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.