and congregations, and public servants and private citizens to give our all to defend and communicate our values with humility: no regrets.
William Borden’s challenge and my father’s direction are the same for us all. It is the challenge to meet our obstacles with total commitment: no reserves. To stand firm on those Creator-endowed truths that we find to be self-evident, the foundations of our culture: no retreats. And to do both in a way that honors and glorifies our Savior, that shows regard for our neighbors and, yes, love for our enemies: no regrets.
No Reserves, no retreats and no regrets.
God Bless You.3891
In May of 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke at the Family Research Council’s 2001 Washington Briefing, stating:
When it come to illegal exploitative material that would undermine our children and the values of this culture, there needs to be a crackdown. And we need to make sure that our children have the opportunity to escape childhood without the imposition of the worst that adults should have to endure …
The pornographers contaminate and otherwise interrupt what should be the innocence of childhood, and I think it is wrong to steal that wonderful God-given gift of childhood and impose upon children the kinds of things that most of us, as adults, would choose not to inflict upon ourselves.3892