by
Gadfly
Presidential
election day is three days away.
Millions have already voted. Nearly
half favor President Trump. Nearly half
favor former Vice President Biden. Somewhere
between 10 to 12% are undecided voters. Americans (and the rest of the world) wait
with great anticipation for the outcome.
The
contest has typically been described as a political divide. One side favors conservative (previously called
classical liberalism) values: individualism
freedom, private property, limited government, free markets, ground in
Judeo-Christian traditions. The other
side favors progressive (modern liberalism and socialism) values: collective freedom, less emphasis on private property,
a powerful central government, a command economy (with far more government
control through regulatory regimes), grounded in a secular-humanist (strongly
undergirded by Marxism) religion (atheistic in its manifestation). In the end, it is the religious component
that speaks far more loudly about the divide.
The
left’s pro-choice position is the most potent religious toxin of all the left’s
values. It justifies murder of an
innocent child in its mother’s womb, or in some states, immediately after a
live birth. Such depravity! The protective instinct in a loving mother’s
moral fiber has no limit. I saw it in my
own wife and the extent she disregarded her own safety and comfort for the wellbeing
of her children (and now grandchildren).
The
left’s code of social justice requires relegating individuals to a tribal
existence in identity groups. The
dynamic has nothing to do with justice.
It is all about exercising power by political elite. Members of these identity groups are mere
pawns for the selfish exploitation by their political masters. Manning Johnson discovered this and wrote
about it in his 1958 book, Color, Communism, and Common Sense (available
online here).
Manning
Johnson, Circa 1958
Identity
group tribalism, and its corresponding politically correct code, did not just
happen. It manifests the outcome of at
least three generations of an educational system deliberately controlled by
John Dewey-inspired progressive education that is closely aligned with the
political philosophy of Karl Marx. Rod
Dreher, in his recently released book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, writes
about the pre-totalitarian conditions in America through interviews with former
residents (and survivors) of communist and fascist nations. Here is one sobering story about a family in
a Soviet Bloc nation:
“My father was the pastor of our congregation. All sorts of pressure was put on him,” [Yuri]
Sipko recalls. “When I was a child, all
I knew was that I wanted to be like my father.
I saw that he was able to stand alone, with dignity and courage, against
all his enemies.”
When Yuri was still a boy, the Soviets sent his father
to prison for five years for preaching.
His mother, along with several other women in the congregation, was left
alone to raise the children. These
mothers read the Bible to the kids, prayed with them, wept with them, and
taught their little ones what to live for.
One day, Yuri’s teacher called his mother to the
school for a conference. The teacher was
angry because the child refused to accept the state-mandated lessons in atheism
and materialism. Yuri’s teacher demanded
to know what kind of cult Mrs. Sipko belonged to and why they taught children
such nonsense. The boy watched his
mother, whose husband was in prison for his faith, to see how she would react
to this dressing-down by an authority figure.
“She got out her Bible and began to read,” he
remembers, smiling. “It makes me so
happy to think about it. The teacher
called me to her and said, ‘This is our boy. He’s learning our lessons.’ But under the protection of my mother, I
found the courage to say, ‘No, I believe in God.’ It was a fiasco for the teacher” (pp.
146-147).
As I read this passage, I
recalled Hillary Clinton’s book, It Takes a Village. The overarching theme
was a blatant profession of similar Marxist ideology.
The danger today is that
ideology cuts across political and religious boundaries. The left wants us to believe that politics
and religion are mutually exclusive domains.
Yet, both domains are all about values that guide and shape our thoughts
and actions. The difference is the
epistemology (worldview) that shapes and justifies the values. This is why America’s divide is between good
and evil.
The left does not
subscribe to the ideals in our Declaration of Independence. They do not believe God made all of us equal,
with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is where the atheistic power
elite enter and command our lives to make all people equal, such as brutal
lockdowns, the fear-inducing mandates to wear masks, the redistribution of
wealth, or the disenfranchisement of white men because Marxists advance their
absurd critical race theory, among many other examples. To further demonstrate its power over life
itself, the state justifies the murder of innocent children when consensual
sexual activity results in an unintended and unwanted pregnancy. Is this no less barbarian than the millions
of lives taken by Nazis based on identity politics and Communist nations based
on ideological dissidence?
To make matters worse,
even the current Catholic Pope appears to align ideologically with the left
with its climate pseudoscience, socialist promises, and assault on the sanctity
of traditional families. For the sake of
the Catholic Church and for the preservation of political conservatism
(classical liberalism), one living Archbishop, who now is in hiding, courageously
speaks out for truth.
Archbishop Viganò understands
who Donald Trump is and that for which he stands. He
has written to President Trump before around the time Trump was criticized
by the left for his walk across Lafayette Square to hold a Bible in front of a
church vandalized by protestors (Black Lives Matter and Antifa).
This week, Archbishop Viganò
issued
another open letter to President Trump.
He clearly sees what is happening to America and the rest of the
world. It truly is a contest between
good and evil.
