The Divide Is Not Political: It Is Between Good and Evil

 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.