Saturday, March 31, 2018

The problem of leftism (and what to do about it) - by Dr. Joel McDurmon (When will Christians face reality?)


There is a fact that needs to get across to everyone. If we can succeed in this, it will liberate everyone spiritually, psychologically, and in large part even physically and politically.
I am about to say something that will strike most Christians and conservatives as strange, even objectionable, at first. You will see, however, that it is merely counterintuitive. The fact to get across is this:
The left is a huge problem, but it is not really the problem.
To put it even more enigmatically, the left is the problem, but the left is not the problem.
To put it in the more seemingly objectionable way, the left is not the problem, period.
To explain, let’s be clear: “the left” is, in fact, the problem in that it embodies the worldview of the society of Satan. It results in the attempt to erect the humanistic state on the ruins of Christian civilization in every area of life—family, church, state, education, money, markets, banking, military, police, public services, insurance, medical, business, infrastructure, property, etc. Everything.
Everything.
So far, we are talking about a worldview and the party (“the left,” so to speak) that embodies that worldview in general.
The great problem, however, we have got to realize, is not the party so much as the worldview. This is not because the party and its adherents are not wrong, devious, and destructive—murderous, even. It is because the worldview that drives them is the source of it all, and because that worldview is not confined within the ranks of that party. Let us be absolutely frank, clear, and painfully honest: this worldview is the greatest problem of all, and it is so mainly because Christians and conservatives far too often partake of it.
If that statement provokes any significant level of denial from you, then I humbly submit that you have not truly understood the depths of the devious worldview of which we speak, nor the broad scope of it. It is too easy to see ourselves in contrast with “the left” where it is easy—transgender bathrooms, forcing Christian bakers to “bake the cake,” the deadly socialism of Stalin, Mao, and Lenin, etc.
What we overlook are the areas in which we ourselves already practice the basic principles and values of that very worldview: government education, government contracts, subsidized businesses, a strong centralized executive-administrative, central banks, fiat money, a standing army, etc.
The problem here is not the left. The problem here is everyone who says they hate the left nevertheless acting like the left. The problem is the devious worldview of leftism among the ranks of Christians and conservatives.
The problem is not the left. The problem is the us acting like leftists. In fact, in some cases, it is us not only acting like the left, but defending the principles of leftism as we do. Our side has grown so dependent—spiritually, psychologically, materially and financially—upon acting like leftists that we defend its principles and institutions with the same ardor and passion we would our most fundamental religious doctrines—the resurrection of Christ and the inspiration of Scripture, for example.
Take, for now, just the issue of government education alone.
Christians defend the public school system, or at the very least refuse to call it what it is: socialism. The government schools are, by any measure by which you can measure them, the most socialistic institutions in our society. They are socialism, root and branch.
Most Christians have no idea that such a government-run education system was one of the key “planks” in Marx’s Communist Manifesto. We’re not talking about the content of the education here; we’re talking about having a government-funded education system period. When Marx published that idea, only a tiny handful of radicals in the northeast accepted such a view. There was hardly a public school anywhere in the U.S. The vast majority were private and home schooled, and yet we educated our children as well as anyone—and in many ways, far better than today.
But if you float the idea among Christians today that public education is unbiblical and should be avoided in principle by Christians, you had better duck immediately. You will be treated like a radical, fringe conspiracy theorist, a revolutionary, a schismatic, a troublemaker—indeed, un-American! It’s not that the nature of the socialistic education system has changed, or that the principles of the Bible have changed. It is that Christians and conservatives have grown dependent upon the system, deeply, and they are just as invested in it emotionally as they are materially. The initial call to repentance and change almost always meets resistance for these very reasons. Few are the Zaccheuses in life who happily make immediate changes that hurt them socially and financially.
Telling Christians and conservatives that they have accepted socialism and are behaving like socialists in this area—any area—usually strikes them as a deep offense. But it is true.
The truth, however, is that if every Christian and conservative immediately pulled out of government schools, the system would collapse almost overnight. If we pulled out and adamantly opposed the funding of it, it would without question collapse immediately. In this area, socialism would have no hold over us and be no threat to us.
And that brings us back to our point: the left is not our problem. We ourselves are the problem, in every area where we act like leftists. And we do. A lot.
I wrote about this a few years back in Restoring America:
The problem ultimately is as much personal as it is political. The local and state levels are microcosms of the more extended plundering that goes on in Washington, D.C., but local gov­ernments themselves are a reflection of the lusts and corrup­tion that local individuals choose to allow. Local governments often suffer under corrupt officials who doggedly pursue more money—more grants from state and Federal governments. But often local citizens either agree with taking, taxing, and bor­rowing, or they are oblivious or apathetic to it.
So here’s the hard truth: if you agree with the appropria­tions (even if “only at the local level”), then you’re complicit in a corrupt system that stretches from your heart all the way to Washington. Don’t talk about freedom and fiscal respon­sibility when you make multi-million dollar exceptions for yourself, your business, your industry, your union, your police and fire, or your local schools. Obama’s not the problem; you’re the problem. Until you address this problem in your own heart, you have no moral authority to criticize people for doing essentially the same thing you do (albeit on a larger scale and way over your head). (Restoring America One County at a Time, 100–101)
I like and even love a lot of what I hear from sources like crtv, Matt Kibbe, and others. But they don’t go all the way, and that is the very problem itself. We can decry “socialism” all day long, and probably make a good deal of money frightening people with pictures and tales of Stalin, the trail of dead bodies in socialism’s wake, and warnings that the progressive want to take away our guns. But it will produce nothing more than the gain of a few celebrity producers and talking heads if we do not swing the axe at the root of our own socialism; and we cannot swing the axe at the root if w will not be honest about where the root really is.
You cannot escape Marx while practicing the teachings of Marx. You cannot stop 1984’s “boot stamping on a human face—forever” when it’s also your boot on the face of your neighbors. You cannot shelter socialism at the foundations of your society and then pretend to fear the results to which socialism leads.
Get out of the government schools, completely. Fight to privatize the institutions, and free mankind to choose. Help other local Christians and conservatives use their wealth voluntarily to create charitable schools and trade schools for the truly impoverished and needy. Create private networks of help, business, education, self- and home defense, arbitration, etc. Don’t just condemn the left where it’s easy; sanctify yourself where it is both easy and difficult. Free yourself from your own dependence on government and socialistic institutions. Then start or join an effort to replace those institutions with alternatives of liberty and charity, and work to get the government out of all places it does not belong completely, for good, forever.
We want to abolish all socialism. But we can only do so if we are truly honest about how deep socialism runs and how much we are intertwined with it, and then get really honest about rooting it out.